Fell (The Sight 2) (7 page)
Alina pulled her pack over her shoulder as she went racing through the second break in the fence and tumbling down the snowy verge on the other side. In no time at all she had reached the little stream. She knew enough of living in the open to take off her boots as she crossed the shallow water, still unfrozen by the coming winter, and felt it burn like fire against her skin. Then she sat for a while on a large rock on the other side, drying and rubbing her feet, then sliding them once more into her warm boots. At least the cold river had driven back the effect of the horrid potion.
She opened her pack and took out some bread, blessing Mia for the timely gift, and looked out beyond the fields. The night was pitch black, but a moon was rising, giving an eerie blue wash to the white, and Alina realised again that she was still wearing Malduk’s coat, and blessed its warmth.
In the distance the young woman saw the shadow of the forests and rising behind them the foothills of the great Carpathian Mountains. When she had thought of running away before, tired of hiding, she had made up pictures of goblin forests and fairy caverns, but as she looked out there she knew that real nature waited for her now, a whole world, unknown and forbidding to the girl, yet her only hope. Alina the storyteller was accused of theft and murder, while those who had pretended to save and value her had wanted to kill her to conceal their terrible secret. They had wanted her life.
It was a life she hardly knew anything of, one mixed with sadness and fear, and yet, somewhere, the feeling of love and safety beyond. Now Alina Sculcuvant wished more than ever that she had a friend to aid her in her journey, wherever it might take her. She thought bitterly of Mia and Elak and Teela, and around the foothills she noticed great flames of orange light begin to burn and blaze and lick into the night air. They were lighting the beacon fires. Then the changeling, hunted and alone, rose and was running as fast as her young legs could carry her, out into the wild world towards the mountains beyond, and in the heavens once more it had started to snow.
FELL RAISED HIS MUZZLE AND SCENTED THE wind in the clear, crisp day. The trees of Carpathia still wore their autumn garment, threaded with nature’s richly woven colours, but now veils of white had been brushed across their dying leaves, and the great Carpathian Mountains were already heavy with snow. Their flanks had turned to shining pinnacles of glittering brilliance that pierced the blue grey heavens.
The snow lay thick as a heavy coat, and though the sky was as blue as new spring flowers, Fell was troubled and deep in thought. Since leaving the cave he had drifted closer and closer to a human village, thinking of the voice and the boy he had seen in the water. Had Larka really sent her spirit from beyond to tell him of the child’s importance to nature itself? And what of those words about the Helpers and a Guardian? The ghostly visitation was still haunting the wolf, but in truth he wanted nothing to do with this strange burden.
Fell caught a delicious smell on the breeze, the smell of cooking meat. To any ordinary Varg it might have meant very little, or been disgusting compared with the scent of a fresh kill, but Fell knew of the humans and their strange red flowers—their fires.
Fell knew how humans would chase and kill wild animals too, but not nourish themselves with the food straight from the bone like the wolf, but chop the carcass with their knives and put the bounty on a stick of wood over the flames that rose from the fire. They would even place it in a metal pot and add water and roots and plants to it, and let it stew horribly.
At first the unnaturalness of it had appalled the prowling black wolf, but with time, as he watched their encampments and smelt their kitchens, Fell had begun to accept that perhaps these Lera, these strange human animals, needed to do such a thing in order to eat. He pitied them for it, but Fell had grown accustomed to it too, and even come to like and recognise the scents and flavours given off by their concoctions.
Now the wolf could smell cooking rabbit and winter rosemary, and it made his stomach grumble and his mouth slaver. Three days after his strange visitation, Fell had been hunting without success and he was desperately hungry. With the heavy snowfall many of the Lera, rabbit and hare, fox and squirrel and hedgehog, had gone to ground, snuggling themselves safely away, warm and secret in their hides and burrows, hidden deep in the secret earth.
It was as if the land were going into a deep sleep, instilled by some magic potion, and was beginning to dream, or had been emptied of its rightful inhabitants by a mysterious spell. Fell had seen tracks and could sense that creatures, and thus food, were around him, but the contours of the land had changed completely, and with no natural cover anymore to hide the Putnar’s approach, it was easy for prey to see a wolf and escape.
