Rhamin

by Bryce THOMAS

  The attempt to lighten his mood was in vain. Rhamin shook his head and sighed deeply.

  ‘Death is part of our lives, Rhamin, you know that. When we look the buffalo in the eye it is he that decides to run or make a stand. It is he that decides it is the time to die. They must know that if they stand their ground we won’t attack, not because we cannot kill them if they do, but because it is not their time to die. But we never give in to death like other animals. We live life to the full and death takes us where it may, looking it in the face and saying, “Not today thank you!” And if it does take us, then we haven’t spent any of our time worrying about it.’

  Natan brushed against her neck consolingly. ‘Who would have expected that to happen; a stupid dog of all things! I reckon Fayli died by trickery, that’s what! Men and dogs; men and horses. It’ll be men and wolves next!’ As he stopped speaking, his tongue lolloped out again, and he turned to Rhamin. ‘And what’re we going to do with that?’ he asked, pointing his nose at a dark curled up fur ball on the ground.

  ‘Huh. Well I took that to get the dog’s attention.’ Rhamin paused and looked down at it. ‘It’s something I suppose. Don’t reckon it’ll hurt to take it with us.’

  ‘A tasty morsel for Yeltsa when we get home then,’ Natan suggested.

  ‘We’d better find the others,’ Rhamin said, suddenly raising his nose and sniffing the air. He picked up the night’s pathetically small catch and headed towards the dark and distant mountains.

  Rhamin’s instructions to travel away from the farmstead towards the mountains before heading back home was a simple precaution for if the men folk responded immediately by getting on their horses, or worse their creatures of metal and wheels, to pursue them, they would carry on in the direction in which they had started, expecting to overtake the wolves. The plain was flat and crossed by fences that became natural barriers, so there was little chance of looking across at the farm, in the dim starlight, even with his keen eyes, to see what activity the pack had stirred up. There was a slight breeze blowing, but that was against them heading across the farmstead and homeward, so he couldn’t even pick up any scent of activity on the wind.

  Neither Natan nor Charka complained about the trek away from their home. They followed his command unquestioningly. Then suddenly, Charka let out a quiet bark. A wolf ’s bark is not like that of a dog, it is a ‘woof ’ that comes up from deep in their chest. The rest of the group stopped in their tracks and, pricking up their ears, they strained to hear what Charka had heard.

  Gifted with hearing through a very wide range that would include the ultra sound of a bat – which helps them hunt out mice and small game under grass and snow – and the deep vibrations of the lowly buffalo and elk whose almost sub-sonic rumbling tones wolves can hear from many miles away, the silence seemed unnatural. Even the crickets were in respite. The long drought had caused most of the natural prey and wildlife to move from the plain, apart from the insects that is. Those creatures gathered around carcasses and occasional piles of dung. But there was little other micro life left there to bother making mating sounds or calling boundaries. Without essential moisture, their eggs and pupa remained dormant.

  Everyone looked at Charka. She stood stone still. She was the wolf that had always had exceptional hearing, more sensitive to sound vibrations than any wolf Rhamin had ever met. She stood silently listening and then, she woofed again, louder this time. A few seconds later Rhamin heard a reply. It was Silvah. She was due west of the farmstead.

  ‘Silvah, Solin and Powla are heading towards us now,’ she said quietly. She looked at Rhamin for confirmation that they should remain there. Rhamin just nodded. He knew intuitively what she was asking without her opening her mouth. He dropped his prey at his feet and lay down. The other two followed suit and settled down.

  It wasn’t long before they heard the sound of Solin’s voice barking out orders to his two companions. Rhamin couldn’t make out what he was saying. He looked at Charka, and after a moment or two, Charka turned her head to him and said, quietly, ‘Solin is trying to persuade them to leave the pack with him. I can hear him telling them that they should be following him instead of heading back to “the great Rhamin!”’

  ‘Huh,’ Rhamin said quietly. ‘We have already lost two of our best tonight.’

  ‘Do you think he is serious about leaving?’ Natan joined in. ‘It would be no great loss.’

