‘What of it?’ asked another.
‘I don’t know,’ whispered the wolf, ‘but there is a change in Morgra. She seems more confident somehow.’
‘Yes,’ said a third wolf, ‘I heard her talking to herself last night outside her cave. She’d been leaving out that meat again.’
‘What was she saying?’
‘She kept muttering to herself. ‘‘This, I never saw this. It shall serve me well.’’ Then she growled and started to laugh out loud.’
‘But what can it mean?’
‘There’s something else. My pack only got back last night, but immediately we noticed it. There is a new breath of fear on the wind.’
Suddenly they heard a snarl behind them and they swung their heads to see a wolf standing, listening to them in the darkness. They all knew him as one of the lead Draggas and a famous fighter among the Balkar.
‘Fear,’ he snorted scornfully, ‘there is only fear for a Night Hunter if he doesn’t know his true loyalties. Know who and what he is.’
‘Why,’ said the wolf who had spoken of it, ‘what has happened?’
‘Don’t you know?’ answered the Dragga coldly, his eyes suddenly huge in the night. ‘Morgra has given orders that we kill all the cubs.’
The Balkar wolves growled guiltily.
‘Sacrifice them?’ said one.
‘No,’ snarled the newcomer, ‘we don’t need them any more.’
‘But why?’
‘Can’t you feel him, fool? Feel his very teeth on the winter?’
The Balkar stepped forward and opened his jaws and even as he did so it began to snow.
‘Wolfbane,’ he snarled. ‘Wolfbane has returned at last.’
8 - Scavengers
‘Seek and ye shall find.’ Matthew, chapter 7, verse 7
To Kar and Larka it seemed as though they had been passing through a land of fables. As they rose above the river and climbed higher and higher among the jaws of the mountains, they saw the true wildness of this jagged country. Below them the forests and woods seemed to stretch on for ever, swathed in white, a strange, almost enchanted kingdom that for a wolf offered the promise of safety, of concealment and of seemingly endless mystery too. But it was the fury of the mountains that called to their young hearts. Soaring slopes and grave canyons, lonely peaks and beetling precipices rose around them and woke in the wolves the full wonder and terror of life.
Yet, in the high mountains of Transylvania, they had noticed that game grew sparser and sparser and, in between their quarrels, Kar had persuaded Larka to drop down from the heights in search of food, despite their fear of coming closer to Man’s dwellings, or other wolves whose voices they often heard now on the angry wind.
From the forests they had looked out at the humans’ castles and encampments too and seen things that made them fear the legend even more. Troops of soldiers riding out on horseback, travelling south through the winter, their bodies bound in those strange, hard skins that glinted in the frosty sunlight. Plains flecked with the humans’ burning air, as human packs met beneath fluttering banners. They shuddered as they thought of the coming of the Man Varg and a power to enslave all the Lera.
Larka stopped in the snow. Her eyes showed fear of all that lay before her, but now she was wondering about what Kar had said to her. Kar had been right. Larka had no idea where she was leading them and suddenly she realized that all she was doing was running away. It made her feel guilty and made her fear even worse.
‘Come on,’ she growled suddenly, trying to push aside the fear, ‘you must try and hunt for us, Kar.’
The friends splashed across a stream and a fish darted round Larka’s legs as she waded through the icy water. Instinct should have sent her splashing after it, but the she-wolf remembered the rabbit and just stared at it stupidly. Below the stream was a ragged forest, and Larka and Kar passed into the trees. Kar was leading when Larka suddenly pulled him up. She had seen a path skirting through the forest and, though she didn’t know why, she suddenly wanted to follow it.
‘No, Kar,’ Larka whispered, ‘this way.’
Larka had just had the most extraordinary feeling. It was as though she could hear a voice calling to her on the wind. Kar hesitated, for he wondered now if he should take the lead, but as Larka set off and Kar recalled what he himself had said about trust, he followed her again.
The wolves padded on and, as they came to the edge of the trees, they caught a strong, sweet scent. Kar’s tail came up. They had reached a steeply sloping field and below them, as the wolves pressed their noses from the wood, they suddenly saw a figure toiling on the hill. It was a human.
