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Tiger, Tiger
Lynne Reid Banks
Two tigers. One city. Two very different lives.A compelling story about friendship, brotherhood and battling against the odds.In Ancient Rome Caesar is almighty and his power is played out in the gladiatorial arena, where animals and men are baited, challenged and destroyed.Two tiger cubs have been kidnapped from the jungle. One is tamed and de-clawed for pampered life as an exotic pet for Aurelia, Caesar's daughter, but the other is cruelly caged and made even more brutal, trained to fight and kill.Princess Aurelia loves her pet tiger, Boots, and grows ever more fond of his keeper, Julius. But when a childish prank goes awry, Boots escapes. Furious Caesar sentences Julius to death in the arena… and Boots is to face the same fate.So the two tigers are reunited in the gladiatorial ring, one a cosseted pet, the other a vicious predator. In a world dominated by Caesar's will, all must fight for freedom.
Copyright (#u335b149e-861e-5898-9a94-878a9a885f2d)
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain in hardback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2004
First published in Great Britain in paperback by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2005
This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Cover illustration © Marc Martin 2017
Text copyright © Lynne Reid Banks 2004
Lynne Reid Banks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780007462940
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007349913
Version: 2017-02-01
Dedication (#u335b149e-861e-5898-9a94-878a9a885f2d)
For my son, Gillon Stephenson
Table of Contents
Cover (#uc259c46a-3c4f-5c64-8e13-ad80962b1707)
Title Page (#ua2648f29-07d7-5796-9408-122df8c603b0)
Copyright (#u5f214fa9-c234-517a-bcf9-5c5f4520b330)
Dedication (#u90cc3a10-1161-5285-9ba5-b32c61d546ec)
Prologue (#ud1378c8a-12b4-566f-9983-e0ed1b0b84fd)
Chapter One: In the Hold (#uc6f1e33d-02cd-543a-93fa-69a3168f90bb)
Chapter Two: Caesar’s Daughter (#u6a5f57fc-5e11-51cb-b74b-ee9f207134ea)
Chapter Three: The Naming (#u78d4dfe8-d760-522d-ace9-f586152f20de)
Chapter Four: Visits (#ua4957fc9-62ce-58d4-bcf9-b080db0dd122)
Chapter Five: Marcus (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six: Aurelia to the Circus (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven: ‘The Greatest Treat’ (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight: The Trick (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine: The Catastrophe (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten: Freedom (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven: Julius in Chains (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve: Aurelia’s Secret (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen: Aurelia’s Sacrifice (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen: The Ides of July (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen: In the Arena (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen: A Triumph of Will (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s Note (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Books by Lynne Reid Banks (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#u335b149e-861e-5898-9a94-878a9a885f2d)
The two tiger cubs, romping in the jungle undergrowth near their den, prick up their ears.
While they play by themselves, they always half listen for their mother’s return. But these sounds are not what they want to hear. They are strange and alarming. Loud, staccato beats, clattering and banging – hacking and chopping – a trampling of green stems. And voices. Not animal voices, all familiar to them. These are voices alien to the jungle. And when they begin, other sounds, the sounds that make a constant, reassuring background to the cubs’ lives, fall silent.
They look around, anxiously. Something is coming. Where is their mother?
As the barrage of noise gets nearer, there is a sudden wild whirring over their heads. They look up, and see a blur of colour and affrighted movement as a flock of birds takes flight, disturbing the leaves.
Next, bands of monkeys go fleeing hand over hand through the canopy above, chattering and screaming in terror.
It is a signal. Beasts that have been hiding, spring up. The cubs see a buck stumbling clumsily among the trees, not far from them. At a greater distance, they hear an elephant trumpet a warning. Smaller creatures flee invisibly but audibly through the undergrowth. Every sound they hear seems to urge them to run. But they do not. The flight instinct conflicts with their mother’s training – they must stay by the den, where she can find them.
They crouch together, keeping low. There is a brief pause. Then suddenly the line of hunters breaks through the jungle thickets into the small clearing in front of the den.
