Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves

by Garry Kilworth

‘Doesn’t Groff live near us? I’ve heard the adults say he was given a palace of ice in the snow country. This is the snow country, isn’t it, mother?’

  His mother said, ‘Groff was betrayed by those who gave him life. The humans stopped believing in him and he turned to mist then blew away on the four winds.’

  ‘Can humans bring him back again?’ asked Riffel.

  ‘I think they’ve forgotten how. All this was long ago, seasons out of time, just after the Firstdark. Things have changed since then. Things have changed quite dramatically. Humans were almost animals then, and only had one or two weapons, like stone axes and wooden spears. Their heads were full of magic and they used the magic to hunt us down. They used to draw pictures on the walls of their caves, of men killing deer and wolves and bears, and the next day these pictures would come true. Things they believed in then, like Groff, did come true because they believed. Humans had no doubt in their magic in those days. If you believe strongly enough in something, it is said to always come true because that’s how things happen. Someone once believed in the world, and there it was. It’s a good job for us that humans now have doubts. When you want to create something you can’t afford to have the tiniest little doubt that it’s going to happen, or it won’t happen.’

  Yanthra said, ‘Well, I know father is still alive. I believe it. Athaba will come back to us.’

  Ulaala hung her head a little.

  Wassal said, ‘Can’t you see you’re upsetting mother?’

  ‘I can’t help that,’ Yanthra replied. ‘I can’t help what I believe, can I mother? If I could, then I wouldn’t believe in the first place. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘That’s true,’ Ulaala said, licking his face fondly. ‘You mustn’t mind me – I don’t have the faith of the young.’

  [‘And I was right, wasn’t I?’ Yanthra said to Athaba. ‘I was right all along. Wait until we see that Wassal. I’ll make him swallow his tongue all right. I knew you would come back. I saw it in my dreams. And it’s true.’]

  Ulaala and her pups had been part of the new pack for two months when an event occurred which caused them to change direction yet again. First, two of the wolves were shot by hunters, and the pack moved eastwards, towards the mountains. When they reached a low valley, they rested for a few days, to hunt. One evening, when the stars were clear as points of ice, a strange headwolf walked right into the midst of them, flanked by two shoulderwolves. A wolf with a cinnamon-coloured coat.

  The moment Yanthra smelled and saw this wolf, he knew he was witnessing an extraordinary creature. The headwolf was not as big and strong as Sirenka – in fact he was quite lean with a faintly insouciant look about him – but his manner was striking. It was full of confidence. His tread was firm and even. He held up his head and stared into the eyes of any wolf that had the audacity to study his form. There was no suggestion of faltering, or excusing himself for entering the temporary den of another pack. His demeanour dared anyone to challenge him.

  Yanthra knew, within those few brief moments, that there was not a wolf among them that night who would survive combat with such a creature. This was a wolf that had killed a man. This was Skassi, the leader of the manhunters, the rogue wolf of the east.

  Not a member of Sirenka’s pack said a word. They waited for the rogue to speak. They all knew who he was and most of them were overawed. The legends that had sprung up around this wolf in just a few seasons were passed from pack to pack, from forest to tundra, from the icefields to the mountains, and all who heard were impressed. For the first time in a century of seasons, ten centuries of seasons, a wolf had arisen who promised to lead his kind out of persecution. It was an incredible covenant, taken seriously by almost every wolf in the land. There was a buzz in the air, of zeal, enthusiasm, fanaticism. Wolves were talking of driving mankind into the sea, beyond the snow line, down to the depths of the south where they belonged.

  Skassi stopped opposite the pups and stared hard.

  Yanthra quaked under those cold, hard grey eyes. They seemed to find some fault with him and he fully expected the rogue wolf to order one of his shoulderwolves to ‘rip out the throat of the audacious one’ but still the pup could not take his eyes from the headwolf’s face.

  ‘You,’ said the great Skassi, seemingly with a throat full of gravel. ‘Your name?’

  ‘Yanthra.’ ‘Riffel.’

