Rhamin

by Bryce THOMAS

  Rasci nodded. ‘They are discussing Solin,’ he stated proudly. He clearly took great pride at being able to translate for his master. ‘Solin has been causing trouble with the men,’ he continued. ‘But,’ he said with a curious scowl, ‘Solin has been trying to make the man at the farm think you were responsible for the trouble.’

  ‘That sounds like Solin,’ Rhamin agreed with a nod. ‘And just how is he doing that?’

  Rasci shook his head. ‘I can’t make out what Corvak is saying,’ he said apologetically. He is speaking too fast and using sounds I do not understand.’

  ‘Then relax and open your mind,’ came a scolding voice from beneath the tree. Zelda had been listening with one ear.

  ‘But is it serious?’ asked Rasci.

  She turned to the gathered wolves. ‘You are all going to act fast,’ she said. ‘Solin is going to bring death to us unless we take it to him. We have to rid ourselves of him once and for all. If he won’t leave then he must be killed. That’s how serious it is.’ There was some more discourse between the old raven and the ancient wolf, and when it was clear that the conversation was finished, Rhamin spoke.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘what’s the damage this time?’

  ‘You might well ask,’ said the old wolf. ‘Solin is trying to get you blamed for killing the man’s four young dog pups.’

  ‘I haven’t been near them!’

  ‘No, but he may well think so. Corvak has told me how Solin has been travelling to an outcrop of white soft rock and, by rubbing the top of his head on a rocky overhang, he is able to make his ears white. The man from the farm is looking for a wolf with white ears, Rhamin. Don’t you understand? That rogue of a wolf is passing himself off as you and at the same time attacking those creatures that will inevitably make the man so angry that he will come looking for the perpetrator. In this case, that’s you. You are the only wolf with white ears, the only wolf daring enough to take him on, or so he believes.’

  ‘So Solin has been back to the farm, causing trouble, eh?’

  ‘That’s what I am told,’ Zelda confirmed.

  ‘Thank you Corvak,’ Rhamin said to the creature that was now preening itself in the treetop. Corvak cawed. ‘So where do we find Solin now?’

  Corvak gabbled again to Zelda. ‘The men are heading in the wrong direction,’ Zelda said eventually. ‘They think they are heading towards us, but they have missed us. They think we are cowering in the foothills, hiding from them.’

  ‘So Solin is where exactly?’

  ‘Heading back to the farm again.’

  ‘Again!’ Rhamin nodded. ‘I see.’ Once again he stood and thought, but not for long. ‘Then we must go there straight away.’

  The farm was about half a day’s travel away. ‘If we set off now,’ Silvah stated, ‘then we should be there before nightfall.’

  ‘If you leave me behind,’ stated Zelda. ‘I cannot keep up with you when you travel at full speed.’

  ‘Then you will remain here with Rasci and Silvah to look after you,’ ordered Rhamin. ‘The rest of us have to go and go now’.

  ‘No,’ Zelda stated firmly. ‘You must take Silvah. Corvak will take you straight to Solin and Silvah will be your interpreter. You can leave young Rasci to protect me.’

  ‘All right, but on one condition.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘As we travel into the sun, you travel towards the Great Forest. There, you will be untraceable. We’ll meet you at our usual rendezvous site near the mountain lake. Wait for our call.’

  –––––––

  The warm sun shone on the outer coats of the wolves as they raced through the hot afternoon. Their thick undercoat, now thinning for the summer months, still acted as insulation. Just as the cold weather and bitter cold winds could not penetrate their thick wadge of fur, neither could the sun.

  Corvak remained with them, chattering away in the sky above Silvah, urging them on. Eventually, Silvah explained that Corvak had watched the renegade pack of wolves flee from the outskirts of the farm. He had seen Solin with them and, not long ago, he and six other wolves had suddenly split from the pack and had hidden in a hole that seemed specially dug out for the purpose, whilst the four young decoys led the men folk away into the woods.’

