With a triumphant whinny, the old mare sailed over his head and galloped away from the writhing heap of bristlemanes. The colt followed. From the corner of his eye Thakur saw the Un-Named One yank a bristlemane away by its tail and seize another. He didn’t bother to kill them but just thrust them aside as he and Fessran opened a path for Thakur. The herding teacher dragged his forepaw loose and thrust it at Fessran. He yelped in pain as she fastened her jaws on his leg and hauled him out of the fray.
Thakur caught the gleam of fire on wet pelts and knew the Firekeepers had encircled the bristlemane pack. Now that the rain was stopping, the torches remained lit. The bristlemanes huddled together in the center, their ears flattened, their howls turning to whines. Several Firekeepers brought unlit sticks that had been chewed to a point and sharpened in the flame.
The bristlemanes climbed over and around each other to escape the vengeful creature that surrounded them. A Firekeeper thrust a brand at a trapped animal and it retreated until it backed into the others and could go no further. Its cries became faster and shriller until they became a terrified wail. It crouched and shuddered, trying to bury its face in its flank.
Something made Thakur glance at Orange-Eyes, who stood just outside the circle of torchbearers. The silvercoat’s eyes narrowed and his lips drew back in a half-snarl. It was not the same expression as the Firekeepers wore. Their eyes blazed with vengeance-hunger and a sudden, eager cruelty. Orange-Eyes was looking, not at the frightened bristlemanes, but at those of the clan who brandished fire at them.
Thakur remembered that the Un-Named One had also faced the Red Tongue’s wrath. He came alongside the silvercoat and softly said, “The mare and colt are still loose. We should help the herders find them.”
Orange-Eyes’s gaze remained fixed on the scene. A change came over his eyes. Their color grew more intense, and it was not just the firelight on his face.
“The Red Tongue is powerful creature,” he said softly to himself.
“The mare,” said Thakur, nudging the Un-Named One’s shoulder.
“Yes, herding teacher.” Orange-Eyes blinked, lowered his head and followed.
They found the mare’s scent trail, still strong in the wet grass. Thakur looked back once to see the flames rise and fall. Firekeepers lunged with pointed sticks in their jaws. Yapping and snarling, the frenzied animals charged the ring of torchbearers. One Firekeeper lost his brand and fell back. The cornered bristlemanes attacked again. Yowls mingled with shrill yelps as they broke through the circle, throwing their tormentors aside.
Before either Thakur or Orange-Eyes could whirl around, the pack had fled away into the night. Recovering themselves, the torchbearers gave chase, the flames tossing on their brands. Orange-Eyes leaped to join them, but they had gone and their cries had already begun to fade.
Thakur let his muscles relax. “Come back,” he called to the silvercoat. “Let the Firekeepers chase them.”
Orange-Eyes hesitated, looking after the disappearing glow of the torches. He muttered something to himself that the herding teacher couldn’t hear.
“Are you going to help me track those dapplebacks or not?” Thakur felt his patience going. Orange-Eyes started and swung around, the strange expression still in his eyes. It was half resentment and half something else … Thakur didn’t know what. A hunger, perhaps. A hunger that would not be sated by meat.
Chapter Four
Ratha halted the pursuit at the far end of the meadow. She slowed, panting, the cries of the escaping bristlemanes still in her ears. Behind her, the torchbearers’ growls mingled with the angry snap of the Red Tongue. She shared their fever; the urge to hunt the enemy down with fang and fire.
Terror had given the bristlemanes the speed to outrun the Firekeepers. Their pack-mates lay dead in the meadow and Ratha knew that those who lived bore scars on their memories as well as their hides that would forbid them from again setting foot on clan ground.
She heard a muffled snarl and the sound of a body being dragged and shaken. She turned to see one of the Firekeepers mauling another dead bristlemane. The long tongue hung out of the stiff black jaws and flopped around with each angry jerk he gave the body.
Ratha watched, letting the sight feed her hunger for vengeance. “Enough!” she cried suddenly. The Firekeeper released the corpse and backed away. She waited, studying the eyes that shone back at her with reflected torchlight, their glow softened only by a fine mist of rain. “Enough,” she said again in a low voice. “The herd is safe and the enemy gone. Firekeepers, return with me and rekindle the dead fires.”
The torchbearers did as she bid them and soon new flames were burning in the ashes of the old. But they too were small and uncertain. Ratha knew that if the rain fell harder it would quench them as easily as it had the others.
“Give the creature more wood,” she told the fire-tenders as she paced from one outlying guard-flame to the next. “Make it strong and fierce.”
She stopped, watching two Firekeepers struggling to comply. One brought more wood while the other fed the flame. He crouched a safe distance away from the fire’s nest, tossing in twigs with a quick turn of his head. The fire flared briefly as it consumed each twig and then died down.
“No,” Ratha said impatiently. “Use larger pieces and place them; don’t throw them.”
With an uneasy glance at her, the Firekeeper seized a thick branch in his jaws, approached the flame as close as he dared and flipped the wood in. It crashed into the fire, destroying the nest of carefully laid kindling and sending up a shower of sparks.
Ratha shouldered the Firekeeper aside and dragged the branch out. Carefully she coaxed the flattened remains of her creature back to life and, once it was burning steadily on fresh kindling, she gave it thicker wood.
Each time she placed a branch in its nest, the fire-creature’s breath blasted her face and stung her eyes with heat and cinders. It roared its rage in her ears, licked at her jowls and threatened to consume her whiskers. She had to force herself to lay the wood in position, however much her jowls hurt or her instincts screamed at her to leap away.
When she finished, she backed away thankfully and rubbed her sooty muzzle against her foreleg. The two torchbearers were watching her with mingled awe and resentment. “That is how it must be done,” she said. “If you are quick and sure, you will keep your whiskers.”
The Firekeeper who had nearly destroyed the Red Tongue’s nest stalked over to the leaping flame with more wood in his jaws. He faced the fire-creature, hesitated and lunged forward. He dropped the branch in and scrambled back, his belly white with wet ash, his eyes frightened and defiant.
“Feeding your creature is not easy when it grows so large and wild,” he said with a shudder.
“If you seek to tame the Red Tongue by keeping it small, it will die in the rain,” Ratha said, trying to be patient.
“When it is fierce, it eats my whiskers,” retorted the Firekeeper. “Look how short they are. I can no longer find my way in the dark.”
“If you are thinking only of your whiskers and not of your duty, you will burn yourself. Try doing it the way I have showed you.”
“I will, clan leader,” he said, but Ratha could see in his eyes and his barely controlled trembling that his wish to obey had to fight his terror of the fire. This fear was not an easy thing to put aside as Ratha knew well.