The Sight

by David Clement-Davies

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ spluttered Fell, ‘I...’

  As Huttser noticed the faint grin that was flickering round his son’s muzzle, he snarled.

  ‘Fell, don’t ever tell someone you’re sorry if you don’t mean it.’

  ‘But, Father...’

  ‘Anything could have happened. What if Larka had got lost?’

  Kar looked rather hurt by the fact that Huttser hadn’t mentioned him as well and seemed only concerned for his daughter’s safety.

  Fell dropped his head submissively, but Huttser was right, he didn’t really feel sorry or ashamed. Fell suddenly thought it was very unjust too that Huttser was scolding him alone and not Larka or Kar.

  He wanted to say something really clever to Huttser and, like any self-respecting cub, many times after Huttser punished him for being naughty, Fell had thought up angry answers to his admonitions. But he just mumbled something sulkily, something he had heard Palla saying one day about Morgra.

  ‘What did you say?’ growled his father.

  ‘Am I my sister’s keeper?’ shrugged Fell.

  Huttser glared down at the black wolf, but Palla stepped in now.

  ‘Don’t be too hard on him, Huttser,’ she growled.

  ‘Nothing’s happened. And besides, they’d have left the Meeting Place soon enough anyway, with our little surprise.’ Kar and Larka looked up excitedly. Huttser shook his head as he gazed at Fell, but the anger was draining from him and he too had wanted to surprise the children.

  ‘Very well, Palla,’ he said almost irritably, ‘you tell them.’

  ‘No, Huttser. It’s your right. You’re the Dragga.’

  ‘What is it, Father?’ asked Larka.

  ‘It’s time, children,’ growled Huttser, lifting his bushy red tail high behind him. ‘Fenris is ready to smile on your first hunt.’

  ‘Our first hunt!’ cried Fell delightedly.

  ‘May I come too?’ asked Kar, and Fell snorted with disgust.

  ‘Of course you can, Kar,’ whispered Palla.

  Larka beamed at her friend and bumped Fell scoldingly with her snout. By the time they got back to the Meeting Place the pack had already gathered round and were waiting eagerly for Huttser’s lead, panting and wagging their tails furiously. Skop smiled as he saw Kar’s excitement.

  ‘Now, children,’ said Huttser, turning back to the cubs, ‘stick together and keep in the background. If it’s safe we’ll draw you in at the end.’

  Huttser turned and lifted his muzzle. As he opened his jaws the hunting song that came thrilled the cubs. The pack began to answer the call immediately, Khaz and Kipcha howling like banshees, Bran bounding up to join them. There was a new excitement and a new responsibility in the air, but Brassa was still lying quietly in the grass.

  ‘Huttser,’ she said suddenly. ‘I won’t be coming with you.’

  ‘Is there anything wrong?’ growled Palla with concern.

  ‘No, no, my dear,’ answered the nurse, licking her paw.

  ‘You run along and don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine here. But I can do with some fresh meat. You’ll get it for me, won’t you, Fell?’

  Fell wondered why Brassa suddenly looked so old but he wagged his tail happily, for he was deeply fond of the nurse. Larka felt a sudden pang of jealousy and she ran up to her mother, but Palla growled at her. Despite all her fears for the children, on their first hunt there would be no room for foolish sentiment. Now the cubs had to begin to learn their own way in the world.

  Huttser and Palla led the pack away at a steady trot to the east along the river and away from the castle. As Brassa watched them go her eyes were fixed on both of Palla’s cubs. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something.

  ‘Look after yourselves,’ she muttered gravely, ‘please look after yourselves.’

  Then she lifted her head and called after them.

  ‘And strength to your paws.’

  Brassa didn’t know it but another pair of eyes were watching the young wolves from the shadow of the trees. Eyes as piercing as a knife and a fierce yellow-black.

  Huttser led them in a clear, straight line across the grass and immediately began to test the pace, making sure that the cubs could keep up, but still pushing their trot hard as they could. One day the wolves’ stamina would be their greatest ally and they might have to trail a kill for as many as seven or eight suns before eating.

