The Sight (2 page)

‘And you don’t want to get any closer,’ snorted Brassa beside Kipcha, whining and licking her wounded paw.

Palla nodded immediately.

‘Brassa’s right.  Men may live in packs like us, but they are not Lera.’

‘Man isn’t a Lera, Palla?’ growled Bran with surprise, as the wind rose and made the forest shake around the Sikla.

‘Don’t be foolish, Bran, every Varg knows that Tor and Fenris made Man different to the Lera.’

As Palla spoke of the wolf gods, Tor and Fenris, Brassa nodded approvingly.  They were the makers of sky and stone, the gods of the wolves’ religion, which had driven out ancient superstitions like the Sight, although their faith was far older than the oldest of the trees in the forest around them.

‘Tor and Fenris gave Man a gift,’ Palla went on gravely, looking about her in the snow, ‘that set him for ever apart from the animals.  Though he doesn’t have the power to see in the dark, or scent a thousand flowers on the breeze and listen to the falling leaves, his mind makes him strong and cruel.  And evil too.’

Brassa lifted her head to the heavens and for a moment, through a breach in the thick cloud, she saw a single star, shining so brightly above the castle and the village and the returning wolf pack, that it looked like a beacon light.  But Huttser had noticed how cold Brassa was becoming and he was frantic to be moving again.

‘Come, Palla,’ he cried.  ‘You must lead the way now.  If you don’t find the cave soon we’ll all be carrion by the morning.’

Palla looked back gravely at her mate.

‘If I can remember where it is, Huttser.’

Palla sprang forward in the freezing blizzard and the ground dropped suddenly ahead of them as they came to a river.  It was wide but its surface was completely frozen over.  Soon the whole pack was moving across.  Palla and Brassa went very slowly, fighting the wind and careful not to trip, as Palla looked desperately for any natural feature she might recognize from her youth.  Although wolves have better memories than many animals, they share the general forgetfulness of the Lera, and for suns Palla had been trying to remember the best route back to her birthplace.  But soon Bran was running at Kipcha’s side as the pack followed the Drappa along the river’s sweeping course.

‘Kipcha,’ cried the Sikla as he fought the bitter wind, ‘it’s been so strange, fleeing like this with the Drappa pregnant.’

Kipcha shivered as she tried to keep a grip on the ice.

‘I know, Bran, but Morgra will never get her paws on Palla’s cubs.’

‘Why does she want our pups, Kipcha?’

‘It’s not just Palla’s she wants, but I don’t know.  I’ve heard such strange stories lately, Bran.  Perhaps it’s to do with the legend.’

‘Legend?’ said Bran, thinking to himself that it was certainly a night for legends.

‘Of the Sight,’ cried Kipcha.  ‘I was told about it when I was a cub, but I had quite forgotten it until I saw that horrid castle and Palla started talking of Man’s evil.’

‘Why?’ growled Bran nervously.

‘Because the legend of the Sight speaks of both Man and the Varg.’

Bran suddenly remembered a story that always frightened him as a cub.  Of a wolf whose side was pierced by one of the man pack’s sticks during a harvest moon and so, when the moon fattened, he underwent a terrible transformation.  His muzzle withered and his fur fell away to leave him pink and bald.

His teeth and ears shrank and he stood up on his hind legs like the two-feet and instead of talking in the voice of howling song he began to voice in Man’s strange grunts and whines.  His tail shrivelled away and he could no longer run like the river, or scent for miles.  He lost the power to see in the dark and had to go down to live with the man pack, feeding on meat shrivelled by Man’s burning air.

‘You don’t mean the wolf man, Kipcha?’ whispered Bran, and he shuddered.

‘No, Bran, that’s just a cubs’ story,’ growled Kipcha, shaking her head scornfully, ‘the legend is no impossible transformation.  It tells of a time when a wolf with the Sight would steal a human child.’

‘A wolf steal a child,’ said Bran in astonishment.

‘And rear it as their own, to teach it the ways of the Sight,’ Kipcha went on.

‘Who ever heard of such a thing?’

Kipcha had come to a stop below the looming castle.  There was an air of loneliness and violence about that craggy place, of some profound mystery too that even the bats wheeling above its battlements could not fathom with their piercing senses.  But Huttser was nosing the ice in front of Kipcha and in the snow there was a set of huge paw prints.

‘Bear,’ the Dragga grunted as they came up, sniffing the spores with distaste.  ‘It seems wolves are not the only Lera treading through the forest tonight.’