Kar glanced at Larka and she shook her head to silence him. Larka was going to back away again for the last thing she wanted was to come anywhere near Man, yet something held her and she cocked her head.
The human was dressed in thick sheepskin and on his head was a strangely shaped covering of brown wool. He was staggering down the snowy slope trailing something behind him, grunting and swearing violently as he pulled. The sled was piled high with wood and every now and then a branch would drop off in the snow and he would stop and growl angrily as he replaced it on the pile.
The man looked desperately thin, and his skin was wrinkled and leathery as he cursed his task. His legs were covered in deerskin, which was torn and tattered, while his gnarled face had black stubble growing all over it. He looked quite exhausted and Larka’s keen eyes noticed his paws as he struggled to pick up the wood. They were bent round like claws and the naked skin was turning bright blue in the cold.
They watched warily as the old Dragga struggled on, completely unaware of the wolves’ searching eyes. At last he reached the bottom of the slope and began to pull his quarry along the flat, open ground. Beyond them stood a den made of wood, with a strange, hot mist curling up from its top. From inside an old Drappa appeared, dressed much like the Dragga, and shuffled forward to greet him. As soon as she saw his paws the woman let out a cry. She took them in her own and began to rub them furiously. Then she hugged him tightly and together they dragged the sled inside.
As she watched them Larka thought of the mythical power of the Man Varg and all she had seen of Man from the mountains. Larka felt confused, for these humans seemed to be suffering in the snows as much as the wolves had done.
It was only now that Kar noticed the other dens through the trees surrounding the first. From here he could make out perhaps twenty of them. More mist was rising from their little roofs and, here and there, he saw other humans drifting like wraiths through the snow.
‘Food,’ whispered Kar, looking very sly, ‘there must be some food down there.’
‘No, Kar. It’s too dangerous. The curse will touch us again. And the legend.’
‘But, Larka. We’re beyond the boundary now, and if we don’t eat soon we’ll both be dead, curse or no curse.’
Larka fell silent. It was true that she was frantically hungry. What had Huttser said on the day of their first hunt, about the two ways a wolf must survive, the way of the hunter and the way of the scavenger? But there was another faint thought too, echoing somewhere far in the back of Larka’s mind. A thought that was beginning to answer Tsinga’s words to her. It was hardly a conscious thought. It more was like someone whispering quietly to her as she slept. Maybe, maybe this would be a chance to learn more of these humans.
‘Very well,’ she growled, beginning to pad forward, ‘we will go amongst them.’
‘Not yet, Larka. First we watch and plan, and wait for night to make us invisible.’
The strength in Kar’s voice reassured Larka a little. The wolves lay down in the wood and listened as the wind whistled around its brittle branches. The air was terribly cold and Kar’s stomach had begun to growl at him. He felt utterly miserable and, though it had been his idea to look for food, the thought of going among the humans made him shiver.
‘Larka, are you frightened?’ he whispered suddenly. Larka looked at him. In that moment sh
e wanted to be strong for her friend, yet she longed to share her secret heart too.
‘Yes, Kar.’
‘But you’re not like me, Larka. You’re bold.’
Larka felt anything but bold. She gazed tenderly at Kar. He had grown into a very thoughtful wolf. So much less instinctive than Fell had been, or than herself for that matter. Fell had thought Kar something of a fool and a bit of a coward too. But it wasn’t true. He was just less spontaneous; less impetuous and more sensitive.
‘I’m often frightened,’ Kar went on. ‘I was frightened on the river.’
Larka growled sadly.
‘Don’t blame yourself, Kar, and don’t remind me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Kar, beginning to drift off into melancholic thoughts, ‘but it’s terrible sometimes. To think of what happened to Fell and the others.’
Larka nodded, but Kar looked up hopefully.
‘What do you think comes afterwards, Larka?’ he said.
‘Do you believe those stories, of Tor and Dammam and Fenris?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Larka quietly, gazing up at the darkening heavens, but the she-wolf felt a strange longing stirring inside her. ‘Sometimes I think they’re just tales for cubs.’