  A wild feeling of liberation gripped Fell as soon as they set out. His mouth started to water furiously and his eyes had such an intense look that it was clear that he was already well beyond playing. Fell’s excitement was almost unbearable and for some reason he suddenly thought of the Sight and wondered greedily what its final power could be.

  But as the day went on Fell’s excitement began to dwindle, for the wolves had seen no Lera at all. The children began to trail further and further behind their parents. They were running along the edge of a forest now. Woods like this are a wolf’s natural habitat in the land beyond the forest, where the packs once roamed wild and free and prowled happily through the night. It was called the land beyond the forest not because it was short of trees, but because it lay beyond the mighty forests that edged the land of Hungary.

  The children instinctively felt at ease near the shadows. The sunlight cast sometimes beautiful, sometimes gloomy shapes through the firs on to the forest floor, but the pines were well spaced and here and there as they looked towards the trees the children could see clearings where the light glowed in shimmering golden brown pools.

  As they went, Larka noticed a bird sitting on a low branch above them. Though she didn’t have a name for the creature it was a lesser kestrel and it flicked its head back and forth now, for it held a little cockroach in its curving yellow beak.

  ‘What’s that called, Fell?’ asked Larka.

  Fell was already growing irritated that the pack still hadn’t found any game.

  ‘Why ask me,’ he said, looking at the bird a little resentfully, ‘and why are you always asking so many questions, Larka? If you were lost in a lovely wood would you really want to know the name of every tree or mushroom in it?’

  Larka wondered about the question, but she didn’t take Fell’s mood personally and now she peered even more closely up at the creature. Its talons too were yellow as they gripped the bark, as were the rings around its black eyes. The bird’s head was a blue grey and its wing feathers a beautiful orangey red, while its chest was specked with black. Larka thought how fine the bird looked, but as they padded passed it she started in amazement. Larka thought she’d heard a voice behind her.

  ‘Watch out,’ it seemed to say.

  Larka swung round but the kestrel had lifted into the air and was climbing higher and higher. Kar noticed the bird too as it soared away.

  ‘I don’t know what its name is, Larka,’ he said as his muzzle traced its course through the sky, ‘but it’s flying Putnar all right.’

  ‘Flying Putnar?’ said Larka with surprise. She had thought of it as a bird and little more.

  ‘Yes,’ growled Kar, ‘as opposed to the flying scavengers. It’s a hunter, Larka.’

  Fell was getting really bored and he suddenly wanted to tease both of them.

  ‘I know all about the flying scavengers,’ he growled, his eyes twinkling, ‘Wolfbane made a pact with them. Bran told me about it the other sun. Do you want to hear the story?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kar immediately.

  Larka was not at all sure she wanted to hear a story of Wolfbane but this was their first hunt and she suddenly felt too proud to show her brother the fact.

  ‘All right, then.’

  So Fell began as they padded along after the hunting pack.

  ‘It was when Tor and Fenris had been betrayed once more,’ growled Fell trying to remember Bran’s exact words, ‘and Fenris sent Wolfbane down to take revenge on the Varg.

  But with time Fenris got tired of revenge and he longed to trust the Varg again. He had no more need of
the Evil One or his darkness, so he ordered Wolfbane to return to the shadows. The Shape Changer had grown used to the world though and to the warming sunlight and the smell of new grass on the breeze. He was furious and because he could do such things he transformed himself into a flying scavenger, a great hooded crow and flew away to hide in a rowan tree in the famous valley of Kosov.’

  Fell spoke of it as though he himself had been there, even though he had no idea that the valley of Kosov was indeed a real place where a terrible battle had once been fought among the wolves, long, long ago, though its meaning was lost to time and wind and weather.

  ‘For suns Wolfbane hid from Fenris,’ Fell went on cheerfully, thoroughly enjoying the attention he was getting, ‘and the lesser birds like the crow and the raven, the scavengers of the air, came to help him. They fed him and fanned him with their wings and brought him news of the world beyond.’

  Larka felt a strange thrill as Fell spoke of the world beyond.

  ‘But at last, after Fenris had hunted amongst all the Lera, amongst the beetles and the fish, the snakes and the wild lynx, he learnt that Wolfbane was disguised as a bird in the valley of Kosov and he came himself as a golden eagle to hunt him down.’

  Fell lifted his muzzle as he started to impersonate what he thought the god might sound like.

