One cold sun he found a bone outside his cave and he grabbed it eagerly. It was the shin bone of a horse, but it had no nourishment in it. Kar swung it around proudly and raised his tail, but suddenly he heard a noise in the trees nearby. His eyes grew wary and cunning.
‘It’s mine,’ he muttered loudly, ‘all mine. But I must keep it safe. Safe and secret.’
Kar ran into the cave and, at the back of his home, began to scrabble at the dirt, digging a hole to bury his worthless find. He unearthed a large rock and placed the bone tenderly in the hole made by the space it had left. Carefully he pushed back the soil with his muzzle. When he had finished Kar felt deeply proud of himself.
That night Kar lay there, playing with the rock between his paws. As he tossed it from paw to paw, though, something strange happened. The flinty stone split apart and there, inside it, Kar saw a shape. It was like the skeleton of a small fish Kar had taken one sun, etched into the stone. Kar growled as he wondered how this thing had got here, how it came to be in the stone and on the mountain.
With the morning Kar padded outside, over to the edge of the trees. It had begun to snow heavily, and he stood staring mournfully out over the land. The cold melted through his fur and made him shiver furiously, but as he returned to his cave, he looked back. For one flickering moment, Kar’s heart beat faster. There were two sets of paw prints in the snow. But with anguish Kar suddenly realized that both the tracks were his own.
As winter grew even harsher Kar lay brooding in his cave. He thought of Fell, and the guilt Kar felt wrestled with all the slights he had suffered from him as a cub. Kar thought of his murdered parents, too, and Huttser’s treatment of him. The thoughts made him feel even more worthless, and he was growing so sick at heart that he hardly cared if he ate or slept, and instead he would root around the floor of the cave and pick up pebbles and chew on them to hurt his teeth.
Kar’s mind was filled with shadows, with dark questions that he could not answer. This cave, Kar’s prison, was quite as bad as the kennel. Where iron bars had chained Mitya and Manov, Kar’s own mind had became his gaoler.
Kar could not see how strange he had grown, for he would spend hours chewing pebbles and trying to talk to the bats roosting above him. He would walk in circles in the snow and try and fool himself that the prints were not his own, or stand for a whole sun gazing at a log, and asking what its shape meant. Though he hunted still, he would also lie in wait for the Lera, even when he was not hungry, and spring out at them to scare them. As Kar saw them run for cover, or freeze in their tracks he would turn round and round, growling and snapping at his tail delightedly.
Kar had no one to tell him that this behaviour might be strange, or to look him in the eyes and hold his gaze and remind him of his life as an ordinary Varg. Kar had lost the living pool of company in which to view his own reflection. He no longer knew himself or what he was becoming.
But one sun, when the snow still lay on the ground, but the air had grown much warmer, Kar woke to the noise of growling outside. A grey wolf was standing there in the sunlight, looking around nervously. Though Kar hardly noticed it, he was desperately thin and he had a wound on his right flank which, although already moons old, had barely healed. When the stranger saw Kar his tail and ears came down submissively.
‘May I shelter?’ he whispered feebly. ‘I’m tired and very cold.’
‘No,’ snapped Kar. ‘Get away.’
The stranger shivered, but he didn’t move and Kar began to growl.
‘Please,’ said the stranger, ‘I need help.’
‘Help! Doesn’t everything need help? Why should I help the Varg when all they do is kill each other?’
‘I will die.’
‘We all die, fool. Tor and Fenris have made sure of that. Now go away, or I will get my friends the bats to bite you.’ Kar turned and marched back inside. But when, later that sun, he stepped outside again the grey wolf was still there, lying helplessly in the snow.
‘I’ll kill you myself if you don’t get out of here,’ growled Kar furiously.
‘Then kill me. I’m finished anyway.’
Kar stepped forward, but he paused. He thought he recognized something familiar about this stranger and Kar suddenly felt strangely embarrassed.
‘Please yourself. But don’t come any closer. This is my cave.’
‘Do you have food?’ whispered the stranger faintly.
Kar’s eyes glinted and he thought of the bone he had hidden.
