The Cry of the Wolf

by Melvin Burgess

  But the wolves never forgot how dangerous Man was. Hundred of years had passed, but every one of them carried inside the memory of what the ancient cry, ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ meant to them … the fire by night, the baying of dogs and the cruel, excited shouting of men and children. The chase, slithering across wet fields, scrambling over rocks, dashing between houses, until their lungs were bursting, stones striking their ribs and cracking their skulls, torches of pitch ablaze tumbling towards them … and then the killing … the smell of their own fur burning, of their flesh and bones sizzling and charring as their dens blazed … their cubs thrown up and broken and trampled on the ground, their blood running thick in the open air … sticks beating their hides until the bones broke and broke again …

  They learned to be invisible. They never hunted domestic animals, but lived only on wild meat. If they came to a field with sheep in it they skirted round it. They were always on the move, never staying in the same place for more than a few days.

  So successful had they been, they had kept their secret for all these hundreds of years. Only now had they been betrayed and for the first time an outsider had discovered them.

  Two nights passed before the Hunter came back to his car. It was raining and the cabbage field was sodden clay. He didn’t go back to the track but cut straight across to the main road, kicking the clods of mud off his shoes as he walked and slipping occasionally under the weight of a burden wrapped in black polythene that he carried hunched over his shoulders. Jenny trailed behind him, bedraggled and miserable. He came out only a few metres away from his car, still parked in the lay-by, and the light of a street lamp caught his face as he stepped over the wire. The chin was now stubbly, the skin was wet. There was no expression on his face, but it shone from within with a kind of delight.

  He flung the burden down onto the muddy verge while he fumbled in his pocket for the keys. A corner of the polythene blew over in the wind and the face of his victim showed in the street lamp.

  It was the same animal that had left tracks on the bridleway. It was a dark coloured male wolf with golden hair around his face. Blood was drying between his teeth and dribbled slowly from his ear onto the grass verge. There was a neat round hole behind his ear. He was still warm. He had only been dead a few hours.

  The Hunter wrapped the corpse in a blanket and put it in the boot of the car before he drove off for a hot bath and a drink to celebrate his first wild English wolf.

  3

  ON A STILL, frosty winter morning, three years after the Hunter had made his first kill, a large floppy labrador called Mike was out with his master for an early morning run. Trotting on ahead along the same path they took every morning, Mike turned a corner on the edge of a patch of common land and saw a strange dog. He stopped to have a good look. It was a tall, lean animal and it was behaving in an extremely odd manner, walking to and fro chest deep in long, dead grass, holding its chin into its chest and looking down its nose as it walked. Then it suddenly leaped up as if it had been stung. Mike raised his eyebrows in surprise. The dog then shot down to the ground with a kind of straight-armed dive and snatched something out of the ground, before beginning its stilted walk in the long grass again.

  Mike shook his head and looked again. He had never seen a dog behave like this before. He barked at it, but to his indignation the other dog barely gave him a glance. Mike stiffened and let off a whole series of good, loud barks, just as his master came round the corner, and then stood wagging his tail proudly with his nose in the air to see what effect his magnificent effort had had. But the other dog had gone. Mike looked suspiciously around him. When he realised that it wasn’t behind him or to either side, he went over to have a sniff where the strange creature had been.

  ‘Come on, Mike!’ called his master cheerfully. Mike ignored him, and galloped and flumped over to the bracken. He almost fell over the other animal, who was sitting hidden in the grass. Resignedly and with a hint of a sigh, it got to its feet and let Mike sniff it. Mike’s master looked over his shoulder and saw his labrador sniffing a strange dog, a dog that gave him a curiously intense, almost alarming stare. He paused for a better look.

  Mike backed off, full of suspicion. The new dog didn’t smell right, somehow. He decided a game was the answer and crouched low, wagging his tail. The strange dog gave him a look. Mike tried an encouraging bark, but it came out all wrong. His tail dropped. He barked once more and began to growl, then thought better of it. Feeling a great fool all of a sudden, Mike backed off and then turned his back and trotted across the field to his master, trying not to skulk.

