The wind had quieted; it would not carry their scent. It was a hunter’s perfect day.
‘I wanted you even then. Back in Trehaug. I was just, well, scared of your father. Terrified of your mother. And I didn’t know how to talk to you about it. It was all forbidden then.’
She cleared her throat. ‘See how the trail forks there, and the big tree above it? If we climb it, we can have a clear view in all directions, and a good shot at anything that comes that way. Plenty of room for both of us to have a clear shot if we get one.’
‘I see it. Good plan,’ he said shortly.
Her claws helped her to make the ascent easily. The trees of this area were so small compared to those of her youth that she’d had to learn a whole new set of climbing skills. She had one knee locked around a branch and was leaning down to offer Tats a hand when he asked, ‘Are you ever going to talk to me about it?’
He had hold of her hand and his face was inches from hers, looking up at her. She was mostly upside down, and could not avoid his gaze. ‘Do we have to?’ she asked plaintively.
He gave her some of his weight and then came up the tree so easily that she suspected he could have done it by himself all along. He settled himself on a branch slightly higher than hers, his back to the trunk, facing in the opposite direction so he could watch a different section of trail. For a short space of time, both of them were quiet as they arranged arrows to be handy and readied their bows. They settled. The day was quiet, the river’s roar a distant murmur. She listened to bird calls. ‘I want to,’ Tats said as if no time had passed at all. ‘I need to,’ he added a moment later.
‘Why?’ she asked, but she knew.
‘Because it makes me crazy to wonder about it. So I just want you to tell me, just so I know, even if you think it will hurt me. I won’t be angry … well, I’ll try not to be angry and I’ll try not to show I’m angry if I am … but I have to know, Thymara. Why did you choose Rapskal and not me?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said, and then spoke quickly before he could ask anything. ‘This probably won’t make sense to you. It doesn’t make sense to me, and so I can’t explain it to you. I like Rapskal. Well, I love Rapskal, just as I love you. How could we have been through all we’ve been through together and not love one another? But it wasn’t about what I felt for Rapskal that night. I didn’t stop and think, “Would I rather be doing this with Tats?” It was all about how I felt about me. About being me, and that suddenly it was something I could do if I wanted to. And I did want to.’
He was quiet for a time and then said gruffly, ‘You’re right. That makes no sense to me at all.’
She hoped he was going to leave it at that, but then he asked, ‘So. Does that mean that when you were with me, you didn’t want to do it with me?’
‘You know I’ve wanted you,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You should know how hard it’s been to say no to you, and no to myself.’
‘But then you decided to say yes to Rapskal.’ He was relentless.
She tried to think of an answer that would make him understand. There wasn’t one.
‘I think I said yes to myself, and Rapskal happened to be the person who was there when I said it. That doesn’t sound very nice, does it? But there it is and it’s the truth.’
‘I just wish …’ His voice tapered off. Then he cleared his throat and made himself go on, ‘I just wish it could have been me. That you’d waited for me, that I’d been your first.’
She didn’t want to know why yet she had to ask. ‘Why?’
‘Because it would have been something special, something we could have remembered together for the rest of our lives.’
His voice had gone husky and sentimental but instead of moving her, it made her angry. Her voice went low and bitter as venom. ‘Like you waited for your first time to be with me?’
He leaned forward and turned his head to look at her. She felt him move, but would not turn her head to meet his gaze. ‘I can’t believe that still bothers you, Thymara. After all the time we’ve known each other, you should know that you’ve always meant more to me than Jerd ever could. Yes, that happened between us, and I’m not proud of it. It was a mistake. There. I admit it, it was a huge mistake, but I was stupid and, well, she was right there, offering it to me, and you know, I just think that it’s different for a man. Is that why you went to Rapskal? Because you were jealous? That makes no sense at all, you know. Because he was with Jerd, too.’
‘I’m not jealous,’ she said. And it was true. The jealousy had burned away, but she had to acknowledge the hurt that remained. ‘I’ll admit that there was a time when it really bothered me. Because I had thought there was something special between us. And because, in all honesty, Jerd rubbed my face in it. She made it seem like if I had you, then I was picking up her leavings.’
‘Her leavings.’ His voice went very flat. ‘That’s how you think of me? Something she discarded, so I can’t be good enough for you.’
Anger was building in his voice. Well, she was getting angry, too. He’d wanted her to tell him the truth, promised he wouldn’t get angry, but obviously he was now looking for any excuse to show her the anger he’d felt all along. Making it impossible to admit that, yes, she had since then rather wished it had been him rather than Rapskal. Tats was solid and real in her life, someone she had always felt she could count on as a partner. Rapskal was flighty and weird, exotic and compelling and sometimes dangerously strange. ‘Like the difference between bread and mushrooms,’ she said.
‘What?’ The tree branches creaked as he shifted his weight. A distant scream sounded.
‘Quiet! Listen!’
The sound came again. Not a scream. At least, not a human scream, and not a sound of distress. A sound of excitement. A call. The hairs prickled up on the back of her neck and arms. The sound came again, longer, rising and falling, a wailing noise. As it started to die away, another voice took it up, and then another. She gripped her bow tightly and set her back firmly to the tree. The sounds were coming closer. And there was another noise, a heavy thudding of hooves.
Tats moved through the tree, clambering around until he was above her and staring in the same direction. She could almost feel the hoof-beats; a very large animal was running in their direction. No. Two. Three? She hunched down to grip the tree and peer along the game trail.
They were not elk, but were perhaps kin to them. Antlerless, with large hummocks of flesh on their front shoulders, and taller at the shoulder than Carson. They were running flat out, throwing up chunks of forest floor as they came. They were too large for this game trail; they were running down it because they’d been driven. Low branches slapped against them and broke as they fled on. The nostrils of the creature in front were flared wide and blood-red. Flecks of foam flew from his mouth as he came on. The animals behind him were as frantic. They breathed out shrill terror as they ran and the stench of their fear hung in the forest after they’d thundered past. Neither she nor Tats had even nocked an arrow, Thymara realized in disgust.
‘What were they …?’ Tats began, and then a long wailing cry rose and fell again. Another answered, and it was not distant now, but coming closer.
Thymara knew what wolves were. They did not live in the Rain Wilds, but even so, in the old tales that people still told, wolves were the
