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.
‘You see, Huttser,’ cried Slavka. ‘This is what it means to be a wolf. To face the harsh reality of life and not to flinch from it. The bitter law of survival. For there is nothing else.’ In that same moment Huttser remembered Tsinga’s strange words. ‘When the time of the Putnar comes and the bloodlust is on you, Huttser, can you look into the darkness of the den and tell truth from lies, darkness from light?’ Slavka tore at the animal and around it the wolves’ savage eyes flashed like lanterns reflecting the moon. Huttser paused, but as he saw the reddening flesh an energy began to burn in him that he could not control. As the feeling mastered him it swept away his loneliness and fear. No longer did the stars tower above him, or thoughts of Wolfbane’s winter whisper through the trees. Again the time of the Putnar had come and with the fury of his closing jaws Huttser felt strength and certainty once more. Slavka was right. This was the life of a wolf.
But as he fed, Huttser looked up. The wind was screeching about the wolves in the snows and Huttser shivered as he fancied he saw a shape among the trees standing there looking straight at him. But even as he looked on it seemed to vanish in the snow again and Huttser fancied he heard a mournful voice wailing on the air. ‘We are almost here,’ it moaned.
Palla was lying on the edge of the valley of Kosov, gazing out mournfully into the snows. Next to her lay two she- wolves. They had been among the scouts that had found Huttser and Palla on the ice and the three of them had become friends. Their names were Keeka and Karma.
Palla growled and shook her head, for she was thinking of Huttser and she suddenly felt furious that Slavka’s strange regime did not allow her to see her own mate as she chose.
She couldn’t bring herself to forgive him, but Palla longed to talk to him and to share her terrible pain.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ whispered the she-wolf lying beside Palla, ‘we all did, you know. Wait until the half-moon comes again. Then Slavka has promised you can see him.’
Keeka was very handsome and her thick grey fur was streaked with jet black. As she spoke her voice was filled with optimism. Palla shook her head though. There was little about life among these rebel wolves that she could get used to.
‘Why should I, Keeka? It’s all so unnatural.’
‘There is too much work to do, Palla,’ answered Keeka warmly. ‘We must test each other’s strength and prepare. But Slavka will save us from Morgra’s power. She is the bravest of all of us. The Deliverer.’
In the nights the rebel wolves had often gathered together to howl out a song. The Song of the Deliverer, they called it and it went like this: Let Fenris, cry, aaa-ooooo, aaa-ooooo
The Varg that’s free is always true,
A mountain song, aaa-eeeee, aaa-eeeee
The wolf that’s true is always free.
When darkness fills the world with lies,
She falls like snow from troubled skies.
Deliverer, Deliverer.
It was an old song that told of the coming of a she-wolf in a time of desperate need, and as Palla heard it, she too would feel a stirring, and for a time would forgot what she and Huttser had already had to suffer at the teeth of the rebel pack. ‘Slavka fears the legend above everything,’ growled Palla suddenly. ‘But why, Keeka, if she doesn’t even believe in the Sight?’
Keeka looked about her nervously.
‘Slavka thinks Morgra is using the legend to blind us all. But others say that if Morgra takes this child to the altar and the Man Varg really does come, then none shall be free. If it’s true, what greater evil could there be than the Sight?’
Palla pawed the ground almost guiltily.
‘But not all the rebels agree, Keeka,’ said a deep, growling voice suddenly. The Varg next to Keeka was a magnificent- looking wolf with beautiful, brilliantly flashing eyes, though her muzzle was unusual hairy.
‘Hush, Karma.’
‘No, Keeka, let her speak,’ said Palla looking up with interest. ‘Why, Karma, what do you mean?’
‘Not all believe the Sight to be evil,’ answered Karma quietly. ‘Some are talking of this family. They say one among them has the power.’
Palla looked away nervously.
‘And when I was young,’ Karma went on wistfully, ‘my parents told me that the power of the Sight was given as a gift to the wolf in the very beginning of the world.’
‘In the beginning,’ whispered Palla, looking up at the cheerless skies, ‘when Tor and Fenris brought light out of darkness?’
Karma turned to Palla with a grin.
