“Yes, Fell. And something happened in the forge. I looked into water and saw visions there. I think of the future.”
“You have the Sight, Alina.”
Alina nodded gravely. “Did you find your Guardian?” she said.
The wolf shook his head. Fell had learned nothing more from the Lera of the Guardian.
“Whatever our destiny is, Fell, I must not be frightened. And I have nowhere else to go. I’ve learnt some skills at least, with the dear blacksmith.”
“I see it, Alina. Feel it, too. And I’ve been sharpening my teeth on stone and bone. But if you mean to do this thing, perhaps you need some help.”
“Help?”
“From a human pack. We hunt better in packs, I’ve learnt that now.”
“There’s no help for it, Fell. I’m alone, though I have you.”
“This boy though, he comes too? He makes me nervous.”
“I don’t know, Fell.”
Fell suddenly had the feeling that the link between them, the link made by the Sight, was straining apart. It was as if Alina was suddenly shielding her own feelings for Catalin from him, and it startled Fell, and made him question, jealously.
“It’s good to be with you again, human cub.”
“And to be with you, Fell FastPaw,” answered Alina’s racing mind.
It was good, for as they ran together through the forest Alina suddenly felt more alive than she had ever before. It was as if her eyes were as strong as Fell’s in the twilight, and she could smell everything about her. Leaf and fern, the richness of the swelling spring earth, the moss and lichen on the rocks in their streams. They broke from the tree line at speed, the wolf and the bold young woman, and came to a hill above a little valley. As they both stopped, panting but happy, and looked down, they saw a small roe deer, grazing on the sward.
“I’ll hunt it for us, Alina.”
“No, Fell. Let me.”
“What, Drappa?” came Fell’s amused yet questioning thoughts. “Will you chase it down, then take it with your teeth?”
Alina had slipped the bow from her shoulder and drawn an arrow.
“No, wolf. Watch and learn. This is the power of the human. The art of his mind. His scientia.”
The girl strung the arrow on the bowstring, but Lescu had not had time to teach her any skill with the thing, and although Alina thought herself something of a warrior already, she soon got a sharp shock. The bow gave an awkward twang, the arrow, neither true nor straight, fell far short of the roe buck, though close enough to send it darting away in fright, and Alina felt a violent jolt on her hand from the string, that cut her skin and made her thumb bleed.
“Aggh.”
“Why do you try these foolish human tools, Alina? We should trust to stealth, and speed, to tooth and claw. To nature.”
“Perhaps because I do not have them at my beck and call, like you,” thought the young woman almost sadly, wondering again what nature really was. “Perhaps because I am only what I am. I might have taken it with my sword though.”
“If you had ever got close enough, yes. And you would not have got close enough, human, for animals have powerful instincts. But do not lose heart, Alina WovenWord. I’ll chase it down for us, with nature’s power.”
Fell was gone in a flash of streaking black, and in the distance he took the deer. On his way back though, carrying the creature’s limp body in his mouth like a gift from a huge cat, he spotted the red flowers on the hill—a fire—near to where he had left Alina, and two humans sitting by it. Catalin had found Alina on the mountain again, and for the time being they had made peace.
So they began their march in earnest, that strange little triumvirate, sensing that Vladeran’s soldiers were following them into the wild, but going to meet the lord himself in his halls of stone. Often Catalin walked apart from the other two, still fearing and distrusting this bond between human and wolf. Often Fell walked alone too, guarding them from the mountaintops like a wild sentry, although he prowled their fires in the night, at once distrustful of the young man and fearful for the girl, and watching for wild Putnar amongst the trees.
As they went, not once did Catalin and Alina tell each other a story, but instead they looked out from the mountains, and like a flickering dream, those wayfarers saw evidence of what was happening in the real world of men, and the wars that had indeed lit the lands beyond the forest once more, like a furious flame.
In the valleys they saw soldiers on the march, raising high the waving banners of Moldova and Wallachia and Castelu, woven with the crests of King Stefan or Draculea, or the symbol of a castle on a mountaintop. On the hills they saw flames licking about wooden churches, and in the foothills they found the bodies of men; of Turk, of Vladeran’s soldiers, or Draculea’s and King Stefan’s armies, left alone beneath the thoughtless skies, to feed the Lera and the earth. If this was the world of men, then its magic was a terrible thing.