Suddenly, ahead of them, Palla gave a delighted howl and led them up off the river.  She had remembered the way after all.  The she-wolf’s relief was plain as she spotted a small frozen waterfall and a birch tree, beyond which she knew lay the cave they were hunting for.  Soon they were standing outside a low entrance in the slope of the hill, below a great boulder above them.  The cave was partly shielded by a trailing willow, its mouth yawning into the blackness beyond.

‘Thank Fenris,’ cried Huttser, as the wind shook the branches.

The cave was low-ceilinged, so that Huttser had to drop his head as Palla led him inside, but it stretched well back into the mountain and, despite its proximity to the stream, was also remarkably dry.  The air was fresh and cool, but the wolves found it far warmer than the world outside.

‘It’s good to be back,’ growled Palla with pleasure, and the she-wolf’s voice began to echo around the rock chamber.

‘This is where I was born, Huttser.  My birthing den.  We could fit the whole pack in here when we needed to.’

‘A perfect place to rear our pups in safety,’ sighed Huttser, nuzzling his mate tenderly.

Palla lay down and Huttser licked her beautiful face in the den.  His heart was full of worry, but Palla could already begin to feel the numbness leaving her limbs as she lay in the warm, dark cave.  Yet the she-wolf was desperately hungry and her head felt light and dizzy.

As Brassa prowled into the cave she began to look around her fondly.

‘Huttser, I nursed Palla here myself,’ she said proudly.  ‘It brings back such memories.’

‘Not all of them good,’ murmured Palla.  ‘You nursed Morgra here too, remember?’

Brassa looked strangely wounded.  She fell silent as Kipcha settled on the edge of the chamber as well.  As Bran padded inside, he pushed accidentally against Huttser, who turned and snarled at him.  Bran jumped sideways, creeping back to the edge of the wall in submission and showing his throat to the Dragga.  They were all exhausted and hungry, and Huttser’s worry for Palla had strained his patience to breaking point.

‘Try and get some sleep, all of you,’ Huttser muttered sullenly, turning away from Bran.  ‘Without sleep how can a Varg go on?’

Wolves spend something like a fifth of their lives asleep, but Bran whined miserably.

‘Sleep? How can I sleep with this ache eating at my gut? Besides, I’m bound to have nightmares about that Stone Den.  It’s horrid.’

In the cave Palla looked up.

‘My parents said the castle was deserted, Bran,’ she whispered, as if to reassure the Sikla.  ‘But as cubs the grown-ups used to tell dark stories about it too.  They say Morgra climbed up there once.  But she was always so inquisitive.  That’s why she always asked so many questions about the Sight.’

Huttser threw Palla a warning look but it was too late.

‘The Sight,’ whispered  Kipcha excitedly, her breath stroking the others.  ‘Tell us more about the Sight, Brassa.’

Brassa was the pack’s advisor and keeper of stories, but the old she-wolf suddenly seemed rather nervous.  As she stared around the cave the others’ eyes had locked on hers though and Brassa turned to Huttser, for she knew he disapproved of discussing such things.  There were so many rumours already circulating now that the Dragga let her speak.

‘Most say that the Sight is pure myth, Kipcha,’ growled the nurse quietly.  ‘The Varg’s belief in it died out long ago, thank Tor, although it was the way of seeing that the predators have believed in since the birth of the sun.  The seeing that comes through the forehead.  The sense beyond sense, drawing its strength from the energy in all things.  They say the power had not reappeared among the wolves for generations.  Until Morgra came.’

‘Why?’ asked Palla.

‘Who knows.  Perhaps it faded because the Varg began to look to reason and their wits, though the Sight was always a very rare gift.  That, too, made it feared.  But some say when it reappears, it usually comes to more than one.’

Bran gulped.

‘In the old days, Brassa,’ growled Kipcha, ‘what did the wolves use it for?’

‘That, too, little is known of.  Some say it helped the wolves survive the Great Trek, when we first came out of the Land of the Northern Snows.  Others that the old Seers cultivated it as a way of telling the future.  Still others argue that it was a gift from heaven to help the wolves in their search for Truth.’

‘The stories, they frighten me,’ growled Bran.  Brassa nodded coldly.

‘Yes, Bran.  It’s frightening.  There are three powers of the Sight.  The first is to see through the eyes of birds, the Helpers.’

Bran stirred, unhappily.

‘The second is to look into still water and see things there of far off realities, of past, present and even future.’