  ‘So does anybody know what his plan is?’ Rhamin asked, as he urged the pack to go faster. There was a renewed sense of urgency. Now he knew that unless he stopped Solin then not only would he, Rhamin, be in danger, but all wolves in the territory would have retribution brought down upon them. For what, he knew not, but he knew now that this particular moment in time was going to be a matter of destiny, a particle in the lives of wolves that would settle in the bedrock of their history. It was no longer a feeling of foreboding, it was sure knowledge. Solin was so determined to settle his score with Rhamin he was prepared to do anything. And that anything had to be something that would result in revenge by the man and his kind. It was the only way Solin could get the better of his half brother. He couldn’t defeat Rhamin. But men could.

  The pack raced on, stopping only once to take on cool, refreshing liquid from a small, meandering stream. They were hot and panting heavily when, not long before nightfall, they arrived at the outer ring fence of the farm. Corvak gave some instructions to Silvah and then flew off to the farmstead to reconnoitre before the daylight failed him altogether, for after darkness fell, he would no longer be of any help to his friends.

  There was a sense of foreboding moving through the pack as the wolves that had travelled this route last summer crossed the fences and headed in the same direction. They raced on, led by Rhamin. In the distance he could hear several wolves howling, calling out, over and over again. Now he was running as fast as he could. Before they had crossed the inner ring fence, Corvak returned. Another exchange of sounds and Silvah reported that Solin had started indiscriminately killing cattle in one of the paddocks. Corvak had given directions and Rhamin bounded on ahead. Yeltsa, Silvah, Charka and Rowan were beside him when he spotted the carnage. Solin and his hunting pack had killed three cattle already. The herd was clustered together in one corner of the paddock, milling about, trying to defend itself as a group, the bigger, older animals facing outwards to attack the worrying wolves.

  Usually, a wolf will not attack an animal that stands up to it. It will wait for the animal to panic and then attack only when it turns and runs. But Solin was impatient to do his work. He intended to kill as many of the cattle as he could in as short a time. His motive wasn’t hunger. It wasn’t greed. It was revenge, revenge on Rhamin, for now, as he ran closer, Rhamin could see what Corvak had been saying was true. Solin had white ears. He was impersonating Rhamin and he was killing the cattle with only one purpose; he wanted the farmer to hunt down his enemy for him. And he was succeeding in creating disturbance at the farmstead. He and his pack had called out in order to do just that. They wanted to be seen.

  A young bull was standing his ground courageously. Already he had tossed one of the rogue wolves over his head. It landed in the midst of the herd and was instantly trampled in a melee of panicking beasts. But Solin was not discouraged. The wolves of his pack were dispensable. If he succeeded in getting rid of Rhamin then he would gather the biggest ever pack around him. A few casualties were inevitable in war, and he was taking the longer view. His bid for power had begun in earnest.

  Just then, a hundred yards or more away, a woman ran into the paddock, her hair flowing behind her as she raced through the failing light towards the chaos. She raised a fire stick and instantly Rhamin saw a puff of smoke eject from the barrel, followed shortly afterwards by a loud crack. None of the remaining five wolves of the Solin pack went down. Clearly, the woman was either not as skilled with the implement or the light was getting too poor for her to see properly. On top of that, she was hindered by the fact that the wolves were between her and the herd of milling cattle. Solin had realised that she could not safely kill his hunters without risk of killing the cattle. He ordere
d them to keep on attacking, snapping and tearing at the faces and chests of the animals, who in response, kept their heads down butting and tossing at the air.

  But Solin didn’t join in. For a moment he stood and watched them, making sure they carried out his orders. Then, turning towards the woman, he snarled and lowered his head. It wasn’t easy to see what she was doing, for Rhamin was a good hundred yards away and behind her. But she was clearly having difficulty with the fire stick in some way. Rhamin was not the only one to have seen this. Solin had seen her struggling and he had seen his opportunity. Rhamin could almost read his mind. What better way to get the farmer to hunt down the wolf with white ears. His woman, his mate would testify to the description of the wolf that had mauled her. He wouldn’t kill her; no, that would defeat the purpose. But he would do her a serious injury. He would make sure that Rhamin was hunted down to the end of the earth if necessary. There would be no hiding place, no sanctuary, and no mercy for the wolf with white ears. Solin loped towards the woman, teeth barred and head down. He took his time, wanting her to see his ears, to know exactly who was attacking her. No, he was in no hurry now.