  ‘ ‘‘Wolfbane,’’ cried Fenris in a terrible voice, ‘‘you have disobeyed my commandment, Wolfbane. And you must pay.’’’

  Kar shivered a little as he thought of Huttser’s anger at what had happened that same morning.

  ‘‘‘But Lord Fenris,’’ answered Wolfbane.’ Fell had put on a silly, whining voice now, ‘‘‘I have come to love the world and the sunlight and the power I wield over the Varg.’’ ’

  Larka giggled.

  ‘But at this,’ said Fell, ‘the god Fenris grew enraged with the Evil One, and quite understandably if you ask me, so he sent a great wind to blow Wolfbane out of his tree. Plop.’

  Fell gathered himself again.

  ‘‘‘You dare to disobey me,’’ snarled Fenris furiously as he looked at the silly creature lying in the grass.’

  Fell’s eyes twinkled, for he was trying to imitate his father now.

  ‘‘‘I made you, Wolfbane, and I made you as darkness. So you must stay in the shadows until I choose to summon you again. For it is my choice alone. And remember, Wolfbane, it is not you who have power over the Varg. For they are my children and it is I who do with them as I please, for good or bad.’’ ’

  Kar and Larka were thoroughly caught up with the tale now, but Fell had paused portentously.

  ‘Well, Fell,’ cried Larka, ‘what happened? What did the Evil One do?’

  ‘Of course, Wolfbane knew that he must obey Fenris’s command to return to the darkness,’ shrugged Fell, ‘because Fenris was a god. But before he went he made the flying scavengers a promise, because they had helped him. That one sun he would return and give them mastery over the birds of prey and over the Varg whom he now hated, and swell their craws with seas of blood, till the noise of their feeding woke even the dead.’

  ‘There,’ said Fell, thoroughly proud of the way he had told the story, ‘what do you think of that?’

  Larka gulped. She hadn’t liked the story’s conclusion at all.

  ‘Stop telling tales,’ she said trying to sound grown up.

  ‘Look, we’re falling behind.’

  The cubs ran on and soon they had caught up with the rest of the wolves. On they went, and the sun grew in strength above them. It was a good hour before Huttser suddenly lifted his tail expectantly.

  ‘At last,’ he growled.

  Larka was rather startled, for in the distance they saw a flock of birds wheeling and circling through the blue, flapping their black wings and diving suddenly through the empty air. The birds’ hungry cawing echoed through the day.

  ‘There must be carrion there,’ growled Huttser with pleasure, as the Dragga watched them. ‘This time the birds bring us meat. They want us to open the prey.’

  The pack bounded on and soon the wolves had reached an area of flat ground on the edge of the forest. An old water buffalo had broken its leg and perished that same morning. The flock of crows had settled plumply around it and were flapping about noisily, cawing and screeching or jumping suddenly to peck at the creature’s lifeless eyes.

  ‘Mother,’ whispered Larka, as they approached, ‘do we ask their permission to feed?’

  Palla almost laughed at her daughter.

  ‘Ask a scavenger’s permission to eat?’ she snorted. ‘No, Larka, we are Putnar, we ask no one’s permission.’

  As the wolf pack came down the slope, the greedy crows took to the air in a cloud of black feathers. They settled again around the wolves, watching and waiting eagerly for the Vargs’ teeth to open their find.

  ‘A good lesson for survival, children,’ cried Huttser with pleasure. ‘When we can’t find game, wolves must look to the Lera to aid us and scavenge a meal. Though we are Putnar, we must listen for their calls on the air too, for as the pack works together, so all nature must aid itself.’

  One of the birds was set slightly apart from the rest and was watching the children intently. Its eyes were as beady and black as they had been that night it had spied the pack with Morgra. It was a raven.

  ‘For this is the order of things,’ Huttser went on proudly, ‘as the Putnar must feed and the Dragga and Drappa must lead the pack. Come, Palla. ..’

  Suddenly the reasoned look in Huttser’s eyes, the ancient intelligence of the Putnar, vanished. He swung back to the buffalo with a snarl, opening his huge jaws like a cave, plunging his teeth into the still warm flesh.

