The Sight (30 page)

At first Huttser asked for free passage through the mountains, but Slavka had laughed at him and told him that the free wolves were either for or against Morgra.  That there was no middle way.  There was such a veiled threat in the rebel wolf’s voice that Huttser and Palla knew that it would be more than their lives were worth to resist.  Since then they had been kept apart, and it was made clear that if one of them tried to escape, the other would suffer for it.  Their separation was not unusual in the rebel camp, though, for as part of their training, all mates were only allowed close contact once in a half moon.  But Slavka was only just beginning to trust that the pair were not Balkar spies.  She had recently given word that in another moon’s cycle they too would be allowed to talk.

As Slavka padded down the slope, she looked larger than she had seemed to Morgra in the water.  She passed a male wolf and stopped to address him.

‘Gart, take out another patrol.  More Balkar scum have been spotted.’

Gart dropped his muzzle immediately and growled in assent.

‘Loyalty always, Slavka.’

Loyalty was the watchword in the valley, for the rebel pack had been brought together almost entirely from lone wolves or pairs whose families had been destroyed by the Balkar.  Without the natural hierarchies of family life Slavka had made herself the focus to unite the growing pack.

‘But first deal with Darm,’ she growled suddenly.  ‘He was caught talking about the Sight.  This same nonsense about seeing wolves that vanish into darkness.  He was spreading rumours, too, of the family that whelped under the Stone Den.  There must be no more talk of it, do you understand? No more false hopes.’

Slavka’s voice had grown angry, but Gart’s eyes were full of guilt.  He remembered his journey with Darm through the forests and he liked the wolf.

‘Take some rebels and drive him out of our pack, Gart.  If he is so fond of the Sight, let him join Morgra and the rest.’

It was forbidden to talk of the Sight among the rebel pack, but Slavka sent out regular patrols in search of the human cub.  All the rebels muttered of how their leader hated Man.  There were many stories drifting around camp about how the humans had murdered her whole family, though none of them knew the truth of it.

Huttser was listening carefully.  He had been interested in Slavka from the first, and he had begun to study her methods.  He noticed that although Slavka often went among the wolves and gave them words of encouragement or talked of the great fight against Morgra, she could be very cruel.

Huttser could see that without a Dragga to lead them it made her both feared and respected in her pack.  He wondered now what Skop would have made of her, though they had seen nothing of Palla’s brother.

Hobbling was the harshest punishment for serious dis-obedience – biting through the tendons on the prisoners’ back legs.  Meanwhile, the wolves were trained by being made to take part in daily combats.  The most ferocious of these were always the fights between males and females, for when the wolves faced off their mates they were wrestling with an instinct quite as deep as the will to hunt and survive.

The rebels were also forced into a regime of constant exercise and a daily routine sharpening their teeth and claws on branches and stones.  Sometimes the rebel wolves were taken off into the mountains and made to run up and down hard slopes, and to jump rocks, or they were chased through gullies and expected to hide in caves or double back on their mock pursuers.  If they succeeded in this they were rewarded with extra meat at the communal feeding times.

Slavka suddenly lifted her muzzle.

‘Come,’ she cried.

The rebels began to drift down from the slopes into the valley to listen.  As Palla watched Slavka she shivered bitterly, for she reminded her so much of Larka.  Palla ached to know what had become of her daughter.

Slavka’s face was as fine as Larka’s and her brilliant golden eyes, ringed with white fur that offset the streaks of red that ran down along either side of her muzzle, searched the wolves keenly, resting only momentarily on their waiting eyes, before moving on.

‘Brothers,’ Slavka cried, lifting up her head.  Her voice was strong and certain in the cold air.  ‘Sisters.  The training goes well, but we must not let up for a moment.  Our very freedom depends on it.  The hunting parties report game is growing scarce, but have no fear.  With the summer the Lera flock like birds to the valley of Kosov and we shall grow fat again.  There shall be enough for all, even when the Greater Pack comes to the Gathering Place.’

The rebels were nodding.

‘When the winter passes the families shall come, not forty but hundreds of free wolves to fight Morgra.  Then we shall go on a marking the likes of which has never been seen before.  Our boundary shall ring the land beyond the forest like a mighty river and nothing shall pass.  No, not even Man.’