They crossed rivers and streams, they skirted wide mountain lakes, they scrambled into rocky caves and crept along high, narrow passes, and as they went they felt the spring beginning to swell towards summer, and Lera return in abundance to the land. Rabbit and hare, deer and boar, otter and badger crept out of their hides and their holes and walked once more unafraid of the winter, as the trees opened their buds and rustled, and birds filled the thronging skies. All the while Fell asked of the Guardian, but the animals just shook their heads in fear at a wolf who could talk to them.
Still Catalin watched the heir to Castelu and the wolf with a wary eye. Many times Alina would suggest that Catalin draw closer to Fell, and try to understand him, for she felt that he too might have the Sight, but Catalin would always shake his head angrily. Alina, on the other hand, seemed to grow closer and closer to the wolf, and often Catalin would wake by their fire and see her standing alone by the black wolf’s side and looking out on the land. Sometimes the wolf would creep down to where she lay and wake her, by growling softly or licking her face. Sometimes he would shake his tail so happily when he returned from a hunt and saw Alina, that he would remind the lad of Gwell.
One sun Catalin drifted away and became separated from the other two. They had been walking up ahead, and he found himself thinking bitterly of Lescu and his home. His time with Fell had dulled his own instincts for danger in the wild, and as he was walking down a narrow gorge, he heard a furious growl.
At first Catalin thought it was Fell, but to his horror he saw a gigantic grey wolf, his front paws up on a stone, watching him coldly. He did not move, but around him a small wolf pack was suddenly springing down on Catalin with the bloodlust in their eyes.
The young man turned and began to run, but he stumbled on a branch and fell badly, grazing his hands and face. He picked himself up again and ran on, pushing away the pain, but the ravening wolves had almost closed on him. Then Catalin saw a shape coming towards him. Fell’s tail was up, but there was no fear in his yellow gold eyes. He ran straight past him at the newcomers, and suddenly the air was filled with the growls and snarls of fighting wolves. Fell was driving them back.
Catalin cowered in horror. It was as if the wolves were all around and Fell was in the centre, fighting for his life, and Catalin’s too. Fell swung left and right, growling and snarling and snapping, here catching skin and fur with his powerful teeth, there dragging his claws across a throat. One of the attackers he caught in the eye, blinding it, and another he bit so hard in the tail that it let out such a yelp that it sounded as if it were dying.
Two things helped Fell against so many attackers: the strength and vigour that the black wolf had earned alone in the wild, and his own dark reputation. For this group of Vengerid, for so they were, had heard of Fell of the Mountaintops, and it had made them fight with far more fear and far less tenacity than they would normally have done. So at last Fell saw all six of the attacking wolves cower back before his fury.
“Bravo,” said the big wolf who was still watching from the rock. He raised his great grey tail, as grey and shiny as the strange shock of raised fur that ran right up the length of his rippling spine. It ran towards a neck as thick as an oxen’s, and a muzzle both brutal and primitive.
“Who are you?” growled Fell.
“They call me Jalgan, Dragga. And I commend you on your skill.”
Jalgan. The leader of the Vengerid.
“What do you want?” said Fell warily.
“Nothing. We go to increase our pack and like a fight to entertain us. Though I am not in the mood today. You should join us.”
Fell said nothing. He was thinking of Tarlar.
“What is your name?” asked Jalgan.
“Fell.”
Jalgan smiled and nodded. “I have heard of you. As one alone who might be worthy to take my challenge. Will you, Fell?”
Fell looked back at Catalin and then Jalgan. “The fights of the Varg do not concern me,” he answered.
“A pity,” said Jalgan, smiling. “I think it would be a better fight than the old fool who has taken it. Huttser.”
Fell’s ears came up immediately, and he almost snarled.
“Huttser?”
“You know of him?” said Jalgan. “He was not a bad fighter, I’ll give him that, for one of such age. Twice he fought off my scouts and now has taken the challenge. The only wolf ever to do so.”
The others were growling scornfully, and Fell felt pride through his muscles as he heard that his father had shown his power again.
“It won’t be much of a fight though, and I fear the old dog will be dead before I reach him, with the wound he has already.”
