The Sight (35 page)

Larka noticed with amazement how its features were changing.  It seemed to happen almost overnight.  Where the wolves had been looking at a plain, featureless bundle of skin and bones, they saw character appearing in the child, tiny crow’s feet on the edges of its eyes and little wrinkles puckering around its mouth.  Larka stirred wonderingly at the transformation and thought of what Skart had said in the air about becoming, for she knew that she herself had changed too.  She had grown up.

That same night she lay next to Jarla, staring at it and shaking her head.

‘We must call it something,’ she growled.

‘What, Larka?’

Larka pressed her handsome muzzle closer to the helpless creature.

‘I know,’ she cried delightedly, ‘we’ll call you Bran.’

In the baby’s trusting blue eyes there was no understanding of her growls, but it gurgled and opened its arms and then, to the wolves’ amusement, it suddenly rolled on all fours and gave a little growl.

Over the coming suns Larka couldn’t let Bran out of her sight.  Her naming of him seemed to have brought her even closer to the baby.  Sometimes she tried to imagine what it would really be like to look into the mind of a human.  But Larka could never hold Bran’s gaze for very long and each time she was forced to look away, she thought of the Man Varg’s power over all the Lera and trembled.

One time Larka thought of the story Tsarr had told her, and she touched Bran in the centre of its forehead with her muzzle, just as Tor had done to Fren.  Even as she did so, she shivered, and for a moment she imagined that she could feel an energy coming from Bran.  Could it be true, wondered Larka gravely, was there really some third eye here? But what kind of eye was it, for it had no lid and no iris? Nothing surely that could show it anything of the world.  But Larka suddenly had the feeling that a great power lay in that forehead.

The next sun, for a change, Larka had gone off on her own, leaving Bran in the others’ charge.  Skart sat high in a tree looking down on them as Tsarr and Jarla talked together.  Larka was returning over a hill in sight of the wood again when she suddenly stopped and her tail came up immediately.

She saw them first, not as bodies, but as heat and light.  It was instinct that told her instantly they had come to do harm in the twilight.  The five wolves were moving steadily, stealthily, weaving through the trees towards Bran and her friends.  As Larka scanned the distance between her and the child’s bed she growled furiously.  She wanted to hurl herself through the sky towards her friends, to do something instantly to protect them.  But Larka knew she could do nothing.

 ‘The Sight,’ she cried, ‘what use is it to me to see these things and be powerless?’

But even as she spoke Larka remembered what Skart had showed her of hunting, and something Tsinga had said long ago about not fearing her own nature.  She remembered, too, Fenris’s cold commandment.

‘No,’ she snarled furiously, ‘I am a wolf, too, and I have teeth and jaws.  For I am Putnar.’

Larka leapt down the slope.  The white wolf ran like lightning across the grass, her ears quivering, her tail streaking out behind her.  There was a fury in her stride and violence in her paws, but as she moved with a new intent something else stirred too – freedom.

Jarla heard them first.  She caught the sound of breaking twigs.  The five wolves attacked at speed and Skart screeched in the trees and opened his wings as Tsarr and Jarla sprang forward.  They were facing off four of them now, but one of their attackers called to the fifth.

‘Quick,’ Gart snarled, ‘the human.  Kill the human.’

As the rebel leapt towards Bran, the baby began to bawl in terror and Jarla launched herself furiously on the two wolves in front of her.  They both sprang.  Tsarr made to turn, but Gart and another Varg were on him and the rebel was nearly at the child.  Above them Skart swooped.  His talons missed the wolf’s head, but they scared the rebel so badly that he turned and clawed at the air.  Gart broke away and lunged at the child himself.  He was almost on it, his jaws about to slice it in two.

There was a flash of white through the air.  Gart felt the breath pressed clean from his lungs as he was knocked to the ground.  Larka swung round at the wolf that was trying to fend off Skart’s talons and in one stroke delivered such a furious blow across the muzzle that it spat at her and fled.

Larka looked invincible as she stood there, her yellow eyes blazing, every muscle in her body straining with purpose.  She sprang at Tsarr’s attacker, and in an instant they had driven him off too.  She and Tsarr turned towards Jarla, but to their horror, they saw that the she-wolf was on the ground, and the two rebels were standing over her, clawing and biting at her throat.

‘No,’ gasped Tsarr.

