Ratha and Thistle-Chaser (The Third Book of the Named) by Clare Bell Page B

wondered if what he’d seen was only his imagination. Could it be that his training as a herder and his work as a teacher made him misinterpret the stranger’s behavior? Was he seeing only what he expected to see? Well, he could hardly have expected this! He watched the stranger wend her way among the odd, lumpy sea-creatures, their calmness convincing him that they knew her and had grown accustomed to her presence.
    The stranger’s smell was faint at this distance, but the trace of it he could catch was not clan scent. Curious now, he cast about until he found a scent-mark she had made on the bluff and inhaled the odor. No, she wasn’t from the clan, nor was she of the Un-Named, who left their traces on hunting trails.
    Thakur toyed with the idea of going down to meet this intriguing stranger, but something made him hesitate.
    She must be from the fringes of the Un-Named, he decided, a product of a mating between a clan member and one of the Un-Named, just as he and his brother, Bonechewer, were. If so, she might be friendly, but she also might be dangerous. Though crippled, she had managed to beat off a bird bigger than she was. Thakur wasn’t sure he wanted to confront her directly and certainly not with Aree on his back.
    Instead, he watched her, being careful to keep downwind so she wouldn’t smell him. He noted the trails she took through the terraces and rocks. If he scent-marked a shrub or boulder along her way, then he could announce himself in a casual fashion and see from a distance what her response would be.
    He put his plan into action the following day. After spraying several shrubs and rubbing his chin on a boulder, he sent Aree to safety in the branches of a wind-gnarled cypress and hid himself above the path.
    Soon he heard footfalls in the rhythm of his quarry’s three-legged gait. He peered from his hideaway for the first close-up view of the stranger. He was not prepared for the odd little face that appeared around the edge of a boulder. None of the Named had anything like her markings in orange and rusty black. An inky band across the lower part of her face emphasized the lightness of her eyes.
    Thakur had never seen such eyes. An iris of milky green swirled about each slit pupil, giving the stranger a gaze that seemed distracted and diffuse. Yet her stare had an unsettling quality. The cloudiness at first made him think she might be blind, but the sharp definition of her pupils and the way she made her way without using her whiskers to touch things convinced him she could see.
    The stranger’s ears flicked back, and her neck extended as she caught his scent. He saw her upper lip curl back, revealing short, sharp fangs without signs of wear. She took one limping step toward the bush he had sprayed and then went rigid. A look of terror and rage shot through her eyes. Reeling backward as if she’d been struck, she crumpled into a whimpering heap, her good forepaw shielding her face. Shudders racked her, throwing her on her side, where she fought and thrashed against some unseen enemy.
    Thoroughly bewildered, Thakur crept from his hideaway. He had seen and smelled many reactions to his scent-marking, but none as dramatic or frightening as this! An irrational sting of guilt hit him for daring to place his mark in her path.
    The young female lay on her side, pedaling weakly with three feet as she stared ahead. Her head arched back and she stared without seeing. As the paroxysm spent itself, her limbs stilled and her eyes closed. She lay limply. When Thakur pawed her, she wobbled like a freshly killed carcass.
    Numbed by astonishment and disbelief, he went to her head and stared down at her. Part of him insisted that it was coincidence; she had sniffed his mark just as the fit struck her. No. He had seen too clearly the shock and fright that had flashed through the cloudiness of her eyes in that instant before she fell.
    She took quick, struggling breaths that jerked her rib cage. Thakur himself took a