Kar seemed very gloomy at her answer.
‘Larka,’ he said, ‘what do you think real courage is?’
The words of the verse came to the she-wolf through the trees.
‘Real courage. What do you mean?’
‘Well, Fell always thought courage was being a brave hunter,’ said Kar, ‘but what if you’re no good at hunting?’
Again Kar seemed very gloomy, but he suddenly felt that the most courageous thing he could do, the most courageous thing he had ever done was to tell Larka exactly how he was feeling.
‘Can I tell you something, Larka,’ he whispered, ‘just you? Can you keep a secret?’
Larka was almost amused, for in their predicament who was there to tell?
‘What, Kar? What secret?’
‘I don’t want to die, Larka.’
Larka’s young heart went out to her friend. He lifted his muzzle and howled quietly to himself, but as the call quivered through the air towards the humans, Larka growled.
‘Hush, Kar. They’ll hear you.’
The friends fell silent again, as the night settled around them. The darkness seemed to steal into their thoughts, but it gave them comfort too, for at least it offered the frightened wolves the promise of concealment from the humans. It was getting very late when Larka got to her feet.
‘Well, then,’ she whispered, ‘if we’re going to do this thing I suppose we’d better get going. Stealth and cunning, Kar.’ An orange glow was coming from the first wooden den as the wolves padded down the hill towards the humans.
Kar began to shiver a little under his fur, but there was no sign of life. Indeed, if the wolves had known it, inside the den the humans were already beginning to doze.
The old woodcutter they had watched on the hill was hunched by a stove in their single room, wrapped tight in his woollen coat. His wife sat opposite him on a wooden stool, dressed in red woven cloth and slumbering too. Her face was as old and wrinkled as her husband’s, and her hands were clasped together tightly around a little wooden crucifix that she always carried with her to ward off the evil eye. She had fallen asleep watching the man she had loved for nearly fifty years.
There was a bed in the room, a simple cot. Neither of them were using it, for here, under a threadbare blanket, lay a little seven-year-old boy. He was asleep too, near his grandparents, for his own parents had died of cholera not a year before, and he was dreaming fitfully. As the wolves neared the house in the snowy night though, the boy stirred and suddenly lifted his head. The woodcutter woke too.
‘What is it, Roman? Can’t you sleep?’
‘I keep having bad dreams, Grandfather. Did you hear them calling in the night?’
‘Yes, Roman,’ yawned the woodcutter wearily and he nudged the dog at his feet, ‘the voice of true hunger. The voice of the wild wolf.’
‘I saw three last spring,’ shivered the boy, sitting up in bed now, ‘they looked just like dogs to me. Perhaps one day I will catch one and tame it.’
‘Perhaps, Roman,’ smiled the woodcutter, ‘though some say you can never really tame a wolf, and looks can fool. Survival in the wild makes them far more powerful than dogs and far more dangerous. But if you ever do we should change your name to Wolfram and send you to live in the Northern lands.’
‘Why, Grandfather?’
‘Wolfram means ravenwolf, Roman. Odin, the god of the Vikings, always kept two giant wolves beside him that followed him into battle, along with a pair of ravens that would peck at the corpses.’
Outside, Larka suddenly stopped and shivered. The she-wolf felt her senses more acutely than ever as her interest in the dens before her blended with the fear thrilling through her body. The voices came to her faintly from beyond.
‘Even today some believe it ensures victory,’ the boy’s grandfather went on inside the house, ‘to see a wolf and a raven together before a battle. Sometimes they really are seen together in the wild, but then many strange legends are drawn from real facts about nature, especially in the land of Transylvania.’
The boy trembled, but he was looking through the window at the soaring, snow-capped mountains and he suddenly felt a mixture of fear and desire.
‘I know the Gypsies think they have the evil eye,’ Roman said in a nervous voice, ‘and Petru says they carried off a whole group of Gypsies last month. Left nothing but their boots.’
His grandfather grinned. His face was as gnarled and pitted as the bark of an ancient oak tree.
