O-ha knew the situation was desperate. She was afraid, it was true, but not terror-stricken, the way she had been in her dream. She had a job to do, which was to escape. She went through the snow in a series of leaps, as if she were jumping hurdles. It was a slow business. The snow dragged her down, hindered any nimble progress. She could sense the long-legged hound gaining on her, unhampered as she was by the deep drifts. Where he could not remain clear he would force his way through. Sabre was well fed and immensely strong.
Once she reached the roads, she ran, skidding a little, on the hardpacked snow. A slow vehicle came towards her, shunting its way amid clouds of steam, in the same channel between the walls of snow. She was not going to give way and at the last moment the driver saw her and swerved instinctively, burying the front of his car in a side drift.
She ran on, a quick glance behind her telling her that the dog was closing in.
He began the traditional taunting that hounds were so fond of doing during a chase.
‘Skinny vixen! I’m going to break every bone in your body, suck out the marrow and spit it in your face. You’ll live long enough to feel me cracking open your skull. I’ll colour the snow with your blood and brains.’
A young human came around a corner, bent low against the wind, and Sabre struck him, sending the youth flying into the road. The boy went sliding along the ice, too shocked to scream. He struck his shoulder hard against the curbstones.
The glassy surface took the dog’s legs away from him too, but he soon regained control, and continued the chase, ignoring the shrieking of the human he had hurt.
The streets ended and the lane to the farm came in sight. Why she was running towards this place, O-ha had no idea. It just seemed right. It was the way it had happened in her dream. She knew that head to head confrontation was going to take place soon.
It seemed likely that Sabre would catch her before going through the gate. He was inches behind her now, his teeth snapping at her hind legs, trying to bring her down.
She skipped sideways but rolled over on to her back. The dog followed her movements, his savage jaws going for her now exposed belly. She waited for the pain of the strike.
‘Gagggaaah!’ The dog’s head was pulled up short just a fraction from its target. She saw his legs to from under him as if he’d been shot in mid-run. He crashed down heavily on his back. O-ha was up in a second and continued to run. Had he been shot? There had been no sounds.
No. A quick glance behind her told her he was back on his feet. His flailing leash had caught on a post and had jerked him off his legs, but he was back up now and straining to move forwards. The post cracked at the bottom, where it was undoubtedly rotten. Sabre dragged it along with him for several yards before the lead fell free of it.
O-ha had gained about twenty yards, but she knew the dog would soon recover this distance. Much of the snow had been cleared from around the farm and while she found it easier to run, so did Sabre.
‘Thought you had me, eh?’ he shouted. ‘Deathday is here. You have no hope of escape. Nothing will stop me from killing you now. Not walls, not people, nothing. I will kill. I’ll kill anything and anyone who gets in the way.’
She ran down the long driveway to the farmhouse, past the whitewashed building, her breath labouring in her chest. Sparrows on the snow scattered with cries of terror frozen in their throats, as she ran between them. Sabre was very close again. One quick glance told her he would be on her within a few moments. He too was breathing heavily, his exhalations filling the air around his head with sprigs of steam. She could smell his scent now, the odour heavy in her nostrils. His great paws drummed on the snowpacked earth, just a few yards behind her.
She ran between the barn and the house, thinking to head across open fields again. If they had been ploughed up and left fallow, ready for spring planting, then the hard-edged furrows might slow the dog up. If there were a tree out there! But there were only low hedgerows.
There was a snapping at her heels and she half-twisted in her run, to bite back. Death was only a second away. He was almost on her. One more yard …
Something flashed between her and the hound and Sabre went tumbling, somersaulting on to his back. He had tripped over a taut chain. Blood came from deep jagged gashes on the big dog’s forelegs. He screamed an oath. On the other end of the chain was Breaker, the old foxhound. Breaker yelled something at O-ha and then threw himself on top of the ridgeback.
It was no match. Despite Sabre’s agony, the great hound was soon back on his feet. There was a very brief struggle, which gave O-ha a few more yards, before Breaker was thrown aside. The foxhound struck the side of his kennel and lay still. One of his legs was bent at a sharp angle.
‘Stupid traitor!’ screamed the ridgeback.
Sabre was immediately back on O-ha’s trail again.
This time the dog was limping, though his wounds did not seem to slow him down. His determination was evident in his whole demeanour.
‘Not this time,’ he was saying. ‘Not this time, fox, I will have your throat. I can taste it – taste it …’
She ran round behind the back of the barn, looking for a shed to climb on top. There was nothing suitable. All the buildings were too high. She ran inside the barn and in and out of the machinery, hoping Sabre might be skewered on some of the blades, but he stayed by the door, getting his breath back, knowing this was the only way out.
‘I’ve got you, fox – the vixen that’s given me so much trouble, all these seasons …’
She crouched behind a tractor.
‘And you …’ she gasped, gulping for air, ‘you’ve never let me or my family rest. You killed by firstborn litter. You hurt my cub …’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes. You bit off his tail.’
‘I did more than that, vixen. Give me credit. I’m told that the white one was yours too …’
‘A-sac?’ her heart turned over.
‘I broke his neck. Snapped it like a twig.’