His pounce knocked one of the rebels over and Larka took the other, her teeth going straight for its gullet.  The bite wounded it badly and as it also turned and ran, its companion joined him.  Gart was left alone.  He had got up again, but as Larka saw him advancing on Bran her voice rang through the wood.

‘Don’t move a muscle, if you value your life.’

Gart froze and Larka prowled towards him.  Tsarr was craning over Jarla, licking her muzzle tenderly.  Jarla’s blood was already thick on the grass.

‘Why have you done this?’ cried Larka furiously.  ‘Did Morgra send you?’

‘Morgra,’ snarled Gart, ‘what does a rebel have to do with that filth? You know more of Morgra than we.  For you also claim to have the Sight.  You are the same as she.’

‘But what harm has this creature ever done to you?’

They were both looking at Bran, and the child was utterly petrified.

‘You dare ask,’ said Gart, ‘you a wolf, a Varg, protecting a human.  It is against all the laws of the Putnar.  Against all the laws of nature.  Morgra is already seeking our leader because of this legend.  The Night Hunters are on the move once more.  And you ask what harm this creature does?’

Larka dropped her eyes almost guiltily, but there was another moan from Jarla.  Larka turned furiously.

‘Go, get out of here.’

Gart looked hungrily at the child again and when he spoke his voice was hard and cold.

‘I will go.  But first, don’t you want to know about your parents, Larka, about Huttser and Palla?’

Larka sprang and knocked Gart on to his back.  She stood over him, her jaws open and her tail high, her powerful front paws pressing down on his chest, her muzzle swaying slowly back and forth over his throat.  She might have pressed him into the earth.

‘My parents,’ she hissed.  ‘They are alive?’

‘For now,’ growled Gart, ‘they are being held with us in Kosov.’

Larka felt a sickening feeling in her stomach.

‘Your father was some use to us for a time,’ growled Gart scornfully, ‘spying out Balkar and humans.’

‘Humans?’ cried Larka.

‘A few are settling beyond the valley.’

Larka’s heart thundered.  Then what she had seen.  It lay in the present.

‘Then we found out Huttser and your mother were the real spies,’ said Gart.  ‘They are still alive, Larka, but only until Slavka decrees their end.’

‘Tell me.’

There was little fear in Gart.  He was a fighter and now he was resigned to his fate.  But first he delivered Slavka’s message, coldly and with defiance.  When Larka heard it she began to shake furiously and Gart felt her torment quivering through his own body as he lay beneath her paws.

‘So you see,’ whispered Gart, eyeing Larka’s teeth, ‘you have a choice, Larka.  Sacrifice yourself and the child, or say farewell to your parents for ever.’

Larka hissed at Gart and as her muzzle came closer, he could feel her hot breath stroking his fur.  He closed his eyes.

‘Do it, then, Larka.  Get it over with.  Are you a wolf or not? At least I have done my duty as a true Varg.’

Larka wanted to seize the rebel in her teeth, to shake the life out of his throat, for his stupidity.  It wasn’t just her parents’ fate that hung now in the balance, she wanted to scream, but the fate of all the wolves, of all the Lera.  The legend was coming true.  She had seen it.  But Larka knew Gart would never believe her.  As she stood there, she was like some ancient prophet destined never to be believed.

As Larka thought of Huttser and Palla she opened her jaws, yet something within her held her back.  Gart was strong and proud and he was right, he had risked his life to do what he felt was best.  Why should he die for it, what justice would quiver through the leaves below Tor’s heaven if she killed him?

Larka sprang off him.

‘Go, go back to your leader and give her my message.  Tell her that she is wrong.  That it is not the Sight that is evil, no, not even Man, but Morgra and Wolfbane.  And tell her, too, that we are not the same, Morgra and I.’

Gart opened his eyes.  He had expected his end and a great lightness came over him, as though he were floating beyond his own body.  The wolf got up and looked strangely at Larka.  ‘How fine she seems,’ he thought.  Gart was touched by a guilty memory, too, a memory of what Slavka had made him do to his friend Darm.  He was about to speak again, but Larka turned her head coldly.

‘And tell Slavka that if she lays a paw on my parents she shall suffer for it.’

As he padded away Gart kept looking back at the white she-wolf and wondering to himself.  But Larka had swung round to Jarla in the grass.  Tsarr shook his greying muzzle sadly.

‘It’s hopeless, Larka.’

