Athaba was out hunting on his own one day when he spied a lone duck. Although a supreme harrier with a zig-zag that many wolves envied, he was not normally good at catching birds. With birds a lot of patience was required. You have to come at them from down wind, of course; but in little spurts, sticking close to the ground. Every move was done with a hunched-down crouch, except when you were lying flat in the grass. Up dink-dink-dink-dink-dink-dink down. Stay-absolutely-rock-stone-still-until-you-are-sure-you-haven’t-been-seen. Then – up dink-dink-dink-dink-dink-dink-dink down. And so on, for perhaps half a dozen times, then just as you get near enough to taste fowl, more often than not the duck takes to the air. You make a last desperate leap, which does not come easy after being crouchy and dinking along on tiptoe, hoping to get a mouthful of plump bird. It was all a bit too slow and careful (not to say uncertain) for a wolf like Athaba who liked zipping over the scrub with the adrenalin racing through his body and his nerves tingling with electricity.
So on first seeing the duck, he was not all that enthusiastic about attempting the catch. At first, he just strolled in the general direction of the bird which was prodding about in some weed at the edge of a shallow stretch of water. However, as Athaba got closer, he realised that the duck was so intent on feeding itself it had not noticed him at all. He crouched, he dinked, crouched-and-dinked, crouched-and-dinked, 1-e-a-p-t – and the bird was in his mouth. He was about to close his jaws on it, when it suddenly went all limp and floppy. It had died, like so many small creatures, of a heart attack. Voles did it all the time.
So, with the feast undamaged, Athaba trotted back to where the pack were gathering for the evening. He was very pleased with himself. The first person he wanted to show the bird to was Ragisthor, who was always telling Athaba he was the worst bird hunter in wolf history.
When Athaba had said, ‘I’m not interested in hunting birds,’ Ragisthor had replied, ‘Little green shoot, you should be. You should be interested in hunting anything and everything that a wolf hunts, or one day you’ll find yourself in no-hare country with no voles or deer-mice in sight. A place where the moose and caribou never venture. In this strange land there will only be one thing to eat, unless you count snow amongst your favourite foods. That something will be birds. In that land, precious fern, you will starve to death, because you cannot catch birds. For shame. For shame that a wolf should die because he likes to do only those things he is good at and scorns those things which he has to practise, over and over, merely to be adequate. Sometimes adequate is enough to prevent you from that ignominious death of which I speak. You can’t chase hares which do not exist, no matter how skilled a harrier you might be.’
Athaba saw Ragisthor standing on the edge of a group. He dropped the duck to call to his friend, filling his chest for a loud victory howl. As he threw his head back, the note just about to be loosed from his throat, something took to the air in front of his eyes. It was the duck, that had been doing something ducks – and geese – were famous for. Feigning death. When a waterfowl has nothing else to lose, when the jaws are closing on it and there is no hope, why not pretend dead? Athaba had heard the story about the flock of geese who had seen a wolf coming, knew that hunters were over the brow of the hill so could not take flight, and had feigned death. Athaba had heard about the chagrin of the wolf, who when finding all his caches empty, had realised what had happened. Had then guessed that the geese had fooled him, had got up and shook the soil and twigs from their feathers, had a good snigger and waddled away to some hiding place. Athaba had heard that story all right. Had tucked it away somewhere in is mind, thinking, ‘Mustn’t forget. Geese feign death sometimes, when you sneak upon them.’ No one had said anything about ducks, or any other birds or animals for that matter.
Ragisthor came strolling over to him, a puzzled expression around his jaws and in the position of his tail.
‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘What?’ replied, Athaba innocently.
‘I saw a bird fly up from under your very nose. A duck, it seemed. Was I wrong? Perhaps I’ve been looking into too many sunsets?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what? Bird, or one sunset too many?’
Athaba cringed inside.
‘Well, actually, yes there was a bird, and it was a duck.’
Ragisthor looked closely at his protégé.