‘You – you’re lying. The fox-spirit never came.’
‘I don’t know about any spirits, but I know I killed that white thing you spawned. Went down hard. You’d have thought he was full of demons the way he fought. Said he had come looking for me. Went at me like a demented beast. Still got a scar on my neck. Said he’d been ordained by some god and was on a holy mission to destroy evil.’
Yes, that was A-sac.
‘And now you’re going to kill me.’
For an answer the hound began to move towards her. She waited until he was almost up to the tractor and then dashed around the other side. His jaws clashed together, caught her ear, held on.
O-ha thrashed around, twisting, turning, trying to loosen the dog’s hold on her ear. She clawed at his eyes with her back legs, scratching deep grooves in the dog’s snout. Still he held on to her. She could feel him trying to quell her frantic movements, trying to get a firmer grip on her head. If those jaws closed on her skull, she knew they would crush it instantly, as Sabre had so often promised. Her blood mingled with his.
Finally, her ear tore away from her head, and she found herself running again, out into the open. Her strength was all but gone now. The dog was still on her tail, despite his damaged legs, his wounded face. He would not be deterred.
She raced across the yard, towards the pond. She had some idea that if she could reach the railway, she could lead him down the tracks and let a train hit him, squash him to pulp. It was a foolish plan and in her heart she knew how futile it was, but she had nothing else. The savage ridgeback would run her down long before she reached the railway and his brute strength would overwhelm the last vestiges of energy that kept her legs moving.
She was fading fast and the ridgeback would soon be on her. He slipped over a couple of times where the tractor had churned up the mud and it had frozen beneath the snow, but these were just minor hindrances to the dog. He knew he had her now. She was staggering, dripping blood from her torn ear.
When
she reached the pond, she was down to a tottering walk. The mist of imminent death had fallen over her eyes. She was numb from head to tail. No hunger pangs, no ghastly fear, no tortured heart – merely a regret that she had failed Camio. If she did not return to the earth with food, he would surely die too. Sabre had managed to destroy both of them just as he had always promised he would.
She staggered on to the ice, aware that her walk was as unsteady as that of a poisoned rat. Sabre followed, sure of his quarry.
This was the final confrontation.
The ridgeback cried, ‘At last …’
Then she heard the crack of the ice breaking.
She turned, instinctively glancing back, and saw him go through.
The huge dog disappeared into a jagged hole, the black water sucking him down. For a few moments there was just a swirling. Then his head came up and his forelegs found the edge of the ice. They began scratching and scraping, trying to find a purchase. Another plate of ice broke away and the demonic hound flailed forwards, his head still above the water that must have been freezing his muscles to a standstill. There was a determined look in his eyes as he found the edge with his forepaws yet again.
Suddenly O-ha came to her senses. Sabre was getting closer! His front legs were snapping a path through the frozen water: forcing a channel through the ice. She began to run, but her movements were frantic and her claws skidded on the slippery surface. She fell over several times. Her heart was on the point of bursting. She kept regaining her feet, only to lose them again. They skittered and scrabbled on the ice as she worked them in her frenzied desire to escape, getting nowhere, racing on the spot.
‘Fox …,’ grunted the dog, his face rigid.
Snap, snap, snap, the ice cracked and split under the hound’s weight. His eyes were glazed now, fixed on her. The jaws were open, ready to spring shut. His whole body looked stiff, as if the blood were already frozen to red ice in his veins. The big-boned head came towards her, slowly, determinedly. The front legs broke away at the sheets of ice.
Still her claws would not grip. They skidded, and slid, her legs whipping away uselessly beneath her.
He was close. His breath on her rump.
‘Now!’
She felt the teeth on her rear, gripping her haunch firmly. There was only a vestige of strength in them. Her head turned to see the triumph in his eyes, a final burning from within, as Sabre began slipping under the deadly water. He was pulling her with him, determined they should drown together.
One of her legs entered the water, froze. It roused her to anger.
‘NO!’ she shouted.
She wrenched herself free from those clamped jaws, now frozen solid, leaving rump fur behind. Sabre’s body went down alone.
O-ha lay on the edge of the hole, panting. Even at the last, as his head sank out of sight, Sabre’s eyes were still on hers, full of cold hatred.
She waited a long time, hardly daring to believe what had happened. Her heart was still thumping in her breast. Her legs were still taut, ready to run, in case the hound emerged roaring from that black hole, and fell on her like the devil he was.
Nothing happened.
When she eventually gathered enough strength and courage to investigate she went as close to the hole as she dared. His body was floating gently under the ice. It was some yards from the hole. She could still see the eyes, the dead eyes, staring up at her. They had lost their look of hatred. Then the body rolled over, slowly, and she caught a last glimpse of the dark ridge of hair running down its back, before it sank out of sight.
She walked back, round the barn, to where Breaker lay. He lifted his head as she approached.
‘He’s dead,’ she said, simply.
Breaker coughed. ‘So am I, I think.’
‘Thank you – Breaker.’
‘How did he die? You tear his throat out?’
‘Me? No, he fell through the ice. He drowned.’
Breaker coughed again, then said, ‘Serve him right. Arrogant swine. You’d better get out of here, vixen …’
‘But you’re bleeding.’