‘So that’s what you want,’ he cried. ‘To steal my food.’
‘No, not steal it. But I’ll die soon if I don’t eat.’
‘Die, then,’ snorted Kar going back inside, only this time he was grumbling angrily to himself. As Kar tried to get some sleep he felt strangely unnerved. He tried to push the stranger from his mind, but he couldn’t manage it, and he began to talk to himself so loudly and angrily that the bats grew furious at the chatter and suddenly took wing, exploding from the hollow chamber in a flurry of black indignation.
But as light began to filter into the cave and the bats returned from their hunting, settling peacefully on the crevices above him, Kar got up and picked up some spare meat. Outside he tossed it almost resentfully to the stranger, but as he lay down and watched him eat, Kar felt a sense of peace descend on him and he was glad that he had overcome himself. Later that sun he gave the stranger more food and when he thanked him, rather than snapping at him, Kar just nodded. That night the air grew colder again, and it began to snow once more and, as Kar turned to go inside, he stopped.
‘I suppose you can come inside.’
The stranger picked himself up slowly and limped after Kar into the cave.
‘How long have you lived here?’ asked the wolf, looking about him.
‘I don’t know. It’s fine though, isn’t it?’ answered Kar proudly. ‘And it’s mine, so don’t you forget it.’
‘I should say it’s rather lonely,’ shuddered the stranger, ‘it must be lonely being a Kerl.’
Kar’s ears cocked up in surprise at the word. But the stranger was right. As he slept that night, Kar was strangely comforted that there was another wolf in the cave, but he had a terrible dream too. It was of Fell and the ice, and angry faces glared at him accusingly in his sleep. Huttser was there and Palla and the old blind fortune-teller. When he woke he was drenched in sweat, and a yawning guilt hovered about him.
‘But you must have missed company,’ the stranger said as they lay together in the morning.
‘Sometimes,’ muttered Kar irritably, ‘but I have my own thoughts.’
‘I can imagine,’ whispered the stranger, looking around him and shivering.
‘They’re no worse than my thoughts out there in the real world. Besides, I’m cursed.’
An odd, mournful look came into the stranger’s eyes.
‘Like my poor sister,’ he muttered sadly.
Kar looked up. The recognition he had felt the sun before had woken in Kar’s mind again and he suddenly got up.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Skop.’
Kar’s eyes opened in astonishment.
‘Skop,’ he cried. ‘Skop. But... but don’t you recognize me?’
Skop rose too now and peered back at Kar through the shadows. Kar did not realize that his singed fur had changed his features, and also he had grown since Skop had left him.
‘It’s me, Skop. Kar.’
The wolves’ muzzles were almost touching now and their tails wagged furiously as they examined each other in the cave. Suddenly their memories came flooding back with the scent filling their nostrils.
‘I had to leave you, Kar. I couldn’t look after you properly and I wanted to help the rebel pack fight Morgra. I made sure you had a good home.’
Kar felt no real bitterness any more. They had spent two whole suns talking together and already the company had worked its own small miracle on the Kerl.
‘You have suffered, Skop,’ growled Kar quietly
.
‘All the wolves have suffered, Kar. The Balkar ambushed me in the mountains. I fought them off, though this wound still won’t heal.’
Skop tried to lick his side and Kar winced at the sight of the livid cut.
Now Kar had Skop with him, he found a new purpose. As spring came he went hunting again for game for his friend. The wolf took a young roe deer seven suns later and brought the meat proudly to Skop.
‘That’s more like it, Kar. You’re behaving like a real Varg again. Will you do something for me, though? Will you go outside and look at yourself in the water?’
Kar looked into the rippling water and hardly recognized himself. His muzzle was thin and gaunt. His eyes were sunken and glassy and the fur around his ears was wild and dishevelled. From that moment on Kar began to groom himself and to eat properly, yet the greatest healer was talking to Skop.
