Tiher was responsible for organizing the hunt, and he knew he needed luck. Since being given his office at Christmas, he’d arranged a few boar hunts in the forest of Rennes, but this wolf hunt was clearly going to be a much bigger affair. What with the duke and duchess and a large group from the court moving to the hunting lodge for a week and most of the nobility of the region joining the hunt itself, a new Master of the Hunt who made a mess of things was likely to find himself a mere household knight again. Wolves were difficult creatures, shy and hard to find, and when found full of cunning ruses that could baffle all but the best hounds. Hunts for them had to be organized as carefully as battles, with relays of dogs stationed at strategic locations and every attention paid to the terrain and the direction of the wind. Tiher felt that he could do the organizing as well as any man at the court, but it would all count for nothing if bad luck intervened — if, for example, the quarry had moved somewhere else by the time the hunting party arrived to chase it. Tiher crossed himself at the thought.
And then, too, it would be impolite to take on too much of the organizing. It was, after all, the duke’s wolf hunt. “I hope my lord the duke will have mercy on a poor novice like myself,” Tiher said carefully, “and take as much of the business as he can into his own skilled hands.”
Hoel laughed. “Prettily said! You knew perfectly well I’d never be kept from the business, and you make a virtue of necessity. But the first part of this battle I’ll leave to you. Take some of the servants and go to Treffendel today: have them get the lodge ready, while you consult with my forester there and with Lord Alain about where this marvelously crafty wolf is to be found. — Oh, and take Mirre with you. She’ll sniff the beast out for you. The rest of us will come to join you tomorrow.”
The wolf knew nothing about the arrangements for the duke’s hunting party. He had been living in Treffendel forest for about two weeks by then, hunting by night and curling up in the dry leaves beneath a bramble bush to sleep during the day. He had decided to stay near Treffendel for a time: he remembered the forest, and knew that the man who had been hunting him could not come there. And he was tired, very tired, of being hunted.
For months, it seemed, he had been running, living from day to day with no company but Hunger, Fear, and Cold. Loneliness was worse than any of them. Wolves, like humans, are social creatures, happiest with others of their kind. Instinct and drowned memory agreed in longing for others, but humans and wolves alike treated him with fear and loathing. He met other wolves in the forest from time to time, and they always understood that he wasn’t one of them. They would fall back at first, snarling and yelping. If he refused to go away, they attacked.
He went to St. Mailon’s sometimes, but only when he couldn’t bear the loneliness, when the vastness of the forest seemed to crush him, and the ache of longing for what he’d lost swelled to become unendurable. It was an immense relief to scratch at the door of Judicaël’s hut and be welcomed. He would lie on the floor beside the fire, and the hermit would talk to him and stroke his head, and then say the offices and pray beside him. Judicaël gave him food, too: bread soaked in goat’s milk. He ate it, though it made his stomach hurt. Warmth and food and company: paradise. But he never dared remain beyond a single night. He understood why he was being hunted, and it was easy to guess that if he went to St. Mailon’s often, the way would be filled with traps. Besides, there was always a danger of meeting a stranger there. Judicaël was much admired, and the people of the region often came to him for advice. The wolf’s instincts were afraid of any unknown human, and his struggling reason feared for the safety of his only friend. On top of that, Judicaël had only the food that people gave him, and always sternly refused to accept more than he needed: if he fed the wolf, it usually meant that he himself went hungry. So he went to St. Mailon’s only infrequently, always coming after nightfall and leaving before the dawn. He tried to stay away from the hermit’s goat, afraid that his hungry instincts would lead him to kill it.
Hunger, then, was his closest companion. It followed him devotedly, stepping in his shadow. A whole wolf pack will have difficulty bringing down a healthy hind, let alone a stag: one wolf on its own must live on smaller game, and small game is scarce in winter. The wolf caught rabbits, mice, and voles; he snatched roosting birds from bushes in the darkness; he ate rats on the edges of farms, and frogs and beetles dug from the frozen earth. Sometimes sheep were left overnight in the fields, but he rarely dared approach them, and they were more usually enclosed. The carcasses left as lures he’d welcomed as a feast. Other wolves were always there first, but he took advantage of their fear to snatch a part of the carcass and run away with it. And he knew all the wolf hunter’s tricks, and never stayed near the baited woods until morning.