The bigger cub tries to run now, but it is too late.
He is pounced on, seized by the scruff of the neck, and thrust into a sack. He squirms and squeals and tries to bite his captor, but it is useless. The smaller cub doesn’t even manage to struggle – he is enclosed in a dark, noisome place, and swung upward. They can see nothing now, but they hear the sound of trampling underneath them, and the ear-hurting other sounds fade. They are bumped up and down, their bodies distressed, their minds blank with bewilderment.
*
The two hunters who carry the sacks reach the edge of the forest where their horses wait. They hand their burdens to others while they mount, then take the sacks again and loop them over the pommels of their saddles.
The horses can smell the tiger-scent and begin neighing and curvetting, trying to get away from it. Their skilled riders use this fear to urge them forward. The tigress, they know, cannot be far away.
Behind them, in the jungle, the noise of the beaters continues. More beasts are being hunted and trapped.
The moment their heads are freed, the horses rear up, then gallop for the riverbank, where the boats wait.
With their goal in sight, the riders’ hair stands suddenly on end as they hear behind them the ferocious roar of a charging tiger. The horses bolt. Reaching the ramp that connects the bank with the first boat, the leading horse bounds up it. The one behind utters a scream as it feels the tigress’s claws tear its haunch – then, wild-eyed, it plunges up on to the deck.
The hunters disengage the sacks and fling them expertly to the waiting sailors. Then they jump from their horses, and turn at the rail to watch as others repel their pursuer.
As the cubs are carried down to where cages wait in the grim bowels of the ship, they cannot know that their last chance of rescue lies at the foot of the gangway with a spear through her heart.
Chapter One (#u335b149e-861e-5898-9a94-878a9a885f2d)
IN THE HOLD (#u335b149e-861e-5898-9a94-878a9a885f2d)
The two cubs huddled together, their front paws intertwined, their heads and flanks pressed to each other.
Darkness crushed them, and bad smells, and motion. And fear.
The darkness was total. It was not what they were used to. In the jungle there is always light for a tiger’s eyes. It filters down through the thickest leaves from a generous sky that is never completely dark. It reflects off pools and glossy leaves and the eyes of other creatures. Darkness in the jungle is a reassurance. It says it’s time to come out of the lair, to play, to eat, to learn the night. It’s a safe darkness, a familiar, right darkness. This darkness was all wrong.
The smells were bad because there was no way to bury their scat. And there was the smell of other animals, and their fear. And there was a strange smell they didn’t recognise, a salt smell like blood. But it wasn’t blood.
It was bad being enclosed. All the smells that should have dissipated on the wind were held in, close. Cloying the sensitive nostrils. Choking the breath. Confusing and deceiving, so that the real smells, the smells that mattered, couldn’t be found, however often the cubs put up their heads and reached for them, sniffing in the foul darkness.
The motion was the worst. The ground under them was not safe and solid. It pitched and rocked. Sometimes it leant so far that they slid helplessly until they came up against something like hard, cold, thin trees. These were too close together to let the cubs squeeze between them. Next moment the ground tipped the other way. The cubs slid through the stinking straw till they fell against the cold trees on the other side. When the unnatural motion grew really strong, the whole enclosure they were in slid and crashed against other hard things, frightening the cubs so that they snarled and panted and clawed at the hard non-earth under their pads, trying in vain to steady themselves.
They would put back their heads and howl, and try to bite the cold thin things that stopped them being free. Then their slaver sometimes had blood in it.
When the awful pitching and rolling stopped and they could once again huddle up close, their hearts stopped racing, and they could lick each other’s faces for reassurance.
They were missing their mother – their Big One. They waited for her return – she had always come back before. But she was gone for ever. No more warm coat, no rough, comforting, cleansing tongue. No more good food, no big body to clamber on, no tail to chase, pretending it was prey. No more lessons. No more love and safety.
All their natural behaviour was held in abeyance. They no longer romped and played. There was no space and they had no spirit for it. Mostly they lay together and smelt each other’s good smell through all the bad smells.
