Rhamin

by Bryce THOMAS

  Solin’s eyes gradually travelled round the whole circle of wolves and finally settled on the eyes of Rhamin. If it was a challenge to the leader, Rhamin had to put it to one side. The very survival of his pack depended on harmony amongst its members. ‘We have no alternative,’ argued Solin. ‘Unless we take some of his food then we will all perish. At least this way some of us will survive.’

  ‘The plan is flawed,’ croaked Zelda.

  ‘Oh shut up you withered old dog,’ Solin snapped. ‘You of all people should be in favour of this idea; you who depend on all the rest of the pack for your pre-digested food. And anyway, I haven’t told you any plan yet!’

  ‘The plan is flawed!’ croaked Zelda again, flinching as Solin jumped towards her.

  ‘Leave her be,’ commanded Rhamin. ‘We all have a right to speak in this circle. I allow it. Otherwise why are you speaking?’

  ‘Huh,’ Solin snarled, ‘I suppose you are going to listen to her then?’

  ‘I am listening to all of you,’ Rhamin countered. ‘So say your piece and get it over with.’

  ‘Yes, get it over with,’ Solin parroted in a squeaky unnatural and skitting voice. ‘Well,’ he said, now in his most adversarial tone, ‘I will get on with it and I will say what none of you cowards dare to hear.’

  Rhamin just glared at him. Solin paused to make sure he had everybody’s attention. ‘It is a risk we will have to take. If we do not attack the men’s compound then we have only two choices: move north now and seek out our usual prey, or…’ He looked at the two sisters, Charka and Fayli of the Bardin pack, staring them straight in the eyes. ‘Or we sit here and die. Die, I said. That is the option. All our food has migrated and we have been left behind because our beloved Rhamin has decreed that the rains will return. Well they haven’t returned and we are all dying. Not today perhaps, but soon.’

  He was right of course. They were slowly starving to death. It hadn’t always been so. But the season had changed. The mild spring with its gusty winds, warming sunshine and sustaining rainfall that nurtures all young life, from the sprouting cone seed to the foetal young inside a creature’s womb, had turned into a prolonged and scorching sun baked hell. All the food that had been abundant in years past had now disappeared; or even worse it had not developed. Seedlings had pushed up under the first, warm rays of spring and, as the soil had dried, they had pushed their primary roots down deeper into the soil and their primary leaf shoots up towards the sky. But the heavy beads of night dew alone could not sustain them through the scorching heat of the day. Now, the old vegetation from last year that had been grazed down to the roots was not growing back; nor was it being replaced by new life, which, if not still born, had suffered a premature demise.

  That was not an end to it of course. It was just the beginning. The animals that grazed on the natural resources of the earth were no longer there. They had moved in pace with the weather or perished. And the animals that preyed on those creatures in a natural balance of nature had to follow them or die.

  Rhamin had chosen not do that. His mate, Yeltsa, was already overdue to give birth to her babies. It was too late to embark upon the long and hazardous trek to the north. And even if they did, neither he nor any of the pack could say if they would reach a promised land. Each day that passed, the returning members of the pack brought back less and less food. There was nothing big; a rat here and a vole there; nothing that would sustain a pack of fourteen wolves. Rhamin worked hard to keep the pack together, but every day it became a little harder. The younger members of the pack were restless. Until recently, their loyalty had been flawless, and even now, none of them resented having to bring back their spoils to share. Rhamin had maintained the rule. It was a rule of survival passed down from leader to leader, from generation to generation. Every wolf had the right to share his pack-mates’ quarry and when they themselves caught food then they had the same duty to bring it back for all. In times of plenty the strongest never ate first. Wolves are not like other predatory animals. When feeding on a kill, the whole pack shares. And those wolves or young that are unable to travel to the kill are fed with meat brought back or with regurgitated food from any or all of the hunters when the pack returns to the den. But maintaining pack morale by sharing didn’t dispel disappointment.

