But even as she thought it, Slavka felt the breath of fear among the wolves. As the newcomers had arrived at the Gathering Place, the story had sent up a whisper among them. Many had seen visions as they travelled, visions of wolves watching them, wolves that had suddenly vanished again. Now the name of Wolfbane was everywhere, too. Many of the free wolves had resisted joining a Greater Pack, but such fear was stirring through the land beyond the forest that at least they had come to hear what Slavka had to tell them. Slavka rose slowly on her paws and prowled forwards. She howled and the wolves began to pad towards her.
‘You are welcome,’ she cried and her words rang through the valley. ‘Welcome all. Our time is at hand. Since Tratto’s murder and the coming of Morgra an evil has begun to stalk the land beyond the forest.’
There was an angry growling among the wolf packs.
‘But I am here to deliver you from evil. To destroy the darkness of myth, the darkness of the Sight. To help us remain Putnar, not become slaves to superstition.’
But among the wolves a little group were murmuring together.
‘But should you do this?’ asked the female. ‘We swore loyalty always, and if we betray her now—’
‘Stop talking about betrayal,’ growled the wolf she was talking to, ‘there is no such thing as betrayal. There is only breaking ranks.’
The grey wolf suddenly stepped forward from the group. He was a huge Dragga and his eyes were keen and bold. His name was Rar and his young family stood at his back.
‘Slavka,’ he cried suddenly, ‘you call yourself the Deliverer. But is a Greater Pack really the way of the wolf? And there are stories too, Slavka. Of your own methods.’
The wolves began to whisper again, but as Slavka answered Rar there was neither weakness nor doubt in her voice.
‘Some may resent me, Rar,’ she said scornfully, ‘and think me cruel. Others find the separation of male and female difficult and the combats cause mutterings. But we are Putnar, and I tell you now that we must fight strength with strength. There are rumours that Morgra and the Balkar are on their way here already.’
But Rar was not to be put off.
‘We all know of Morgra, Slavka,’ he growled, ‘and the stories of Wolfbane too. But not all believe the Sight to be evil. And now there is other talk, of the white wolf.’
In a circle among the rebels a Dragga and a Drappa stirred as he said it and their ears came up among their guards. Since that night in the snow, Huttser and Palla had been kept under constant watch.
‘You know it is not just talk, Rar,’ snarled Slavka ferociously. ‘Her name is Larka and she travels with a human. But no true wolf travels with Man. We must destroy them both and end the lies that are infecting the Putnar with weakness and fear.’
‘Slavka,’ growled Rar, appealing to the wolves around him too. ‘If this Larka has the Sight, then perhaps she can help us against Morgra. Some say that she herself is the Deliverer. That her family have been tested by the elements...’
Some of the wolves had begun to mutter again and nod, but Slavka swung up her head furiously and she gave a jealous shiver at the mention of the Deliverer.
‘What are you saying,’ she snarled. ‘That she could bring forth this Vision? This Man Varg. Man is evil, and he is close enough.’
An angry growl came from many of the wolves. Rar fell silent, for he could see that Slavka was stirring them. Even as they had come in from the mountains, they had seen the human soldiers camped at the far southern edge of the Gathering Place and it had set their instincts on edge. Like others, Rar had sought for hope in the stories of this strange white wolf, but even he would not dare to refute Slavka as she talked of Man.
‘If Larka pretends she has the Sight,’ Slavka went on, ‘she is no better than Morgra.’
The Dragga standing next to her looked up and there was a secret doubt in his eyes. He had only just returned to camp and one of his number had been captured by the Balkar. It was Gart.
‘But she will bring the human cub to me. I promise you that,’ cried Slavka. ‘Then, when I have killed it myself, my Greater Pack shall fight this darkness, tooth and claw, as Putnar should. We have always found our freedom in our pack boundaries and that freedom shall swell as our boundary swells. No longer separate and isolated. No longer hunting the forests alone. But together. Now is not the time to doubt or waver. Join together, for we face our destiny as one.’
Even Huttser felt a tingling down his spine and, despite all her cruelty, his heart beat a little faster for Slavka.
