ALL SIX OF THEM, seven if you counted Piluk, were silent as Sinh Loan ended her story. Chih wondered if the sky behind the tigers was growing a little lighter, if the air was a little warmer and easier to breathe.
“Thank you very much for your story, madam,” Chih said, stretching out their writing hand. “I am very grateful that you decided to tell it to us.”
“You should be,” Sinh Loan said shortly, “and I hope you took very good notes, because now we are going to eat you.”
“Oh don’t,” exclaimed Sinh Cam, and her elder sister turned to her in annoyance.
“I am hungry, and I am sure that you are as well . . .”
“I’ll go down and get us a cow from the lowland farms,” said Sinh Cam, “or I can bring us back a farmer if I cannot find a cow. Only I want to hear the cleric tell us another story.”
“They’re not going to be any better,” argued Sinh Loan.
“Then we can fix them,” replied Sinh Cam earnestly, but Sinh Loan shook her head.
“I’m tired of fixing things,” she said. “I am bored, and I am stiff, and I am hungry, and if you had a grain of common sense, you would be too . . .”
Their raised voices woke Sinh Hoa, who reached out to cuff blindly at whichever of her sisters she could reach. It was Sinh Loan instead of Sinh Cam, unfortunately, which got her a sharp smack to the nose, which made her grunt and wake up a little more.
Si-yu leaned in closer to Chih, grabbing their arm.
“All right, when I give you the signal, run under Piluk’s legs.”
Chih didn’t have enough time to ask what the signal was when Si-yu uttered a piercing whistle, two high notes with the final one swooping low.
Piluk grunted loudly in response and took three steps backwards, putting her broad rear to the corner of the barn and lowering her head so that her short horns were positioned to gore.
Oh, that must have been the signal, Chih thought, already moving, and they dashed blindly towards the mammoth’s legs. Si-yu was right behind her, and when Chih slid to their knees, half-blinded by Piluk’s hanging fur, they turned just in time to see Bao-so getting shoved towards them.
“Pull him in, pull him in!” Si-yu was shouting, and Chih gritted their teeth and, latching their hands onto Bao-so’s coat, dragged him back as far as they could. They were blinded by fur, they were sweating under their coat, and they were in terror of Piluk’s feet, stomping up and down.
They drill so that their feet come up and down in the same place, Chih thought desperately, but they wrapped their arms around Bao-so, grabbing on to his body as tightly as they could and keeping him close to the space directly under Piluk’s belly.
“Come on then!” Si-yu shouted. Her voice came from above, and Chih realized that she had scrambled up into her saddle again. There were two loud thumping sounds, Si-yu’s lance against the rafters. “I’m tired of you talking about eating us, come and eat us if you think you can.”
“Actually, please don’t,” Chih muttered, too numb and tired to be anything more emphatic than that.
Through the space between Piluk’s forelegs, Chih saw three tigers and not two and a woman any longer. They looked as enormous as cart horses, and even if the two smaller ones hung back, the third was large enough and hungry enough to make up for it.
“Think I can, little scout? I do more than think it. What do you think you are doing, with that little stick and your squealing calf? I told you I would let her go if I ate you, but if she is hurt protecting you, I won’t care.”
One of the younger sisters, Sinh Hoa, Chih thought, made a sudden dash forward, cutting left so fast that Chih only caught a glimpse of green eyes and a velvet muzzle wrinkled in ferocity. Her hunting roar turned into a shriek as Piluk swung trunk and tusk hard at Si-yu’s call, and then a hefty thwack against the tiger’s hindquarters sent her scampering back for cover.
Sinh Hoa hung back, but Sinh Loan came forward, head lowered and her paws barely clearing the ground.
“How long do you think you can last?” she asked, as if she were terribly interested in the answer. “One mammoth, one lance, one half-dead man and one weaponless cleric with bad stories . . .”
To Chih’s surprise, Si-yu laughed, the sound bright and wild.
“Oh, I should say for just a brief count longer, madam,” she said. “Just another little while . . .”
Then it came, a low and throbbing roar that seemed to hit the lightening sky and bounce back, a sound that up close would be a wall and from far away still had a weight that could crush. Piluk squeaked, stamping her forefeet up and down as Chih yelped with panic, and then she bugled in return, her voice higher and less powerful than the first call, but just as carrying.
Chih would have cheered, but then Si-yu shrieked and Piluk screamed, rearing up in panic as a furry orange and black shape rolled off her back to thump to the ground below, followed immediately after by Si-yu, lance falling from her hand.
It was Sinh Cam, Chih realized, who must have scaled the bales of hay by the wall to jump down from the rafters. Sinh Cam shook off her stunning and put her teeth into Si-yu’s back as Chih stared in silent panic. Before they could break it however, Piluk lunged forward, but now the other two tigers swarmed her. Chih flattened themself on the ground just in time to avoid a stunning blow from one of Piluk’s rear legs, and they looked up to see Piluk toss her large head and throw Sinh Cam off of Si-yu’s body.
Sinh Loan, obvious in her larger size, roared, and she threw herself up towards Piluk’s saddle. If she could get a good grip, if she could reach the back of Piluk’s neck . . .
Then there was a deep bass thundering, and two more mammoths, one the classic russet red, the other with patches of gray over her eyes, rammed into the space, filling it as much with their trumpeting as they did with their bulk. With a curse, Chih dragged Bao-so’s prone form back to the corner, because trampling was as nasty a fate as being eaten. They had just turned around when there was a final scream from the tigers and everything went still.