  They had both spoken together, thinking that each was the one to whom Skassi was speaking.

  ‘Be quiet,’ said the soft voice of their mother, from behind them. Ulaala had come up silently and was in a protective position, guarding her pups.

  ‘My name is Ulaala,’ she said.

  ‘These are your pups?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Still the rogue wolf stared with narrow eyes at Yanthra.

  ‘One or two of them have familiar markings. Someone in my old pack had a slate-blue colouring such as that little one … you, your name?’

  This time Yanthra knew it was he who was being addressed.

  He did not know why he answered so formally, as if it were some occasion such as an initiation or a ceremony. Perhaps it was an occasion of a kind, if not a ritual? It certainly felt like one.

  ‘Yanthra, son of Ulaala, son of Athaba,’ he said, proudly.

  Skassi turned and stared even harder. After a long while he spoke again.

  ‘Ah, yes. Athaba. I see him now. I see him in your mane and tail, and in your jaw.’

  The rest of the pups were looking at the rogue wolf with round eyes, wondering what was going to happen next. Was this famous rebel going to kill them all, for being sons and daughters of Ulaala and Athaba? It certainly seemed like it. They stared into the ferocious eyes, at the savage fangs, of this terrible wolf of wolves, and waited for his condemnation.

  ‘I knew your father,’ he said at last. ‘We were raised together, we fought together. We even fought each other. We have been enemies all our lives.’

  The pups waited, as still as stones, while Ulaala moved closer to them, stood amongst them.

  Skassi then said, ‘I distrusted your father. I thought he stank of mysticism and magic …’ he paused, and looked away, to the north-west for a moment, before continuing with, ‘… but he had aspects of character I’ve never seen in another wolf,’ the voice was almost wistful,‘ – tenacity, fortitude, endurance. He was a wolf who refused to lie down and die where any other would have given up hope long before …’

  ‘That was my Athaba,’ said Ulaala, with fierce pride in her voice.

  Skassi’s head came up.

  ‘Was?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Have you seen his carcass? Were you there?’

  Ulaala looked taken aback.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Then don’t be so certain, she-wolf. That outcast has a dozen lives, and all of them disreputable. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him walk across those hills one day. I know, you see – we’re from the same pack – we’re of the same blood. Only the guns can kill us, only the guns will.’

  ‘He was shot by a hunter,’ said Ulaala.

  The narrow eyes closed and opened, slowly. Skassi looked as though he were thinking, deeply, of some subject beyond the ken of other wolves. His eyes had distances in them, greater than the leap from star to star. There was frostfire there, too, burning coldly from within.

  ‘Shot?’ said Skassi. ‘Show me the pelt, show me the holes. I see him coming, out of the blue mists, one day. Did you hear that I am able to see into the future? The forests talk to me …’

  This all sounded a bit strange, to Yanthra, after his father had been accused of the sickness of mysticism and magic. It sounded very much like Skassi had the same complaint.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Skassi went to Ulaala and sniffed her as one might sniff a mate. There was silence amongst the wolves that watched in anxious anticipation. No one quite knew what Skassi wanted: why he was visiting at all. Certainly this act of nosing around a female of another pac
k, without even having had an invitation to the den, was a breach of protocol at the very least.

  No one moved or made any objection to this blatant display of bad manners. There was not one amongst the pack who dared show any hostility towards Skassi and his two shoulderwolves. Ulaala herself must have felt the humiliation strongly, because she alone spoke.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ she said.

  Skassi ignored the remark and then motioned to his two pack members that they were leaving the area. As he walked out, through a gap which led to a mountain path, he said to his shoulderwolves:

  ‘Bring the pups.’

  The two wolves, a male and a female, whirled and began rounding up the pups like a dog with sheep. Confused, the pups gathered into a group. Ulaala shouted: ‘No!’

  Skassi turned and said, ‘They either come with me, or they die. Which is it to be?’

  ‘I’ll kill the wolf that touches them,’ she warned.