Slavka lifted her muzzle. The note was pure and strong and the grey wolves around her began to answer, one by one, heads lifting until the whole valley was echoing with their howling cries. Then, as the Greater Pack began to grow quiet again, another note came to them from the eastern edge of the valley, rising in unison, low and stirring. A howling song, the Song of the Deliverer. The howling subsided and as it did so the wolves began to call.
‘Slavka,’ they thundered, ‘Slavka.’
Even Rar found it hard not to take up the cry now, so mastered were the wolves, so strong did they seem. As their voices carried across the air to the southern edge of the valley where the human camp lay, spread out across the plain, men leapt from their tents and seized their swords.
But Huttser and Palla trembled as they stood surrounded by their guards. For suns their thoughts had been filled with terror for their daughter, and with the arrival of other packs another fear was stalking the valley. The story of Wolfbane’s promise and where it had been made had begun to circulate freely again. As the howls subsided, Huttser began to snarl as he watched Slavka.
‘Huttser,’ said Palla, so the guards could not overhear her, ‘if only we could escape.’
‘They never stop watching,’ growled Huttser angrily.
‘There are some who might help us. I heard Keeka and Karma talking. When they learnt that we were Larka’s parents. That perhaps our family. ..’
But Palla looked across to a nearby bush and she growled at what she saw there. There was a beady-eyed bird sitting in the nest. It was large and plump and it looked about it smugly. The creature was a cuckoo, and Palla had watched with horror how its birth had come about. For the nest did not belong to the cuckoo at all, but to a family of finches. Palla had seen the mother and father weave the nest proudly and lay their little eggs. But one night when the parents were off hunting, a female cuckoo had flown down and placed her own egg in the nest, too. It was much larger than the others, but feeling the warmth of its life and being forgetful, the mother and father finch had mistaken the egg for their own and sat on it with the others.
In time the egg had split open and as soon as the huge chick had emerged from the shell, it had pushed the finches’ own eggs from the nest, to fall and shatter on the ground below. Then it had begun to call for food, like a huge mouth, and so the finches had started to feed it. So rapacious was the creature, and so much food did it demand of the little birds that with time, as the cuckoo grew fat and strong, its new parents died in the effort to give it nurture. Palla shuddered as she thought of the horrible cruelty of it and in that moment she wondered what a family really was.
‘Most of the rebels are loyal to Slavka,’ growled Huttser, ‘and they would see us fight each other. But that shall never be, Palla. Meanwhile, we must hope and look to the future.’ But the she-wolf’s eyes had grown heavy and morbid.
‘The future,’ she whispered bitterly. ‘It’s as bleak as the past.’
Huttser shook his head sadly.
‘Larka,’ whispered Palla, ‘do you think she will come?’
‘She must not, Palla, whatever happens.’
A polecat was sitting on the branch of an oak licking the fur around its muzzle. Its little fangs glistened like ivory and it squeaked with satisfaction as it thought of the kill it had just made. It flicked its tail left and right and was just settling down to take a nap when it looked up in amazement. The polecat could hardly believe its eyes.
r /> There in the wood, threading through the trees. Over the past suns the polecat had been startled to see so many grey wolves moving through the forests. But this. Never in his short life had he seen this. They vanished beyond the trunks and the polecat screwed up his eyes. But no, it hadn’t been a dream. He had seen it, on a white wolf’s back.
But with that, the polecat heard a finch fluttering down to settle on the end of a branch and in that instant it forgot all about what it had just seen as it began to creep forward, stealthily along the branch, drawn by its own hunger.
The polecat was not the only Lera to see the strange little family, part wolf, part man, part bird. As they travelled north east towards Slavka in the valley of Kosov an osprey looked down from its rocky eyrie and nearly fell out of its nest. In a sparkling stream an otter poked its glistening head from the waters and promptly dropped the trout it had clasped in its eager paws. A herd of fallow deer were so startled at the sight that they began to fence with their antlers out of season. The strange apparition set up such a chattering and whispering among the animals that the forests seemed to tremble with the rumour.
