“The breath of the white tiger,” she whispered.
What of it? Silver Snow knew that the sigil of the West was the white tiger; the wind could well be called its breath. Once again rose the sound that had caused her to break off her music. Involuntarily she glanced at the tent wall. The shadow that she had come to expect there had also stiffened. Then it disappeared.
“That is not the mere breath of the white tiger,” Silver Snow stated flatly. “That is an animal out there. Perhaps a white tiger, perhaps something else,” she added, more for bravado than because she believed it to be true. She had heard that white tigers and snow leopards were among the dangers to be found in the West: and suddenly, terrifyingly, she suspected that such a beast now stalked their camp, perhaps came sniffing about her very tent.
Aside from the wind and the sound of whatever prowled and stalked outside, the tent grew suddenly, ominously still. Silver Snow glanced over at Willow, who had stiffened, her red hair glowing in the light from the brazier. Her green eyes seemed to glaze over, as if she listened to something that her mistress could not hear.
Gradually sounds insinuated themselves into that silence: what seemed almost like a purr of feral satisfaction and the rhythm of a huge heart pounding.
Willow’s lips pulled back from her teeth. Had she been in beast form, she would have growled. The Hsiung-nu women, almost shy for the first time since Silver Snow had met them, hung back, not in fear, but in awe. Then their eagerness for a fight—and possibly their fear of the Lord Vughturoi and his father—awoke.
Careful not to make a sound, she reached for her fur cloak, donned it, and caught up bow and arrow. Sable and Bronze Mirror drew out sharp daggers. Willow, however, had none. When Sable would have tossed her a knife from her soft, supple riding boot, the maid nodded thanks, but refused.
“This is the only weapon I need,” she explained, and drew out her mirror, curiously incised with strange symbols, the one she had borne as long as Silver Snow had known her.
When a horse screamed in mortal fear and agony, Silver Snow realized that her worst fears must be true. Other horses screamed in panic. Now men, too, shouted an alarm as they raced to seize arms and guard the camp against the intruder.
“We cannot wait here for our fate to come upon us,” she said, shaping her lips without sound lest she draw their enemy upon them. “Not while we are armed and able to defend ourselves.”
Either Bronze Mirror or Sable could have restrained her with one hard hand. However, before they protested or tried to stop her, Silver Snow slipped outside, and Willow followed.
Overhead shone the moon, incredibly vast and close-seeming in this land where no houses, walls, or trees might hide it from view. Starlight, obscured at times by gusts of fine snow, bloomed in the night sky and glanced off the mirror that Willow held up.
“Elder Sister,” the maid whispered, “I think that this is another such sending as troubled Jade Butterfly when we parted.”
“Aimed at me, do you think?” Silver Snow nodded to herself. Jade Butterfly had been no more a menace than her namesake, but she, with her brideprice and her rank, might well have enemies with whom she had yet to reckon and of whom, she now realized, Bronze Mirror and Sable might not dare to speak.
Perhaps they will trust me if I can prove my strength, thought Silver Snow. Fine archer though she knew that she was, going on foot and armed only with a bow against a tiger was not a test that she would have chosen. She chose an arrow with care and nocked her bow.
Just as Willow’s mirror flashed a warning, Silver Snow heard the coughing grunt of a beast poised to spring. The light flashed once more, and the leap went awry.
She whirled, drew, shot, and was rewarded with an anguished yowl. She had wounded the creature, then, but not slain it, she realized. And a wounded beast was ever the deadlier. Paws padded against the ground. She shot again.
“Behind me!” cried a man, as his horse pounded toward her. She heard the whine of his bow and of several others. The beast shrieked and thrashed, at one point rolling so close to Silver Snow that she could feel its hot breath, rank with blood. She saw the starlight gleam on its teeth and claws, which seemed to flicker with a phosphorescence of their own. Unholy, accursed! Something shrilled in her mind, and she could not restrain a scream.
Then the beast toppled, kicked once or twice, and, finally, lay still.
The warrior leapt from his horse, raked one glance over Silver Snow and her maid to assure himself that they were unhurt, and turned to their quarry.
“Bring fire!” he called.
Silver Snow pressed in closer. She too wanted to see the beast that she had helped to slay. Torches wavered and guttered, the wind all but blowing their flame sideways in the cold. In their fitful red light, Silver Snow saw a white tiger. It was immense, with massive paws and jaws upon which a bloody froth was now freezing. Even now, its green eyes glowed, then went out, like emeralds shattered by a hammer blow. Had Silver Snow imagined the light she had seen? No! Flickers still clung to claws and teeth, flickers that faded and died in glittering death throes of their own as the beast’s body twitched and cooled.
Carrying one of the Hsiung-nu’s long, deadly spears, Vughturoi walked toward the tiger and prodded it from a distance. When the beast did not move, he edged in closer and bent over its body, his hand going out to count the arrows that feathered it.
“Another excellent shot, lady,” he said to Silver Snow. “Though you might recall that it is my head that will fall should I fail to bring you unharmed to the shan-yu. ”
Silver Snow knew that she had earned the rebuke for her rashness, but she held her ground. Among the Hsiung-nu, she would gain more face from stubbornness than from retreat, she thought.
Vughturoi investigated more closely. “Two fine shots,” he commented, not at all surprised that she had not withdrawn.
“Very well,” he shouted to the cluster of hunters. “Finish tending the horses and go to your rest, all of you! We will carry this tiger with us—if our own beasts will bear it—until our next stopping point, where we can skin it. And you, lady,” he added in a softer voice, “may present it to my father as a sign of your prowess. It will be interesting to see the flurry that that will cause in the shan-yu s tents.”
Now he sounded, not displeased, but speculative, as if Silver Snow were a gamepiece that a particularly canny player had moved with surpassing skill. She did not understand him in that mood, not at all, nor did she trust it. She returned to her tent and tried to compose herself for sleep.
The next morning, when men came to load the tiger’s body upon the least restive of their packbeasts, they found only the blackened stains of its blood, which even now the snow was covering over, and the charred shafts of the arrows that had slain it. But the beast itself had vanished.
They finished breaking camp in silence and moved on with what was great haste, even among the Hsiung-nu.
14
Silver Snow chose to use her chariot for entrance to the main camp of the Hsiung-nu. Though that decision might make them regard her as weak, she wanted the advantage that a few minutes of study, behind the chariot’s protective curtains, would give her.
“It is custom,” said Willow, “for a bride to arrive in a carriage or litter. Besides,” she added practically, “should snow fall, you will not ruin your brocades.”
“Foolish one,” replied Silver Snow, as she pushed away the mirror that Willow held out for her, “what will the Hsiung-nu care about fine silks?”