The Tiger and the Wolf Read Online Free Page A

patched, though, and his skin was dirty,
and beneath that so pale it seemed almost translucent. Shifting
forwards, she could see the veins in his forehead, above the mottled blue-black bruise someone had given him. His hands were
tied behind him and, of course, a knotted rope was about his
neck.
‘What do we have here, do you think?’ Kalameshli asked
thoughtfully.
‘Snake,’ Akrit spat. ‘A Snake that dares the Wolf. Well, you’ve
found the Wolf now, Snake. You’ve found his very den.’
The wretched old man bared his teeth – and Maniye was
disappointed to see that they were just teeth, after all, and not
the hollow fangs of his namesake. ‘You do not dare raise a hand
against a priest!’ he hissed. ‘Ill fortune will dog you all to your
graves!’
Some of the hunters were hanging back – everyone knew that
to harm a priest was to invite disaster – but Smiles Without
Teeth slapped the man across the back of his bald head and
drove him to his knees.
‘We’ve seen your kind before, up from the south,’ Akrit
snarled. ‘All Snakes say they’re priests, every one. It can’t be all ,
so none of you are. But you are come just in time for the Wolf,
old man.You are very welcome by the Wolf. Until we found you,
I feared his jaws would go empty. Now your thin carcass shall
roast within them. How will the Wolf like that, Takes Iron?’
Kalameshli considered the scrawny old man thoughtfully. ‘He
shall like it very well, I feel. It is right that the Wolf should
devour the Snake’s get, wherever he shall find them.’
The captive hissed suddenly, driving most of the hunters a
step or two back. ‘If you do not release me, I shall lay the Serpent’s Curse on you all! I shall have your crops wither in the
fields, your children in their mothers’ wombs. There shall be no
strike of misfortune under your Shadow but you shall see my
hand in it!’
‘Gag him!’ Akrit snapped, and Smiles gripped the old man’s
jaw, forcing it shut, and then shook him when he still wouldn’t
be silent.
‘Something more, I think,’ Kalameshli decided, businesslike
now. ‘The venom of the Snake is legendary, but it cannot bite if
it has no fangs. Bring him to the forge and I shall fetch my
smallest hammer.’
The captive’s eyes widened in alarm, but Smiles Without
Teeth was already wrestling him towards Kalameshli’s domain,
where the magic of iron was made, while hunters went whooping off ahead of him to call for the priest’s tools.
Maniye watched them go, finding that she did not share their
enthusiasm. The old man had been weak and thin, it was true,
but he had been something new just for a moment. He had been
her own omen, promising change in the year to come, a reversal
of her fortunes. Now they would destroy him, as they destroyed
everything, and so everything would go on just the same.
She did not want to watch, and returned to her hidden hole
as the shrieks and screams started, Kalameshli Takes Iron
methodically smashing out every remaining tooth in the old
Snake’s head. Because what is a Snake without fangs?
But one thought would not leave her. Her people – or those
truly of her people – were born in the Jaws of the Wolf, they said.
It was to prove this birthright that the Testing happened. The
Eyriemen were born under the Wings of the Hawk, and the children of the Boar between his Tusks. So it went that each of the
People had their sign and their badge that marked them out as
who they were.
But nobody ever spoke of the Jaws of the Snake. Kalameshli
had made a mistake, she realized, and the very thought of it sent
a shock of hope through her. In the Coils of the Snake, that is the
saying. Better break all his bones, priest, or you may find he does not
go quite so easily to his death.
2
    There were many wolves in Maniye’s world. Out beyond the
extent of mound and field, the lean grey beasts, her mute kin,
coursed between the trees. They hunted and bred, and everyone
she