by Brian Carter
‘We could try for hens at the cottage on the edge of the wood,’ Wulfgar said.
‘The trapper would like that,’ Stargrief grunted. ‘He reasons as we reason. If he didn’t get you there he’d track you to the cave and finish us while we slept!’
Wulfgar gritted his teeth and said, ‘How he poisons our lives! I should have ripped out his throat when I found him beside the road.’
‘But fortunately Tod sent a sign and you didn’t kill him.’
‘Get Tod to strike a blow for the Hill Fox Nation.’
‘How can I?’ said Stargrief.
‘Ask him to hurl down a star on the trapper.’
‘I read what he writes in the sky. I don’t ask for favours. Our lives are our own affair.’
Fresh fox-spoors ran before them in the direction of Saddle Tor. They felt vulnerable and ill-at-ease out on the snowfield. Stormbully’s faint, far-off skirl crept from the distance and lifted Wulfgar’s hackles. Then a dog fox was howling the double notes that his kin found irresistible. Other foxes were on the move towards Saddle Tor and the three from Holly Tree cave joined the race. Where the snow had been exposed to the storm it was crisp and sparkling.
Wulfgar led the way to the rocks beyond Crow Thorn. His nose was bringing him the gut-warming smell of meat and blood and fox-musk. In the hollow beneath the tor a dozen dogs and vixens were milling round a dead pony. The animal had slipped from the crag during the blizzard and Killconey had laid claim to it. Now he was gorged and was willing to share the feast with the clan. Fox trails radiated from the carcass and a few early arrivals lay about grooming themselves and exchanging gossip. Those still busy at the meat snapped and growled in a tight scrum.
Killconey rolled onto his back and flashed Wulfgar a grin.
‘Enough to feed the Star Place dogs,’ he sighed.
All day they lingered by the carcass while the shadows lengthened and the sun became redder than the stains on the snow. The foxes were replete and drowsy but reluctant to leave the source of their contentment. It was fine to sprawl beside the frozen flood-pool while Stargrief mounted a nearby rock and gave them the verses and the sagas.
Such gatherings were memorable. The old prophet guided them through his visions. And as the sun crossed the western sky, bathing him in its glow, it seemed he had been turned to gold like a real companion of Tod.
Rowanfleet glided between the dogs in a cloud of musk. Brown and amber fires burnt in her eyes and her chest fur was the white of button mushrooms fresh with dew. She was mysterious and beautiful, and her words fell upon his knowing like water from a moorland stream.
‘When I was a cub,’ Stargrief said, ‘the blood of the grass was on my teeth. My mother rested and licked my muzzle while I stood under her waiting for her to settle in drowsy song.
‘We stood in the field close to the sky, two shadows on the summer, already forgotten and doomed like the grass. But we left a presence on the seasons.’
O sea of stars carry me through this winter, the old fox prayed. His haggard face was tilted to catch the last of the sun. How like a fantasy of all vixens was Rowanfleet. The snow blinked golden at her feet and something ancestral climbed through his blood to his brain. He was running with the dream of foxes before the ice that daily crept nearer. But the great rivers of ice did not carve and grind and stultify the moors. Bear and wolf, fox and man shivered in the arctic twilight. But they lived. In Rowanfleet’s beauty was immortality and salvation.
The rich and bloody sunset flared and dimmed. Wulfgar, too, was watching the vixen. Her silence sang to him. It was satisfactory to lie beside her listening to the rise and fall of her breathing and exchange the love thoughts. When the sun set the fire remained in her eyes.
By starlight the foxes departed leaving the three to talk with Killconey.
‘Why didn’t you speak about the Ice Lurcher you saw in your vision?’ Wulfgar asked.
‘Because it troubles me and you know why.’
‘I do, but destiny is destiny. Are you so uncertain of your prophetic powers?’
‘As I get older, yes. It’s hard to differentiate between vision and daydream. I’m afraid I’ll send you on some errand dreamt up in a ga-ga catnap.’
‘The meaning of the vision is crystal clear.’
‘It turns my blood to ice.’
‘But the winter will do it – this winter. And it isn’t the first of The Three.’
Killconey gazed from one to the other and wagged his muzzle.
‘Star Places and The Three and destinies!’ he snorted. ‘Go and sniff out a few more feasts. That’s what the clan needs.’
‘And the trapper?’ said Wulfgar.