  ‘It would if he split the pack,’ Rhamin said angrily. ‘He might be less edgy if you didn’t bait him all the time.’

  Natan dropped his ears. ‘Sorry boss.’

  Rhamin thought about how close Solin had been to killing the man’s children back at the farmstead. If I hadn’t stopped him, he thought, the man would have already been hunting us down. ‘He is very dangerous,’ he said, almost but not quite, under his breath.

  Natan heard. He looked at Rhamin in surprise. ‘He’s no match for you boss,’ he said truthfully.

  ‘I didn’t mean it like that, Natan. Yes, I know I am bigger and stronger. I hope I always will be, for the benefit of the pack.’ He looked at Natan. ‘Promise me something.’

  ‘Anything boss, you know that.’

  Rhamin went up close to Natan and licked him on the ear. ‘You are a good wolf, Natan. Promise me…’ He paused. ‘Promise me that if anything happens to me you will not challenge Solin to a fight.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of him,’ Natan boasted a little too eagerly.

  ‘You have a lot of growing to do yet. When you are big enough.’ He held his head up to stop Natan from speaking again. ‘But, I’d expect you to take as many of the pack away with you at the first opportunity. He is a dangerous wolf, not just because he is still bigger than you, but because of the dangers he would bring upon the pack.’

  Natan was about to say something in reply, but then, out of the darkness, Silvah came bounding up to them.

  ‘Where are the others?’ Rhamin asked her.

  ‘They’re coming up behind but they have two sheep and they are not small ones. Powla and I saw the commotion at the farm house and we snuck in and took the two sheep that had been worried already while the man and his dog were distracted. The one I was dragging was much larger than the other. Solin offered to carry it for me.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Rhamin half asked, half exclaimed. ‘So what treason was he inciting on the way over here then, if he had his mouth full?’

  ‘No, I was still carrying the sheep then. He was saying we should eat the smaller one and take the other away to the mountains with us.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Silvah, ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘You haven’t,’ Rhamin said softly, and before he could say anything else to reassure her, Solin arrived with the sheep. His mouth was around its throat and his head was tilted down and to one side as he dragged the creature along the ground. Its blood was no longer dripping off its short fleece, but congealing into a black mass around Solin’s mouth. He put the sheep down and licked his lips as Powla panted up out of the darkness, dragging the other dead animal in a trail of rising dust.

  ‘Seems like I got a decent meal for every one,’ he boasted and at the same time pointedly glanced down at the catch that Rhamin had at his feet. ‘You had better eat that before the rest of the pack back home see what a useless catch you’ve got.’

  Rhamin saw the hair on the back of Silvah’s neck bristle. ‘Your catch?! You…’

  Rhamin broke in quickly. ‘What we’ve caught tonight belongs to the whole pack; not you, not me, not any of us here, but every member of our pack when we get it back to the Darin.’ He looked Silvah in the eye. It was a consoling look. It was a look that told her he believed her side of the story, a look that melted her anger; the same look that he sometimes gave to her that turned her long legs to spring water.

  ‘You can’t stand anybody being better than you, can you?’ Solin snapped. He was going to go on but Rhamin growled and barred his teeth. It was a warn
ing.

  ‘We are still a wolf down,’ Rhamin stated. ‘So, instead if bickering, can anyone tell me where Rasci is?’ The wolves all shook their heads. He was reluctant to head off home without the full compliment but he dare not call out to find the missing member of the pack.

  ‘Has any one seen what happened to him?’ Once again they all shook their heads. ‘Okay. Let’s get this food back to the Darin,’ he ordered. ‘We’ll look for him later.’

  Although the losses were hard to bear, the night’s work would see the whole pack through the next week or more. Seeing that his members had succeeded in getting some prey, he had made up his mind what he was going to do next. But he wasn’t going to tell any of them yet.

  ‘We’ll take it in turns at carrying the prey,’ Rhamin decreed. ‘We have a long journey home and I intend having this food back at the Darin before mid day. We are all going to eat heartily.’ He looked directly at Solin. ‘You can carry that a little longer, but when you start falling behind, then your shift will have ended.’ He turned to the rest of the pack. ‘And that goes for all of us.’