As days and nights passed in this terrifying, sickening fashion, they forgot their mother, because only Now mattered for them. Now’s bewilderment, fear, helplessness and disgust.
There was only one good time in all the long hours. They came to look forward to it, to know when it was coming.
They began to recognise when the undifferentiated thudding overhead, where the sky ought to be, presaged the opening of a piece of that dead sky, and the descent from this hole of the two-legged male animals that brought them food. Then they would jump to their feet and mewl and snarl with excitement and eagerness. They would stretch their big paws through the narrow space between the cold trees and, when the food came near, try to hook it with their claws and draw it close more quickly. The food, raw meat on a long, flat piece of wood, would be shoved through a slot down near the ground, the meat – never quite enough to fill their stomachs – scraped off, and the wood withdrawn. Water came in a bowl through the same slot. They often fought over it and spilt it. They were nearly always thirsty.
The male two-legs made indecipherable noises: ‘Eat up, boys! Eat and grow and get strong. You’re going to need it, where you’re going!’
And then there would be a sound like a jackal’s yelping and the two-legs would move off and feed the other creatures imprisoned in different parts of the darkness.
Brown bears. Jackals. A group of monkeys, squabbling and chattering hysterically. There were wild dogs, barking incessantly and giving off a terrible stench of anger and fear. There were peacocks with huge rustling tails, that spoke in screeches. And somewhere quite far away, a she-elephant, with something fastened to her legs that made an unnatural clanking sound as she shifted her great body from foot to foot in the creaking, shifting, never-ending dark.
One night the dogs began to bite and tear at each other amid an outburst of snarling and shrieking sounds. The cubs were afraid and huddled down in the farthest corner of their prison. But they could hear the wild battles as one dog after another succumbed and was torn to pieces. The next time the sky opened, the two-legged animals found a scene of carnage, with only two dogs left alive.
‘There’ll be trouble now,’ one muttered, as he dragged the remains out from a half-opening while others held the survivors off with pointed sticks.
‘I said they should have put ’em all in separate cages. They’ll say we didn’t feed ’em enough.’
‘Better cut the corpses up and give the meat to the tigers. Dogs is one thing, but if we lose one of them cubs, we’ll be dog meat ourselves.’
After that there was no shortage of food and the cubs spent most of the time when they weren’t eating, sleeping off their huge meals. But their sleep was not peaceful.
The cubs had no desire to fight or kill each other. They didn’t know they were brothers, but each knew that the other was all he had. One was the first-born and the larger. He was the leader. In the jungle, he had been fed first and most, and had led their games and pretend hunts. He was also the more intelligent of the two. He came to understand that it was no use howling and scratching at the ground and rubbing backwards and forwards with cheek and sides against the cold, close-together barriers, or trying to chew them to pieces. When his brother did these things, he would knock him down with his paw and lie on him to stop him.
The younger one would submit. It was better, he found. His paws, throat and teeth stopped being sore. He learnt to save his energies. But the misery was still there. It only stopped while he ate, and when he curled up with his brother and they licked each other’s faces, and slept.
*
At last it ended.
The sky-hole opened and stayed open and a new smell came through. They smelt earth and vegetation – not what they’d been used to, but bearing some comforting relation to it.
They stood together side by side, alert and waiting for what would happen next. The two-legged animals were running about over their heads and making loud noises with their mouths. The sky-hole grew bigger, and at last they could see the blue of the real sky over their heads. Something came down from above, grasped their prison and swung it upwards! It rocked and swayed and the cubs fell on their sides and couldn’t get up without falling down again. After a short journey, there was a hard jolt. Then two-legged ones gathered around them, peering at them, their loud mouth-noises coming from all directions.
One of them put its long-toed hairless paw in between the thin trees. The bigger cub snarled and snapped at it furiously. It was snatched away and there was an outcry.
‘It tried to bite me!’
‘Stupid! What do you expect? It’s wild, it’s not used to being petted.’