  In the hierarchy of the pack, Solin was second only to his leader. It was his dream to take over but Rhamin was too strong. He stood almost a head taller than all the other males. Rhamin was king of the pack and there was never any mistake about that. He was a giant among wolves, his size and his white ears and black coat distinguishing him from not only all the members of his own pack, but from any other wolf they had ever encountered. None dared speak against Rhamin but when he called a meeting of the pack all voices were heard.

  It was early in the night. What clouds there were in the sky were wispy and scarcely veiled the moon when they drifted across its face. The air was still dry but cooler now. Solin sniffed it, his nose pointing upwards as if searching for some scent carried on the still night air. Slowly, he strolled around the inside of the circle, looking each wolf in the eyes, as if challenging any of them to argue with him. ‘We have to raid the farm.’

  ‘The plan is flawed. Death dog!’ murmured Zelda, hardly audible; but Solin heard.

  ‘What are you chuntering about? Without the food we bring back to you you’d be dead long ago you old stiff!’ Solin grunted as he turned to address the circle again. ‘And who’s going to feed Yeltsa and her cubs when they are born? We are all slowly starving to death.’

  ‘I notice you never manage to bring anything back for those in the camp,’ Natan, a young male barked at him. Solin glared back at him and bared his teeth. Natan laid back his ears and backed away submissively. He was neither old enough nor brave enough to take on Solin. But he respected Rhamin and thought that anything Solin suggested automatically sucked.

  ‘And just what is your plan,’ Rhamin demanded.

  Solin sniggered, barring his teeth defiantly. ‘The man’s animals are just food. They kill them and eat them. All I’m suggesting is that in this time of hardship, we take a small share to eat. How bad can that be? After all, I don’t see us hunting men down when they kill one of our buffalo or hunt our deer!’

  ‘Bad enough for us to have to move far away,’ a voice came from the crowd.

  ‘The man’s enclosures are over sixty miles away. He’ll be lucky to find us. Our Darin is well hidden. It is the best hidden den in the whole country. No other pack is as well hidden as we are. Nor does any other pack take such care as we do to leave no trace of our whereabouts.’

  Rhamin pondered the remark. It was true; they had the very best den that any wolf pack could have found. It was a cave complex with an opening behind a wall of rock. To get to the mouth of the cave they had to climb up a slope and then descend behind the rock to the opening. From there, a tunnel, about the height of a wolf, sloped gently up to a cavern. There were passages and caverns beyond that, some small, some big, but no wolf had ever found the end of the underground complex. Even with their keen eyes and sense of smell, the darkness was so impenetrable that discovery of what lay beyond was never an issue. They had other dens that they used on their travels, but they always returned to this one. This they called their Darin, a fortress of a home. If they left to travel north in search of food they might have to travel for many days. They could travel fifty miles at a gentle lope in one night. Their long slender legs give them the appearance of floating over the ground as their four large feet just seem to flick them along. But the journey would take them across the territory of other wolf packs, and they might never return.

  ‘So you want to start a war with the man?’ Rhamin said, almost under his breath. Solin heard.

  ‘My plan is for seven or eight of us to go into the man’s enclosure, take one small sheep or a cow’s calf each and disappear before he even sees who has taken them. He won’t even know who was responsible He might not even know they are missing. We can get
in and out in less time than it takes to travel a tenth of the way.’

  Rhamin glanced at Zelda. Her eyes were closed and she was rocking backwards and forwards, and murmuring quietly. Somehow she sensed him looking at her and, suddenly, her eyes flashed open and she jumped in the air as if she had been stung on the backside by a scorpion. For several moments her sightless eyes locked on his and then, as if looking beyond him, quietly she spoke. ‘The man will see you.’ She swayed from side to side and then flopped down where she had been lying. ‘He will see you!’ she said in a resigned and fading whisper, and turning towards Solin, ‘And you!’ she snapped.

  ‘Huggh!’ Solin gave out a disgusted growl. ‘You are too old to know what you are talking about. We’ll be in and out and gone before he knows any of his precious creatures are missing.’