  Rhamin was careful to gage the trek home so that all had a spell at carrying the sheep. They couldn’t have been more than half way back to the Darin when, through the semi light of night, they spotted a lone figure of a wolf bobbing up and down as it trudged heavily onwards ahead of them. As they gained on the wolf they realised it was Rasci struggling with another large sheep. They soon overtook him. Before they could say anything, Rasci spoke. ‘There’s no way I was going to carry this in the opposite direction,’ he stated, dropping his heavy load and sinking down onto the ground beside it. It was the biggest of all the captured prey.

  Rhamin said nothing except, ‘We’re taking it in turns at carrying the food. You need some help?’ Exhausted, Rasci just nodded.

  Rhamin handed the dog pup to Rasci and took over the work of carrying the large sheep. They all changed around several times, Solin actually taking another shift with a sheep rather than be seen carrying the small, almost worthless prey that Rhamin had grabbed. They tracked hard and long through the cool cloudless night and saw the thin, faint light of day creep along the horizon long before he headed the tired, panting and dusty hunting pack into camp.

  Rowan, one of the guards had already gone on ahead to tell the pack the news and when the hunters arrived there was a cheer from all, followed by a communal wagging of tails and the greeting of friends.

  Yeltsa glanced over at Rhamin who was now, once again, carrying the dog pup. He looked back at her with adoring eyes, suddenly noticing something different about her. She was much thinner and her breasts were engorged and heavy with milk. As she ran towards him, they swung from side to side, heavily beneath her. He dropped his prey from his mouth and licked her face affectionately. You’ve had your babies!’ he exclaimed.

  She licked his face and said, ‘At last! I thought they were never going to come out!’ It had been a long pregnancy. The normal gestation period for the grey wolf is sixty three days. Yeltsa had seen the sixty eighth day come and go before the hunting pack had departed. Rhamin had considered migrating north to where the white tailed deer were likely to have found pasture, but it meant many days trekking and, in her condition, Yeltsa would never have been able to stand the heat and the lack of food and water for more than two days. No one could have known that the rains would not be coming. His decision to stay and wait out the drought had been solely to ensure the safety of his mate and her unborn offspring.

  ‘How many have we had?’ he asked.

  ‘Five born but one was still born. The first was too big and it took almost the whole day to get its head clear. After that he slid into the world, complaining before I had even had time to lick him dry. But the last born must have waited too long. He died before he could take a breath.’

  ‘Never mind my love,’ he said softly. ‘Four is just fine.’ Yeltsa was about to speak again when she noticed the prey that Rhamin had dropped at her feet. It was moving. It was still alive. She sniffed at it curiously. ‘What on earth!’

  ‘Oh, it’s a dog pup,’ Solin barked from across the camp. ‘It’s all he could manage.’

  Rhamin ignored him. There was plenty of time to make Solin sorry but now was not it. ‘A dog pup,’ Rhamin repeated. ‘You can eat it if you want. It should be tasty.’

  Yeltsa sniffed it again and then licked it. It stirred and whimpered thinking that its mother had returned to feed it. Yeltsa’s face changed. She had been hungry for too long and she had babies to feed every few hours. Suddenly her engorged breasts began to drip milk. She needed her babies to relieve them. She closed her mouth around the dog pup’s body and picked it up, and as she lifted her head, she looked at the rest of the pack and growled. The dog pup squeaked, suddenly afraid. It had realised that this wasn’t its mother. Turning, Yeltsa gave out another growl, deeper and louder this time. It was the growl of the dominant female asserting her right to take the first pickings. Solin might have thought that the offering was worthless but Yeltsa was quite obviously not of the same opinion. Rhamin watched her, puzzled as she paced slowly at first, head held high, and then, springing on her toes, bounded deep into the cave.

