Doglands (23 page)

When the bucket reached the top of the circle, Dervla threw the red lever again, and the big wheel lurched to a halt. Spotty’s pimpled face peeped out, then ducked back.

Then Dervla turned to Furgul.

“I want to run with you too.”

The Dog Bunch loped across the carnival as if the moonlight had conjured phantoms from the Doglands’ darkest dreams. They crossed the empty roads with their ugly yellow lights, and soon they’d left the sleeping town behind them. Open country beckoned, and they took to the fields.

Furgul led them on at a steady pace with Dervla and Zinni close behind him. Then came Cogg and Baz. Brennus padded along at the rear.

Brennus heard a sound. He looked over his shoulder and grinned.

“Trouble ahoy!” he called.

Furgul glanced back as Skyver galloped up alongside Brennus.

“I suddenly realized, you’d never pull this off without me,” panted Skyver.

Brennus gave him a look.

“Okay, so I was scared of the dark.” Skyver glanced at Furgul in the lead. “Speaking of which, how does he know where he’s going?”

Brennus said, “Because Furgul is the dog who runs in darkness.”

P
ART
T
HREE
THE DOG
BUNCH

A
s the sun climbed above the easternmost edge of the world, the Dog Bunch topped the crest that marked the craggy northern ridge of Argal’s Mountain. They’d covered more miles in fewer hours than any other dogs they’d ever known. They themselves could hardly believe that they’d done it. Only one among them knew what the secret might be, yet he, too, was astonished. They stopped to watch the distant ball of fire drag itself into the sky. It left blood-red claw marks on the clouds.

“Shepherd’s warning,” said Brennus.

No one else spoke. From the ridge, the rock sloped down toward woods and pasture. Beyond the fields a dirty smudge marred the land, which Furgul knew was the slave camp at Dedbone’s Hole.

They descended a hundred feet to a mountain stream, and there they slaked their thirst. While the others drank, Furgul wandered to a ledge and looked down. He saw the dirt track that wound up the hill from the valley below. At the top end of the track he saw the entrance to the cave of death.

He expected grim memories to flash through his mind, but they didn’t. Instead he felt dizzy. A strange current flowed up through his legs and through his body. It was as strong as the torrent that had swept him down the river, yet he didn’t move. It was as powerful as the strongest wind, yet not a hair on his coat was ruffled. It had no sound. It had no taste. It was invisible. And yet it was there. And he knew that it could tear him apart like a leaf if it chose to.

Furgul shook himself down and stepped back from the ledge, and the strange sensation was gone. When he turned he found Brennus nearby. Brennus had been watching him. Furgul felt safer. He went to stand closer to the old Saint Bernard. Brennus nodded to the stream, where others paddled and rested.

“None of them felt it,” he said.

“Did you?” asked Furgul.

Brennus nodded. “Yes. But nowhere near as strongly as you did.”

“Do you know why we were able to get here so fast?” said Brennus. “We should still be panting our way toward the far side of this mountain.”

Furgul shrugged. “We’re a tough, fit, wild bunch of dogs.”

“Not if you include me.” Brennus smiled. “At least, not the fit part. We did it because you led us along a Dogline. And you didn’t even know it. Did you?”

Furgul shook his head. “It just felt like the best way to go. But it felt nothing like that—thing—that just went through me. What was that?”

“I’m not sure. The knowledge of Ancient Dog Lore has almost vanished from our species,” said Brennus. “As the human race became more and more remote from its own wild origins—as humans sold the truth of their inmost hearts for TVs and hair products and safety—then so we dogs lost touch with our origins too. We stopped asking ourselves the most fundamental question of life:
What is the nature of wildness?
We stopped asking our mothers and fathers—
What is the nature of wildness?
—just as they had stopped asking theirs. Like the humans, we, too, sold our truth. And for what? For a pat on the head from the masters and a bowl of meat we no longer even know how to hunt and kill for ourselves. We ate our food from tin cans, like they do. We lay down by their kitchen hearthstones and forgot who we once had been. I did it myself, to my shame. And so now, in all the world, there are only a handful of wise dogs left who have any grasp at all of our ancient knowledge. The knowledge we had when dogs owned the earth and humans were helpless as children.”