  But he hadn’t seen Rhamin or his companions. His delay was to Rhamin’s advantage, for as Solin took one last lunge towards his prey, Rhamin appeared from behind her. He took off with a leap that carried him past the woman’s shoulder, landing his huge paws against Solin’s chest as, only inches from the woman, he sunk his long canine teeth deep into the face of her attacker. The woman froze. She knew that she had been attacked from the wolf in front of her, but she didn’t see Rhamin before he glided past her. Neither did she know why there was now a bloody fight taking place at her feet. She could still make out enough detail to see that both wolves had white ears, but in the increasing darkness, she could tell that only one looked and moved like a snarling, black shadow.

  Rhamin took no notice of the woman or her reaction. His task was already laid out before him. Solin lay on his side, blood pouring from his face as Rhamin stood over him. He grabbed the wounded wolf by the throat, but Solin managed to get his paw up in front of him, preventing Rhamin from crushing his wind pipe. Rhamin swung up his strong neck and carried his foe towards the centre of the paddock. When he dropped Solin, he noticed that Yeltsa, Rowan, Silvah and Charka had been joined by Lexa and Ramusan, and they were fighting fiercely with the four Solin wolves. Soon, they were joined by Natan and Bamar, and then by Floss, Depni and Fatz who were determined not to be left out.

  ‘Spare me,’ Solin gasped as he watched the remainder of his pack being torn down. ‘I’ll work with you, I promise!’

  Rhamin ignored him. He stood with his huge paw on Solin’s neck, watching his pack, making sure that nothing happened that he could prevent if he had to. But his wolves were courageous in their work and skilled at fighting. The youngsters were no less brave. They outnumbered the enemy, but none were afraid to be the ones to go in for the kill.

  Although it seemed like time stood still, it took less than a few minutes to end Solin’s treachery. What Rhamin didn’t see was the woman as she departed the way she had come. The sound of the door shutting behind her brought Rhamin’s head around, only to find that the courageous woman, left shaken and frightened, had disappeared back to the safety of her den. Rhamin’s pack loped around, checking for any other insurgents. There were none. ‘What are you going to do with that gutless calf?’ Natan asked, pointing his nose at Solin.

  Rhamin did not answer. He pricked up his ears and looked to the north. Lights and the sound of the men’s carriages returning from their hunt suddenly rose above the sound of bellowing cattle. The animals were still bunched in a corner, waving their heads threateningly at the surrounding wolves, which in turn, just ignored them.

  ‘Time to go,’ Rhamin called quickly. ‘Everybody out. Now! I’ll follow. Don’t stop for anything.’

  With that, the pack exited quietly and quickly in the opposite direction to the approaching vehicles. Rhamin took little time catching them up, and silently and as fast as they could run, together, they disappeared into the night.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  No one asked what Rhamin had done when he was left alone with Solin. One thing they knew for sure was that Rhamin had to stop Solin from impersonating him again. Immediately, Rhamin concentrated on regrouping his pack at the waterfall in the forest. There, they rested and slept off the fatigue of the last day’s events. Because of what Solin had done, they had never faced danger so great as they did now. All they could do was to stay in the forest and lie low until they knew that the danger from the man was over.

  But, would the danger ever really be over? Rhamin had done his best to show the man that he was not to blame for the deeds of the rogue wolf Solin. But he could only guess what the farmer was going to think when he saw the results of Solin’s evil work. On top of that, once again, Solin had attacked one of the man’s family. And once again it had been Rhamin that had stopped him only with seconds to spare. The whole affair had been a disastrous turn of events. And it was only with Corvak’s help that he had been able to avert an even more precipitous catastrophe. Without the help of the old raven, Rhamin would never have arrived at the farmstead in time. Without the help of Corvak, all hope would, by now, have been lost.

