“Hold, herder,” Meoran growled, narrowing his eyes to amber slits. “There are more things to say.”
Thakur lowered his muzzle, slightly abashed.
“You, Ratha, stand before me.”
Slowly Ratha walked toward Meoran. The gray-coat seemed as massive as the stone he sat on. Cherfan and his mate came and stood beside him. More survivors from the broken clan peered out from behind him. They were sons and daughters of clanfolk Ratha had known. Here was a young male with the crooked tail of Srass, the grizzled herder. Of the older clan members, the only one that remained was Meoran. He sat upright beside Cherfan, towering over the young father.
Thakur had told her on the trail that Meoran’s rule was no less harsh than before, yet the harshness now was of necessity, not the petty tyranny it had been. His errors had cost him all of his sons and nearly all of his people; knowledge was imprinted as deeply on him as the gashes that Un-Named claws had made across his face. Cherfan looked at him as a son might look at a father and Ratha sensed he had earned that devotion.
The amber slits opened suddenly. “I do not forget the night when a cub carried the Red Tongue among us. And I see by your eyes that you have not forgotten either.”
“It is gone, Meoran,” Ratha answered. “It perished in the creek. By my foolishness.”
“And not by the claws of the herder Fessran, as I was told.” Meoran turned his head. Ratha followed his gaze to Fessran, crouching nervously in the shadow near the inside cavern wall. Meoran eyed her and yawned, showing the back of his tongue and all his teeth. “Sit up, herder, and don’t cower like a cub. Ratha’s tracks betrayed her. After I spared you I went back and saw where she slid and fell into the stream.”
Fessran shot Ratha a fierce glance that stabbed her with joy and fear.
Meoran grinned. “Did it amuse you to think you fooled me? I spared you, Fessran, because I needed you. With the Red Tongue gone and the she-cub driven out, you were no threat to me. So you lived.” He turned to Ratha. “So you wish to return. To be a herder once again. To eat at the clan kill and obey clan law.”
“Yes, Meoran.” Ratha looked down at her paws.
“You ask me to forget the night you and your creature shamed me before my people. That is asking much.”
Ratha lifted her head and stared into the glowing orange eyes as she had stared into the heart of the Red Tongue. “Most of those who remember that night are dead now,” she said softly. Everyone was still, listening. “There is no shame left in dead memories, Meoran. Now it is only between you and me.”
“Ratha, be careful!” hissed Thakur behind her.
“Quiet, herder!” Meoran roared, startling everyone. In the rear of the cavern, a cub began to wail. “You come to me asking to share my meat and my den, yet you speak to me as an equal,” Meoran said to Ratha.
“What I ask is to serve again as a herder and work for my meat.” She felt her whiskers bristling. “I will obey clan law.”
“Obeying clan law means obeying me,” Meoran said in his deep voice. “That you must do without question.”
“I will obey.” Ratha clamped her teeth together, feeling her hatred build again.
“Look at me as you speak and let me see what your words really mean.”
Ratha brought her gaze up to his.
The orange eyes semed to blaze out and devour her. She fought back, quietly, deep inside, hoping he couldn’t see.
After a long moment, he looked away.
“You will obey me in words, perhaps, and in deeds, but not in heart. Every time I look at you, I will see challenge in your eyes.”
“No!” Ratha cried miserably, knowing he saw what she could not hide. She would never forget that he too had bowed his great head before the power of the Red Tongue.
“Listen, you who were once of the clan,” he said to those assembled around him. “I will hear other words. Shall she come back among us?”
“Shall we invite a tick into our fur? Or maggots into our meat,” cried the young male with Srass’s tail and ears.
“Yet, she is young and strong and could bear cubs,” Cherfan argued, turning to Meoran. Mutterings grew and spread. Ratha listened and heard with dismay that most were against her. Fessran got up from her crouch against the wall and came toward Ratha. Her joy at seeing Ratha again was so obvious she could not hide it, and it was no further risk of Meoran’s wrath to run to Ratha’s side and welcome her openly.
Fessran sat close beside her and she felt her warmth and her fast breathing.
“Meoran!” Thakur cried. “Hate begets hate. Let old trails be covered with grass. If you turn her away, you will regret it. I need another herder. Cherfan’s cubs need a teacher. The Un-Named are enemy enough. Why make another?”
Meoran raised his paw and pointed at Ratha. “The hate is not mine. She chooses the trail she will run. Look at her!”
Ratha stood, quivering, trying to quench the rage boiling inside her, trying to be the humble herder she was asking him to believe she was. She knew that the voice that had so often lied for once spoke truth.
It was something in her, something that burned deeper than the Red Tongue. It was something she did not want, for it betrayed all her wishes; all her hopes to be united once more with her people.
“Meoran is right,” she said in a low voice. “I have chosen the path I run. He has not made me outcast, it is I who have made myself.” She raised her head. “I say it in words now so that it will not be said in blood tomorrow. Take care of your people, Meoran.”
She turned, choking on her last few words, and the hunger that twisted her belly. For a moment she saw the pain in the faces of her two friends; then she was beyond them and running down the stone slab. She heard Fessran leap up and run after her and she redoubled her speed. She heard panting just behind her and a voice. “Ratha, if you don’t stop, I’m going to pull you down like a dappleback!”
Ratha slowed, jogged to a stop.
“Go back, Fessran. He needs all of you,” she said.
“He’s wrong!” Fessran cried, her face wild with agony. “We need you. For what he has done, I swear I’ll seek his blood!”
“No!” Ratha hissed. “He’s right, Fessran. Didn’t you listen? Your people can only survive if they stay together, under one leader. The Red Tongue has tainted me, made me want something I was never meant for and should never have. You are still free of the taint, Fessran. Go back to Meoran, obey him and your people will live.”
“Ratha!”
“Go back, Fessran,” she said softly, touching the other with a paw. “And tell Thakur he is forgiven.”
Then, before Fessran could speak again, Ratha bounded down the trail, leaving her friend behind. Darkness closed about her, seeming even to block out the stars overhead, and as she ran she felt as though she were plunging down the maw of some hideous thing that had risen up to swallow her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ratha fled to the edge of clan ground. There, by the stream bank amid the trees, she dug a den and lived by herself. Often, as she hunted shrews and bare-tails, she heard the sound of fighting in the meadow and the shrill cries of herders and raiders. She would turn her back on the noise and hunt elsewhere, for she hated both sides equally.
She thought that all the clan would shun her, for her friends would face Meoran’s wrath if they came to search for her. That Thakur or Fessran might find their way to her den was too dangerous a hope to allow herself. She thought often of leaving again and becoming a wanderer, without people or territory. There was much to see beyond clan ground and even beyond the land held by the Un-Named. Once she had climbed up a peak and seen a sparkling line of blue where the hazy sky met the land. Wild new smells in the wind blowing into her face made her long to journey that way.