“Away, herders!” she cried at the two still sitting and staring. “There is no need for you here.” They whirled about and dashed away. She followed at a trot then slowed to a walk, watching her people dragging the Un-Named corpses into the dirt clearing where the fire burned. Fessran and the others who helped her were piling fuel on the flames, making them bright and hot, eager to consume the bodies. At the other end of the meadow, the dapplebacks grazed peacefully, showing no sign of the night’s terrors. Ratha let her eyes rest on that scene and turned her back on the fire.
Grass rustled behind her and a familiar smell was with her. Not until Thakur was beside her did she turn her head.
“I held my brother’s throat until he was still,” he said softly.
“Did he say anything more?”
“Only that clan leaders are not forbidden to grieve.”
Ratha’s jaw dropped. “That arrogant mangy son of a scavenger! He thought I would cry for him? He thought ... I would ... cry ... for....” Her voice broke into a keening wail as her sorrow escaped at last. She stamped, lashed her tail and flung her head back and forth. All the rage, hate and sorrow she had felt and kept hidden now took her and shook her until she was left panting and exhausted. She stumbled to Thakur and laid her head against his chest. “I am even more a fool,” she muttered, her sides still heaving. “A clan leader should not bawl like a cub.”
“No one was watching,” Thakur chided gently.
At last she lifted her head and gazed across the meadow. There the dapplebacks grazed, with the herders around them. Soon there would be three-horns and other kinds of beasts, for Thakur and others in the group were good at catching and taming them.
My people will survive, Ratha thought. They have changed, even as I have, but they will survive. That is what matters.
“I left my brother under the pine,” Thakur said. “Is that what you wished?”
“It is. His bones shall lie there and those who pass shall honor them.” Ratha drew a breath. “Once I hated him. Now there is nothing left to hate. He was my mate, Thakur, with everything that it meant. I will not soon forget him.”
“Nor I, Ratha.”
She turned to Thakur, to the green-eyed face that echoed the one whose amber eyes were closed in death. No. He was not Bonechewer, and he too evoked memories that, if anything, were more painful. She would take no mate until the raw memories were soothed and healed by time. But, she sensed, he would be a wise and comforting friend and would run beside her on the rough new trail that lay ahead of her and her people.
It would not be an easy path, and the dangers that lay there might be beyond her capability to face. Yet ragged and weary as she was, she lifted her muzzle in voiceless challenge to those things still unknown.
She was Ratha, she-cub, herder of three-horns, tamer of the Red Tongue and leader of her people.
Whatever came, she would meet it with all the strength and wit she could command. One thing she knew; as long as she and the Red Tongue lived, her people would survive.
Triumph overcame her weariness. She lifted her tail and trotted after Thakur as he walked across the meadow toward the rising sun.