I’m still alive, Chih thought with surprise. Or I will be as long as my heart doesn’t beat out of my chest . . .
“Anyone alive down there? I see . . . that’s Piluk, isn’t it? Si-yu, Si-yu, girl, where are you?”
There was a long moment in the fallen hay bales and the forest of treelike legs when Chih was afraid there would be no answer.
“Here! Over here, damnit, Hyun-lee, move Malli back before she scares Piluk even more.”
Upon hearing Si-yu’s indignant voice, Chih collapsed back against the back of the barn, letting themselves shake to little bits as they had wanted to do since all of this started. They felt as if they were swimming in sweat, and all of the strength that they had been using to sit up straight and talk to tigers abruptly deserted them.
When they looked up next, there was an intent-looking man working over Bao-so, and a tall fat woman was offering them a hand up. Chih took it without thinking and then nearly stumbled into the woman’s arms before she set them upright again. Si-yu clapped them on the shoulder with a grin.
“Didn’t think we’d make it out of that, did you?” she asked.
Before Chih could respond, the man who had been tending Bao-so hauled him up to his feet, one shoulder shoved under his armpit to support him. To Chih’s surprise, Bao-so was awake, and though his eyes were a little vague, they could see the sense in them.
“We should bring out a medic to look him over and a holy man to make sure that nothing came to live in him while he was down.”
The tall woman nodded, and Chih, despite their exhaustion, noted with interest that the coil of mammoth hair pinned at her shoulder was beaded with carved ivory beads where Si-yu’s was bare.
“Good thing for you we were escorting the Great Star himself up through to Borsoon. We would have camped at sundown, but Malli was all twitchy, wouldn’t stop, and you know if Malli won’t, then Sooni won’t, either.”
Si-yu looked up from comforting Piluk with a grin.
“Lucky for all of us. Thanks for the rescue. I was afraid the cleric was going to run out of story before you got here, but it turns out there was just enough.”
“How in the world did you know that they were coming?” asked Chih, and Si-yu laughed.
“I didn’t. Piluk did. She started to get excited a little while ago. She was talking to someone, and she’s no dummy, my baby, is she?” cooed Si-yu, leaning up to thump Piluk’s shoulder. The mammoth swayed in a way that was decidedly smug, and her trunk knocked against her rider’s hip with pleasure.
“How did she know?” asked Chih, baffled.
“Calls we can’t hear,” said Hyun-lee. “That’s what I think it is, anyway.”
“Uncle says it’s a kinship connection, that they can always talk to their relatives no matter how far apart they are. Piluk is Malli’s third cousin on her dam’s side. That would do it.”
“Your uncle still thinks that they should get meat every solstice. That’s not right.”
Abruptly, they both seemed to remember that Chih was there. They couldn’t quite tell if the pair were embarrassed to be caught quibbling or protecting trade secrets, but Hyun-lee changed the topic abruptly.
“And you, cleric. What’s your story?”
“I needed to get through the pass and then south to Kephi. Si-yu was kind enough to escort me up to the way station, and then . . . tigers.”
Hyun-lee laughed, her eyes lost in the cheerful lines of her face.
“And then tigers sounds about right. Those are probably the three they were talking about on the circuit. We’ll keep an eye out. Ingrusk will probably set a bounty on their hides before too long.”
Chih couldn’t help feel a pang of regret at the fact. It wasn’t as if bounties weren’t set on human outlaws as well as tigers, but it seemed . . . a shame, perhaps. If they hung Sinh Loan’s skull on the ice wall at Ingrusk, the only place she would live on was in the archives of Singing Hills.
“Well, Borsoon’s a little out of your way, but you can likely hitch a ride from there,” said Hyun-lee, coming to a decision.
“But . . . we’re going to sleep first, right?” asked Chih plaintively, and Hyun-lee slapped them jovially on the shoulder.
“Of course, we’re not savages. Go ahead and go lie down in the way station. You look like something the mammoth trampled flat.”
Chih turned straight into a hug from Si-yu.
“You did pretty good for an out-of-shape southerner,” she said cheerfully. “Get some sleep. Dream of meat.”
Chih was so shaky on their legs that they thought they might collapse before they got to the door of the way station. The ground seemed to tilt underneath them, and they kept seeing flashes of orange and black out of the corner of their eyes.
They were close to falling asleep on their feet, but then something made them turn their head, and they stared.
The big bull stalked the edge of the clearing, ears standing out from his head, and tossing his head from side to side. He wasn’t saddled, but his curving tusks were capped with polished steel, and they guessed that his back was easily level with the roof of the way station, far larger than the cows, far heavier and mountainous.
Royal mammoth, Chih’s mind supplied. They crossed the Ko-anam Fords. One just like this broke the gates of the Palace of Gleaming Light, letting the winter into Anh . . .
Chih froze as the one that Hyun-lee had called the Great Star—he must be going to stud at the stables in Borsoon, I wonder if they would let me go see—stamped one last time at the edge of the clearing, snorted, and then wandered up to Chih. They stood stock still as the royal mammoth leaned down and his trunk came up to knock back their hood and sniff curiously at Chih’s head. The bull’s touch was surprisingly delicate and now Chih could see the phlanges, one above and one below the flaring nostrils, mobile enough to wrap around branches and grab and pinch. Up close, the bull was overwhelming, a wall of solid muscle and fur that could trample an empire flat.
“Hello,” Chih said softly. “I wish Almost Brilliant could see you . . .”
The bull abruptly decided that Chih was fine, and turned to patrol the edge of the clearing again, and after one last look to reassure themself that there were no tigers around, Chih went into the way station.