  It was with that in mind that Rhamin told Silvah and Zelda to invite Corvak and his family to the camp so that he could thank him personally for all his help. The old raven had been seen high in the sky above them before the battle, heading towards some trees where he would no doubt spend the night. But, in the days that followed, Corvak had not come to the pack either to tell of the presence of game nor had he come to share the food that Rhamin and his pack had caught.

  One evening, Rhamin went to the top of a rocky outcrop that looked out over the great wooded valley below. The half moon was already rising, even though it was over an hour to go to sunset. To his right, far away, a dark cloud of rooks were flying to their rookery somewhere in the distance, filling the early evening air with a chorus of their communicative chatter. In the opposite direction, distant specs on the skyline could have been Corvak and his family, but he wasn’t sure, and unless the raven wanted to come and visit the pack, Rhamin had no way of asking the old bird to visit. Sadly, he climbed down and made his way back through the trees to his camp site. Sitting next to Zelda, he pulled at a tuft of old undercoat that was sticking out of her side. It was instantly caught by a breeze and wafted off into the air on a rising current. He watched it disappear over the tree tops, chased by a robin that was looking for just the right thing for lining her nest, and then he asked, ‘Can you suggest how we can contact Corvak?’

  Zelda looked tired. Her face had long been white with age and now, with every day that passed, her natural grey coat turned even lighter. Her unseeing eyes bulged as she thought for a moment and then replied. ‘He’s an old bird, you know. He may have gone away, but so long as he’s all right, he’ll turn up when he wants to.’ She paused to think again. ‘I do know that his mate Corvus died during the winter. I wasn’t going to tell you. He asked me not to. But I don’t think anything has happened to him.’

  Rhamin felt saddened by the news. True, birds and wolves alike grow old and eventually, they die as do all living things. But he hadn’t had the chance to thank Corvus, properly for her help last year. ‘I wish I had known,’ Rhamin said despondently.

  ‘But it was a hard winter, Rhamin. Even we were lucky to get through it without losing any of our pack. Look how ill Lexa became. And me! Pooh, I’m on borrowed time, that’s for sure!’

  Rhamin settled down on his belly next to the old wolf, wrapping his thick tail around his feet. Yeltsa was not best company at the moment. She was nearing the end of her gestation period and was pestering Rhamin to return to the cave ready for her to give birth. Wolves have few predators. Apart from man, those that are seriously dangerous are bears on the ground and eagles from the air. Despite having used their cave as their Darin since before he could remember, Rhamin
was now sure that safety lay in the depths of the thick expanse of forest, covered by the canopy of new growth, hidden from natural predators and most of all, from the tendrils of man and his kind. He wondered if Corvak would be able to find them under the cover of the trees, but then Corvak would call if he was searching for them and, since all the wolves in the pack knew him, one of them would answer him if they were within earshot.

  And so it was. Yeltsa dug a deep hole beneath the roots of a huge redwood tree, and there she prepared herself a den ready for having her next litter of pups. For the next nine days they lived and hunted in the mountain forests, each day, watching from lookout points on the mountain sides, listening to every sound that travelled across the plains and the valleys. It was on the tenth day that two of Rhamin’s young scouts raced up to their camp. They had been sent out to look for deer, but they returned with news that they had seen four unknown wolves heading towards Rhamin’s new den. Rhamin suspected that these were the four wolves that Solin used as decoys, the ones chased and shot at by the men. They were without a leader now, unless they had formed a new pack of their own. They were obviously doing the same as Rhamin and his pack, lying low, keeping out of sight, waiting until the danger passed. But, whatever their reasons for being there, this was still Rhamin’s territory and no other wolves, alone or in packs, were allowed to trespass. Most of the pack was present when the two youngsters arrived. All the wolves volunteered to go and check out the strays, but Rhamin urged caution. What he didn’t want, was to attract any attention to the pack’s whereabouts, for although they had looked out for approaching men, there may well be one or many more within hearing range. Sound travels for miles in the mountains, bouncing off cliffs and echoing down the steep banked river valleys. Rhamin had forbidden any communication between pack members by howling and the sound of fighting wolves could be just what some man was waiting to hear. There was going to be a better solution.