“Wound?” whispered Fell dangerously.
“My scouts wounded him badly. And he’s old, the oldest Varg in the lands beyond the forest, so they say, so it will not heal well. I fear I will be deprived of my glory. They say this Huttser is dying.”
Fell felt a terrible weakness enter him. His father was dying, and the others were in danger too. Tarlar.
“I don’t think I shall take his challenge. I have pack members to seek out,” said Jalgan. “But when he goes, I will fall on his pack like a ravening vulture and take back my rightful mate.”
Fell felt a pang in his heart, but he knew that now was not the time to show weakness, and he had to maintain his dominance.
“Then why don’t you go, Jalgan?” he cried. “And leave others in peace.”
The leader glared at him, but Jalgan turned and led the Vengerid away, with swinging muzzles and angry growls. Fell shook himself and turned towards Catalin.
The lad was picking himself up and Fell walked towards him and lifted his tail, but he stopped and did not go any closer. If Catalin had had the Gift, he might have been able to read the black wolf’s scornful, angry thoughts.
“Don’t look grateful, human,” Fell thought coldly. “I did this because I could and for her, not for you, although the Dragga of a true pack protects all. Even a Sikla like you.”
With that Fell turned scornfully and went bounding back towards Alina, who had no knowledge of what had happened at all as she walked far up ahead, her eyes ever fixed on Castelu and her home.
That night Catalin sat by their fire, watching the black wolf strangely, and for the first time, he felt grateful to the creature. Just for a moment he wished that he had Alina’s power to reach him and thank him in some way. Yet the young man was frightened too.
Fell’s thoughts, meanwhile, were consumed with what he had heard of Huttser. It made the wolf growl and whimper in his sleep, and when he woke his mind was turning towards that valley beyond the Great Waterfall. The valley where Kar had said his father and mother were. And Tarlar too.
As they travelled on, Alina had the sense that they were getting closer to their goal, a sense far stronger than her youthful feelings of things about to happen, and she tried to talk to Fell in her mind, but the black wolf was distant and preoccupied now. By evening, twelve days later, he had not hunted, and they had not eaten more than a rabbit that Alina had managed to snare.
They made a simple camp on the edge of an elm forest, near a stream, and Catalin lit a fire. Alina had taught him the technique with the sticks, and the young man and woman both wondered if Fell would hunt, but he sat above them on a slope, wrapped in his thoughts. Catalin got up and wandered towards the stream to drink, but as he cupped his hands, he found the water strangely discoloured, and when he sipped it, he suddenly spat it out again. It tasted foul, and they slept that night with hungry bellies.
It was Fell who woke first. Dawn was breaking all around them, sending shards of brilliant pink splintering through the mauve. Fell got up and yawned, a huge wolf yawn, and stretched himself. Then, with a great shake of his coat, thinning again now to a sleek spring gleam, he lifted his black tail and padded down the slope towards the two young people, to wake his friend.
Alina was wrapped in her blanket by the smoking embers of the fire, her sword and bow by her side. She was calm and peaceful in her sleep, and the wolf noticed her pretty nose twitching slightly, as the dreams passed through her mind. Fell swung his head. Catalin had stretched and turned over in his own sleep. The wolf did not like the young man, but he was suddenly not sorry that he had protected Alina’s friend from the Vengerid.
Fell’s stomach rumbled though and he realised how hungry he was, and just then the oddest thing happened. He caught a powerful scent on the breeze, filling his nostrils. He knew immediately what it was, and that it shouldn’t have been there. It was fresh meat. Not the normal smell of a living animal, which would have raised Fell’s instincts for the hunt, but the smell of new blood.
Fell’s ears came up, but he did not wake Alina. Instead he turned towards the trees, where the scent was coming from. The wolf was still sleepy, and exhausted with worrying all night about his father. Perhaps it was that which made him sloppy and careless as he reached the edge of the wood. The scent of meat masked the smell of man that lurked behind it.
The blood scent was very powerful now, irresistible to a hungry wolf, and as Fell looked into the shadows of the wood he saw the carcass hanging in the crook of a tree. It was a dead deer, and it was just possible that a lynx had taken it and left it there to return to later and feed.