‘Ah, I see. Sneaking up on the pack, was it? Ready to peck the lot of us to death in one fowl stoop? Got it, little blade. Got it. And you the courageous hero managed to thwart this dastardly creature. Caught its measure on the wind, sallied forth and went for it despite the terrible danger. I see it barely escaped with its life …’
‘What do you mean?’ said Athaba, his heart sinking at every word Ragisthor uttered. He was envisaging later revelations to the pack and his standing amongst them deteriorating beyond recovery.
Ragisthor replied, ‘You have a feather on your jaw.’
Athaba brushed rapidly at his jaws with his right paw and a small downy feather floated to the ground. He stared at it in dismay, knowing that Ragisthor must have guessed what had happened. The older wolf cocked his head on one side.
‘I think this brave act of yours should be kept to ourselves, young sapling. We don’t want Skassi to get too envious of your exploits, do we? Saving a wolf or two here and there is all very well for your image, but glory due for saving the whole pack is a bit hard for any rival to swallow. Yes?’
‘Yes,’ he replied in a very small voice.
Ragisthor turned to leave, then said over his shoulder.
‘Don’t be too despondent, my little fern. At least you’re catching them now.’
Once Ragisthor had settled himself, Athaba joined the pack. Several seasons had gone by since his father had been killed by the caribou and his subsequent foolishness was now forgotten by most. Possibly Skassi still remembered but it was doubtful if any other wolf had bothered to retain the memory. Athaba’s standing in the pack was very high. Amongst the senior undermegas his ranking was equalled only by that of a she-wolf whose pack had joined Athaba’s. Skassi himself was now a mega, a good shoulderwolf and in strong contention for the position of hunter-warrior headwolf. He had brought down a caribou in full flight, had beaten another mega in a battle for a contested place in the inner circle next to Urkati and Itakru, and his howling skills, the range and quality of his tones, were enviable. Thankfully, Skassi had no time for quarrels that would not advance him further in the hierarchy of the pack.
Athaba was also frequently chosen as a shoulderwolf, though this was not unusual for an undermega shortly to become a mega. He was almost three years of age now: twelve seasons. Despite the appalling duck incident, he rarely made major errors out in the field. He knew his territory well, from the tundra flatlands to the subalpine fir-covered mountains. He knew its shades of light, its warm pockets during the cold winters, the likely position of quarry given the time of year and type of weather. He was sensitive to subtle changes in temperature, to odours beyond number, to the changing landscape. One of the things that Ragisthor had taught him (among many) was to maintain a flexible mentality.
‘A closed mind, sapling, is a dead one. We are by nature rigid beasts. The structure of our society may seem flexible on the surface – headwolves that move aside for others in changing circumstances – but we shatter on impact with the unusual. We are disciplined and regimented from birth: necessary for pack survival but often destructive with regards to the individual. One day you may need to survive as Athaba, not as a member of a pack, and then you will need individuality …’
For the good of the pack, Athaba carried out his duties in the field and around camp assiduously. For the good of himself, he sometimes lay watching the landscape from a high vantage point. He observed differing patterns of light that fell on various parts of the tundra. Most wolves would have settled for the fact that there was light, or half-light, or dark. Athaba was poetically in love with light, hazy or clear, soft or hard. The s
hadows had a shallowness or depth to them which intrigued him. In the forests, shafts of hard light dazzled him, glades of soft light seduced him. Out on the tundra the slanted light had an ethereal quality with a power to influence travellers. Owl-light, gloaming magic, twilighted wetlands.
To most wolves, certainly to his own pack, a study of rock formations was more important than the nature of light. Each scar, crag, stack, tor, sill and overhang had its personal name. Every rock and stone was once a wolf heroine or hero, an ancestor from the Firstdark, caught in a dramatic death pose. These were the wolves that died in the initial great battles with the new creatures, the men that the giant Groff and his dogs helped out of the sea-of-chaos. In those days, the first men did not have guns but were bigger, stronger creatures who fought with sticks and stones. In their battles with these muscled, grisly people, the wolves were seized and their forelegs wrenched apart so that their hearts were split in two. The shock of such a sudden end transformed the heroes and heroines to stone. The bodies were flung far and wide across the landscape, the agony of their death-throes evident in the angled features of each petrified corpse. Such were these wolves from the Firstdark that even in death they were of use, forming landmarks to navigate by and pinnacles to use as watchtowers. They had such names as Ooolhralahan, Aarwanlillaa, Uuraqahiiri. All four-syllabled names which gave themselves to a distinctive howl. The sound of their titles crooned out of the throat smoothly and hung over the moonlit landscape for many moments after the call. They were names to drift as droplets of moisture over the treetops, and fall like delicate rain upon the ears of waiting wolves many miles away.