“And you’re one of those wise dogs.”

“No. Not me. But I met one once, when I was young—and when she was old. She was named Murgen, which means
‘from the sea.’ But Murgen must be long gone now, at least from the world of blood, bone and fur. No, Furgul, I’m not wise. I just remember some fragments of lore that I was too foolish to value until it was too late. But you could be such a dog.”

“Me?”

“Yes, Furgul. You. If you searched the Doglands for long enough—if you sought the answer to the question:
What is the nature of wildness?
—if you were willing to pay the price—you could rediscover the Dog Lore.”

“But I don’t know anything,” said Furgul.

“You know how to find the Doglines.”

“I don’t really understand what the Doglines are.”

“You understand them better than me. I have the crumbs of a few old ideas. But you can feel these things in your bones. That’s why you must seek out the Dog Lore.”

“What was that feeling I just felt—that force from the rocks that you felt too?”

“The Doglines are the pawprints of the ancestors, first laid down by wolves in the time before long, long ago. But just as a wolf or a dog or any living creature may be right or wrong, a Dogline may be right or wrong. A right Dogline can take you somewhere good—like Appletree—but a wrong Dogline can take you somewhere bad—like Dedbone’s Hole. The old ones believed that the Doglines can get tangled—like knots in string—which concentrates their force and makes their fluxions—the flow of power—much stronger. I can’t be
sure, but I think there are two knots inside this mountain—one right and one wrong. The force we felt was the contrary fluxions—the two knots—pulling against each other.”

Furgul had a realization. “One is in the chasm beneath the hill of dead dogs. That’s a wrong knot. A wrong place. The right knot is in the crystal cavern.”

“How do you know?” asked Brennus.

“Because I’ve been to both places, wrong and right. I left my sister Eena’s body at one knot, and my sister Nessa’s body at the other.”

“You see?” said Brennus. “Your search has already begun.”

“But I wasn’t searching. I was just a pup, running for my life.”

“No, you were running the Doglines.”

Furgul thought back to his escape from Dedbone’s Hole, his journey through the mountain and down the river. Brennus was right. It wasn’t luck that had saved him. It was the Doglines. He saw the excitement in Brennus’s eyes.

“Furgul, you’ve been running the Doglines—and searching for the Dog Lore—since you were born.”

“What else can you tell me?” asked Furgul.

“Only one more thing, the last of my crumbs, but a dark one. The Doglines are powerful—as you just felt better than I. And they give you a choice. Each Dogline is made stronger every time you run it. Some dogs run the right lines, and some dogs run the wrong. And just as you can change the Doglines, the Doglines can change you.”

“Did Argal run right Doglines?”

“Yes, on the whole, he did, though he only sensed them. Argal’s own natural wildness was so strong, so defiant, that he had no patience for the Dog Lore. He was too busy fighting for freedom. Argal’s brother, Sloann, is just as strong, but cooler in temper and more brilliant. Sloann knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s always chosen to run the wrong Doglines, to harness their strength against the masters. If you ever get wind of Sloann, stay away from him.”

Dervla came padding up to the ledge. “We should press on,” she said.

Furgul wondered if Dervla felt the Doglines too. He sensed that she did. But now wasn’t the time to ask her. It was time to go to Dedbone’s Hole and find out if the right was stronger than the wrong.

They studied the layout of Dedbone’s Hole from a grove of trees. The main compound was just as Furgul remembered it—a scrubby rectangle of barren land surrounded by a high wire-mesh fence. A fence too high for even Furgul to jump. Inside were long rows of crates, stacked two deep, one crate on another, where the greyhounds lived their miserable existence. On the top row lived the males, and on the bottom the females. In another corner were the whelping cages where Furgul had spent his first days. At the far side stood the troughs where the greyhounds ate.