The wolf pack all looked up, not simply because of the strangeness of the idea, but because a wolf fears nothing more than death by water.  If a wolf is drowned then they believe the soul can never find a true resting place in the skies with Tor and Fenris.

‘But the last power,’ whispered Brassa, ‘that is the most fearful, although it is said that none have even reached it before.  It is the power to touch the minds of others directly and control thoughts and even physical actions.  Some say that only predators can wield the Sight, but that if they do it always brings great unhappiness and misfortune.’

The wind outside was screeching now, moaning and howling around the cave mouth.  The wolves were all thinking fearfully of Morgra, and they hoped more than ever that they had left her far behind.  But as Bran watched Brassa, for a moment he fancied she was keeping something back.

For a while in the den not one of the wolves dared speak as the wind went on moaning.  But suddenly Huttser sprang to his feet.

‘All this is nonsense,’ he cried irritably.  ‘The Sight is nothing but a myth, as Brassa says.  And besides, doesn’t the wolf have senses enough to master the world?’

Even as Huttser spoke, a shadow suddenly spread across the wall of the cave.  It swayed gently and though it looked something like a wolf, its muzzle was strangely extended and misshapen.  Huttser swung round, growling threateningly, and even Bran raised his tail in challenge, although he drew backwards too.  But as the pack recognized the handsome face that suddenly appeared through the darkness, they all sighed with relief.

‘Khaz,’ cried Kipcha, wagging her tail delightedly.

The wolf that trotted into the cave was only a little smaller than Huttser, though distinguished by a great bushy tail, tinged with red.  His eyes sparkled as he acknowledged Kipcha and dipped his head to the Dragga, for in his mouth he was carrying a hunk of fresh meat.  It was this that had distorted the shadow thrown on to the cave wall from the world outside.  As Khaz threw the meat on the cave floor he shivered and shook the snow from his thick coat.

‘There,’ he cried, ‘not much I’m afraid, but enough to give strength to Palla and her little ones.  This cold could freeze the claws off a bear.’

‘Good for you, Khaz,’ growled Huttser.  But he was thinking, too, of those huge paw prints in the snow, ‘I was wondering where you’d got to.’

‘I would have caught up with your tracks sooner,’ panted Khaz, lying down and nuzzling up to Kipcha for warmth, ‘but I was checking for Night Hunters.  No sign at all, thank Fenris, though I met another family fleeing the edict.’

The freezing wind began to whistle through the willow tree now and its movement sent swaying shadows dancing like crabbed fingers across the cave floor.  Palla began to gnaw at the flesh, chewing at it with the side of her powerful jaws.  It was tough, but her teeth were very sharp and to an appetite enlivened by hunger it tasted delicious.  Bran’s eyes looked longingly at her across the cave.

‘And I saw other things to worry us, Huttser,’ growled Khaz.  ‘Humans, hunting near the village.’

‘Man,’ snorted Brassa, lifting her paw as if in evidence of what she was saying, ‘they are evil, as Palla says.  They are cruel and kill without hunger.’

‘So do we, Brassa,’ said Khaz rather cheerfully, staring at Palla too as she fed, ‘for we are Putnar also.’

Putnar was the wolves’ word for a predator.  Among the titles Morgra’s Balkar gave themselves to intimidate the free wolves they called themselves ‘First Among the Putnar’.  Khaz bared his teeth.  He couldn’t hide the saliva beginning to drip from his jaws as he gazed at Palla, for although he had made the kill and eaten a little himself, it was only a small calf and he hadn’t lingered to feed properly.

 ‘Some things not even the Putnar can control,’ Khaz went on, growling to himself thoughtfully.  ‘I got into one of their sheep folds last spring.  I wasn’t hungry by the time I left but I...  I couldn’t help myself.  I killed them all.’

‘The bloodlust was on you, Khaz,’ smiled Huttser indulgently, ‘that’s all.  And when they bring so many tamed Lera together in once place, it’s difficult to resist.’

As the wolves thought of Man’s strange habit of taming the Lera, they all nodded gravely.  It was fundamental in Varg lore that the wolf was the only Lera that could never be truly tamed.  Freedom is a wild wolf’s birth right.

Palla finished her meal and licked her lips as the others tried to swallow nothing but their disappointment.  It wasn’t really difficult because, though they were all bitterly hungry, there are few bonds in nature as strong as a wolf pack and their co-operation is remarkable, especially when the Drappa is pregnant.  They will all hunt to feed the expectant mother and nothing is allowed to get in the way of the pack’s future, now symbolized by the life stirring in Palla’s belly.