Tarashana by Rachel Neumeier (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📕

“Brave wolf. Brave warriors.”

“Everyone was brave that day. The wolf looked at the warriors and saw his own brother standing there, now a grown man. The warrior looked back at the wolf. He knew a wolf does not challenge the white tiger, certainly not to protect human girls, so he looked hard. He saw his brother behind the eyes of the wolf. He went back to his tribe and told them what he had seen, and the wolf went back to his tribe and told them the people were his own. After that both Ugaro and wolves knew they had become cousins. That is why we are kind to one another.”

Suyet nodded. “That’s a good story. We call that kind of story, the kind that didn’t really happen, a folk tale.”

“It might not have happened exactly that way,” I told him. “It was a long time ago. But something of that kind did happen, or we would not tell the story. You should remember that wolves agree Ugaro are their cousins. We do not hunt them, but they do not hunt us either. If I saw a starving wolf, I would shoot a deer for him. If I were starving, I could go to a wolf kill and take some meat and the wolves would not try to prevent me. I have heard of such things happening.”

He tilted his head. He did not believe me, but he did not disbelieve me either. He said, “I expect if I were starving and tried to take meat from wolves, it wouldn’t work out the same way.”

“I would not suggest a Lau try that,” I agreed. I lay down on my back and listened to the wolves. They were farther away, not really hunting yet or they would not have been singing. There were at least nine. I said, “Thank you for coming with me tonight, Suyet. I would not ... I thought at first I wanted to be alone, but I was wrong.”

Suyet got to his feet and put more wood on the fire. Then he lay down again, looking at the sky and not at me. He said, “I think you should trust Lord Gaur. He’ll do the right thing.”

“The right thing for his uncle? Or the right thing for himself?”

“I hope he’ll find a way to do both.”

I hoped that too. But the way Aras had explained it to me, I could not see any way in which he could do something that would be right in both ways. I was silent for a little while. Then I said, “You should tell me a tale of the summer country. A folk tale. Something that did not really happen, or that you think did not really happen. Something with a kind ending.”

He smiled. I saw his teeth gleam in his dark face. “I can do that. Let me think.”

In the morning, I went with Suyet back to the barracks. I did not go to the house to find Aras. I was not certain what he was doing or thinking. I did not want to know, in case I argued with him. Arguing with a man too much will make him think he must hold tight to his first opinion. So I stayed with Talon Commander Sharet’s soldiers in their barracks.

The talon commander did not comment about this. He told me to go to the training yard and had me wrestle and then fight some of his men, the younger ones who had never fought Ugaro warriors. Wrestling is more like a game; fighting is more dangerous, even when knives are not involved. Someone can get hurt fighting even with empty hands, but it was not likely to be me, not against young men like these, and I was used to being careful when fighting young Lau. It was good for them to fight me. Fighting an Ugaro is not exactly like fighting another Lau, and the difference surprises them at first. They have to learn how hard an Ugaro warrior is to knock down and how difficult he is to keep down. They think they know how much stronger an Ugaro is, but they seldom truly understand that until they feel it for themselves. Their long limbs give them important advantages, but at first they do not know how to use that.

Eventually they learn how to do it. After he had watched me embarrass five young men in a row, Laraut, a man of Esau’s file, challenged me. He beat me twice. We had been learning from each other for a long time. The third time, I pinned him with his face in the dirt. He knew better than to keep fighting when I had him down, but he tried several things that might have worked if his opponent had been a Lau, to show the young men that none of those things worked against me. When he finally yielded, I helped him up and he clapped me on the back and said to the young men, “See what happens if you don’t use the leverage the gods gave you? Let an Ugaro get you down and you’ll never get him off. Too much weight and way too much muscle. Ryo hasn’t even got his growth. In five years, I won’t be able to put him in the dirt very often. In ten, not even Esau will have an easy time putting Ryo down.”

I smiled and told the young men, “Laraut is right. Fighting an older warrior is not like fighting me. A man ten years older than I am will weigh more than I do, and he will be stronger. You should ask Esau what happened when he taught my brother to wrestle. You must stay back and not let an Ugaro get inside your reach. With your long limbs, a blow has more force than your strength alone could give. You should use that.