  The birds crowed and flapped about delightedly and the young wolves watched in amazement as Palla joined her mate. Larka had never seen such a fury in her parents before, even when they quarrelled, and the sight suddenly terrified her. Fell too remembered resentfully the pain he had felt when Huttser had grabbed him by the scruff of the neck that sun Skop had arrived. But as they watched, suddenly all three children began to grow angry themselves.

  The bloodlust was on their parents and the fur round their muzzles was already drenched with gore. Their eyes had grown almost sightless with the furious pleasure of the feast, and as the wolves joined them, biting and snarling at each other as they found their place around the body in their natural pecking order, they all settled in to gorge themselves.

  ‘Come, children,’ growled Palla at last, as she saw them hanging back.

  Fell leapt forward. A frenzy had woken in his eyes and as he tugged at the meat and tasted the fresh blood he was mastered by the thrill of a wholly unfamiliar passion. That wild sense of freedom was mingled now with a strangely liberating anger. Kar joined him and Larka pushed in beside them too and started to tug at the buffalo. But as the crows flapped and cawed about them, Larka suddenly fancied that amid the noises she could understand words. The birds were talking.

  ‘Tear it,’ one seemed to say, ‘crack its bones.’

  ‘Hunger,’ snapped another, ‘time to feast.’

  ‘All in good time,’ crowed a raven. ‘Let the Putnar gorge and the scavengers wait. For when Wolfbane returns and his promise is fulfilled, all nature shall rebel and then we shall feed on them too.’

  Larka’s head was dizzy, and suddenly she grew hot all over. She turned her head and noticed the raven watching her intently. Larka shivered, for she thought she had recognized it, and then something even more extraordinary happened.

  For a moment Larka could no longer see and then, with a flash, she felt that she was in the air itself. Below her was the ravening pack tugging at the sides of the dead buffalo, pulling away at the skin that contained its flesh, desperate to get to the meat and tendons and bone inside. As Larka looked down she gasped, for there was her own body lying still in the grass next to the carrion. Larka seemed to hover and dive over the bloody ritual and then, almost as suddenly as it had happened, she found herself stirring in the
grass again, as the sounds of the pack came once more to her ears and the raven settled quietly nearby.

  Huttser lifted his head. Fell was trying to push Kar out of the way, but Larka had vanished.

  ‘Kar, where is Larka?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ stammered Kar, looking round with surprise.

  ‘Damn you,’ snarled Huttser, ‘are you a Dragga or not?’ The pack had stopped feeding altogether.

  ‘Something must have frightened her,’ growled Huttser.

  ‘She can’t have gone that far. We’ll follow her scent.’

  But as they began to scent for her, Palla grew frantic. The smell of the buffalo was so fresh in their nostrils and its blood so strong on their lips, they could not pick up any sign of Larka at all.

  ‘Split up,’ cried Huttser.

  Larka was in a torment. As soon as she reached the cover of the trees she had looked for somewhere to hide, anywhere where she could be alone to think as she tried to understand what had just happened. She found an abandoned hole by the bowl of an old elm tree, and scrabbled angrily at the soil, pulling her body inside, eased by the darkness and the warm earth. There she lay and tried to calm her breathing. Her eyes were still swimming and she felt a terrible throbbing in her head.

  ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Larka whispered bitterly to herself. ‘I was looking through that bird’s eyes.’

  It was as if she had left her own wolf body and become one of the birds, flying above the feeding pack. Larka began to tremble violently.

  ‘The Sight,’ she gasped suddenly. ‘The first power is to look through the eyes of birds.’

  As she said it the air seemed to have been sucked from the den. The revelation so startled Larka that for a moment she mistook the beating of her own blood for the sound of an animal stalking her.

  ‘Is this the curse, then?’ she whispered in terror. ‘Is this what Morgra threatened? Wolfbane made a pact with the birds and what those crows said...’

  Larka suddenly heard voices approaching. Her mother was calling and Palla and Fell were walking right past the hole.

  ‘Larka, where are you, Larka?’

  Larka remembered the cold ferocity she had seen in her mother as she had begun to feed and she felt so terrified that she pulled herself even further into her hiding place. She was still trembling badly and now she began to shiver too as she heard her mother and her brother disappearing into the distance.