  ‘Never mind, boy.’ His master rubbed his ears for him. Mike huffed gratefully and glanced back disdainfully, if nervously, over his shoulder as they went round a corner. The other dog was already gone.

  As he walked, the man kept an eye out for rabbits or even a hare, if he were lucky. He would have been thrilled to see a fox that morning and delighted to see a badger. He did not know that he had just seen one of the rarest animals in the world. But then, he might not have felt so secure in his early morning walk had he known he was in the middle of a wolf pack.

  The wolves were by now in danger of complete extinction. Their numbers were already so low that it was doubtful they could ever recover. Of the seven packs of three years before only one other remained, a group of six animals in hiding in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. The Hunter knew where they were, he considered he could pick up their trail any time. First he was intent on wiping out this pack.

  Three years before, the man and his dog would have been surrounded by wolves, eleven of them. Now only four waited behind trees, hidden in the grass, under bushes, until he and his dog had gone.

  As the man and his dog vanished into the morning mists, the wolf Mike had seen, a young female, rose from her hiding place and began her strange walk across the grass again. She was hunting mice, which made up a very large part of the wild wolves’ diet. In half an hour she had caught fifteen – quite a good meal, even for a wolf. No dog would have thought of making a meal of mice; probably no dog could actually catch them.

  The other wolves lay in a circle around her, watching out for people and other trouble. When the young female had finished she lay low and crept out of sight to a place under a thicket of gorse bushes where a beautiful cream and silver wolf lay resting on her side. This wolf was Silver, the pack leader. Her belly hung heavily on the icy ground. Silver was pregnant. Her cubs were due within the week.

  When she lay by her leader’s side, the young wolf began suddenly to heave and retch and then she spilled out half of her catch on the ground by Silver who quickly gobbled them up.

  Her task over, the young wolf crept away and lay in the grass some way off. Further along the common, another animal rose from behind a crest of dead grass at the foot of an old fence, disturbing a flock of rooks poking for worms nearby. This was a short, stocky wolf, powerfully built with a fine golden ruff over his shoulders and around his neck. The golden blond fur spilled onto his face, like a mask.

  This wolf, Conna, stalked up and down in the grass for a while, but then seemed to get fed up with it and began rolling on his back instead. He paused and a look of surprise came over his face and then he began to squirm and wriggle in a most absurd manner, whimpering and groaning softly. There seemed to be something wrong with him.

  The rooks in the field certainly seemed to think so, and began calling and croaking among themselves. Several of them stopped poking in the ground for worms and lifted their heads to get a better look. Others began walking towards the racket, making noises that might have been laughter. Conna certainly looked very absurd indeed.

  Whatever was wrong with the wolf, it seemed to be getting worse. He began jumping up and down in the air, his tail thrashing and twitching. Then he lay still for a second before going into more spasms. He hunched over his stomach as if he felt ill, retched a couple of times and then began chasing his tail in ludicrous little circles, round and round.

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p; The rooks gawped and looked at one another in amazement. A group of three jumped into the air and settled about twenty metres away to have a better look, and as Conna got more and more demented, they walked towards him, jeering and cawing, unable to take their eyes off this absurd beast. The rooks got closer and closer, Conna got madder and madder – but then, he suddenly leaped an enormous leap into the air and landed smack in the middle of them. The rocks squawked and flew off with a great clatter of wings, but it was too late for one of them. Conna had caught breakfast the easy way.

  But it was not his breakfast. He too lay down on his belly and ran along the ground, so as not to be seen, and brought his gift to Silver under the gorse. The two wolves lay nose to nose for a second, giving each other long wet-tongued kisses, and hugging each other with their forepaws before Conna left to get his own breakfast. The two were mates. Wolves mate for life. Silver had been left a widow once before, because of the attentions of the Hunter. This was to be Conna’s first litter, and he was as proud and as nervous as a puppy with its first mouse.