Fear was only a visitor, but a frequent one. He would catch the scent of men and dogs on the morning air, or hear the horns in the distance, and he would run from them. Chilled and worn from a night’s hunting, he would strain every limb to escape, and wrestle with his buried memory for the craft to outwit the hounds. Even after escaping, he could feel no elation. The chases exhausted him, slowing him the next night, making it harder to catch food.
He knew who was hunting him. Judicaël had told him. He couldn’t understand half of what the hermit said to him, but he’d understood that. Eline had married his one-time rival, and the two of them meant to kill him. When he thought of it, the anguish and helpless rage were so terrible that he tried to bury them. There was no point in remembering that he had ever been human: it would be far better to forget, to drown the struggling self and become entirely a wolf. But the self refused to drown. It struggled on, sometimes completely submerged, at other times horribly aware, freshly appalled at how it was trapped. He hated it for the pain it gave him, but he could not get rid of it.
He’d been reluctant to leave Talensac land. It had been comforting, in his intense loneliness, to at least be in country he knew, which he’d loved as a human and filled with pleasant memories. In the end, though, it was a relief to be away from it. Treffendel forest lay a little farther from farmland and it was guarded against poaching peasants by the duke’s resident forester, so the small animals he lived on were more plentiful. Hunger dropped another step behind. It was the beginning of March now, too, and his other loving companion, Cold, was also retreating. Best of all, no one had come to hunt him during the whole of the time he’d been at Treffendel. He was beginning to relax, to feel that Fear had given up visiting him for a while. It was a numbing shock when he woke suddenly in early daylight to a scent of dogs and the sound of feet crackling in the brambles.
He leapt up and ran from them, twisting his way through the thickest snarls of bramble and dog rose. As he ran, he heard the horns begin to blow close behind him, the quick, stammering call of the view, for the unharboring of the quarry from its bed. Fast on the horn call came the baying of the hounds as they caught his scent. He did not think anything, not in that moment: all his being was taken up in running.
He had chosen his bed carefully, picking a place with thick cover and near water, a stream that flowed into the Chèze River to the south. He splashed into it with relief and ran along it, upstream because that direction took him with the wind, keeping his scent from the dogs. Where the stream turned he left it and continued to run with the wind. The sound of the baying changed from the full excited cry of hounds on the scent to the irregular and angry one of those that had lost it. He stretched out and ran at his full speed. It was a simple puzzle and would not hold them long; meanwhile, he must win some distance.
The hounds were in full cry again within minutes, but the minutes had been enough. He had enough space now to mislead them. He ran through a thicket, doubled back on his tracks, then leapt as far as he could sideways. He ran on, came to a tree that had broken in half during a gale and lay with its top branches sloping upward from the ground to the break in its trunk. He scrambled through the branches, up the slope to the top, doubled halfway back, and jumpe
d off. He doubled his tracks again, and ran on, still going with the wind, but more slowly now. That would delay them a little. Now he must circle round and find a good place to lose them entirely.
The self had time to surface inside him now. It was furious that they had been able to get so close. He had been careless. And what did he, the enemy, think he was doing, hunting in a ducal forest?
The horns sounded again: Da-da ta ta ta ta, Da-da ta ta ta ta — the call for the quest, when the hounds have come to some check. The baying had again fragmented. Too many hounds, he realized suddenly; too many horns. This was not one man and his servants hunting with the remembered pack. This was a large hunting party. He did not try to puzzle out how or why. He had no energy to spare for the difficult and laborious business of reasoning. But he knew he was in even greater danger than he’d at first supposed. There would be more hounds, fresh ones, waiting elsewhere in the forest: there would be trackers and beaters. Mercy! he thought, the word surfacing and filling his whole mind as he ran. Oh God, have mercy!