‘Who knows about men? They aren’t animals. They don’t belong to the brotherhood of living things. The trapper is like the itching sickness, like the snares and the gun and the hounds. He is death and death is always with us.’
‘You need a vixen,’ said Stargrief.
‘I’ve got one,’ Killconey said. ‘Leafsong. The trapper killed her dog, Sundrifter.’
‘The Ice Lurcher will have its way,’ Wulfgar said mysteriously.
‘Ice Lurcher!’ Killconey growled.
‘Where are you kennelled?’ Stargrief said.
‘In the woods by the empty sett. There’s a ruined cow house that keeps out the wind.’
The yawning vixen stiffened her forelegs in a stretch of well-being. Her face was livid in the light of the moon, in the reflected moonlight.
THE GREAT AMMIL
Scoble had pleurisy. He crouched by the kitchen fire and sipped the bitter juice of hoarhound. Silence pressed down on Yarner Cott. It seemed alive, as if Dartmoor had turned into a gigantic carnivore and was swallowing whole flocks of sheep and sucking birds out of the sky. He sent a forefinger burrowing through his beard in search of the wart. Snow slithered from the ash tree and he closed his eyes and saw the rats slithering over the corpses in the shell-hole. Crimp’s bought it, the sergeant major said. The big one exploded with a hell of a noise and there was Crimpy – and there and there and there and there. The birch log banged and sent a shower of sparks onto the hearth. O the lovely bloody warmth and some long-dead soldier playing Roses of Picardy on a mouth organ.
He stared absently at the swollen joints of his fingers as they clenched on the cider barrel tap. It’s all right for them bastards down at H.Q., Corporal Wellan said. Frost powdered his face. His eyes were dark and sunken. Just the morning to surprise the Allemands, Lieutenant General Shewte chortled, reaching for the bacon. The staff officers guzzled tea and grinned. But Lieutenant Gatty was OK. He cried when young Brannan copped it, and he shared the shit and misery. A machine gun nailed him to the Roll of Honour at some public school. Crimp was ‘other ranks’ but he got on the village cenotaph.
The trapper lit a candle and placed it on the table. The fox masks glared down at him from the wall and half a dozen pairs of glass eyes imitated the life-glint. Scoble swallowed cider and thought about Old Blackie. In the sky over Yarner Wood the stars shimmered and winked, and across Trendlebere Down a famished fox ran, fetching up a howl that hung unanswered on the stillness.
Snow fell again in the evening and by midnight another blizzard had arrived. From Moretonhampstead to Tavistock trees and telegraph poles were brought down. The muffling fall killed the last of Lugg’s hill sheep. But while the wind blew and the snow swirled a whiteness endured that concealed the horror. Only in the spring would the piteous huddles of farm creatures come to light.
The wild night stampeded the stars and kept the foxes in their cave. At daybreak the blizzard was down to its last flake and Wulfgar led his companions onto the common. The strength of the wind took them by surprise. All along the ponds ponies were trampling the furze and eating it. The animals were emaciated, but unlike the sheep and cattle they knew how to survive. The easterly that was hurling flocks of thrushes over Yarner lifted their manes. They regarded the foxes from delicately lashed eyes, and continued munching. Light spread grey
on the hills.
Later that afternoon the foxes raided a barn at Manaton and gnawed open a sack of meal. The white owls up in the rafters hissed at them but they gobbled the grain while the countryside creaked as the temperature dropped.
‘Chicken food,’ Stargrief grunted.
Rowanfleet smiled.
‘Tod forgive my ingratitude!’ the old dog fox exclaimed cheerfully. ‘A full belly is a full belly.’
He stepped outside and the wind cut into him. Sirius glinted from the dusk. It grew dark very quickly and the lapwings started to scream in the fields under Bowerman’s Nose. On the outskirts of the village they paused and looked up at the sky. The beauty of the world continuously filtered through their senses to feed their spirits. The stars were out in strength with Orion in the south and the Pleiades above it and the Great Bear in the north. There were few things lovelier than the snowy hills set in the soft glow of the universe.
Winter spilled over into March and showed no sign of relenting. The wind rushing down the Leighon Valley flattened the reeds and ruffled Scrag’s feathers. The intense cold had finally killed the heron and he lay like a badly wrapped parcel on the ice of Dead Dog Pond. The wind passed on, up and over Hound Tor, looping to add more snow to the drifts of Hamel Down.
At twilight Wulfgar emerged and lifted his muzzle yet again to the sky that was now calm and clear. A single bright star broke from the constellation of the Seven Sisters and flared through space.