  Rhamin had to admit that the plan seemed straight forward and simple. He had passed the man’s farmstead several times recently and it was as Solin had just described. In essence the plan to raid the farm seemed simple and reasonably safe for the participants. At worst they could leave empty handed and high tail it out of the compound if they were seen.

  ‘We’re all very hungry,’ a voice called from the back of the circle.

  ‘Isn’t it worth a try?’ another young wolf put forward. Solin grinned. ‘So what about it Rhamin?’ he said, adding in a derisory tone, ‘Oh great leader!’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Rhamin said, his voice calm and even.

  ‘That’s right, you think while we all starve!’ Solin snapped. Rhamin glared at him. Then turning to the pack he said, ‘I’ll let you all know my decision by the morning.’ He walked past Zelda, who was murmuring to her front paws and shaking her head. ‘A wolf with no ears!’ she chanted over and over again, ‘A wolf with no ears!’

  ‘I have heard,’ Rhamin stated. His coat was black. But for the fire that burned his ears when he was a cub, and left them white when the fur grew back, he would have been a totally black wolf. In the winter, against a snowy background, he often looked like a black shadow without any ears. ‘You’ve had your say; now be quiet!’ Zelda’s voice dropped to a whisper that Rhamin couldn’t make out.

  ‘That’s better.’ He walked back to the mouth of the cave and disappeared into its blackness.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Morning came early but Rhamin hadn’t hunted for long before the sun cleared the horizon. He had caught two lizards and then, towards sun rise, had happened upon a weak and skinny rabbit which he had pounced on with his two front feet and carried back to the den. Some of the other pack members had already returned when he arrived. He dropped the rabbit by the base of the rock at the mouth of the cave and climbed up to his position on top of it. A long loud harmonic howl made sure that all the wolves inside the cave and any that might not yet have returned from their night’s hunting, heard it and came to assembly below. To his surprise, Solin was one of the last to arrive. He sloped along giving the impression that the decision, over which Rhamin had pondered all night, would be going against him. He had already decided to leave. None of the females had, so far, said that they would go with him but last night’s speeches might have changed his luck. He had always planned to take over from Rhamin, but now he felt he would be better off as a single male than a browbeaten heir apparent. He had always lived in Rhamin’s shadow. His coat was a dark shade of grey with a couple of white tufts at the bottom of his chest. He was a good head shorter in height but that was not because he was a small wolf, Rhamin was just big; too big for Solin’s liking. True, Rhamin’s size held great advantage when he used that and his strength to drag down a fully grown buffalo, but Solin was slim and sleek and could outrun any male wolf both in a sprint and over massive distances. Only a few of the sleek and slender females could outrun him, and that was only in the shorter sprints. Solin despised the other wolves for not being as fast as him. If only Rhamin hadn’t been so big and strong.

  It wasn’t long before all the pack was assembled below the rock. ‘Listen, everybody,’ Rhamin began, ‘I’ll make this brief.’ He didn’t want to leave any time for Solin to start arguing this morning; the wolf was always so adversarial. Anyway, he was in no mood to put up with Solin’s insolence; it was going to be a long hard day. ‘My decision is yes.’ There was a gasp from the gathered pack. ‘Yes, we will invade the man’s territory,’ he followed on. ‘Yes we will take some of his food, so get prepared. We set off when I come down from this rock.’

  ‘So you’ve seen sense at last,’ called Solin.

  ‘I’ve made a decision. That is all. None of us should be pleased about it. It is the most dangerous hunt we are ever likely to undertake, because we are probably going to end up being the hunted. That will be no fun, mark my words. Man will spare us no mercy. If they hunt and find us, we will die as sure as the sun comes up in the morning.’

  ‘But what about what you said last night?’ Rowan, a young female asked. Her eyes were wide with fear.

  ‘For once Solin is right, we eat or die. There could well be losses but we will just have to take all precautions to prevent them.’ He glanced around and settled his eyes on Solin.