‘Jarla,’ whispered Larka, ‘I am sorry.  I didn’t come in time.’

Jarla was straining painfully, the fur around her throat torn and bloody.

‘But let me try to heal you, Jarla,’ said Larka suddenly.

‘Let me use the Sight.’

But Jarla’s breath was growing fainter.

‘No,’ she growled, ‘it’s too late for me, Larka.’

Larka could feel somehow that Jarla’s life force was vanishing.

‘Larka,’ Jarla gasped, ‘Larka.  There isn’t much time.  I want to ask you something.  I want you to promise me that you will care for the human.  That you will do all in your power to protect it.  And that one sun you will return it to its mother, for only she can truly understand it.’

Larka whined tenderly.

‘No, Larka,’ gasped Jarla, ‘promise me.  Swear it.  By the

Sight.’

Larka remembered bitterly the pact they had all made as young wolves.  ‘What point,’ she thought helplessly, ‘what point is there in making promises we never keep?’

‘I swear it.’

Jarla closed her eyes, and as the death rattle hissed from her broken body they heard another meaning, a meaning without words whispered from her dying voice.  It was a sigh, a sigh of gratitude and relief.  Larka’s howl echoed around them and Bran turned his head as he heard it.  Something stirred in the child’s unconscious  mind, some ancient memory.

Tsarr rested by Bran that terrible night, licking his wounds as Skart hopped and fluttered about them and Larka went off alone to think.  Tsarr and Skart were worried, and they could see that Larka had been given an impossible choice.  Larka’s heart was full of shadows as she prowled through the wood.  She had promised herself, promised Jarla to protect the strange little human.  But now her parents were in terrible danger, not just from Slavka, but from the legend, too.  Morgra was on the move and Larka knew now that it was in Kosov that she would try to fulfil the verse and open the pathways to the Searchers.

Perhaps she could reach them first and spirit them away.  But could Slavka really make her parents fight each other to the death? Larka shuddered as she thought of it, but again that image came to her, of their snarling faces on the ice.  She wanted to save them, to stop it all.  But if she took Bran to Kosov as Slavka demanded, then had not she herself become Morgra’s servant? It was as though Morgra was asking Larka to join her.

It was dawn when Larka rose on her paws and wandered over to Jarla’s body.  She shivered as she saw that already the secret workers of the wood, ants and termites and beetles, had come scurrying from the undergrowth and begun to feed on the carcass.  Even as they supped they fought each other, clambering over each other’s tiny bodies.  But as Larka thought of how Skart had talked with such hatred of Kraar and the flying scavengers, she felt confused.  Was not the wolf a scavenger too, like these little things? Did not everything scavenge on everything else?

‘Larka,’ said Skart quietly, ‘what are you going to do?’ Larka’s eyes flickered.  For a moment her parents’ angry voices seemed to echo in her ears, but Tsinga’s cry came with her memories, out of the barren snows, across the tender grasses.  ‘Love each other, Larka, love each other or perish.’

 ‘I am going to rescue my parents.’

‘But, Larka,’ cried Tsarr, ‘shouldn’t we wait? The Sight is growing in you still and we have more to teach.’

‘I have learnt enough,’ snarled Larka almost scornfully, ‘I have been learning all along without even knowing it.  And what use is this power if my parents are to die? All my life I have been running, running from fear and betrayal.  But I am not the Betrayer.  I shall not betray Huttser and Palla, and I shall no longer be afraid.’

‘But the rebels want to kill the human,’ whispered Tsarr, ‘and want to kill you.  And Kosov.  Morgra is on her way—’

‘They shall not touch a hair on its head,’ growled Larka.

‘Nor mine.  Not Morgra, nor the rebels.  And if Slavka fears the humans so much, perhaps Bran will help me defeat her.’ Yet Larka shivered as she thought of the soldiers she had seen gathering on the edge of Kosov.

‘But you have not yet mastered the Sight.  You—’

‘Peace, Tsarr,’ said Larka quietly, ‘Skart told me once that a child picks up blame from others, for things that were not even their fault.  That is true.  But if I do nothing now, if I simply use the Sight to glory in the freedom of the skies and hunt wild, will I not always blame myself? We must know what we should or shouldn’t blame ourselves for.  I love my parents Tsarr and if I betray them, will not that kill something inside me? Then would I ever be able to love again? And you are forgetting I am a wolf too, Tsarr, and there is strength in my claws.’