‘You’ve misgivings?’ said Stargrief’s voice behind him.
‘None. Is Rowanfleet ready?’
The vixen joined them and they ran silently across Haytor Down. A mass of cloud spread from the east to meet them.
‘Are you afraid, Rowanfleet?’ Wulfgar said.
‘Terrified.’
‘Don’t be. Nothing can happen to us. Tonight we are the great hunters full of Star Place magic.’
Where the moors fell steeply to Yarner Wood he said goodbye to the dog and the vixen. ‘Wait here’, were his parting words.
He went into the valley whisking his brush, raising the powder snow with his forepaws. Like a wolf, thought Stargrief. The sky was black and the lights along the coast were vanishing.
Wulfgar took the road to Yarner Cott. The frozen drifts made it easy for him to leap the wall and drop noiselessly into the yard. Light from the kitchen window yellowed the snow. He padded cautiously up to the window ledge and stood on his hindlegs and pressed his nose against the glass.
The trapper had drunk hard from the cider barrel until he was ready for the Scotch. Slumped in the armchair before the fire he laughed and scowled. Every so often he slid his tongue along his lower lip and let it lie in the corner of his mouth. Soon he was drooling and lidding his eyes and the tears dawdled over the mesh of broken blood vessels on his cheeks to vanish into his beard. His shirt and corduroys were stiff with sweat and grime. God, Scoble, Corporal Wellan said. You smell like a bloody compost heap. You never knew what was under the trench water. Rats were very good swimmers and they could sniff out a corpse. Softly through the fog of alcohol came the strains of ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’. The Cornish boy could really play the mouth organ. Ought to be on the halls. Better than the hymns. What had God done for them? But Church Parade was a holiday and ‘We plough the fields and scatter’ brought them back over the hills to Devon. The bloody padre spoilt it – spouting fat, posh words like we were suddenly important and not just the poor dressed up in uniforms. Not just yokels born to hold the horse and feed the hounds and drive the carts and carriages. Maybe it’s really changed back home, Corporal Wellan said. Bands playing, lads marching, all the flags and bunting and flowers. And the girls stroking our medals and giving us great smacking kisses.
He groaned, coughed and clawed at the Johnny Walker bottle. Rationing never bothered him. The toffs were always ready to hand out the Scotch if you did them a favour. He wasn’t old and sick. The medals were locked away in a box under the bed, but where the hell had the sergeant major gone? The slow-flowing gold of whisky pulsed in the glass. He turned to the window and lost control of his sphincter muscle. The dark angular fox mask stared back at him, eyes green and unblinking, mouth set in a satanic smile.
‘Jacko,’ Scoble wailed and his reflection wailed back at him. Like one of they shrunken concentration camp Jews, he thought, pulling on his Wellington boots.
‘You won’t have me. Lord Jesus you won’t.’
The rifle kicked as he squeezed the trigger and splintered the window sill. But the fox had disappeared and Scoble was fighting to shrug off the dizziness. The devil sent you, you bastard, he thought, stuffing cartridges into his pockets.
You’ve followed me all the way from the Somme. Charlie the mule and Jacko weren’t enough. Poor Jacko. Poor old boy.
Wulfgar’s spoor led him across the road and onto the hill. The exertion brought him coughing and puking to his knees. There were three trails now. And that’s how it should be, he mused. Three dark foxes under the flares, white swelling then fading into darkness until more flares lit No Man’s Land. The rifle cracked but the foxes did not move until he had reloaded and struggled to the top of the ridge. Kamerad, the German soldier cried, but the bayonet was deaf. In, grunt, out, grunt. Scoble laughed. The snow came right over his wellingtons on the southern slopes of Haytor Down. The fresh falls had not had time to freeze. Dimly ahead of him the foxes kept their distance. Each gulp of icy air hurt his lungs and sweat beaded his body and trickled into his eyes. Tears and phlegm clotted his beard.
Wulfgar glanced back at the floundering figure.
‘The Man-shape rising from the snow,’ Stargrief whispered. ‘We have become part of the vision.’
They groomed their fur while they waited. It was a casual business, like attending a sick cow or pony. Crow work, Stargrief called it. But they had a nose for death. When the bolt clicked they clapped down and waited for the bang before loping on into the darkness, which had thickened and grown colder. Every so often Rowanfleet gave a scream that carried to Haytor Vale and made Steelygrin hiss and draw back his ears. The feral cat lay in the garden shed of the Moorland Hotel and dined on dream voles.