No mercy, no more than he had found when last that plea had risen in his mind. The puzzle he’d set didn’t keep them as long as he’d hoped. It was only minutes later that the strong, clear baying rose again, and the horn, joyful and merciless, sounded the rechace. He put his head down and ran.
He tried every puzzle, every ruse, that he had ever heard of. He doubled and redoubled his tracks; crossed and recrossed streams; fled through sheets of icy water, left in low patches in the forest by the melting snows, and through nearly impenetrable tangles of thorns. He nested one trick within another. Several times he thought he’d lost his pursuers, only to hear them taking up the call once more, faint in the distance at first, but always coming nearer, always too close. He could not circle back, as he longed to, to find the stretch of marsh or the lake where he was sure he could lose them. Instead he was forced downwind, northeast. As he’d feared, there were relays of fresh dogs in that direction: he heard the new cries, eager and excited, joining the old. Noon came and went, and the cries came steadily nearer. He could not shake them. His legs were trembling now, and his lungs hurt. The human part of him curled up inside, weeping in exhaustion and despair, and the wolf ran on blindly.
The hunt had forced him north and north again, and he burst suddenly from the trees onto the open space of a road. He recognized it as the road from Montfort to Plelan, the boundary between the forest of Tremelin, which had been his own, and the forest of Treffendel. He stopped, sides heaving. It was late in the afternoon now, and he knew he would not live to see the night. The human self suddenly awoke to full consciousness. Death was following him from the woods, the hunter whom no one can flee forever. Since in the end it must be faced, he would face it bravely. No one would praise the courage of a wolf, his body would be given to the hounds to tear — but he would die bravely still, for his own sake.
He began walking slowly along the road, not fleeing now, but only moving to keep himself from collapse. The forest to either side stretched wet and gray; the grass of the verges was deep. Early snowdrops were flowering in the shadows, and the sun rode brilliant in a wrack of windswept cloud. He heard the baying crowd of hounds burst from the forest behind him, and close on their heels came horses and riders. The horns were silent, the huntsmen too tired to spare breath on blowing idly. The wolf turned in the middle of the road to face them all, and the horns suddenly sprang to life again: Ta da-da ta da-da ta da-da ta da-da taaa, the beast is brought to bay.
There weren’t as many of them as he’d expected, only a score of dogs and a handful of riders. The rest must be straggling through the forest, left behind by the furious chase over the rough ground. He saw with a surge of fierce joy that he had a chance to accomplish something before he was killed.
He waited until the hounds were almost on him, then lowered his head, gathered all his remaining strength, and raced toward them. He rushed into their midst, snapping and tearing on either side, and they fell back, snarling, yelping, and howling. But he wasted no time on them; he lengthened his stride and raced on, through the dogs, and in among the astonished horsemen.
Wild and distorted shouts rang on every side; horses reared; white faces glared down at him. None of them was the face he was looking for, the face of his enemy. Confusion began to drown him, leaving only a wolf’s instincts bewildered with terror. Then he glanced up at one of the white faces and recognized it. My lord, he thought, with a spasm of senseless hope. On the thought, he leapt up onto his hind feet, slid a forefoot into the rider’s stirrup, and bent his head to lick the rider’s foot.
Duke Hoel gave a shout of fear when the wolf leapt up against his horse, and his companions cried out in horror. No one had his sword out. Wolves never turned at bay, and they’d expected their cunning quarry to be killed at last by the dogs. Hoel’s horse pranced in terror, and for endless seconds he struggled to pull his weapon out of its scabbard, while his attendants shoved and got in one another’s way as they tried to draw their own and come to help him. The seconds were long enough that he noticed them, and noticed, when the sword was at last in his hand, that the wolf had not sunk its teeth into his leg and dragged him from his horse; that it was, instead, licking his boot. He sat with his sword in his hand, staring in perplexity. His horse stopped prancing and stood trembling with its ears back. The other huntsmen had their own weapons out now and drove their horses close to help; beyond them, the dogs were boiling back up the road after their quarry.
