The Sight (42 page)

Kar seemed to wake from a dream as he looked around.  Five sheep lay dead already, bleeding on the snow.  Kar was startled by his own ferocity and he shuddered.  Suddenly he looked up and growled.  For a moment, Kar fancied he had seen a wolf in the distance, watching him, yet as soon as he spotted it, it vanished.

Mitya was the first to see Kar again.  He was padding towards the kennel in the coming morning and he carried a haunch in his jaws.  Manov tried to hide the gratitude in his eyes as Kar threw them the meat and lay down to watch them feed.  That night found the wolf talking with Mitya in the shadows.

Kar told her the story of the legend and his own journey.  Then he asked Mitya and Manov of their own lives, and they began to tell him of the lands to the north-east, that men call Russia, where they had been born and bred.

Kar growled excitedly as he learnt of the sweeping country called the Steppes and of the terrible winters that were even worse than in Transylvania.  Mitya told him of the giant landlocked lakes that would freeze as solid as stone, and the vast mountain chains that seemed to go on for ever and ever, about humans, too, that always kept on the move and were known to the Borsoi as the tamers of horses, though the humans call them Cossacks.

Manov and Mitya had lived for a long time with the Cossacks, until they had been sold into their current slavery, and had slept in the open by their burning air.  They had watched their strange, wild ways, and listened as the humans gathered together in the evenings and picked up odd wooden objects, just as Larka had described the Gypsies carrying, which gave off wonderful, haunting melodies as they danced and spun round and round with each other in the night.

Mitya avoided the matter of hunting and the purpose the Borsoi had been bred for, but the wolf listened in amazement as he learnt how the humans would choose characteristics in their animals and dogs and marry them together to produce more specialized qualities in their young.

‘Then it’s true,’ growled the Varg.  ‘The only freedom runs with the wolf.’

‘I don’t know why you say that, Kar,’ Mitya whispered almost indignantly.  ‘I was suckled in a human den when my mother got sick.  It’s all I know.  Sometimes Manov talks about living out there in the wild, but is wildness the same as freedom?’

Kar gave a low, unsettled growl.

‘Out there,’ Mitya went on, dropping her eyes a little as she stared through the bars, ‘survival is difficult and your kind are hunted.’

‘Yes, Mitya.’ Kar nodded.  ‘But all things are hunted, except perhaps Man, and it makes us strong.  At least the wolf can roam where he will and choose his own den.  At least he can howl to the mountaintops and hunt where he likes, and can never be tamed.’

Mitya and Manov felt an odd stirring in their bellies.

‘True,’ Mitya nodded, ‘but the humans hunt where they will too.  And they are more successful at it than any Lera.’

‘Are you saying,’ growled Kar, ‘are you saying that you want to be like them?’

The Borsoi paused thoughtfully.

 ‘No, Kar.  But for some dogs their greatest ambition is to leave their kennels and go and live in the humans’ dens.’

‘You mean that they live with the humans?’ gasped Kar.

‘But what happens to them?’

‘They grow tame,’ said Manov suddenly, looking at Kar with distaste again.  Kar’s eyes flickered.  To him it seemed that Mitya and Manov were already tame, and he could not imagine what it could be like to live in close proximity to Man.

‘But how could they do it? Live in the human dens with their burning air and all their strange smells?’

‘They have comfort too,’ answered Mitya gently, ‘and the humans are odd.  I like many of their kind.  Or at least I find, well, I find I am naturally drawn to them.  Sometimes I think I could learn things from them.’

Mitya paused.  A memory was flickering across her eyes.

‘There was one.  A boy who used to look after me.  He was kind and did not beat me as some of the others did.  Sometimes as I lay by the fire he would put his hand on my head and it always felt strange as he stroked me.  It calmed me and he would let me look into his eyes longer than normal...’

Kar cocked his head with surprise, but the strangeness of the idea passed.

‘Well, I could never do such a thing as live with Man,’ grunted Kar.

‘Don’t be so sure.  You are a wolf, Kar, and we are dogs, but we are not so different, you and I.  We can talk to one another for a start and there are many dogs I’ve met that still have the blood of the wolf flowing strongly in their veins.’

‘Bad breeding,’ whispered Manov scornfully.

Kar found the idea strangely discomforting, but he felt that perhaps Mitya was speaking the truth.  Despite what the Borsoi had said of freedom, though, it was clear that they were desperate to get out of their cage.  All night they kept whining bitterly and pushing at the gate, and though from the outside Kar tried to help them, leaping up and pressing on the gate with his long, slender legs, it was no use.  Morning found them still together and in the night Kar had crept back to the sheep fold and brought them more meat.  Mitya was clearly very grateful, but Manov still kept looking at Kar angrily.  At last Kar could stomach it no longer.

‘Why do you hate my kind so, Manov?’ he growled.

‘Because of what you do,’ snorted Manov.

‘And what is that? Hunt free and wild.’

Manov’s eyes flickered.

‘I was caged with a wolf once,’ he whispered coldly, ‘to the north when the humans had been fighting.  But she knew only the freedom of killing, and I have never seen a Lera kill with such a will.’

Kar’s ears came up immediately.

‘At first they fed us on mutton and scraps, but then,’ Manov shuddered strangely, ‘then the food they brought us .  .  .  that I would have nothing to do with.’

There was something horrified in the Borsoi’s look.

‘Tell me,’ growled Kar.

"306The humans,’ he said, ‘in their fights they had captured many man Draggas and one night they brought one down to the kennels and thrust him into the cage with us.  It was clearly terrified.  But the wolf went straight for the human’s throat.  After that, for suns they would bring down more of their prisoners and the wolf would gorge herself.  The kennel floor was littered with human limbs and, as she grew fat, she kept watching the humans greedily, as though she were studying them.  I remember her face well,’ said Manov, ‘with that torn ear and those terrible scars on her muzzle.’