Less familiar to him were the wider surroundings.

The place still looked like a junkyard. Telephone poles carried paired black cables to Dedbone’s house, though it was less a house than a filthy cabin festooned with antennae and TV dishes. Outside stood Dedbone’s pickup truck, the one that Furgul and his sisters had ridden as pups. Strewn about the yard were rusting trailers and derelict cars, oil drums, empty bottles and stacks of old tires. A smattering of dilapidated sheds stood alongside a hog pen. Half a dozen billy goats grazed the parched grass. Beyond all this the main road out of Dedbone’s Hole rolled away into the distance.

There were no humans to be seen.

“Dedbone must have been stuck at the track until late last night,” said Furgul. “He must be sleeping in.”

“You’ll never get over that fence,” offered Skyver, who was licking his travel-worn footpads. “Or under it. We’ve come a thousand miles for nothing.”

To his annoyance, everyone ignored him.

“Which crate is Keeva in?” asked Dervla.

“I don’t know. But I didn’t come here just for Keeva. I came to free them all.”

“Great,” muttered Skyver. “While we’re at it, why not discover a cure for fleas?”

Down in the compound below, the greyhounds started barking and crooning with hunger. The din grew more and more frantic.

“Breakfast is late,” said Furgul.

“Don’t we know it?” said Skyver. “I can’t remember
the last time I ate. Look, old buddy, I know you’re under pressure—and I don’t want to make it any worse—but do you have any kind of plan at all?”

“Breakfast is late,” repeated Furgul.

“He’s lost it,” said Skyver. “If you’d listened to me, we’d have already eaten our breakfast by now and be going back to bed, safe and sound, at Appletree.”

“Hey, whinger, or whatever your dirtbag name is,” growled Dervla, “no one asked you to come along. So why don’t you put your feet back in your mouth and stop chirping in my face.”

Skyver at once went back to licking his blisters. Dervla looked at Furgul.

“In the dog pen at the carnival I had a lot of time to think about how to get out,” she said. “The only weak spot is when the masters open the gate. Like at mealtimes.”

“Good point,” said Furgul. “And breakfast is late.”

“What’s their schedule?” asked Dervla.

“Dedbone opens the gate to wheel in the sacks of feed. He may have the Gambler to help him. Tic and Tac will be with him. He locks the gate behind them. After he’s filled the troughs, Dedbone opens the crates and lets the hounds out to eat. Then he goes home to drink whiskey. When he returns, he opens the gate, locks it, puts the hounds back in their crates and leaves again, locking up the gate for the rest of the morning.”

Dervla said, “Okay, so we strike when he’s on his way to
drink his whiskey, just before he can relock the gate. All the hounds will be out of their crates.”

“You’ve never seen sixty greyhounds at breakfast,” said Furgul. “While there’s food in the trough, they’d rather eat than be free. We’d never get them to leave.”

Dervla said, “So we make our move the next time he opens the gate—when he comes back after his whiskey—and before he crates them up again.”

“Right,” said Furgul. “But even that isn’t so easy if you know greyhounds. They’ve never known anything but slavery—blind obedience—the routine. They’re indoctrinated. And they’re all too terrified of Dedbone to try to escape.”

Dervla nodded. She understood that better than anyone.

“If I could get in while they were feeding,” said Furgul, “I could persuade them to rebel. I could also find Keeva. I know they’d listen to her.”

“So we’re back to square one,” cheeped Skyver. “You’ll never get over that fence.”

Dervla rose to her full height, baring her teeth. Skyver hopped away on his blisters.

“I can get over that fence,” piped Zinni.

They all turned to look at her, mostly in disbelief. Skyver opened his mouth—caught Dervla’s stare—and shut it again so fast he hurt his teeth.

“See those overhead cables,” she said, “with the crows sitting on them? Electrical, or telephone, maybe both? They stretch right over the compound.”