Huttser remembered what he had said once to Brassa about marking his own boundary to keep out the curse.  He stared oddly at Slavka though, for she suddenly looked strangely magnificent and her eloquence always stirred the rebels.

‘Very well, then, now I go on patrol.’

Slavka suddenly turned towards Huttser.  She had had an instant liking for the Dragga and he had always fought well in the combats.

‘Huttser,’ she barked, ‘you will come too this time, and we shall hunt.’

Huttser growled at being ordered to do anything by a she-wolf and he glanced accusingly at Palla, but he stepped forward.  As soon as he did so he felt the rebels’ eyes lock on his body.  He knew that many of the rebels were deeply suspicious of him, while others had begun to grow resentful, for word was spreading of how highly Slavka thought of him.  But Huttser braced to deflect their gaze, and lifted his tail proudly.

Huttser was well used to their angry eyes for he had already had to pass muster himself in another peculiar ritual among the rebel wolves.  It had not been devised by Slavka at all, but had grown up quite naturally among them.  The Gauntlet, it was called.  The rebels, usually only the males, would line up in a long line facing each other, and then wolf after wolf would be made to walk slowly down the line with their muzzles raised as high as possible.  The others would watch them carefully and growl amongst themselves and, if they saw the slightest sign of doubt, or fear or weakness, they would pounce on them and set about them roughly, scratching and biting.

Despite his own sense of rebellion Huttser fell in with the patrol now.  As he set out, Huttser decided that he would use the time usefully to find out more about the rebel leader.  Soon he even felt a sense of excitement and purpose growing in him.  For the first time in as long as he could remember he was not running, and the feeling was blissfully liberating.

There were seven wolves in the group and, though they saw no Balkar, they soon caught up with a small herd of water buffalo.  Huttser managed to gore a male’s leg and split it from the herd, which clearly impressed Slavka, but the animal was unusually strong for the winter, while the wolves themselves were weak and unwilling to risk the buffalo’s horns.  So they began a familiar waiting game for a hunting wolf, trailing its blood through the snow, never letting it rest, worrying it whenever they could and sapping the life from its failing body.

Huttser and the wolves followed it for three nights, haunting it like shadows, and soon they were all exhausted, for none of them had slept.  That night as he lay in the snow next to Slavka on the slope above a shallow valley, Huttser shivered under his thick fur.  The buffalo was trying to drink fruitlessly from a frozen stream, as three of the rebel wolves hovered around it.  It flinched and snorted as it heard their cries, but it was beyond flight now.  Around them the winter seemed to stretch on forever. For suns there had been mutterings among the rebels about the bleak, unending cold.

‘You know the story, Slavka,’ growled Huttser as he peered about him, ‘of Wolfbane’s winter.’

‘Silence, Huttser,’ snapped Slavka, ‘you talk of things that in camp you would have to be punished for.  We will have no talk of the cult of Wolfbane here, and the winter will pass.’

The rebels around them looked a little doubtfully at Slavka.

‘But it is fine, is it not,’ whispered Slavka, her eyes sparking and her breath steaming as she licked her lips, ‘to hunt free in the wilderness.  Even in winter.’

As Huttser listened to the buffalo’s mournful bellows below, he suddenly felt terribly alone and he thought angrily of Palla.

‘I love the wilderness, Slavka,’ he growled, ‘but it is hard, too.’

‘Yes, Huttser,’ cried Slavka, ‘as we must be hard.  There must be no place for weakness or fear, for fear destroys thought.  We must be strong, strong as the wilderness itself.  Like the Night Hunters.’

‘But don’t we risk turning into them?’ said Huttser, thinking of the Gauntlet and the Combats.

‘Never,’ snorted Slavka scornfully.  ‘Those Draggas claim to be First Among the Putnar, yet they are not true wolves, for they worship darkness and superstition.  But we, we must be a pack that sees clearly.  Sees the truth.’

Slavka snarled and spat.

‘Slavka,’ whispered Huttser, ‘why do you hate the humans so?’

Slavka’s eyes grew cold and she was clearly angry at Huttser’s impertinence, but the she-wolf said nothing for a while.

‘Your cubs?’ ventured Huttser.  Slavka nodded quietly.

‘I am sorry.’

As the wind stirred on the slope, Huttser felt a churning sadness in his stomach.  He looked up at the heavens.  The wind had punched a hole in the cloud and, above, he could see the stars flickering in the black.  There was another painful bellow and now the two other rebels got up to join their comrades.  Slavka watched them go and very quietly she began to tell Huttser her story.