But other sights had made the Lera fearful too. Sights that filled them with wonder and foreboding. Muzzles and eyes that seemed to appear from nowhere to startle the hunted, and then vanish again as if they had never been.
Larka and the others were frantically worried, for Skart had great difficulty remembering the way now, but as they travelled, at least they had more success than they had done caught in winter’s unforgiving grip. As spring edged towards summer, game became more plentiful as the herds of deer and cattle swelled and the Lera lost their fear and grew lazy with feeding. Tsarr hunted for them all and Larka’s coat lost its pallid yellowy grey, and she walked graceful and healthy through the tall grass, as white as the arctic wolf.
As she went Larka, too, began to notice more of the Lera that lived in this mysterious land. As she watched them, only sometimes did the wolf feel hunger stirring in her belly. But at other times she would look out and marvel at the forms and variety of the animals.
In the forests she saw red squirrels and stoats and weasels stalking through the trees, and fox and wildcats and otters too, spinning and twisting through the glittering streams. She saw snakes slithering through the grasses, horned adders and steppe vipers, picking their way through life with their darting tongues, their undulating bodies so in tune with the earth that they hardly needed their feeble eyes. As Larka looked at them and thought of the promised power to control all the Lera, again she felt strangely humble.
But Larka grew frantic as the summer arrived, and her friend still had difficulty recalling the best route to the valley. She hardly had a plan of what she would do when she reached Slavka, but all she could think of was saving her parents. One clear, calm morning she came to a decision.
‘Tsarr,’ she whispered looking fondly at Bran. ‘I must leave you here. Skart and I shall use the Sight again. We need Skart’s wings now.’
As Larka’s body slumped to the ground by the child, again she felt a glorious freedom as they rose in the skies, as though her troubles were dropping away from her. To the north the ragged mountains climbed into the skies. But to the south, and east and west, the forests and woods had become an ocean of colour below them, rippling and shrugging in a tide of branch and leaf.
But as this sea of growth swept before her Larka was startled, for she realized that, though the whole looked green, now, as she looked down she could see the infinite variety of shades and colours that really made up the forests, as the clouds crossed the sun or the wind rocked the branches. As Larka thought of what lay ahead, she suddenly felt as though there was some hidden moral in the grandeur of that sight.
For three suns they travelled together, and day turned to night and back into day. Larka noticed how many birds there were in the skies, for the creatures of the air had returned from their winter migrations. But, best of all, Larka liked it when the darkness came in and the she-wolf flew with Skart below a star-soaked heaven. She wondered how high Skart could fly, and if the bird turned upwards whether he could ever reach those sparking eyes of light and sail through the darkness along the Wolf Trail itself; a trail between heaven and earth that for as long as the Varg could remember had been etched into the stories of the wolf.
But the wolf and the eagle were flapping below the moon when Skart heard a cry on the air below them. A great cloud of wings was moving steadily towards the east. There were ravens and crows and hungry buzzards. The noise sent a whispering through the clouds.
‘The flying scavengers,’ shuddered Skart, ‘they are making for Kosov too.’
Suddenly, ahead of the scavengers below them and leading them on, they both recognized a single black raven. It was Kraar.
Skart dived on the air and, as they came closer, they heard Kraar’s voice crawing through the night.
‘Come,’ cried the raven triumphantly, ‘follow me. Soon I shall give our kind power over the Putnar, as Wolfbane promised me himself, and we shall feast on seas of blood.’
Before Kraar was even aware of Skart’s presence, a shadow fell on him in the skies and the flying scavengers scattered with fright as the eagle’s great talons closed like a vice around the raven’s wings. Kraar cawed in terror, but he was caught fast as the eagle sailed on.
‘So, Kraar, we meet again,’ cried Skart coldly, as he held the bird below him. ‘Flapping back to your mistress?’
‘Let me go,’ cawed the raven furiously, ‘or I’ll—’
‘Or you’ll nothing,’ snapped Skart, closing his talons even tighter, and wheeling upwards to carry the creature away from his friends. ‘You will be silent, or I will crush you like a fly. Now, tell me what is happening, Kraar. You’re going to the valley, aren’t you?’
