When both had rested and groomed, Ratha asked how they had fared on the journey. She noticed that Fessran let Khushi do most of the talking.
“We didn’t find the cub’s mother. I didn’t expect that we would,” Khushi said matter-of-factly. “We left him in a safe place. If she’s still in the area, she’ll find him.”
Ratha glanced at Fessran in surprise. “You agreed to let Khushi do that?”
Fessran seemed preoccupied. She was slow to respond, and her voice sounded distant.
“We couldn’t think of anything else,” she said. “The mother was gone, and we couldn’t find her. We would only have frightened her more if we had. And you would have chewed our ears to scraps if you saw us bringing the cub back.” Fessran stretched out in the shade and began grooming her belly. “Anyway, I did some thinking while I was on the trail and decided you were right. There was no use in making a fuss about this Un-Named cub when we will have our own.”
But you won’t be having cubs this season, Ratha thought.
She tongued her own fur, wondering where her feeling of uneasiness had suddenly come from. Nothing in Fessran’s smell or manner alarmed her, yet she had the sense that something wasn’t right. Well, it wasn’t like Fessran to give up fighting for something she cared about. Not so abruptly.
What are you complaining about? she asked herself crossly. I made Fessran obey me, which is something I’ve had trouble doing ever since I became leader.
Yet this time Fessran’s willfulness had seemed to echo her own conscience. She might just be wrong about this litterling. Her judgment might have been too hasty and too harsh. And not just with him...
She felt slightly dismayed, as if her conscience had given in too easily, just as Fessran had. As if the stronger and not so likable part of her had won out.
I don’t like it, but that’s what made me clan leader.
She decided to forget about the cub. There were other things to think about; new journeys to plan. Fessran would come with her, and perhaps the time together would allow her to mend the rift in their friendship. Warming to the idea, she laid out the prospect of the coastward journey to the Firekeeper.
Fessran, however, was curiously unenthusiastic, and when Ratha said she wanted to leave the following day, the look in Fessran’s eyes was one of reluctance.
“Are you sure you want to leave so soon?” Fessran asked.
“I have to see Thakur’s spring for myself, and that must be done quickly.”
“That makes sense,” Fessran agreed, though her voice sounded flat. “Why do you want me, though? I’m not a herder. You and Thakur are more skilled at judging if a place is fit for keeping three-horns.”
“You were a herder before I gave you Firekeeper leadership. Fessran, I can’t make this judgment alone. You and Thakur are the ones I trust the most. If I must tear the Named from clan ground, let me have some hope that I am doing what is right.”
“You haven’t had doubts about other things, clan leader,” Fessran replied, and the way she said it told Ratha she had not forgotten the Un-Named cub. Before Ratha’s ears could flatten, Fessran yawned widely. “All right, I’ll come. But give me at least a day to rest. My shoulder aches and my pads feel like I’ve walked across every rock in the world. I just want to be left alone to sleep.”
Fessran got what she wanted, and Khushi soon joined her in the dense shade beneath a pine that stood apart from the other trees in and around the meadow. It was Bonechewer’s grave-tree. Ratha wondered if Fessran had chosen the spot deliberately, so that the clan leader would not come near.
She was surprised by the strength of anger and sadness that weighted her steps as she padded away. She remembered her dead mate too welclass="underline" the gleaming copper coat, the amber eyes, and the voice that was sardonic yet caring. And she remembered the faces of their cubs and especially the face of their daughter, Thistle-chaser. The blank, bewildered stare of her own litterling suddenly became the equally empty gaze of the Un-Named orphan she had ordered Khushi to abandon.
Toward sunset something drew her to the pine again. If Fessran was as weary as she had sounded, she would still be asleep, and Ratha planned not to wake her. But when she arrived near the grave-tree, she heard only one set of rumbling snores, and they were Khushi’s. Fessran had gone.
Ratha sniffed the ground around the pine. Her first instinct was to track the Firekeeper, but suddenly she grew disgusted with herself. Being clan leader was turning her suspicious and sour, ruining an old and valued friendship. Did she really have a good reason not to trust Fessran? Did she have to know where everyone was and what he was doing at every moment?
She shook herself, grimaced, and trotted away.
Fessran returned, in good time to supervise the lighting of watchfires for the night. Ratha watched the slim, sandy form trotting from one Firekeeper to the next, giving advice, instructions, and seeing that the fires were kept properly fed yet contained. Ratha let her suspicions drop with a sigh of relief. Wherever Fessran went was her own business. She worked hard and well for the clan. There might be mutterings about what she had done in the past, but she had done more than enough to redeem herself, and no one could fault her now.
In the morning, Ratha woke Fessran and met with Cherfan and Bira. If this journey yielded the refuge the Named sought, she said to the older herder, then Fessran would return with instructions to guide the clan, and Cherfan was to bring them under her direction. After the Firekeeper leader gave some brief advice to Bira, Fessran and Ratha set out on their journey to the coast.
Days later, Thakur approached the lone tree at the clearing that lay inland from the beach. He smelled places where two of the Named had chin-rubbed against rough bark. Ratha’s scent he knew well, and Fessran’s had an acrid, smoky undertone that told of her place as Firekeeper leader. They had both passed this way not long ago.
He also sniffed an odor that surprised him and reawakened his belly-rumbles: fresh meat. Either the two females had just eaten or they were carrying prey. His ears cocked forward. He knew Ratha had learned to hunt during her exile from the clan, but the smell told him that this was no wild prey. The meat came from a herdbeast. How could they have dragged it all that way and kept it from turning rank? Perhaps one of them was just carrying a small piece for him in her mouth. His own watered at the thought.
Thakur circled back to follow their trail, then hesitated. Ratha and Fessran’s arrival meant company and perhaps food, but it also meant that the time the clan leader had allotted him to study Newt and her sea-creatures was gone. He felt now that he might have enough knowledge to try herding the seamares. Ratha would be eager to test his suggestion. But this would mean more intrusion into Newt’s life. Thakur sensed that the place she had made for herself was precarious and could easily be destroyed.
The smell of the two Named females and the tantalizing odor of food teased him onward, and he trotted after them with Aree riding on his nape. Soon after he broke out of thinning forest into coastal meadow, he caught sight of two tawny backs moving ahead of him through the grass. He didn’t need to call, for the wind had carried his smell ahead of him. He saw both figures turn, their ears and whiskers lifting at the sight of him. But although he smelled food, neither Ratha nor Fessran carried anything in their mouths. His belly gave a disappointed grumble as he jogged to a stop in front of them.
Fessran took one sniff at him, then retreated, grimacing. “Herding teacher, you are wearing the most disgusting stink I have ever smelled on anyone.”
“You’d better get used to smelling me this way.” Thakur grinned. “Those duck-footed dapplebacks won’t let me near them unless I roll in their dung. I’m sure there is plenty for you.”