Yeoman’s been hit, Corporal Wellan said. That isn’t human, Corp. It sounds like a horse screaming. Rats scurried out of their galleries to investigate. A shell droned by. Something legless was dragging itself from the gloom; something legless that screamed with the persistence of a spoilt child. Scoble fired and the noise stopped. The squad charged over the snow to the fortification. Bullets whined past his head. He scrambled up the hummock and saw the foxes vanish into the quarry. He was alone on a spinning battlefield. O Christ, the bloody lot are dead. The sheep path zig-zagged down the wall of the quarry. He dug his heels into the hard snow and leant on the rifle. Then he was coughing and jerking about and his feet were sliding away. The rifle clattered into the void and he joined it. A jumble of snow-crusted rocks flew up to meet him. He hit them with a force that jarred and twisted his spine and robbed him of breath and consciousness.
Wake up, Scoble, the sentry said. It’s brass monkey weather. Best stand to before Wellan does the rounds. Dear God, wasn’t it cold! What had happened to his tunic and greatcoat? You’re a rum bugger, Len, doin’ guard duty in shirtsleeves. He tried to get up but the pain in his left leg made him cry out. The kneecap was pulped. His fingers fumbled the mess of cartilage and blood. From the distance of No Man’s Land someone was screaming. It isn’t me, Private Scoble said. It can’t be me. They were singing Land of Hope and Glory as the band marched them through Exeter. Old soldiers never die, they only fade away.
When numbness set in he surfaced from the agony. He couldn’t move. His back was dead and cold. Through the reek of his sweat and filth he caught a whiff of fox.
‘Black bastard,’ he hissed, clenching his teeth to hold off the pain that had developed a tidal shift. The sweat turned to ice-water on his body. A hole appeared in the sky and released a flash of moonlight. The flare fizzed up and fell,
bleaching the gloom. Beyond the shell crater the foxes sat cleaning their whiskers and paws.
‘Get back to hell,’ Scoble screamed.
His ruined knee poked from his trousers like a scavenger’s tit-bit, something for the foxes to gnaw at.
Another flare plopped down and he saw all around him the bulging dead. His lung heaved and he siphoned up a warm gruel of blood and phlegm. The sniper’s bullet had done disgusting things to Burdett’s head. ‘God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform’, the padre sang, and Private Scoble was shivering. The tent was as cold as God’s promises.
It began to drizzle. The temperature was well below zero and the fine rain froze on contact with everything it touched. Presently the wind came strong from the north-east turning the drizzle into an ice storm. Who will feed the ferrets? Keep your mind on the task at hand, Leonard, said Corporal Wellan.
A thin fox howled beneath the poplars. The lads were marching and singing the great songs. ‘Roses are bloomin’ in Picardy in the hush of the silvery dew.’ But the life was leaving him as surely as if an artery had burst. Beneath the skin of ice it was warm and drowsy. The foxes had reached the mule on the patch of snow that grew larger and smaller, then unsteady and large again. He felt faint. The icy raindrops clung to his face and hands. Giddy with terror he heard the grinding squeal of the tank. Dear Christ don’t let it come here. His fingers dug into the snow and stiffened.
‘What have you done to the mule?’ he slurred.
The shell exploded and he was falling backwards through his own darkness. Get out of the mud, Len, Corporal Wellan barked. Get up, lad – that’s an order. But he was settling deeper, choking, drowning. It’s Old Blackie, the boy on the bridge cried. Old Blackie’s a magic animal.
He stared through his frozen eyelashes. Beyond the pool the foxes sat. And in the sickening moment before blackness swamped his mind he knew where he was and why he had been brought there.
At first the verglas formed on the windward side of twigs, grasses, wire, reeds, rocks and branches, but when the storm died the drizzle fell steadily like a dense fog, sheathing the entire moor. Twigs swelled to five times their normal circumference and became embellishments on the glass sculptures that had once been blackthorn bushes. Branches were torn off trees by the weight of the ice crystals; birches, rowans and beeches were brought down and telephone wires snapped. Reeds of ice stood beside the frozen streams and the snowfields ran sparkling to white and glistening tors. In the hedges of the lanes around Manaton and North Bovey the hazels bowed to meet in arches and tunnels of ice, and the oaks of Leighon seemed to have been carved from the same bright substance.