  Solin’s eyes were strange. His face showed more than just the pleased look of getting one over on the ruler of the pack. Rhamin tilted his head and, with an inquisitive gesture, waited for a comment from his half brother. ‘It will be easy,’ Solin bragged. ‘Straight in and straight out. No messing. We’ll take one small sheep each and disappear into the night. Are we all ready to go?’ he called out.

  ‘I haven’t finished,’ Rhamin proclaimed before anyone could answer. ‘We have to prepare for the worst.’

  ‘That isn’t necessary,’ shouted Solin. ‘It will be a roll in the grass.’

  Rhamin glared at him. ‘If you’re not going to follow orders then leave.’

  Solin scowled and visibly restrained himself from answering back. He wanted to be in at the kill and it was just like Rhamin to leave him on guard duty. It wouldn’t be the first time. Rhamin continued. First he looked around at the faces of his pack. Some looked wide eyed with fear, some wide eyed with anticipation; he could tell the difference. ‘I will take eight of our best hunters.’

  ‘That counts you out then Solin,’ shouted Natan. Rhamin could see him being a challenge to Solin when he was a mature wolf. Solin just snarled.

  ‘That isn’t so,’ Rhamin insisted. ‘Solin is one of the best. He is one of the fastest in the pack. He can bring down a buffalo on his own.’ He paused and looked at Natan intently. Solin grunted his acknowledgement of the tribute. Natan reluctantly nodded. ‘But you are also one of my best hunters. During this drought you have brought back more small prey than any other. It shows ability, cunning and thought. We will need that.’ Natan smiled broadly, his tongue lolloping out of the side of his mouth as it always tended to do as he panted with pride. ‘I will also take Fayli and Charka for not only are they strong but they know what it is like to be hunted by men and that will bring caution into our group.’ The two sisters of Bardin looked at each other surprised, but noticeably proud to be chosen. They had always hunted together and now was not the time to split them up.

  ‘I also choose Seth and Powla for they too know as surely as I do what man is like.’ They were the brother and sister that escaped the hunt by men when Rhamin was saved by Silvah. ‘I take Rasci for he is as strong as any wolf here,’ he continued.

  ‘And an idiot!’ Solin snapped. He had never liked Rasci, but then, the feeling was entirely mutual. Rasci was the same age as Solin. Raised by Zelda and Silvah as an orphan pup he was now the pack jester. But he hunted as well as any other wolf.

  ‘And finally, I choose Silvah who is no less brave and strong.’ Silvah was now the second female only to Yeltsa. She beamed. There was no time she loved more than when hunting with Rhamin. She had loved him and cared for him since the day he was born and, although Rhamin never looked at her as anything other than a surrogate mother, she had once hoped he would notice her as a potenti
al mother for his cubs. She was the most mature female of the pack – excluding old Zelda. She too was a dark grey colour and she had a thin white bib running from her chin to her chest. She was always sure to keep herself clean and smart for her leader, and would spend hours cleaning her face after the pack had been feasting. She knew all the water holes and never missed a chance to bathe in them. She had found that a great advantage during this hard dry summer. Not only was her coat kept free of old fur but she found it cooling and refreshing. Many of the other wolves thought she was a little eccentric. Rhamin thought she set a good example to the youngsters.

  Rhamin continued, ‘When we leave the compound where we hope to get our prey, we must not return straight home. We will no doubt be split up and so it is imperative that we all take a round about route. I know those back at the Darin will be hungry, but Yeltsa’s safety is paramount. We must not lead the men to our home. We will place guards not just outside the mouth of the cave but two or three miles away as well. The guards will practice their warning calls so that there will be no mistake that it is a warning and not a call to bring us together. As a last resort, two guards will remain at the Darin, and it will be their task to distract the hunters and divert them from their path if they are coming near our home and becoming a threat to Yeltsa. Does everyone understand?’

  Every wolf barked their confirmation and Rhamin bounded down. He looked around and his team was already behind him.