“I thought I’d better feed you up if you’re going to swim tomorrow,” he said, choosing another multi-legged morsel from the pile. It tried to scuttle away from him but he seized it by the tail and dragged it back. The flailing legs and antennae threw sand grains. This one was smaller and Thakur didn’t even bother to peel the shell off. He took the crayfish into his mouth, crunched it and sorted out bits of meat and shell with his tongue.
Ratha spat out a shell and eyed Thakur. “Why is Meoran so impatient to return to clan ground?”
“I don’t know, yearling. Perhaps he dislikes the thought of any other animal in his den.”
“Or the Un-Named Ones on clan territory.”
Thakur drew back his whiskers. “I doubt it. He thinks so little of them that ground squirrels in his den would bother him more. Even the recent raids haven’t taught him that they are more dangerous than he thinks.”
“You know a lot about the clanless ones, don’t you, Thakur?” Ratha said cautiously. She watched his eyes. Thakur lowered his muzzle, ostensibly searching for another crayfish.
“Yes, yearling, I do.”
“Why don’t you tell Meoran what you know?”
“He would listen to me as well as he did today. Yearling, don’t ask me any more.”
Ratha bit down on a stubborn carapace and felt it bend in her mouth.
“Forget about the Un-Named, Ratha. The Red Tongue has driven them far away. They won’t come back for a while.”
There was silence, broken only by the sound of the river flowing and Thakur’s crunching shells.
“I know why you don’t want to go back,” Ratha teased.
Thakur stared at her, eyes narrowed, whiskers back. “You do?”
“You’re so fond of these river-crawlers you can’t give them up.”
Thakur relaxed. His sigh of relief puzzled Ratha, his odor told her she wouldn’t get an answer if she asked him why.
“You are clever, yearling. I see I can’t fool you. Yes, I have grown fond of the river-crawlers and I’ll take some with me on the way back.”
Ratha watched him as he ate. His odor, his eyes and everything else about him told her that the reason he didn’t want to return to clan ground had nothing to do with river-crawlers.
* * *
Ratha trotted over the beach, her pads obliterating for a moment the maze of tracks in the sand. She stepped in a pile of dung and hopped on three legs, shaking her foot in disgust, while the dapplebacks covered her tracks with sharp-edged toe prints. The beach wasn’t big enough for this many animals at once, she thought, wiping her pad clean in a patch of scrubby dune grass.
The three-horned deer stood together in a tight bunch eyeing the clan herders. The stags pawed and thrust their spikes into the sand, their musky scent sharp with ill temper. Herdfolk rushed at them, singly and together, trying to shy the males away and split the herd in half. Ratha, knowing she was still too weak for this task, watched as Thakur and Fessran sparred with two big males guarding the center of the herd. Skillfully the two herders drew the stags aside and Meoran led a drive into the center of the herd. The mass of animals shuddered and then broke apart. Herders on both sides of the split kept the milling animals separated.
Ratha jumped up. Her task was to join with the other herdfolk in driving the dapplebacks, cud-chewers and other animals between the three-horns.
“Keep the deer on the outside!”
Ratha glanced back and saw Meoran yowling orders down the beach. Herdfolk snarled and nipped at the deer, driving them into the river. Over the backs and heads of the little horses, Ratha saw the deer plunging and tossing their heads, throwing spray from hooves and antlers. The sound of the river was lost in the clamor of splashing and bawling. The water boiled and darkened with mud, churned up from the bottom. Ratha saw flashes of white in the water, as silt-blinded fish thrashed and jumped to escape the animals’ hooves. The dapplebacks followed the deer into the river and the herders followed them.
Ratha ran down the beach, leaped and bellyflopped into the water. She opened her eyes, gasped at the cold and started paddling. Ahead of her, the short-legged dapplebacks swam beside the wading deer, bouncing in the brown current that swirled past the three-horns’ legs. Ratha’s feet left the bottom and she began to swim after the little horses, feeling the water pull through her pads at each stroke. She angled up against the current, which buffeted her chest.
Now the deer were swimming, only their necks above water, their crowns forming a moving thorny forest around the dapplebacks. Ratha felt the water churn beside her and saw Thakur’s slick head and dripping whiskers. She grinned at him over her shoulder and got a mouthful of muddy water as a wave slapped her in the face.
“Can you swim it, yearling?” he called as she sneezed and spluttered.
“I’ll swim it, Thakur,” she answered, water running out of the corners of her mouth. “Don’t stay beside me,” she protested as he bobbed alongside, his tail dragging downstream in the current.
Ratha settled down to the business of swimming, keeping her paws going in a steady rhythm and her nose above water. She fixed her eyes on the herd, moving in the water ahead of her. The three-horn deer formed an open ring around the dapplebacks and other animals, breaking the force of the current so that the smaller animals didn’t have to fight it. Even so, the flow was sweeping the little horses to one side of the ring, piling them up, flank to flank, against the deer. The three-horns kicked and poked the dapplebacks away, but the current pushed them back again. Trapped against their irritated neighbors, the dapplebacks squealed and bit.
Ratha swam in their wake, tasting blood in the water. Her stroke was slowing, her paws so heavy she could hardly move them. The ache in her lungs had begun before she had swum a few tail-lengths, but now it was a grinding pain, radiating from her breastbone into her chest. Her wet fur dragged her down. The water lapped along her cheek and the base of her ears. The shore seemed no closer and the herd farther away.
Thakur was swimming alongside her on the upstream side, staying close enough to grab her if she went under, but otherwise offering no help except an encouraging “Halfway, yearling.”
“Halfway, Thakur,” she bubbled and kept on stroking.
Ratha’s breastbone felt as though it would split and she was sobbing from exhaustion by the time her claws scraped bottom on the other side.
There was a tug at her ruff and the wet warmth of a body at her side. Thakur steadied her, while she found footing on the loose gravel. Slowly she waded to shore beside him and hauled herself out.
Weary as she was, she lifted her head and squinted up and down the beach. The tracks were there, but the herd had gone. The beach was quiet except for wavelets lapping along shore and her soaked pelt still draining onto the sand. Ratha ground her teeth together, crunching gritty sand between them. Meoran hadn’t bothered to wait. Yaran might have, but he was too afraid to cross Meoran. For all they knew, she had drowned in the crossing. She felt a nudge; a voice in her ear.
“It doesn’t matter, yearling. Lie down and rest.”
She turned and flattened her ears. “Meoran thinks he is rid of me, the weakling, the she-cub. When he sees me it will be like rubbing his face in dung.” She grinned, still panting. She turned and staggered up the beach, knowing Thakur could do nothing except follow.
He did. She heard his paws crunch on the sand as she made her way over the rippling dunes on the high part of the beach. She saw that he looked at the ground as he walked and not ahead to the forest, whose fire-scarred trees spoke of the Red Tongue’s passing. The burn smell hung in the air, and though it was mixed with the fresh scent of new growth, the odor brought with it the memory of the fire. Thakur began to lag and the ends of his whiskers trembled.