  –––––––

  It was mid afternoon when Yeltsa emerged and went over to the place where the rest of the pack had been feasting on the prey. There was plenty left, though some of the best bits had disappeared. All the pack was resting around lazily except for Silvah who was busy feeding Zelda. Rhamin watched as Yeltsa trotted over to the carcass of the biggest sheep and began to eat. He knew that after she had whelped, she would have eaten the afterbirth and even the still born baby, but now he realised that she would have to eat almost constantly for the next few days to recover her strength and to make the milk she needed to keep and feed her four babies. Often, wolves refrain from breeding during a drought or even lose their young prematurely if it seems likely that there will be no food to maintain them when they are born. But the early drought had caught them out. It was never expected to last, and every day Zelda had said that rain would come in time. But the skies were still clear and cloudless, the days scorching hot and the pickings of prey now totally inadequate.

  When she had eventually had her fill, Yeltsa looked up. Rhamin was lying facing her, watching over her as he always did. He had explained about Fayli and Seth and she had taken the losses rather more casually than he had expected. The rest of the pack was asleep except for Rasci who had been sent up to the top of the rocky outcrop to sit out the hot day in the shadow of a rock on guard duty, and Silvah, who, Rhamin knew, had gone down to the drinking hole in the back of the caves to wash. She never liked being seen with blood on her face and coat. The task of washing, however, was getting harder. Even the water hole in the caves was turning shallow, the source stream now subsided to a trickle. They had never known it dry up, but Rhamin was worried this year that the water would disappear before Yeltsa could give birth to her pups. At least it had lasted that long. She wandered over to him, gave him an affectionate lick on the ears and said, ‘Best be getting back to the babies.’

  Rhamin licked her muzzle. ‘Get as much to eat as you can from now on. In two days we will prepare to move out.’

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she gasped. She looked into his eyes with that Do we really have to? look.

  ‘Don’t worry, the pups will be safe. We will carry them. But you do understand, don’t you? You could not have travelled and given birth to them on the move. We had to wait it out.’

  Yeltsa nodded. She did understand. She also knew that Rhamin would make sure that she got a good fair share of the food before it was all eaten. With their tremendously strong jaws, by the time the sheep had been eaten, there would be nothing left but the fleeces. Wolves’ jaws are capable of splintering the bones of a buffalo. Sheep were succulent morsels by comparison. As she turned and headed back into the cave, Rhamin watched her every move with admiration. His mate had done well.

  The next morning, Yeltsa eme
rged once again from the cave, her body leaner and showing signs of the heavy toll feeding the babies was taking on her. Rhamin had saved the sheep on which she had fed the day before. The rest of the pack understood. Their job, once the second sheep had been completely devoured, was to go out hunting again. During the day there was to be little respite from the gruelling sun, so hunting began in earnest again during the cool calm hours of darkness.

  The following day, shortly after the sun had reached its highest point in the sky, Rhamin howled and called the pack together. After making sure all his pack was around him he looked towards the north and said, ‘You all know what is planned, but for those with any doubts, let me make it quite clear, we all have to be prepared for a trek lasting at least ten days.’

  ‘And just how do we propose to live?’ Solin demanded. ‘I say we should return to the farmer’s pens and eat our fill.’ He looked around to see if any of the other wolves were nodding in agreement. They all stood still, waiting for Rhamin to answer.

  ‘We will hunt on the way and we will seek water from the many rivers and streams which cover our territory. But if we find none, there will be no turning back.’ He paused to make sure that Solin was not going to interrupt. ‘And more serious still is the fact that our journey will, inevitably, take us beyond our own territory, vast as it is. We will be travelling within the boundaries of other wolf packs.’

  ‘But isn’t that risking being attacked?’ Bamar, a young male asked. ‘I hear that the packs to the north are dangerous, especially one belonging to a wolf called Pagin.’

  ‘We have successfully protected our territory from all other packs,’ explained Rhamin, ‘because we have had the advantage of numbers. That is why I have fought to keep our pack together,’ he continued, giving Solin a rocky glance. ‘As we stand, even with the loss of Seth and Fayli, we are still a formidable force. Of course, numbers are not going to be our only deterrent from attack, we will have to be prepared to fight, and fight we will; but most importantly, we must be determined not to be turned back. If we are lucky, the other packs to the north will have moved on the same as us but they may only just have made their move as we are doing, and in that case they will fight to keep whatever right they claim to their hunting grounds while we are moving through them.’