  After Conna had finished his breakfast, it was time to be off. Silver rose heavily from her hiding place in the gorse. He ran to her side but at a low growl from her, sheered off. It was not good to stay too close together, in case of ambush. Silver shook herself before moving forward through the bracken and stubby gorse bushes, over the little stream and into a cow pasture beyond. One by one, her pack followed her.

  It was winter, the deep frozen heart of January. The ground was hard as iron and the frosty grass brittle beneath their feet. The wolves moved quietly between the cows, ghosts from a past that England had long ago killed off and forgotten. The pasture led south over gentle hills to the farm and the stretch of river where, three years before, young Ben had told the Hunter that there were wolves.

  That corner of Surrey where Ben’s father raised crops and grazed cattle had been part of the pack’s ground for centuries, and normally they would pass along the bridleway two or three times a year. But this was the first time Silver had led her pack this way since the Hunter’s first kill – Goldface, Silver’s original mate.

  The murder of her Goldface – the first killing of a wolf any of them had known – brought swift action from the pack leader. She led them west through Sussex and then off their normal beat into Hampshire and then north right up into Wiltshire. The wolves had used every trick they knew to shake off the scourge that came among them, but even so the Hunter tracked down and killed three more before they threw him off and he picked up on another pack. Silver’s pack had been saved, but the Hunter had soon appeared among another pack – then another – and another. The precious numbers of the wolves dwindled, slaughtered one after the other. Silver kept well away from her old haunts and wandered further north into Staffordshire. Here the pack was safe for three years, until at last a new animal had come up from the south to join her, the last member of another wolf pack. The Hunter had followed him. Now he was among them again, killing. And this time, after three years’ experience, he was more dangerous than ever. So far Silver had been unable to shake him off their track. Only now had she led her wolves back into Surrey as she criss-crossed the southern counties in her efforts to shake him off.

  Silver was very tired. The wolves had been moving fast for weeks. This was a race for her life, for the lives of her unborn cubs and the life of her pack. The Hunter was ferocious, cunning, with no mercy, no thought of reprieve. He wanted every one of these wolves dead by his hand.

  Brindles, the oldest of them, and Cacoo, a cousin of Conna, had been the first, killed as they were drinking from a small pool in woodland south of the Farthing Downs in Surrey. One more, one of Silver’s own daughters, had been taken on the edge of Tunbridge Wells and another old wolf, aunt to Conna, had been wounded on the railway line to Brighton, and died a few days later. Another two, both young pups, had been killed only a few miles further on; they had been slowed down by the dying old wolf and the Hunter had used his chance well. The terrible chase continued. Silver tried everything she knew and more, but it seemed nothing could throw him and his crooked little dog off the trail. The Hunter had learned fast. He knew how the wolves travelled, how they rested and fed, all their habits, and had developed a terrible, uncanny instinct to predict which way they would go. Thus he was often able to follow them so far and then cut ahead so as to ambush them, appearing suddenly and slaughtering two or three before they even knew he was among them. For this reason, when Silver heard from her scouts sent back to keep track of him, that he had disappeared, she did not rejoice, but wondered instead how and when he would reappear.

  After crossing only two or three fields, Silver felt she had to rest again. She sniffed the air anxiously and whined slightly. Her weakness, as pack leader, put all of them in terrible danger. They had been running all night. She coughed and lay back down, signalling a period of rest. Two of the others in their hiding places sank down, sighed, put their heads on their paws, and tried to snatch a little sleep. The third, the yellow-tinted young female, stayed alert, on watch for danger.

  Conna was unable to relax. He lay still, which was his duty, but his ears were up and he was listening not for the sounds of danger on the air, but for his mate, hidden behind the crest of grass. And in a few minutes, his suspicions hardened as he heard a whimper come from her hiding place. Quickly he was at her side, but again a warning growl sent him straight back to his own place. Silver was in labour.

