The Tiger and the Wolf Read Online Free

were no eyes there to see her, for
she faced challenges the others did not.
No, I have gifts the others lack, that is the truth of it , she told
herself over and over. Yet every time she hid those gifts , because
she knew they would see her denounced, she believed a little
more that they were nothing but a curse.
After she had bored herself with that, she sat and brooded,
inventing dire fates for Kalameshli and Broken Axe and her
father – and anyone else who crossed her mind – until she was
jolted from her dark reverie by the sound of a horn.
They’re back. For her father and his picked band of hunters
had been off after tribute from the White Tails. She had been
given a few blessed days when the only chain about her neck
was old Kalameshli’s, and now she would be loaded with Akrit
Stone River’s disapproval as well.
But she was out of her hole before the echo had died away, to
watch them return. There would be omens, after all. Kalameshli
would want to see the trophy that he would offer to the Wolf.
The course of the next year would thus be decided.
She felt badly in need of omens.
The hunters would be returning down the northern approach.
The Wolves built no roads, and yet the arrangement of the
smaller mounds about the chief’s own formed a rough cross,
guided by alignments of the stars and the wisdom of the priests.
If she hid herself in the narrow, earth-smelling gap left between
this hut’s sagging roof and the ground, she could watch the
hunters return, and even hear what they said. Let her fellows
run and fight and chase each other about like chickens.
Perhaps the old priest already had a presentiment that all was
not as it should be, for he was coming down from the hill,
descending the earthen ramp with care. ‘Stone River, the Wolf
runs beside you,’ Kalameshli called out, but Maniye could hear
the concern in his voice, his words almost a question.
Akrit Stone River was at the head of the pack, and Maniye
felt that emptiness in her chest that she had grown used to when
looking on her father. There was no love in her for him, any
more than there was any in his breast for her. And yet, and yet
. . . despite every blow and curse and frown, still that gap persisted, the hollow space where she was wretchedly aware something should dwell. I cannot love my father , she told herself
almost every day, and yet, and yet . . .
Akrit picked up his pace and drew ahead of the others, loping
over to the old man’s side.
‘Where is the trophy?’ Maniye heard Kalameshli hiss. None
of the hunters was bearing the antlers of a kill.
‘The quarry was a coward in the end,’ Akrit rumbled. ‘Their
greatest warrior? Either the White Tails are sick to death or they
hold out on us. Whichever, they’re due a reminder of whose
Shadow they dwell in.’
‘But . . .’ She could imagine the priest’s face suddenly
gripped with alarm. ‘No trophy . . . the omens.’ A pause. ‘Or
something else to burn in the Wolf’s jaws?’
Maniye went cold all of a sudden, the priest’s fear and ire no
longer a cause for amusement. The Tests . . . Had Kalameshli
foreseen this? Had the Wolf whispered to him that a sacrifice
would be needed from within the pack? Or had he already
decided that she was not of the pack, after all?
‘Oh, we have something more than that,’ her father declared,
sounding too jovial for a man who had come back from the hunt
empty-handed. ‘Smiles, show Kalameshli Takes Iron what we
found creeping through the Wolf’s Shadow.’
Smiles Without Teeth, her father’s keenest bully-boy, shouldered forwards, dragging a stranger in his wake.
Maniye stared: she had never seen the like. The captive was
older than Kalameshli, and completely bald, his neck scrawny as
a turkey’s, his limbs thin like sticks. He had a hooked nose and
deep-set eyes, and if only he had been dressed for it, and walking free, she thought he would look like a sorcerer should. His
robe was ragged and