Fell padded from the cover of the trees and looked down the slope. Near a circle of rocks, he could see a little plume of grey smoke rising from a birchwood fire beneath a bubbling cooking pot. The wolf could scent horse dung too, but there was no one about, and Fell padded farther into the open. The wolf was wary, but hunger was getting the better of him, and the smells from the pot were drawing him towards the fire.
Closer Fell drew, and the wolf smiled as he saw that a coney, a baby hare that had not made it into the pot, was hanging tantalisingly on a stick, left for the morrow. As Fell approached the free breakfast, a shape stirred on the ground and he stopped dead. A man was lying fast asleep beyond the fire. An empty bottle of tsuika lay beside him and next to it one of the human’s metal sticks. A sword.
Fell’s muzzle curled upwards a little and he gave a nervous growl. He should have scented the human immediately, but the smell of horse and of cooking rabbit had masked him. As he stood there, he thought of that voice and its words about a human child, a boy who was close and needed his help. But how could a boy be important to nature itself? Fell wondered if it was the child’s destiny to grow into a great and powerful Dragga. He had a thought then that he often had in his wanderings—that the real strength and fight of nature lay with the Dragga, the male. Fell wanted answers today as much as a meal.
The wolf raised his tail and wondered what to do.
As Fell stood there, something strange happened. Fell knew that the Sight was touching him again, even before the vision came. It was as if his eyes were misting over, and a sudden darkness surrounded him. Then Fell was seeing images in his mind’s eye.
“No,” he growled, trying to stop them coming. “No.”
Fell was looking on a human homestead and in the doorway a human Drappa was smiling and waving, while two human cubs, a little Dragga and Drappa, held their mother by the waist, laughing and giggling happily.
Fell’s eyes cleared and he was looking on the sleeping man once more, but now it was as if the very will had been sucked from him, and he felt weak and ashamed.
“What’s happening to me?” Fell whispered, thinking of how he had understood those squirrels, but still the wolf couldn’t move. Then there was a shout and Fell saw two horsemen galloping towards him. The soldiers, the Turks from the East, had spied him from the brow of the hill and were racing to save their companion. Their shouts and the whinny of horses woke the sleeper too, and seeing the black wolf, he cried out and grabbed his sword. The horses had almost reached the fire now, and as Fell saw the riders raise their spears, he gave a snarl and turned and leapt away.
Straight for the trees the wolf ran, his tail streaking behind him, but the horses were after him and his trail was clear in the snow. Fell knew all too well how quickly the hunter may become the hunted in the wild, and he was terrified. But the fear was made worse by the confusion that the vision had brought on him, and the sense of shame that he had not been able to strike the man. Fell had seen how humans could fight and kill, with the violence of the wild Putnar, and felt no pity for the creatures. Yet the Sight had drawn him into the man’s mind, only to bring this strange confusion of purpose.
On Fell ran through the forest, with the chasing horses drawing closer. He saw the ground dip and heard the sound of water. Below him was a little river, snaking off through the forest, and Fell heard that warning voice in his mind again: Fear it, Fell. Fear death by water. But he swerved towards it this time and, just as the horses reached him, sprang onto a rock and leapt for the drop.
He sailed across the gulf, as the riders pulled hard on their reins and brought their mounts to a halt. Fell landed on the far side of the bank, his hindquarters splashing into the still-unfrozen water, as a spear landed in the soft snow beside him.
In truth the horses could have leapt the river too, but a wolf is dangerous prey, especially in the early winter months, when the savagery of survival is so strong in his blood, and the Turks had other matters to attend to. They were scouting, far from their Southeastern homelands, and had no time to lose. They had an army to take their messages to.