  Yanthra’s heart was beating hard at this point. He wondered if there was going to be a battle between his mother and these three strangers, because it was fairly certain that the rest of the pack would not help them. Then he heard his sister speak.

  Grisenska said, ‘Don’t mother. It won’t do us any good if you are killed. Let’s go with them?’

  Skassi said, ‘You may come with them, if you wish.’

  Ulaala was crouched, ready to launch herself at the shoulder-wolves. Yanthra could see the torment in her eyes. His mother had to make a decision between attacking those who would take her pups from her, or allowing them to be taken and to go along with them. It was a choice between almost certain death and permitting Skassi to turn her young ones into renegades. Skassi had killed humans. There would be no rest for him or those that followed him. Humans would turn the world inside out rather than let a mankiller get away. They would shoot down every wolf on the tundra, in the forests, in the mountains, if that was the only way to ensure that the culprit was punished.

  To Yanthra’s surprise, his mother’s taut coiled form slowly relaxed.

  She said, ‘I’ll come too’.

  Out on the trail the pups stumbled along through the darkness with the shoulderwolves nipping their flanks to keep them moving. Although they were used to being without daylight at this time in the seasons, the path through the mountains was unfamiliar to them. Even Ulaala slipped occasionally, on patches of ice she could not see in the dark.

  They travelled a long way, through passes and over glaciers, until they came to a place where the trail dropped away, downwards into a hidden valley. As they descended Yanthra looked up the sheer face of the mountain. He could not see the top which disappeared into the blackness above. All around him the iron rock rushed silently downwards like black waterfalls. Surely this was a place where rivers of stone fell to earth from some lake above the clouds? Perhaps somewhere above their heads was the palace which had once been given to Groff, carved from ice and snow, and perched on a plateau of frozen cloud? Cottonwood trees of white mist grew from fissures and crevices as he watched. These expanded slowly: ghostly dim shapes that eventually became part of the night. This was an eerie land of shadows within shadows, where moulted darkness clung to the rocks and the ground dropped away to places that saw no sun.

  In the gravel beds they passed were buffaloberry and crow-berry shrubs which hid scuttling shapes. When the light of warmer seasons came there would be poppies and fireweed and coltsfoot scattered over the passes, but now there were no flowers to scent the air or colours to pattern the hillsides. It was a dreary journey which filled the hearts of the pups with heavy sand.

  Skassi led the group, occasionally pausing to howl, the sound echoing round the white natural walls of the canyons. From the distance came the faint sounds of answering howls, informing them that there was no danger.

  Yanthra felt afraid as he and his brothers and sisters entered the area of the den. Dark silent forms of strange wolves could be seen in hollows and dips. Although there was menace there, the overall feeling was one of deadly resignation. These were wolves who had renounced worldly wants and had prepared themselves for an early death. There was no fear in them. Such feeling had been replaced by a philosophical acceptance of martyrdom. The oath that was only whispered out of curiosity amongst wolves in the forests and on the tundra was buried in their hearts. It had changed them from beasts that run from men to beasts that pursue men. The hunted in them had become the hunter. Yanthra regarded these wolves with great awe, wondering how they could reach the state of mind that was evident in their posture, their eyes.

  Skassi called the whole pack together. His control over them seemed absolute. They obeyed him as if they were entranced. His hold over his pack appeared to have its sources in mysticism rather than physical discipline. The sheer power of his personality seemed to draw the wolves from their rest and place them in set positions around himself. For a wolf that seemed so fiercely opposed to anything which smacked of cabbalism, Skassi was strangely reliant on some invisible method of persuasion which even Yanthra found irresistible. Even when not staring into those terrible eyes, the pup could feel the presence of this wolf leader, like a stale hot wind that will not be denied existence. In the end, the pup had to look up again, to find those eyes and wonder about the compelling influence behind them.

  ‘I have brought these pups here,’ said Skassi, ‘to give us a second generation of mankillers. Before the spring, I want each of them to be aware of their role in life. One pup will be allocated to a mega whose job it will be to educate that pup.