As he listened to Skop, Kar was staggered at his lack of bitterness. Skop hated the Balkar, but the hatred had not eaten him up as Kar had been consumed by what he had seen. Kar realized that Skop had some philosophy that had protected him from his own experience. As Kar listened and talked, his own heart and mind began to heal. But Skop’s wound was growing even worse. It had become infected and caused him terrible pain.
As summer approached, the wolves felt something of the bonds they had known in their packs being gradually restored. They were sitting together outside one warming sun when Skop told him a secret. He had learnt from a lone wolf that Kar’s brothers had been killed in the Balkar camp. Kar lay there growling bitterly. At last he raised his head.
‘Skop,’ he whispered, ‘do you know what’s become of Huttser and Palla?’
‘No. I heard nothing of them. I would like to see them again.’
‘And Larka?’
Skop shook his muzzle as he looked out towards the forests and the giant mountains. Kar gazed out there, too, and as he did so he felt a sudden tugging at his heart, but a sense of certainty also, that Larka was still alive.
All that sun Kar thought of Larka and that night he dreamt of her. But it wasn’t a dream of their childhood, when they played together at the Meeting Place. They were walking quietly together and, as they stopped in the grass, Larka suddenly turned and rubbed her muzzle against his. He felt a great sense of peace and of place at her side, and when he woke, for the first time in as long as he could remember, he felt happy. Kar’s happiness did not last. When he got up he found that Skop was shivering terribly, although it was hot outside. His eyes were open but they had a distant look.
‘Skop?’
‘This wound, Kar. It has poisoned my blood. It won’t be long now.’
‘But you can’t leave me, not now.’
‘We all leave each other in the end,’ said Skop sadly. ‘That is Tor and Fenris’s way. But maybe we shall meet again. If Tor and Fenris’s forests exist.’
‘But, Skop—’
‘Don’t be sad, Kar. At least I will not die alone and you have done my heart good. By helping me, even before you knew who I was, you restored my dwindling faith. But promise me this. When I am gone you will leave this place. In my travels I met many lone wolves and many of them were happy, but the life of a Kerl is not for you. Look after yourself, Kar. Love yourself.’
‘I promise,’ said Kar, thinking suddenly of Larka.
‘Then go in search of your family, Kar, and if you ever see Palla again tell her ... well, you know.’
‘I’ll heal you, Skop,’ said Kar suddenly, ‘I’ll—’
‘Oh, my friend, it would take a miracle to heal me now.’ Kar laid his head on the cave floor as he gazed out at the world.
‘And there are no miracles, are there, Skop?’ he whispered bitterly.
But Skop lifted his head again.
‘Don’t be foolish, my friend,’ he growled softly. ‘Can’t you see? It’s all a miracle.’
It took three more suns for the poison to do its work, but when it was finished Kar noticed with surprise the look of peace that lay on Skop’s muzzle. His own heart was choked with pain, though, and the howl that rang through the cave sent the bats wheeling into the air. For a whole sun he stood there, suddenly alone again.
He picked up a few pebbles in his mouth and began to toss them angrily around the cave, and when the bats returned he growled and snapped at them furiously. The loneliness was even more terrible than before. But as he lay down to sleep that night something else came to his rescue. He dreamt of Larka again, and the next sun he stood staring down at himself in the pool outside.
‘I need others,’ he growled to himself, ‘for good or bad. That is my nature. I need her.’
But as Kar thought of the wolves out there, and of the Night Hunters who had murdered his parents and his brothers, a terrible anger rose inside him.
‘I’ll avenge you all,’ he cried, ‘whatever I do.’
Kar padded back into the cave and looked at the wolf lying there on the floor of the home where he had nearly gone mad. He hated to leave him in that hollow stone grave, but his mind was made up. He blessed Skop for having helped him and strangely, he wished him a safe journey. Before he turned to leave he looked up at the bats hanging in their crevices.
‘Guard him, my friends, guard him well.’
Kar travelled for several suns, and began to rise higher and higher into the mountains. On the wide, flat plains to the South Kar looked down and saw more evidence of Man and their battles: fields flecked with fire; stone dens in ruins; horses thundering through the dust. As he travelled into the woods he began to notice the Lera again and shuddered at what he saw as he remembered the words of the legend.
