The other flicked her tail in answer and the two set off across the burn, Fessran in the lead, Ratha following, bearing the torch.
As the two traveled, the grass grew thicker underfoot, hiding the burn beneath a new carpet of green. Wild wheat stems stroked their bellies and flanks as they passed through, and Ratha had to hold her torch aloft to avoid setting the new growth alight. A sea of waving grasses covered what had been forest floor, swirling around the fire-blighted stands of pine and fir. Only the great red-woods still shaded the land, their heartwood still living, their fibrous bark only scarred by the Red Tongue’s passing. The wild grasses grew thin in their shadow and the torch seemed to burn brighter in the cool, still air beneath their boughs.
But the trees were few and the grass triumphant as it spread far in the open sunlight. Ratha walked behind Fessran, watching her tail swing back and forth in time to her pace, listening to the fire snap and hiss. The only other sounds were of grass swishing past legs and the muted hammer of a woodpecker from its faraway perch.
The sun reached its zenith and began to fall again. Fessran had replaced Ratha’s torch as many times as there were blackened stubs left along the trail. Ratha could hear Fessran’s stomach growl and her own, she was sure, would meet her backbone by the time they arrived on clan ground.
Ratha slowly became aware that the continuous low gurgle in the background was not coming from her stomach or Fessran’s. It was the sound of running water. She tried to scent the stream, but the acrid tang of torch smoke made her nose useless. She could only follow Fessran’s lead.
Soon they were walking along a grassy stream bank. Fessran found a ford where the stream ran shallow over gravel. They began to wade across, Fessran still leading, Ratha behind.
Fessran reached the other side and scrambled up the steep bank, shaking mud and pebbles from her feet. “Here is where we swam with the deer away from the Red Tongue,” she called back to Ratha, who still stood in midstream.
Ratha remained where she was, letting the water flow over her paws. The creek looked different in the open sun with grass instead of trees on its banks. But there, upstream, were the potholes she’d swum across and above them the waterfall she’d tumbled down. Her flank ached momentarily at the memory.
“I know your feet are weary, Ratha”—Fessran’s voice cut into her thoughts—“but we have only a little farther to go.”
Ratha’s jaws loosened in dismay and she almost dropped the torch in the water. Only at little farther to go? She wished that she was back on the burn, still traveling; the goal of her journey too far ahead to have to worry or think about. Now, suddenly, she had arrived. Ratha looked up the bank to where her companion was standing. Clan ground. And she wasn’t ready.
“Are you going to let your tail drag in the water all day?” Fessran sounded annoyed.
Ratha glanced down at her reflection. Herder of the Red Tongue, she thought wryly. A thin forlorn face stared back at her, holding the torch in its jaws. An echo of her own voice rang in her ears. Clan leader, hah! Who is he compared to....
“Ratha, hurry.” Fessran leaned down the bank. Ratha jerked her head up and sprang, dripping, onto the slope. Her paws slid on the muddy bank but Fessran seized her ruff and hauled her up.
Ratha paced back and forth on the stream bank while Fessran shook herself off. This was home ground, but very much changed. The forest no longer reached the stream and the meadow had altered shape and grown larger. The grass felt new and crisp underfoot. Ratha looked across the open land and remembered the cool dimness of the old forest.
The meadow stood empty. No beasts grazed; no herdfolk stood guard. Ratha shivered. Where are they ... ?
“Fessran, could the clan have gone somewhere else?” she asked, turning to her companion and speaking awkwardly around the branch.
“The meadow grass is not thick enough for beasts to graze,” Fessran said. “And the dapplebacks like to browse in thickets. Our folk may have taken the animals further away to graze, but I am sure they will return to the dens at sunfall.”
Fessran found the overgrown trail that led to the clan dens.
“The grass is bent here,” she said, nosing about, “and here are the marks of large pads. Meoran and the others came this way not long before.”
Ratha stood on the stream bank, her soggy coat still dripping. She stared across the meadow. She thought it was empty, but what had caused that patch of weeds to wave when the rest was still? The motion died out and though Ratha searched intently she could see nothing else. Her wet coat made her shiver again.
“Someone is stalking us,” she muttered in response to Fessran’s questioning look.
“Some clan cub out hunting grasshoppers.” Fessran wrinkled her nose. “Come out of the weeds, weanling, and give greeting to your betters,” she called. The meadow remained still.
“That isn’t a cub,” Ratha said.
“How do you know? I thought you couldn’t smell anything with the Red Tongue’s breath in your face.”
“My nose isn’t telling me. I just know,” she growled.
Fessran lifted her tail and waved the white spot at the end of it. No cub in the clan, Ratha knew, would disobey that signal. No one came, however, and Fessran lowered her tail. “Shake yourself dry,” she said irritably to Ratha, “and leave whoever it is to their games.”
Ratha shook her pelt and followed Fessran onto the trail. It wound among the few trees that had been spared by the Red Tongue and forest giants that had fallen across the path. Fessran seemed unsettled, even though this was a trail she had once known well.
She stopped, one paw lifted. Ratha halted behind her.
“They watch,” Fessran hissed. “All along the trail they watch and they hide themselves. If you be of the clan, come forward and give greeting!” she called, but again no one came out, although Ratha sensed motion between the trees and caught the phosphorescent gleam of eyes.
“Are they the Un-Named?” Ratha asked, shivering again although her coat was almost dry.
“No.” Fessran’s muzzle was lifted. “I smell scents I know well.”
“Then why do they not come out and offer greeting?”
“I don’t know.” Fessran walked ahead a short distance and called again. “I am Fessran of Salarfang Den, a herder of the clan. I walk by right on this ground. Do you hear me, those of you out there? Srass, that rank odor can only belong to you. And, Cherfan, I smell you along with Peshur and Mondir. Come and show yourselves!”
Her roar rang in the air, but once it died, the afternoon continued to slip into twilight in silence. Her ears and whiskers drooped. She crouched and picked up the branch she had dropped.
“Wait, Fessran,” Ratha said. “My creature grows weak. It wants food. Give it the branch you carry.”
Fessran laid her stick across Ratha’s until it caught. She held it while Ratha kicked dirt on the dying old one and then gave the new torch to Ratha. The fire snapped and roared, gaining hold in the wood. Ratha carried it high as she trotted down the trail after Fessran.
Again there were rustling sounds in the forest near the path and again sudden glimmers of eyes in the growing darkness. Faraway calls told Ratha and Fessran that the news of their coming was spreading far ahead of them. Fessran paced on, her head lowered, her tail stiff.
“I smell a kill,” she hissed back to Ratha. “The clan will meet us before we reach it; of that I am sure.”
Ratha felt her saliva dampen the wood between her teeth. The hunger had become a dull pain in her belly, drawing the strength from her limbs so that she trembled as she walked and she could see that her companion too was betraying her hunger. Only the Red Tongue was strong.
They went up the grassy rise and over the knoll, past the ancient oak with limbs low to the ground, where, Ratha remembered, she had first seen the Un-Named raider.