A growing numbness in her mind offered an escape, but she chose not to take it. Instead, she forced her senses to accept it all, the beyond-bitter taste of the charred crust that covered the bodies, the way it broke beneath her fangs and the gritty crunch of it in her teeth. The acrid, corrosive smell ate its way into her nose. Her eyes blurred so that she couldn’t tell if the red beneath the crust when it crumbled was still-glowing ember or once-living flesh.
Next to her, someone retched, and that smell joined the other foulness.
She tightened her belly against sickness. The offer of numbness rose again, but this time she drove it off with rage against the black renegade. He was the one, not she. He stole coals from the watch-fire, he hid them and tended them, and he tried to use them to assist the hunters in capturing and killing face-tails. This hellishness that surrounded her now was of his making, not hers. She imagined what she would do to him if she caught him, adding to Fessran’s expressed intentions with a few of her own.
She made a shield of her anger and cast it all about her, willing it to harden and defend her from all other feelings, but even as she fanned rage’s flame, she felt it falter. The thoughts she coaxed from her anger began to repulse her, and then sicken her until she, too, retched and drooled on the ground.
Her will made her shaking legs move, stretched her neck out, made her mouth open so that she could fasten her teeth in the next one of the slain, but a paw appeared in her tunneling vision, stopping her. She thought at first it was Thakur—and, yes, he stood nearby—but the paw was Bundi’s.
“Clan leader, let me take this one,” the herder said, and a flash of memory told her why he was in the line of searchers.
The horrible thing was pulled out of her vision and away from her nose. She could only gasp her gratitude since her tail had become so heavy that she couldn’t lift it in acknowledgment. Now it was Thakur beside her, steadying her.
“I doubt if it helps to know this, yearling, but True-of-voice hasn’t shirked this duty either.”
Her tongue feeling the acid-etched surface of her fangs, Ratha turned her head to one side. Thakur was right. True-of-voice was in the line with some of the other hunters. Even as she watched, he had found another of his dead and was pawing at her to turn her over. It wasn’t an easy task, for the heat had shortened the ligaments in her back so that she was bowed, the back of her head touching the base of her tail. Her mouth was frozen open, revealing teeth that were nearly sabers. One had broken, the fracture line sparking another of Ratha’s memories. Tooth-broke-on-a-bone.
She watched True-of-voice. He positioned the body so that he and another hunter could pick it up. Although it was a struggle, he moved so gently, so carefully, so … reverently … that Ratha felt her throat tighten. What was he thinking, feeling? Did he understand why this had happened? Did he hate Night-who-eats-stars? Did he hate the clan now, and was he planning revenge on them?
“Can you go on, Ratha?” Thakur asked softly.
She could and did, again taking up her position in the line. Thakur rolled in ash, disguising his scent so that he could stay beside Ratha without distracting her.
She saw True-of-voice’s people working alongside her own and wondered what they thought and felt.
The last body was up in a tree. True-of-voice circled the scorched pine, looking up. Ratha saw that he wanted to climb it, but like Cherfan, he was too large.
“I’ll get it,” she said. “I haven’t done a lot yet. Let me at least do this.”
“I’ll get Thistle,” said Thakur. “She’ll tell True-of-voice what you want to do.”
“Hasn’t she gone with the hunters?”
“No, they haven’t left yet.”
Still fighting off the numbness that wanted to seduce her into its comfort, she went to the tree, sank her claws into the scaly bark, and started to climb. Reaching high with her forepaws while standing on her rear legs, she embraced the tree, sinking her foreclaws deep. With a spine-arching bound, she got her rear claws up and fastened. Freeing the foreclaws, she used the power of her hindquarters to drive her up the trunk. She repeated the forelimb clasp, feeling the tendons on the top of her forepaws pull against her weight as the claws sank in. Hanging by her front claws, she jumped her rear paws, took the weight off the fronts, and surged up again. Using this bounding motion, she ascended into the branches.
Chapter Twelve
The Red Tongue had not licked as far up this pine as it had many others. Once above the zone of charring, Ratha saw green and smelled pine needles. Above her, partially wedged between a branch and the main trunk, was a still form whose tail dangled and swung as Ratha’s climbing made the tree sway. The hunter had climbed high in a frantic attempt to escape the blaze but had perished anyway.
Now Ratha had to thread her way through the branches, spiraling up the tree until she reached the dangling tail. With a grunt and another surge of effort, she hauled herself up level with the body. She saw that this hunter was only half grown, barely out of cubhood. Trying to ignore the twist that this thought gave to her belly, Ratha grabbed the scruff and pulled. At least this one wasn’t burned, and it was more flexible, but somehow it was stuck in the tree. Then Ratha saw the forepaws and the claws driven deep, through the bark into the sapwood. She imagined how the tree would have been rocking, lashed by the in-rushing wind. Choking, terrified, the young hunter would have clung until death froze her claws in an unbreakable hold.
Not looking at the face, Ratha tried pulling at the scruff again. No good. She would have to release the feet, and that meant biting off the deeply embedded claws. Prying with her teeth wouldn’t work, and she might break a fang.
Ratha took a deep breath. The pine-needle scent was the smell of life that had survived the fire’s assault, and it gave her the strength of will to begin the grisly task. She had to take the whole foot in her jaws, maneuver it with her tongue, and use her side teeth to bite off each claw close to the toe. It was a slow and difficult task. If the hunter had been alive, it would have hurt her badly, for Ratha had to cut into the sensitive quick.
She had freed one foot and was halfway though the claws of another when she felt the claw she was cutting move in her mouth. Startled, she pulled back, stunned with the realization that the young hunter might still be alive.
Quickly she turned herself so that she could see the face. Licking it with her rough tongue, she felt the flicker of eyelashes and again pulled back so that the eyes could open. One did, barely a slit, but it showed there was still life.
Ratha swallowed, her throat suddenly tight. It was hard to speak, yet she had to. “Release your claws. Can you hear me? I’m trying to get you down, but I can’t if you won’t let go.”
Both eyelids fluttered now and the tear-lines crumpled in a grimace of pain.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you. Pull your claws back so I can bring you down.”
She saw one forefoot tremble with effort, then the other. The claws were too deeply embedded. Getting her jaws around the forefoot, she pulled while the young hunter strained, trying not to taste the blood seeping from the remains of the claws she had bitten off.
The forefoot came free. Trembling, Ratha started on the other, but as the claws pulled out, the forefoot went limp in her mouth. Again she looked at the face, but saw that the life had slipped free, along with the claws.
Ratha shut her eyes and tried to control her trembling, which was turning into waves of shudders. It was all she could do not to leave the body and back down the tree, but she had promised True-of-voice to bring the young hunter down.