The bird was silent.
‘I will kill you if you don’t tell me.’
Kraar screeched on the ragged wind, but the raven knew it was hopeless. Skart could feel the bird trembling in his grip, but he suddenly realized that Kraar couldn’t speak under the pressure of it.
‘Tell me and I will let you go,’ said Skart, relaxing his hold slightly. ‘Where is Morgra? ’
‘Swear you’ll release me,’ gasped the bird. ‘Swear it by the Sight.’
For a moment the eagle hesitated.
‘I swear it.’
‘Very well,’ shuddered the terrified raven. ‘Morgra and the Night Hunters are on their way to the valley as we speak.’
‘And there she plans to use the ancient howl?’
‘No, I can’t,’ screeched the bird. ‘Morgra and... and him.’ Skart squeezed again. ‘Yes, yes. Morgra is waiting for her true servants to come. She will send them amongst the Lera to do her bidding.’
‘But she doesn’t have the child?’
‘She no longer cares. She says we must trust the legend itself. Is not Larka on her way to the valley, too?’
Far away the she-wolf shuddered as she listened, but as Kraar felt the eagle’s grip weaken again with the power of his own words, Kraar said more than he had intended.
‘And Harja. The citadel lies in the mountains above the valley,’ he cried triumphantly.
The connection between Larka and Skart almost broke with the shock of it.
‘No,’ cried the eagle.
Skart’s talons nearly locked through Kraar’s heart.
‘Stop it,’ screeched the raven, ‘you promised...’
‘Kraar, you are nothing but a filthy parasite. A foul, worthless scavenger. A low, black, honourless—’
‘Skart,’ clacked Kraar suddenly and his voice was filled with bitterness, ‘do you think that I choose to be a scavenger? That I like hopping after snarling wolves or taking lambs’ eyes in the morning? If I had huge claws or a fine beak I would be true Putnar, too, and you would not call me honourless. What gives you the right to judge me? To have power over my kind?’
As Larka listened she heard truth in the bird’s words, and strangely sh
e thought of the poor Sikla.
‘Lies,’ cried Skart, ‘you are proud of being a scavenger, Kraar, hiding in the shadows. Or do you hate the thing you are? Is that why you serve Morgra. Because you are like her. Because she hates the life of the wolf and longs for the power of Man. Longs to be human.’
Skart’s talons were closing.
‘Skart,’ whispered Larka’s voice suddenly, ‘you promised Kraar you would not harm him. Whatever happens, Skart, we must not become like them.’
‘Very well,’ said the eagle scornfully, and then he dipped his beak towards Kraar and his eyes bored into the raven’s.
‘We will meet again, Kraar,’ he whispered. ‘I promise you that too. You are blackening the skies and the hearts of the birds, so when we do I will not hesitate to kill you.’
Skart released his talons with disgust and the raven dropped like a stone from his grasp. It opened its injured wings and, screeching terribly, wheeled into the skies. The flying scavengers had been scattered to the winds, but as Skart sailed on Kraar turned to rally them again.
‘Come back,’ cried his fading voice. ‘You’ve no need to be afraid. Wolfbane is with us and I, Kraar, am not frightened of the flying Putnar, I will lead you to...’
‘It’s true, Skart, isn’t it?’ whispered Larka as Kraar’s voice disappeared into the distance. ‘We are caught in this legend somehow, just as Kraar was caught in your talons.’
The eagle didn’t answer the wolf but as she lay by the child, Larka could hardly breathe.
‘We must hurry, Skart,’ Larka said suddenly. ‘Somehow you must warn my parents for me. Get them away from there.’
But as Skart flew on through the night it seemed that fear itself was riding on the wind.
The sun had come again and they were flying along the Carpathians’ southern edge, directly east, when Skart began to descend. They had come at last to a plain and Larka shuddered as they looked down. There below them was a human encampment. A great herd of horses was corralled at one edge and around them there was a sea of tents and the smoking grey embers of fires wheezing in the day.