‘The Gypsies do have many superstitions, Roman. That to look into a wolf’s eyes can blind a man, or to walk in a wolf’s tracks can lame a horse. But we should not listen to Gypsy tales, Roman, and as for Petru’s story, I have never heard, from any but fools, of a healthy wolf attacking a human in the wild. We are not their natural prey.’
The way his grandfather was talking reminded Roman of his own father but his parents were gone, and Roman somehow knew that he had to grow up more quickly than other children in the village.
‘Petru says they are hunting them again, Grandfather.’
‘Yes, Roman. With this nonsense about the theft of a child and the bounty, there won’t be any wolves left before long. But then, the people are frightened. The Turk is raiding again. Perhaps that has added to their anger, though Men have always hated the wolf.’
‘Why?’ said the boy indignantly, suddenly looking very unhappy indeed.
‘Maybe because they see something in the wolf that they hate and fear in themselves. Maybe because wolves take their sheep and goats, as if we shouldn’t all share life’s bounty. For few have the imagination to see what it is really like to be a wolf. In some towns they even put wolves on trial, as if one should judge the animals.’
Roman found the idea so strange that he pulled the covers over him.
‘But then haven’t we always used the animals like scapegoats. Even more than one another?’
‘Scapegoats?’ said Roman, peering over the covers.
‘In ancient times,’ said his grandfather, ‘villagers used to take a goat and put their hands on it in the hope it would take their sins on its shoulders, and then they would drive it out into the wild.’
Again, Roman looked very unhappy.
‘But as for superstitions, not all are bad,’ added his grandfather, smiling encouragingly, ‘my favourite is of the corn wolf, Roman, a good spirit that guards the crops.’
‘I think the wolf we heard tonight is a good spirit,’ insisted Roman warmly, curling up his toes.
‘I’m sure he is,’ smiled his grandfather, ‘and we should believe such things, especially at the time of our saviour’s birth.’
Roman seemed comforted and he settled in his bed again to sleep. As he closed his eyes he decided that he would have a dream, and
that his dream would be about a wolf. Outside the young grey wolves passed on through the creeping night.
‘Look,’ growled Kar suddenly, ‘down there.’
Kar’s eyes had locked on a space of open ground between two pine trees. The snow around it was scuffed and melted, marked with a good number of human spores that led back to the wooden dens just beyond. Though more of the orange light spilt out on to the snow from these dwellings, there was no one about.
On he ground where the Spores led, the wolves saw a great mound of discoloured matter that made Larka’s senses reel. It was at once delicious and acrid, with a strong scent of decay hanging from the air. Kar was the first to begin rooting through the rubbish heap, turning it over with his muzzle and snuffling after the smells that had suddenly assaulted his senses. Larka lifted her head from the pile. She had an old bone in her jaws.
‘Saved,’ cried Kar.
Their excitement was short-lived. It was soon clear that there was little here that was substantial for the wolves to eat, for the villagers were desperately poor and there was nothing that they could afford to waste. Larka’s bone had long been stripped of its marrow by hungry rodents, and insects and the tiny creatures that swarmed like an army around the rubbish heap. There was no goodness in it at all.
‘Come on,’ said Larka dejectedly, dropping the thing again, ‘let’s get closer.’
Larka and Kar padded on again until they saw a strange den ahead of them. The orange glow they had seen from the houses was spilling out on to the snow and, as they crept up in the darkness the wolves gasped. There were no humans about but the building was blazing with their burning air.
‘Fire.’ Larka trembled. ‘Be careful, Kar.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The elements. We’ve already been touched by four of them, Kar. Earth, air, water, and ice. Fire is the last to fear now.’
The wolves had come to the village forge and in the flickering shadows they saw a great brazier, burning with coals. On a wooden bench in front of it lay a number of strange objects that reminded them of the soldiers they had seen from the mountains, for the scythes that the smith had been mending glittered like swords. Larka remembered the fire she had seen at the Gypsy camp and, as they watched, there was a great hissing sound and the fire suddenly flared up.