Free Ratha’s Challenge (The Fourth Book of The Named) by Clare Bell Page A

wondered if he was blind.
    No. All the hunters have eyes like this. Thakur said that I once had eyes like this.
    The young male was in a funny half twist that looked uncomfortable. After nudging him to make sure that he had no other injuries besides the tusk wound, she got him arranged so that he was lying on his belly. She had to put herself beside him to prop him up, for he kept wanting to flop over onto his side.
    “No,” she scolded softly. “Better for you to stay on your belly.”
    She studied his wound. It was no longer bleeding freely, and it didn’t look too bad. There were no bones showing or guts or anything else that should stay inside a body, except blood. But he was trembling and his nose felt cold against hers. The trembling and the coldness. And the fear. The fear could kill, even if the hurt didn’t.
    She made him keep his head down. Thakur had told her some things about how to take care of the injured. He was a skilled healer. How she wished he were here now!
    She looked at her charge critically. On his belly, with his head down, the wounded young male seemed to be doing a bit better. His nose wasn’t so cold and his trembling was less violent. Maybe he wouldn’t die after all.
    “The song,” he sighed. “It is heard again. True-of-voice comes to Quiet Hunter.”
    His words completely baffled her except for his reference to the song. She remembered her own brief experience with it. She had felt from far away the power it had to comfort and soothe.
    If the song helped the wounded hunter, she didn’t care what it was. She knew she couldn’t hear it. She was too far into the self-identified, Named way of thinking. Well, she had to be, in order to look out for herself and for him. She couldn’t afford to go stumbling around in a dream-trance. Look what that had gotten him!
    The smell of the huge kill made her belly growl. He must be hungry, too, since he was stalking with them. With disgust she noted that none of those now feasting on the downed face-tail had even glanced around for their injured companion.
    Thistle remembered what Bira had said at the campfire. She was reluctant to admit that she would agree with one of the Named, but Bira was right. These people seemed to feel no compassion for one another. They could plan and carry out an elaborate hunt, but they were not capable of the feelings that she and the Named both shared.
    How could I have thought that they are like us?
    This wounded male—he was the same. Even if he lived, he would never be able to look at her with eyes that understood what she was. She had nothing in common with him or his people. She had no business being there at all. She should go.
     

 

 
    Chapter Nine
     
     
    Thistle was giving the wounded male a soft farewell nudge when movement at the corner of her vision made her glance up. One of the hunters, a large, heavy-shouldered male, was climbing a trail up the side of the bluff. He had come from the kill. He had a chunk of meat in his jaws.
    Thistle was sure that he would eat it himself, that he would walk right past the two of them. Instead he paced deliberately to the bush where the wounded male lay. Unsure whether to freeze or run, Thistle stayed where she was. The large male ignored her, laid the meat down before his injured clan-mate ....
    An excited shiver went down Thistle’s back, all the way along her tail.
    Bira is wrong! These hunters do care about each other.  
    Stretching out his neck, the injured male got the tips of his fangs into the meat and dragged it to him. The intoxicating food smell washed over Thistle, forcing her to fight an impulse to snatch some. Instead she crouched slightly apart from the injured male, watching.
    When he had eaten, others of his kind brought more.
    They also gave him small melons from a vine that grew nearby. Thistle had seen the Named eat these to slake thirst when there was no good water.
    Those who brought the meat and melons gazed briefly at her. Their eyes were