  ‘There is also a new she-wolf amongst us. Her name is Ulaala. She is to be my new mate.’

  Yanthra saw his mother start at these words, and he guessed she was about to voice a protest when another female suddenly let out a loud shrill sound, followed with the words: ‘I am Skassi’s mate!’

  There was a short answer from Skassi.

  ‘No.’

  From that moment on Yanthra witnessed a silent vicious war between his mother and this female who had once been the mate of the headwolf. It was pointless for Ulaala to say that she had no desire to be Skassi’s mate. The lord of the wolves had spoken and his word was law. The she-wolf, Nidra, spent her whole time trying to bait Ulaala into a fight, taking savage bites at her when Skassi was not around. After a time Ulaala began to retaliate and it seemed that neither she nor her antagonist was going to back down before one lay dead at the other’s feet.

  Yanthra himself was at first allocated to a stern but clearly disinterested wolf by the name of Ginnant, who taught him the rudiments of fighting men.

  ‘When you attack from the front, be sure to zig-zag. Go under the weapon – go for the stomach or lower – rather than leaping for the throat. While you’re in the air you have to pass the muzzle of the gun and the hunter would be a fool not to blow you apart at that moment. If you go close to the ground, weaving, and up from below, you will destroy his sense of security. If he misses you with his first one or two shots he’ll start to panic and his instinct will be to back off or turn and run, and then you’ve got him for sure.

  ‘However, it’s best not to attack from the front if at all possible. Attack from the rear or the flank. Go in fast and silently – only fools bother with battle cries. Avoid the limbs, even if they thrust a boot at you, or raise an arm to protect themselves. Our instinct is to go for the nearest part of the body, but you have to overrule such reactions. Again, try to get between the leg and arm, in the side, and tear out his kidneys. Once you sink your teeth into his flesh, don’t let go. Twist and turn, spin, but don’t let go until the meat comes away in your mouth …’

  ‘Have you ever killed a man, Ginnant?’ asked Yanthra.

  The wolf looked at him with weary eyes.

  ‘That’s not the kind of question you ask of a mega. Now, repeat to me what I’ve just told you, then go off and practise. I’m a little tired today …’

  Yanthra did as he was told.

  The den of the renegades was neither
a place of despair nor a camp full of bravado and swaggering wolves. It was a grim place, where the business of killing for the sake of revenge was taken seriously. Sometimes, Yanthra felt he was in some dark dreamworld. His mother (and father when he had been around) had taught him that wolves did not waste their time on useless hunts which were not likely to result in food. Wolves, he had been told, should be opposed to anything which was not for the good of the pack. Hunting men was definitely not good for the pack. It was an extremely dangerous, possibly even suicidal, method of obtaining meat. Whatever else men were, there was no denying their intelligence. They had ways within ways that left the brightest wolf on earth blinking with astonishment.

  This pack was not even concerned with eating men, once they had been killed. In fact the instructions were to leave the area as soon as possible before human hunters arrived with more of their deadly weapons. The whole idea of waging war against humans was insane. It was a war that could not be won.

  However, this pack consisted of wolves who were dedicated to the destruction of men. Yanthra was not about to go up to Skassi and say, ‘I think you’re quite wrong, because …’ The headwolf would burn him where he stood with those fiery eyes.

  So, Yanthra did as he was told, but at the same time felt as if he were acting out a role in someone else’s nightmare. He was afraid much of the time and woke from rest with a leaden feeling of doom in his breast. There was a greyness to life that would never again see colour. A kind of suppressed panic existed in Yanthra’s breast, and he knew it was in his brothers and sisters, too. They took the lessons that were forced upon them, but with reluctance, looking for their mother the whole time.

  Ulaala came to Yanthra during rest time one day.

  She whispered in his ear.

  ‘I’ve spoken to your brothers and sisters, now I’ll tell you. We have to get away from this place, but we can’t do it just yet. When the spring comes, you must be ready and watch for my signal. You’ll all be stronger then and the weather will be better for travelling. Don’t give up now.’