His left flank was seeping blood.
‘Someone will come out of the farmhouse soon. They’ll find me, and then it’ll just be a visit to the vet.–’
It looked like a death wound to her.
‘Goodbye, Breaker. We were enemies once …’
‘We still are,’ he gasped. ‘I just repaid a favour. Now get out of here, you red devil, before I break your back.’
‘Oh, Breaker, you poor proud old dog. Don’t you know you’ve made friends with the very creatures you profess to hate? It happens you know. It’s not your fault that a fox has grown to like you, or that you saved a fox’s life, and she’s indebted to you.’
‘You’re right,’ he murmured, ‘about me being old. Fifty-six seasons have passed. Fifty-six. And now I’m tired. I want to close my eyes and die in peace.’
And he did. His eyes closed. And he was dead.
She left him then, turning the snow red, and went out into the fields. There she found some rotting turnips. She ate her fill, then took one in her teeth, carrying it on the long journey back to her earth. When she got there she found that Mitz had been out during the sunshine period after the storm. A kitchen door had been open and she had run in and snatched some bacon. Mitz was good at that: better than her mother. Mitz had been in houses, knew that kind of fear and how to cope with it, in an emergency.
Camio looked as if he were recovering already.
He coughed. ‘You brought a turnip – well done,’ he said. ‘Any trouble out there?’
‘No,’ she lied, snuggling up next to his warm, furry body. ‘It’s a white, peaceful world, with hardly anyone out.’
Mitz cried, ‘O-ha! Your ear!’
Camio rolled over, looked up.
‘Oh, that? A little tussle with an ermine.’
‘But your ear …’
‘Be quiet, Mitz,’ said O-ha. ‘Camio’s not well.’
Mitz did as she was told.
That storm was the worst of the winter. Once it had blown itself out, they were well on their way to Scresheen. There were no cubs to look forward to this time, but it gave O-ha time to appreciate the change in the seasons, without being so preoccupied with her young. It was a good time.
Chapter Thirty Three
O-ha’s wound healed. She was of too advanced an age for other foxes to give her some silly nickname, like ‘one-ear’, but she found herself cocking her head to one side in order to listen to the world. Camio, fully recovered, said it made her look endearing.
That winter had aged both foxes. O-ha and Camio discovered in themselves certain small weaknesses which had not been there before. Nothing that was serious. Nothing that would impair their skills as hunters, or cause them to come to grief. Still, they recognised that the flush of youth had gone from them. They were no longer regarded as a young pair. They were mature foxes, who knew the tricks, who knew the old ways and the new.
Camio learned of Sabre’s death, but said nothing to O-ha. He guessed she wanted it out of her head forever. They had many long talks about the past, but it concerned the good times they had shared, not the terrors. There were still plenty of those around, even with the giant hound gone to the Unplace.
Season drifted into season and the town expanded. O-ha and Camio had two more litters: some of the cubs survived, some did not. Those that did grow to adulthood had their own litters which dispersed and carried the blood of the original pair into new regions.
O-ha and Camio remained on the embankment of the railway, changing their earth at the appropriate times. The days of harassment were over for the old pair and they came to that contentment which is rare but golden. They had their sad memories too.
Mitz lived close by and they saw her occasionally. She had had her own cubs whom the older pair recognised from their markings, but were not known themselves. They were town foxes and their education had been appropriate to their environment. Know
ledge of the ancient highways and waterholes, passed on to O-ha through many generations, had no significance to the new foxes: the land had changed its face, and they were foxes of the face. There were new maps in the minds of new foxes and the world was a different place – no better or worse than when O-ha was a cub – just different. She did not necessarily like the changes, of course, because she had pleasant pictures in her head, of the times when she was a cub herself, chasing the butterflies over the hav, and wrestling with her brothers and sisters in the tall grasses of the slopes below Trinity Wood.
A-salla sent word, from time to time, the news easy to verify since all they had to ask was, ‘Did this fox have anything unusual about him?’ and wait for the reply, ‘Yes, he had no tail.’
The time was Ransheen and the cold hard streets were thick with snow and ice. O-ha remembered when she had first encountered snow. She had been with A-ho then and had been half-way through the leaving-the-earth ritual, her nose poking outside, when something fluffy and cold had landed on the tip. She had jerked her head inside, only to find a droplet of water where the white spider had landed. Then she had remembered what her mother had told her, about the winter white, and gathering her courage together, had gone outside. She had been astounded at the change in the world. The whole landscape was covered in a blinding, soft fur. Each footstep she had taken had been an adventure and all ways hidden beneath the albino coat that had descended from the sky.
There was no magic in snow now, though. It was merely a nuisance, since it hid any gubbins on the roads, or food that had been tossed away by humans the night before.
‘Did you ever have snow where you came from?’ she asked Camio, as she was braving herself to leave the earth. A train rumbled by, below them, making the earth vibrate a little. She had grown so used to the giant metal snakes that she would be lost without them now. There was a certain comfort, a security to be had, in the regular passing-by of trains. The noise was reassuring somehow, as if it meant that the world was still working properly.
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