  It is the habit of wolves to give birth alone, so the others stayed away, but the news spread among them. The one remaining sleeper was put on the alert and all the wolves strained their senses anxiously for the slightest sign of danger. This was the most vital time of all for Silver and for them. Should any real danger threaten they would have to leave her.

  A couple of tits peeped in the branches overhead. The wolves lay still as statues in the bracken. Soon, frost began to form on their coats. Silver, whose early labour had been brought on by the tremendous chase across country, struggled to bring her pups into the dangerous world.

  A quarter of a mile away, unaware of the rare drama unfolding behind him, the man and labrador continued their walk. The dog loudly and wetly snuffed about for signs of rabbits, not that he could ever catch one. The man, who lived in a small house with too many people, enjoyed the empty air of the early morning. But he was not alone in the field. A few steps further on and he met another man with a dog. This man was short, rather plump, with a straight mouth like a line cut out in his bland face and a short, sharp moustache. He carried a strange bag over his shoulder and the small white dog at his feet looked as though it had at some time had an accident.

  The two men nodded without a word as they passed, but then the newcomer turned and asked over his shoulder, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen a dog up ahead, have you?’

  ‘What sort of dog?’

  ‘A mongrel. Got a bit of husky in him.’

  ‘I saw something like that – maybe a few hundred metres further on. Mike tried to play, but he wasn’t having it. He was in the long grass on the common – you can’t miss it. You’ll have to watch your dog round here, though – there’s sheep.’

  The newcomer chuckled. ‘She’s a devil – but she knows enough to leave sheep well alone. Good morning.’

  The Hunter turned away, the friendly smile on his lips remaining like a shadow, as if he had put it on for a purpose and now could not be bothered to remove it. He walked on. He had hoped to be well ahead of the wolves, but now it seemed they had speeded up. He had two options: to follow behind and take them that way, or to try and keep to his original intention by cutting across in front of them and ambushing them. Ambush was better – that way he had more hope of killing several animals. He decided to try for it. He guessed the wolves would make for the woodland on the hill overlooking the farm; it was their habit to stick to woodland cover as much as possible.

  His mind made up, the Hunter turned off the path and moved quickly. Jenny followed, scamperin
g and making queer little jumps over the icy tufts of grass. The Hunter paused, picked her up and tucked her away in his pocket. She was best out of the way. The killing sometimes upset her.

  Within an hour and a half, the wolf pack had nearly doubled. Silver gave birth to three healthy wolf cubs, two females and one grey-blond male. She allowed herself a soft yip, and in a second the other members of the pack were with her. They crouched low and licked Silver’s mouth and sniffed at the little ones, and for a minute or two, the wolves of England played together, chased tails, boxed paws, were happy. Congratulations did not take much time; they had been in one place for far too long already. As soon as Silver had given the pups their first feed, the members of the pack carefully picked up one mewing little mouthful each in their tender jaws. The wolves melted away into the bracken, and continued across the remaining fields to the woodland above the farm.

  Silver could not know how close her unique race of silver and golden wolves had been brought to extinction. She did not know how precious the few remaining lives were. But she did know how precious her cubs were to her.

  The little one she carried in her mouth did not take kindly to being carted about in so undignified a manner and he wriggled violently about to show it. He soon became so angry that Silver snorted in amusement and put him down on the frosty ground to have a good look at this loud and surly son of hers. The pup liked the cold ground even less than the air, and he nosed blindly about, looking for a teat to suck and a warm tummy to huddle up to, crying loudly. Silver snorted again and licked the pup’s back. He responded by lifting his heavy, big head up and mewing ferociously at her. Silver huffed and then flipped him over onto his back with her nose, and began licking his stomach until he fell asleep, before picking him back up and continuing across the field. She crept under the hedge that marked the boundary of the woodland, slid through a thicket of aspens and emerged into the wider space between full grown forest trees.