‘What has happened?’ thought Kar. ‘Am I too late?’
But at last Kar came to a place that made him gasp with horror. In the valley of Kosov the dead rebels lay everywhere, their torn carcasses already dissolving into the earth. Kar shivered and passed on, his thoughts even more urgently on Larka.
Kar could not know that the Greater Pack had already been defeated, or that Morgra had used the ancient howl to open the Pathways of Death. He could not know that the third power of the Sight had entered the world, or that the Searchers were abroad, touching the Lera and filling the animals with horror and guilt and confusion.
The next night Kar woke suddenly among the trees. Again he had dreamt of Larka. It was a beautiful night with a moon shining through the canopy of leaves, but though the weather whispered of warmth and ease, Kar’s heart was heavy. He didn’t know what the feeling was. If it were true or not. It had come on him suddenly and, though he thought somewhere that he was imagining it because he had dreamt of Larka, he couldn’t shake it off.
It was like a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, a queasiness, a sense of betrayed responsibilities. But as he lay there and listened, Kar felt a tingling, just as Huttser had felt that sun approaching the cave when Khaz had spotted Morgra’s tracks above the den. Something was calling to him. That sense that all the Lera know. Beyond sound or sight or scent. Instinct.
‘The pact,’ whispered Kar. ‘I have forgotten the pact.’
14 - The Red Meadow
‘They stood begging to be the first to make the voyage over. Their hands outstretched in yearning for the farther shore.’ Virgil, The Aeneid
‘But he escaped the flames?’
‘Yes, Father,’ nodded Larka, ‘of that I’m certain. I saw it in the water.’
Larka shuddered. What else had she seen in the drizzling rain? As her parents lay beside her, shielded by the trees, Larka had changed almost beyond Huttser and Palla’s understanding. It was more than the natural distancing of parent and child. She had grown far more serious with the terrible responsibility that afflicted her.
‘So Kar, too, is alive,’ growled Huttser. ‘Fenris is kind.’
‘Larka,’ whispered Palla, licking her daughter’s muzzle tenderly, ‘somehow before the spectres came I felt you were near. How did you get through after the massacre? How did you find us?’
; ‘The rain, Mother, your paw prints spoke to us from the mud. Several times they nearly discovered us in the forests. It was only Skart’s eyes that kept the way open through the Night Hunters. They must never find us.’
Huttser growled as they looked up to the mountains through the dense foliage. The Balkar were still searching everywhere and each sun, though the rebels were well concealed, the flying scavengers ranged the skies above.
‘If Morgra is right,’ said Huttser, ‘and the place Slavka stumbled on beyond the stone face is Harja, then the creature is in more danger than ever.’
The rebels had found Bran a cave where he lay now, guarded by Rar, but as Huttser thought of the creature he felt no fondness for the human.
‘Yes, Father, and we must guard Bran day and night. The altar is close.’
‘But what is happening amongst the Lera.’ Palla shuddered. ‘It’s terrible.’
‘The Pathways of Death have been opened, Mother,’ growled Larka, ‘and I must try to seal them again soon. Call back the Searchers.’
Palla’s eyes were suddenly full of fear. Fear of the terrible journey her daughter was about to attempt. A journey to the realms of the dead.
It was ten suns since Larka had saved them from the combat and seen the vision of her own death at Harja. Her coming had worked a dramatic transformation among the rebel pack. Though they all felt something of fear as they watched the odd little party, they had begun to hope again at Larka’s coming, and they kept talking of the family and a Deliverer.
Seeing how helpless Bran was, they had grown less fearful of the strange legend of the Man Varg. They could no longer refute the power of the Sight after what they had seen of the Searchers, and some even started to mutter that Larka should find the entrance to citadel and look into the human’s mind herself.
They had argued over which wolf would have the privilege of guarding Bran. They all wanted to hunt for it, too, and the little child had begun to grow quite fat. It seemed to have no fear any more and, as the wolves came up to marvel at it, Bran would reach out with his searching hands and tug at their fur or smile and pat their muzzles.