‘Tor and Fenris?’ she laughed. Her voice was rich with amusement and almost as deep as a male. ‘Where I come from there are no such gods as Tor or Fenris, Palla. No, my kind tell stories of the wolf god Zostar, born from the fire forests. A wolf of heat and flame that comes to us in dreams. The great Zostar, who decreed that everything in the universe was perfect.’
‘Stop it, Karma,’ growled Keeka, for although she sometimes believed in such things Keeka knew how dangerous it was to discuss them openly in the rebel camp.
Her friend Karma was not from the land beyond the forests, but had come from a country far to the south. The she-wolf had travelled many thousands of miles in her life-time from a place where the sun was always hot and the ground did not turn white in winter. Palla thought her wildly exotic and mysterious.
‘But here,’ said Karma almost sadly, her growling voice growing deeper and deeper, ‘Slavka will not let us talk of such things, or even tell our own stories. Not of Zostar, nor Tor, nor the Sight. She says we must believe nothing of faith, old or new, but only in fighting and survival. She thinks they are the same as freedom.’
As Karma said it Palla thought of the words of the verse. Of the makers of life coming to test the faith of a family. Palla’s own faith had been tested almost beyond breaking point.
‘But you don’t agree?’ asked Palla quietly.
‘What freedom is it to believe in nothing?’ snorted Karma.
‘But, Karma,’ whispered Keeka, looking even more confused, ‘Palla believes in Tor and Fenris. While you believe in Zostar. They can’t both be true. That stands to reason.’
‘They may just be stories,’ nodded Karma, ‘ways of naming and talking about the world. But my kind believe that in stories often great truths lie concealed, unconscious truths, if we only know how to interpret them.’
‘Truth,’ snorted Palla suddenly.
Karma turned quietly to the Drappa as she lay beside her.
‘Perhaps you no longer believe in truth, Palla,’ she whispered, ‘because of something that has happened to you. But is truth not just a word for that which is not a lie? For that which exists beyond lies?’
Palla nodded and she suddenly thought mournfully of her old nurse.
‘But if there isn’t any god,’ growled Keeka, working through her thoughts painfully slowly, ‘as Slavka says. Then to believe in one would be a lie, it would just keep us slaves.’
‘Slaves,’ growled Karma, ‘what about the slavery of knowing too much, Keeka? The slavery of the obvious and the ordinary.’
Keeka looked questioningly at her friend but she didn’t understand what she was saying.
‘Look at that tree,’ said Karma suddenly, turning her gaze towards a rowan that stood nearby. It was still in full berry.
‘Where I come from we wouldn’t just call it a tree, but a living spirit. Its berries would be made from the eyes of fireflies and its leaves from the wings of Zostar’s moths that live for ever and fan Zostar’s tail when it grows too hot. But for those who strip away the magic of stories, the
magic of life, it is just a tree and it will never be anything more than a tree.’
‘But, Karma,’ said Keeka hotly now, ‘in the old superstitions some said Rowan trees beaded with the blood of evil children. And they would make sacrifices of innocent wolves to appease the demons of the night, just as Morgra sacrifices to Wolfbane.’
‘That is true,’ growled Karma gravely, ‘and I am glad that many of the ancient customs were overthrown. For in blind superstition lies evil. Yet do we not lose something when we simply abandon the ancient beliefs? And are there not many truths, truths that seem to be fighting each other.’
‘What do you mean?’ growled Palla.
‘It may be true that we fear death, Palla, but also true that we would be no happier if we lived for ever. Besides, when we name everything and seek to see the world as one thing alone, there is a danger that we rob it of something perhaps more important than anything else.’
‘What?’ said Palla.
‘Wonder,’ whispered the she-wolf and the breeze caught the berries on the rowan tree and shook them like little bells.
‘But you don’t believe Tor and Fenris made that tree?’ growled Palla.
‘Slavka says nothing made the earth or the Lera,’ said Keeka loudly, ‘that it all came about by chance.’ They all fell silent but as they looked out at the rowan trees and the snow and the thin ribbons of pink light above the horizon the idea seemed so absurd that they all wanted to laugh.
‘Who knows what the truth really is,’ growled Karma suddenly, ‘but my father always used to say that in life we usually end up with exactly what we set out to find. Unless perhaps we are able to change the patterns that make us. To step somehow beyond ourselves.’
The Sight Page 25