Other fights had erupted around the two, but it was the two heavyweights that stole Ratha’s attention even as she howled orders to the Firekeepers.
She squashed her impulse to leap between the two huge males, knowing that she had no place in this fight. Either one could swat her aside like a cub.
With a thundering roar, Cherfan belted New Singer away from him so hard that the other cartwheeled over and fell on his side. The force of the big herder’s blow overbalanced him, too, and he went down on his chest. Both scrambled to their feet, shoulders hunched, facing one another, muzzles crumpled by snarls that showed the full length of teeth.
At this pause in the battle, another hunter tore away from his opponent to fling himself onto Cherfan’s hindquarters, clawing his way up the herder’s spine while New Singer tried again for Cherfan’s throat. Arching his back, twisting, clawing, Cherfan threw them both off. Another hunter dashed into the fight. Three opponents now covered Cherfan. Their strikes were swift, deadly. With another chilling shock, Ratha saw that the enemy wasn’t trying to get the clan males out of the way so that they could prey on the herd. Their intent was not to injure or to put to flight, but to drag down and kill.
With a roar almost as impressive as Cherfan’s, the herder Mondir launched himself at New Singer, banging him aside. Light brown fur joined the cloud of darker brown and brindled gray. Mondir was no older than Ratha, but he had the Named male’s heavier bones and more powerful shoulders, and he had matured to his full strength in the last season. He was nearly as formidable as Cherfan, had the lightning quickness of youth, and used it savagely against New Singer, tearing the hunter leader’s shoulder open.
More renegades came to their leader’s side and now the fight was fierce, fast, and wild, frantic with the hunters’ intent to kill.
Fessran arrived, seized a firebrand and plunged in, eyes and torch blazing. Behind her came a wet, pink-stained Khushi with Bundi and Mishanti. Though wounded, the young scout waded into the battle and added his weight and muscle to Cherfan’s defense.
Thakur, Ratha saw, was wise enough not to tangle directly with New Singer’s bigger rogues. After flashing in for several precise strikes at the hunters, he turned to rally the younger clan males who were being forced back by their opponents.
“Ashon, Bundi, Mishanti, to me!” Thakur called, rounding them up. “They aren’t trying to kill you, just drive you away!” Ratha saw him duck and dive, wrenching a scrabbling Mishanti away from a hopelessly larger opponent and tossing him to Bundi, who poked him up a tree.
Yowling through teeth clenched on the shaft of a flaming branch, Fessran swung her firebrand at the rogues. Other Firekeepers poked and thrust with their torches, and the stink of burned flesh and hair rose above the battle.
A wiry hunter male attacked Ratha, giving her a target for her rage. She launched into him with all four feet, kick-ripping his belly while she shredded the side of his neck and clawed at his eyes. With a wrench, he twisted away, and she rolled to her feet, panting.
Screeching in pain and terror, the rogues backed off, but they didn’t flee like the Un-Named raiders did. Something seemed to force them back into the fray, making them ignore their fright and their agony to attack again.
The flame-bearers’ attack faltered as eyes met eyes and the enemy’s ability to withstand the Red Tongue was passed quickly among the Named Firekeepers.
It was the song again. That thrice-cursed, mysterious, dung-eating song.
“Take down New Singer!” howled Thakur. “He’s their source. Take him down, and the others will run.”
Even before Thakur’s call, the renegade hunters had started to form a living wall about New Singer. As fast as Ratha, Fessran, and the Firekeepers ripped the defense open, it formed again, stronger and fiercer than ever.
Above the commotion, Ratha heard an agonized shriek, so raw that she didn’t recognize the voice. She whirled, thinking one of the Named had been mortally struck. Instead she saw Bira, not in the battle but on its edge. Her ears were back, her mouth was open, but the sound from her throat wasn’t a battle cry but a horrified scream.
“They’re killing the cubs!” Bira paused only long enough to gather breath and shriek again, even louder. “They’re attacking the nursery! They’re killing the cubs!”
Another shock went through Ratha, raising all the fur on her back. Fessran, wild-eyed, leaped out of the fray, landing beside Bira. Other female Firekeepers and herders followed.
“No!” Ratha howled, knowing her forces had been suddenly and disastrously split, but even as she called, her body was tensing to bound after Fessran. A threat to the clan’s young struck deep into her, as it did all the Named females.
“Go, clan leader,” Cherfan roared. “Mondir and I can hold them!”
Ratha searched frantically for Thakur, but found him already by her side. Together they bounded after Fessran.
Now bewilderment added itself to the feelings churning in Ratha’s chest and driving her legs. She thought the enemy would go for the Red Tongue and the herdbeasts, not the clan males and the cubs. So had Fessran and Thakur. What was happening? Why were things going so horribly wrong?
With the sounds of the first fight still in her ears, she raced beside Thakur to the cub nursery, dreading what she would see there. The weight of responsibility and the realization of her mistake caught in her throat, dragged at her chest. She dared not look back, even though she feared for Cherfan and the Named males who still fought around him.
She caught Thakur’s eye and gulped, “We have to save—”
“I know, yearling,” Thakur answered, his voice hissing and harsh from the effort of running.
Squalls rose along with the roar of torches from the open cleft of the nursery. The terrified shrilling of cubs stabbed at Ratha, the sight of a dead litterling dangling from a raider’s jaws pushed her close to madness.
She saw Bira and Thistle-chaser defending a scared huddle of cubs from more attacking hunter males while Fessran and the Firekeepers beat back others. Directly in front of Ratha, one of the renegades snatched up a litterling and started to shake it. The attacker had a dun coat and gold eyes just like …
“Quiet Hunter!”
Thistle-chaser’s screech nearly deafened Ratha, and another white surge of shock nearly knocked her down.
“Quiet Hunter, no!”
Thistle became a streak of tan, white, and rust, charging at Quiet Hunter. “No, don’t kill her!” Ratha heard her daughter cry and ached at the pain in that voice. To see her own intended mate not only in the renegade group but in the act of slaying a Named cub …
She saw her daughter’s face stiffen, the eyes harden, the paw draw back, and Thistle struck Quiet Hunter as hard as she could, snapping his head around and making him drop the cub. Crying and shivering, the litterling tried to crawl away, but Quiet Hunter lunged to seize the cub again. Held immobile by a growing numbness, Ratha watched as Thistle planted herself in the way.
“Have to kill me to get this cub.”
Gold eyes met sea-green ones. The gold was shifting, misty … dreaming … under the sway of the song. No longer controlled by True-of-voice but the renegade New Singer.
“Hear me?” Thistle hissed at Quiet Hunter. “Have to kill me, but know you won’t.”
Through the numbness Ratha felt another strike of fear. It tore at her vision, making it ragged. It froze her feet, even as she gathered them for a leap. The dun male’s face was starting to distort in a snarl, his paw rising, claws bared.
All else about Ratha faded: Thakur’s nearby fight with another hunter, Fessran’s sweeping torch, Bira’s frantic defense of the cubs huddled in the circle of her long tail … everything except Thistle and Quiet Hunter.
He can kill her. If the song commands, he will. The thought made Ratha’s hind legs extend, but her spring was shaken and clumsy, weakened by wounds she didn’t realize that she had. She had fallen short and scrabble as she might, she couldn’t reach her daughter quickly enough.