‘I too was interested in the Sight once,’ growled Slavka, ‘and the old beliefs.  I wanted to believe in tales of a power to look into the past and know the future.  Above all, in a power to heal.  I was young and foolish and I wanted to know what lay in store for my family too.  For I loved them dearly.’

Slavka dropped  her eyes.  She seemed embarrassed suddenly.

‘So one sun I set out in search of Tsinga’s valley,’ she growled.  ‘My cubs had not been long born to me in the den, but the pack was strong and my head was filled with a wild longing.  It was while I was away that they came,’ whispered Slavka with sudden fury, ‘the humans.  The others went out to try and distract them, but they perished.  I never even found Tsinga’s valley and as I was returning I saw my mate die on the hill.  Though I got there first, their dogs were leading the humans towards our den.  Towards my cubs.’

Huttser was listening with a kind of grim fascination.

‘I didn’t know what to do, Huttser.  Half of me wanted to run.  Half to save my little ones.  I stood there trembling.  Incapable of thought, incapable of anything at all.’

A terrible bitterness had entered Slavka’s voice.

‘And in the end you had to abandon them?’ growled Huttser, remembering Palla on the hill.  ‘You shouldn’t blame yourself too much, Slavka.  You were true to your nature, that’s all.  To fight or flee.  It is the law of the Varg.  The law of life.’

‘I will tell you about life, Huttser,’ snarled Slavka, her voice echoing through the yawning darkness.  ‘About true wildness.  As I saw those dogs coming I swore an oath to myself.  Never to think of superstition and dreams, and never to succumb to fear again.  To be as strong as nature’s hunger.  Its cruelty.’

‘Before you abandoned them,’ whispered Huttser.  Slavka swung round to Huttser immediately.

‘Now, Huttser,’ she whispered, ‘now I will tell you a secret that not even the rebels know.’

‘What, Slavka?’

‘I didn’t abandon them,’ cried the she-wolf.  ‘I killed them myself, Huttser.  I turned my jaws on my own children, on my own future, so the dogs and the humans wouldn’t win.’ The grunts of the snorting buffalo shuddered through the night.  Huttser could do nothing but growl sadly in the darkness.

‘But it made me strong, Huttser,’ said Slavka, looking up suddenly.  ‘Then Morgra came whispering words of evil.  Of Wolfbane and the legend.  Filling the wolves with superstition and fear, while the Night Hunters broke every boundary they could.  So I determined to destroy her and the myth of the Sight too.  To teach the free wolves how to master real life, to look neither to past nor future, but to the present alone, and to set up a boundary that will protect us for ever from fear and superstition.’

Huttser shivered, but there was something stirring in him.

Below, the rebels had begun to snarl again and one was snapping viciously at the buffalo’s leg.  It grunted stupidly and tried to kick out, but its strength was almost gone.  Huttser was silent.  He was thinking suddenly that if he could have Fell back he would take his family away and forget all about Morgra.

‘You are a fighter, Huttser,’ said Slavka, as if reading his thoughts.  ‘A true Dragga.  You do not flee when evil threatens.’

Huttser felt strangely pleased as he looked into Slavka’s face and followed the line of her strong muzzle.  His admiration for the she-wolf was deepening and he wondered for a moment what her cubs would have been like if they had been allowed to grow.

‘I saw it in you as soon as I arrived, Huttser,’ growled Slavka, ‘for I have grown very adept at judging character.  Perhaps it’s because of what I did, but somehow it allows me to see more clearly into hearts and minds.  I can always tell a coward when I see one, or the marks of doubt and confusion.  So when the rebels come to me seeking promotion or advancement I look at them and first I ask one very simple question.  What is your secret?’

Huttser shivered uncomfortably, but suddenly a bellow shook the freezing air and the buffalo’s legs collapsed.

‘Come,’ snarled Slavka, springing to her feet, ‘it is finished.’

Huttser leapt after her down the slope.  The rebels had already begun to tear at the buffalo, biting into its living flesh.  It grunted helplessly as the bloodlust rose in the hungry animals.  Slavka’s fine coat was bristling as she reached them and looked around proudly at her comrades.  The wolves’ throats quivered with excitement, their eyes wide with the instinctive fury driving them on.