These battles were not fought during the Firstdark but immediately after, since on leaving the sea-of-chaos men had ensured they would have light to hunt by. Groff, their provider, had given them a sun and moon at one throw. However, when the great open battles had been fought and lost on the plains, the wolves took to the high cold country where there was more cover. They were hunted down by the more ferocious of the men with dogs for trackers and scouts. By now men had discovered metal and killed with spears, arrows, axes and swords. True to their devious nature men devised tricks to entice wolves from hiding and to draw them into traps. They sent their young females out, dressed in hooded riding cloaks, to draw curious lone wolves to a place where men with axes were waiting to cut them to pieces. They placed domestic pigs as lures in stockades, which became increasingly more difficult to enter and leave: the first stockade was made of straw, which was easy to breach; the second made of sticks, which took more effort; but the third was made of stones and held a dozen men, ready with fire and sword. Once inside the stone stockade, the wolf could not escape and was at the mercy of his captors.
Wolves, unused to chicanery of any kind, tried to fight back in like manner. They sent in some of their number, smaller wolves posing as alsatians, to stalk the alleys and streets. The light of day was too revealing, and on the darkest of nights men carried lanterns which threw out powerful beams, so wolves waited for the moon. Then they sent these agents amongst the men, to discover their ways and report on any future plans to destroy the wolf population. However, wolves are wolves and find deceit very difficult. The time of the full moon is when wolves generally celebrate with each other in their comradeship, and they would forget where they were and lick a domestic dog’s jaws in greeting, or nip his shoulder as a sign of friendship. Dogs rarely exchange such gestures, especially not at the time of the full moon, which is a wolf time. The dogs would raise a hue and cry which would spread to the men and human barking could be heard throughout the world. In the beginning the wolves often escaped. Men rely on vision and were not used to hunting in half-light. Thus they fumbled with their dull metal bullets, dropping them on the ground and mishandling them. Such things do not deter the most devious creatures on this earth for long. Soon men began to make bullets of silver, even though this metal is precious to them, because it shines under the moonlight and is more easily seen at such an hour. So wolves gave up their practice of spying and retired to even colder climes, in the far north, where men were loath to follow. There were still some who would chase them, even through blizzards and over difficult terrain, but their numbers were few.
Canids are very proud of their history: wolves arrogantly so. It is a past full of suffering and valour with almost all the credit going to the canids. Even dogs, though traitorous to their own kind, are faithful to death once new loyalties have been established. It has caused others to speculate on whether the dingoes, jackals, dogs, foxes and wolves once got together and made it all up. Such speculations have given rise to many alternatives, one of which states that wolves and their cousins were originally long-legged otters that lived in trees, who only came down once the dust had settled under men’s feet. But that story was probably spread around by a cynical lemming.
In years when vegetation on the tundra is abundant, the ground seethes with rapidly breeding voles and lemmings. There are several species of both which burrow through snow in the winter or scramble over the moss in the summer. In such years there might be fifty lemmings where two seasons before stood a single pair. Their breeding overtakes the food supply, and multitudes of vole and lemming refugees can be witnessed crossing sea ice, tundra and mountain ranges, going no one knows where. In such years, the canid predators, the coyotes, foxes and wolves, eat well.
Unlike the savage shrew families, who are entirely carnivorous and crunch away happily on beetles and bugs, the lemmings and voles depend on good quality vegetation. If this is not there, the numbers shrink. In such years, the wolves seriously have to consider each hunt and cannot rely on small rodents to fill their larder.