Kar suddenly felt a weakness grip him.

‘She said she knew of the humans,’ Kar whispered.

‘She was a strange one,’ growled Manov.  ‘She kept muttering about an energy filling everything.  About a power that connected all.  In the nights she would talk of death and laugh to herself.  Then she would mutter things about the past.  About some great injustice that had been done to her.’

‘Morgra,’ snarled Kar, ‘it was Morgra.’

‘One sun I approached her and asked her why she so delighted in killing the human Draggas.  Why she hated Man so.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She laughed in my face.  ‘‘Hate Man’’, she answered, ‘‘I do not hate Man.  I feed on him because everything feeds on everything else.  But far from hating him, I must learn from him.  One sun I shall truly understand his mind.  For there dwell the real secrets.  The secrets of freedom and of life itself.  For only Man’s mind may look beyond the slavery of instinct, the slavery of the thoughtless Lera.  The Lera that shall be my slaves.’’ ’

‘How did she escape?’

‘One sun, after they had stopped feeding her, we noticed a child kept coming to the kennel to watch us, a girl.  The she-wolf pretended to be ill and sickening, and lay there like a mild dog, whimpering pitifully.  The girl seemed moved and one sun she opened the cage.  It cost the creature her hand.’ Kar’s discovery woke something terrible in the wolf, and in that moment he knew that he must find Larka.  But Kar felt guilty at leaving the dogs behind and so, once more, he went to the sheep fold and piled as much food up for the Borsoi as he could.

‘Don’t worry, Kar,’ said Mitya, as he took his farewells of them.  ‘I’m sure our human masters will return, when they think it safe enough and they remember about us.  But you have helped us and we thank you.’

Manov was staring at Kar haughtily, but as he looked at the fresh meat his expression softened.

‘Take a rabbit for us, Kar,’ he growled grudgingly, ‘or a deer and get strong again.  So it’ll be a fair chase, eh, when we get out of here.  But in the meantime I suppose...  we wish you the joy of a free heart.  Good luck.’

As they watched the wolf padding off through the snow, Mitya turned to her mate.

‘I wonder, Manov,’ she whispered gravely, ‘what it would be like to be truly wild.’

Kar wandered for suns and moons and at first his heart lifted again.  To be free was a wonderful feeling.  To stretch his legs and run through the grass, to drink at the stream and watch the birds in the wintry sky.  But one sun he strayed close to the humans’ dens again and, as Kar approached a snowy field, he caught a terrible scent on his nostrils.

The wolf began to tremble and he gasped as he came to a pit.  It was filled with bodies.  They were wolves.  There must have been twenty or thirty of them.  They were all dead and the skin had been flayed from their carcasses.  But amongst them, hidden beneath their bodies, there were dead humans too; Turks who had been murdered by the local people and buried here in this wolf pit, to hide the crime.  The sight made Kar whimper and struggle for breath, and for suns after that he could hardly sleep.  It had scarred his mind, and now a terrible wariness woke in him.

As Kar wandered in search of Larka another feeling grew in his heart.  A feeling he was totally unprepared for.  Loneliness.  He noticed how the Lera responded to his passing.

Most seemed terrified of him and would vanish into the snow or the trees when they caught the wolf’s scent on the breeze.

On Kar wandered and, as he did so, he began to scavenge.  He was forced to hunt even the smallest Lera and it taught him how hard it was to survive in the wild.  The wolf felt the harsh edges of life and saw how, even in the damp, dark places in the forest untouched by the snows, a battle for survival seemed to be taking place that could never cease.  Loneliness gnawed at the Varg’s heart and, as his isolation grew, he began to feel that everything was at once his enemy and the enemy of everything else.  His coat grew rough and unkempt, for not spending time with his own he began to forget the habits of the wolf and would no longer sit to groom himself.  He thought of Mitya and Manov, safe in their kennel, and wondered if all he had said of freedom was just a silly lie.

In the foothills of the mountains he saw Balkar roaming through the trees, and he began to think that not only were the Lera isolated from each other, but that the Varg itself was his bitterest enemy.  Then one cold sun he came upon a small pack.  There was a Dragga and a Drappa and two youngsters with them.  The sight reminded him of his own days as a cub and his tail lifted eagerly.  But they were frightened and, fleeing from the Night Hunters, had seen much horror themselves.  As soon as Kar neared them they leapt at him and drove him off, without once pausing to find out who he was or what he wanted.

It pushed Kar even further in on himself.  He began to talk to himself as he walked and at night he would sit on his own and howl to the skies.  Often voices would come to answer him, the voices of other lone wolves that rose with the same searching longing, but these voices were not talking to each other, they were calling to themselves and their own pain.  They were sounding an elegy for their own despair.

He climbed higher into the mountains and came to a cave by a frozen pool set in a bowl of hills that he stopped to explore.  It was a strange place, dry and dusty, with a high- vaulting ceiling where bats had perched to nest, hanging like living fruit from the crevices.  Kar felt an odd sense of peace and calm as he entered and, at its back, he found a pile of old straw and dead leaves that some other creature had used as bedding.  He scented the place, but could smell nothing of the animal’s life, so he lay down to rest.

As the suns passed Kar settled into his cave, only venturing out to snatch a rabbit or mouse, or to scavenge for winter berries.  He got thinner as the air grew sharper and, having nothing and no one to raise his spirits or share his vulnerability, Kar began to grumble and curse the elements themselves.  The wolf’s conversations with himself became more and more voluble, and Kar even began to fancy that there was somebody else in the cave with him.

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.