“Stop!” Hoel shouted at them all.
“My lord!” cried Tiher, who’d been at his right hand all day. His face was white with fear. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” said the duke. “Look.”
They all looked: there was the wolf they’d chased all day, balanced on its hind legs, licking the duke’s foot. It raised its head, stared up at Hoel, whined, then licked the foot again.
“He’s asking me for mercy,” said Hoel slowly. “By God, I believe he really is begging for mercy.” He began to laugh. “The crafty creature!”
“My lord, kill it quickly,” said Tiher. “They’re evil, dangerous animals. This is only another ruse.”
“No!” said Hoel again. “He’s begging me to spare his life — and I will. Beat off the dogs, there! Tiher, get a collar for the creature, and a muzzle. We’ll take him home alive.”
XI
Tiher was appalled at his lord’s decision. He would have argued, but at that moment the dogs burst among the riders, and he and all the others had their hands full beating them off. When he next looked at the wolf, it was crouching in the road by the duke’s horse. Shivering with terror and exhaustion, it did not look particularly dangerous. He did not trust it any better for that.
More dogs and riders came out of the forest onto the road, demanding to know if the wolf had been taken. Tiher was pleased to find that one of them was the duke’s Master of Hounds. He at once told the man to get the dogs under control, and borrowed a stout collar, a thick leash, and a muzzle from him. He dismounted and, unhappily, approached the wolf. Lord Raoul de Montfort, who’d been one of only four hunters to stay beside the duke to the end, jumped from his own horse and came over beside him, his sword drawn. He looked at the collar in Tiher’s hands, at the cowering wolf, and finally at the duke, still sitting high on his sweating horse.
“You expect your man to collar and muzzle that beast?” he asked Hoel bluntly.
“No,” said the duke, smiling down at him. He slid off his horse beside the wolf. “Give me the collar, Tiher, and I’ll put it on him myself.”
“No, my lord,” said Tiher firmly. “That is something I will not permit.”
“You have no business ‘permitting’ me to do anything!” Hoel replied indignantly.
“And you, my lord, have no business taking stupid risks.” Tiher knelt in the road beside the wolf and put the collar around its neck, trying not to think of the stupid risk he was now taking himself. But the animal didn’t stir. He buckled the collar snugly
and clipped on the leash, then stood up and put the end in the duke’s hand. “Your wolf, my lord.”
Hoel smiled. “Stupid risks?”
“Yes, my lord. There’s no glory for the lord of Brittany in being killed by a wild animal.”
The wolf whined and glanced up. He licked Hoel’s boot again. Hoel laughed. “He heard you, Tiher. Look at that! He’s trying to tell me he won’t hurt me.”
Tiher sighed in exasperation. He knelt down and, with even more trepidation, fitted the muzzle over the wolf’s nose.
The wolf flinched as the man’s hands forced the stinking leather over his mouth and nose, but he did not try to fight. The presence of so many men and dogs all around, stinking of fear and hatred, hemming him in on every side, had left his instincts numb with terror. His exhausted human self found it difficult to comprehend what had happened: he had recognized his liege lord, but no one had recognized him in turn, so why hadn’t they killed him? He was aware of one of the men standing over him with a drawn sword. Duke Hoel, though, held death in check — a godlike figure towering above on horseback, a man recognized, familiar, who had responded to him. He clung to that awareness like a sick child to his mother.
The muzzle had been designed for an alaunt, a hunting dog with much heavier jaws than a wolf. It did not fit. There was an endless interval of pinching straps and fumbled buckles.
Tiher had fully expected the wolf to leap suddenly at his throat, and was hoping that Raoul de Montfort, who was still standing there with his sword drawn, could strike quickly. When the muzzle was at last secure, Tiher leaned back on his heels and looked at the wolf. The wolf looked back, then lowered its head, nervously pawed the muzzle, and whined.
“My God!” exclaimed Tiher. “It’s tame as a dog.”
The Wolf Hunt Page 25