Itakru gathered together four wolves for an attack on some musk oxen to the south. One of the shoulderwolves was Skassi, the other Athaba. There was a junior undermega on one flank and the mega Rennedati, whose hunting skills were on the wane, on the left. The rest of the pack were assigned tasks by Urkati, from hunting smaller ground prey, to pathfinding for the next camp.
‘We’re off after a musk ox,’ Athaba told Ragisthor, not without a trace of excitement in his voice. His hunting blood was up and that peculiar heady feeling which overtakes wolves when their adrenalin is racing was already beginning to have an affect on him. It was as if he were in someone else’s body: he experienced a feeling of detachment from himself. It was almost as if he were ill. Yet his senses remained keen. In fact this feeling seemed to sharpen his senses and hone the edge of his brain. There was the dangerous thought that he could do anything, was invincible.
Ragisthor said, ‘You be careful. Those muskies are not as docile as they seem, young fern. Their horns are sharp. I know. I’ve had a punctured shank and two cracked ribs from those beasts. They want to live too, you know.’
‘Right. I’ll remember,’ cried Athaba, eager to be on his way. How could he ignore this flame in his breast? Ragisthor was getting old and cautious, naturally, in his middle age. But such sentiments did not do for a young wolf about to become a mega in just over a season. He left Ragisthor, standing elegantly on a horizontal slab of stone, looking as if he had been carved by artistic hands.
The five wolves set off, deerwalking across the rough rocky ground. With the wind in his nostrils and riffling his shank hair, Athaba felt good. The light was sharp and bright, the air clear. Only one or two clouds like fine underhair floated across the sky. It was a curiously flimsy day with airborne seeds drifting by. There was a silence balanced delicately on the ridge which threatened to slip away at any moment.
Athaba remembered he had not taken leave of his mother, Meshiska, but then realised she would understand. He glanced across at Skassi, stiff-legged and high-headed. There was no doubt about it, the bully of his earlier seasons was a handsome-looking wolf. He had strength, and intelligence too. But what was it that Ragisthor had said about him? He lacks imagination. Never underestimate the potential of good creative thinking, young shrub. You have it. Nurture it. Athaba was not quite sure how t
o ‘nurture it’ but it pleased him that he had something Skassi had not, whatever it was. Still, Athaba was anxious to remain on the right side of the cinnamon-coated Skassi, which seemed easy to do so long as one showed deference.! When Skassi and he came too close together and Skassi produced dominant gestures, then Athaba would follow with submissive ones: the raised paw, the curled under tail, grin, lowered body, eye-whites and flattened ears. The lot. This was not cowardice or even servility, it was protocol. He still suffered the occasional body-slam, or bite, from a senior wolf, though Skassi had not gone this far for a long time.
They came across an old kill from two days previously. The ravens were still working at the dried streaks of meat on bones which had once been a wild sheep.
‘Ghood ghunting,’ cried the beaked ones, stamping over the carcass and flapping their black shiny wings. ‘Crussh ’em, keell ’em, make ’em dedid!’ They shouted. ‘Ghood wolkfers. Ghood wolfers. Niyse sharp teethings. Haaaaaaak!’
The wolves, as they always did, ignored the scavengers that followed their pack. The ravens considered themselves part of the family, but the wolves pretended there were no such creatures on earth as the revolting little parasites that tagged along behind the pack.
‘Ghed ’em throtes!’ screamed a raven, as a parting call. ‘Ghed ’em throte and rippit ’em opens! Haaaak! Haaaak! Haaaaaaaaak!’
After half a day’s travel they came across the musk oxen, who had unfortunately caught the wolves’ scent when the wind veered sharply without warning. The great beasts, looking like a cross between a yak and a bison, immediately formed a tight defensive ring with the young animals in the centre, and their horns outward. They stood on the plain, their fear evident, and long shaggy guard hairs brushed the ground as they swayed from side to side. The smell of their matted underfelt wafted up the ridge to the wolves, who knew that the wind had again changed but that the quarry was now warned and on edge.
Midnight's Sun: A Story of Wolves Page 6
