That should help convince True-of-voice that our ways are not so strange, she thought.
Next, a small herd of dapplebacks trotted into the show area. Fessran, Bira, and Drani cantered onto the field, followed by a strutting Mishanti. Working together, they rounded up the dapplebacks. Mishanti made good use of his speed, darting out to head off would-be strays while the others kept the herd tight and moving. Each herder cut out individual animals and maneuvered them to the brush pen, using rushes and feints to get them inside. Mishanti’s performance was slightly unusual; he ran one little horse so fast that it jumped the bush fence instead of going in the pen’s entrance.
When he seemed intent on doing it again, Fessran swooped down and lifted him by the scruff. The other three gathered up the dapplebacks and drove them into the brush-ringed corral.
“Well done,” boomed Cherfan. “Although that part wasn’t in the plan, was it, Fess? Now our herding teacher will perform something new he’s been perfecting. Thistle-chaser will show her own variation with help from her treeling, Biaree. First, Thakur.”
Again she turned her gaze to True-of-voice. She noted that he leaned forward with interest, and his eyes were alive with curiosity.
Yet this was not a trait he shared with his people. They were attentive, but not absorbed. Their real fascination was turned inward; they perceived instead the strange entity that came from True-of-voice, who called it “the song.”
It was not “his song.” It seemed to exist almost independently of him. Even though he was the immediate source, he seemed as caught up in it as the others. It was like a river flowing into a pool and then out again, but split into many smaller tributaries. He was the intake, they were the outflow, but all were bathed in the flowing water.
Her own Thistle had somehow managed to capture the song’s character when she said, “It sings through him. Those of his line, long dead, sing through him.” She had also said, “It isn’t just hearing. Not just ear-hearing. Or nose-smelling or tongue-tasting, or whisker-touching. It is all those, but it is more. It is with me behind the eyes. I am no longer one behind the eyes.”
How hard Ratha herself had fought to understand, to overcome the instinct to withdraw, pull back, cut off. Her choice had been in conflict with her feelings when she had directed the clan to rescue True-of-voice from the ledge where he had fallen. She still felt the conflict now.
She noticed that True-of voice’s tribe resembled one another more than did the clan. On the Named side, Thakur’s copper coat contrasted with Fessran’s pale sandy fur; Bira’s rich red-gold pelt and plumed tail shone against the grassy background. Silken blue-gray Ashon, head and feet haloed with glowing silver; Cherfan’s dark sepia brown; Thistle’s mix of white, brown, tan, and rust; Ratha’s own fawn, gold and cream; and the other pelt and eye colors were each as individual as each personality.
But Tooth-broke-on-a-bone and Bent Whiskers could have exchanged pelts and still looked the same brindled gray-brown. There may have been some slight difference in shade or pattern, but besides the riotous colors of the clan, that variation was insignificant. The only one who stood out at all was True-of-voice.
She put the thought aside and turned her attention back to the show.
Chapter Five
Cherfan came next, Thakur taking over as announcer while the big herder performed. Cherfan’s display used a three-horn buck, and he had to step on the beast’s Y-shaped nose-horn to keep its head down and the antlers away. Though not unusual, it was very well done, and Cherfan earned the yowling applause he got from the Named side.
After Cherfan came Thistle-chaser, her treeling Biaree on her nape. Biaree held a coiled length of vine in one small hand, the other wound tightly in Thistle’s fur. The herders released a dappleback mare.
The treeling hunkered low between Thistle’s shoulders as she stalked belly-down through the grass. Ratha wondered whether her daughter would try the stare-down. Thistle chose the classic technique, using her sea-green gaze to immobilize the dappleback until she could get her forepaws around the horse’s neck. She pulled the animal over, but Ratha was startled when her daughter did not go for the throat.
Instead, Thistle spread herself across the beast, holding it down. Biaree hopped off her back, dodging the horse’s hoofed toes. With her rear foot behind the dappleback’s rump, Thistle pushed the hind legs forward while using a forepaw to swipe the front legs back until both sets crossed. Biaree sprang onto the uppermost hock and wound the vine around the crossed fetlocks. Pulling it tight, the treeling made a knot, and then bounced back onto Thistle’s nape. When Thistle climbed off the dappleback, the mare stayed on her side, feet tied together. Struggle as it might, the dappleback couldn’t escape. At last it lay, spent and heaving.
Ratha listened to the clan herders’ voices. They were impressed by this way of restraining a beast so that the herder who made the capture didn’t have to keep fighting the animal or kill it. How Thistle had combined Biaree’s skill at making knots with her own newly learned herding abilities, Ratha had no idea. As she watched, she decided that her daughter had contributed something else valuable to the clan. Thistle’s use of a treeling was so strange, however, that clan herders might take a while to understand and accept it.
Ratha wondered about True-of-voice’s reaction. Could he be thinking that treelings and vines could be used to hunt face-tails? No, Thistle’s technique worked far better on smaller animals such as the dapplebacks.
She imagined that True-of voice would have a difficult time understanding Thistle-chaser. Of the independent Named, Thistle was the most individualistic. One would never think that she could also reach True-of-voice well enough to translate the hunting tribe’s song into clan speech.
Well, she does have Quiet Hunter as a partner. It is not Thistle alone, but the two of them together.
Wondering what the hunting tribe thought of the display, she surveyed their numbers. Again she was struck by how alike the other tribe’s members were as compared to the clan.
These differences might be even greater than she knew, Ratha thought. Thistle and Thakur had been playing around with the idea that the Named couldn’t see reds and oranges as well as their treelings could. Thakur suggested that one could collect some of a reddish fruit that had equal hues (at least to Named eyes), but had varying degrees of ripeness. By blanking out a treeling’s sense of smell, perhaps by scattering strong-scented leaves nearby, one could show that treelings selected the ripest fruit by the depth of its rosy color.
For Ratha, it felt odd to think that she might not be seeing the true color of the ember within a flame, or the burning intensity of Bira’s luxurious fur.
What did Bira look like to a treeling, Ratha wondered. Perhaps only Thakur and Thistle had the imagination to even ask such a question.
And herself? She might well have enough imagination but limited opportunities to indulge it. She had to pay more attention to practical questions, such as whether the differences between her people and True-of-voice’s were dangerous.
When Ratha pointed her nose toward the face-tail hunters, closed her eyes, and let odor claim her attention, she noticed that the theme of similarity among them continued from sight to scent. True-of-voice’s people had almost no individual scents, only traces. The dominant smell was True-of-voice, and even his pure scent did not encompass his group. They had a tribal smelclass="underline" part True-of-voice, part other. The scent of the song, Thakur had called it, even though his choice of words seemed muddled and contradictory.
The scents of her own people, though, Ratha could easily pick out, even if Thakur, Bira, Thistle, or whoever had been rolling in the strongest herdbeast dung. Even Quiet Hunter, in moving from True-of-voice’s tribe to her clan, had developed more of his individual scent as well as the Named group-smell. His was strong enough now that Ratha could taste it on the air that passed the sensitive area on the roof of her mouth. She envied Thistle slightly, and her gaze wandered to Thakur.