On the other side of the river Fell began to pad far down the bank, angry and startled, and still desperately hungry. The calm winter white was so beautiful around him, and yet all Fell’s knowledge of the world, all the knowledge that had been passed to him from his father, Huttser, and his mother, Palla, from their own parents too and theirs before them, was working through his muscles and mind and being, telling him how dangerous such beauty could really be. For if Fell didn’t eat soon he would weaken and then start to make mistakes. Then, if something befell him and he hurt himself in his journey, the Kerl would have no pack to aid him at all.
His five long years alone had already taught the wolf hardiness and self-sufficiency, taught him to swallow his loneliness and go on. But it had brought the pang of isolation too, and a strange resentment that he had to rely on himself entirely. Fell growled and pushed away the feelings of self-pity threatening to overwhelm him. It had been his choice to become what he was, his choice to walk the world alone.
The wolf stopped and looked up at the harsh mountain peaks above him. Had it really been his choice though? Fell hadn’t chosen to be born with Larka, the white wolf, in the den, nor to be cursed with the powers of the Sight. Then there was all that his aunt Morgra had told him. The darkness and anger that engulfed him through her manipulations had taught him that his very nature was evil, and that all there was in life was the search for power and survival. Why did it all end in death too, as he had seen so often? Nothing really chose its path, thought Fell sadly, for every living creature, from Lera to man, was swept up in the great river of being, and borne along like leaves on a windy sea, to what destiny none of them really knew, or controlled at all.
Fell padded on. No, he told himself sternly, there is choice. That’s what Larka’s journey had taught them all. For though they were all made by nature, man and animal could have freedom if they truly chose it. As Larka had chosen to throw off the power she had been given when her mind had touched the human’s—the power of the Man Varg, the greatest Putnar in the world.
Or is it only man that has real freedom, thought the wolf mournfully, only man that can really choose a path, with his clever mind? The ever forgetful Lera were ruled so much by the daily needs of survival, by the land and the animals they hunted, and that hunted them. Compared to man they were like sheep, lost blindly in a snowstorm.
Is that why Fell had carried the human child on his back down from Harja and returned it safely to its mother five years before? The little baby had become almost feral living with the wolves, but Fell had given it back to its own, in the village below the Stone Den on the mountaintop. To live and grow amongst its kind, perhaps into one of those very soldiers who hunted and killed the wild wolf. Why? Because, as Larka had taught, all things must be free and be true to their nature. Yet Fell had tried to make a pact too, a pact that the boy child had seemed to understand—the pact of the Putnar—a pact that said while his cries would remind man of the freedom and beauty of the wild, man’s power must protect the wild too, in exchange.
Had man understood him, the wolf wondered now, or was Fell’s pact just a hopeless dream? Fell had seen little in his journeying that had reassured him that man understood anything at all, with his relentless hunting of the wolf, his destruction of tree and forest, and his endless wars. Was it the Lera then who still had something to teach man instead? Fell’s thoughts went back to the strange visitation in the cave, and that voice’s insistence that a changeling was important to nature itself. Again the old fortune-teller Tsinga’s words came back to the wolf, words in a different journey but perhaps just as relevant—
You must survive … for life itself!
How could it really be?
The wolf stopped and the fur rose on his back. He had come to a section of the river where the banks narrowed and the water dropped downwards. But instead of a gushing, laughing torrent, Fell saw a still pool that was beginning to freeze in the cold. Right across the narrow river a dam had been built, a lattice of branch and tree trunk, sodden with water. Fell’s tail came up and he bared his teeth. Man must be close once more.
However, as Fell scented the air, the wolf caught nothing human on the breeze. Instead, around the strange construction, which so reminded him of men’s dark dens and their wooden churches, a pungent, musky scent filled the air that made the wolf’s mouth water.
Fell heard a splash and a swishing sound, and to his amazement, saw a heavy branch moving straight towards him across the water. It wasn’t floating or drifting along aimlessly, it was moving as if it had a mind of its own, and it suddenly changed course and swung right, towards the dam. Fell blinked in absolute astonishment, and wondered if he was still haunted, or if all things in life, even the trees and stones, were really alive.
But no, a shape emerged on the edge of the dam. It was a dusky grey colour, tinged with brown, and as furry as a rabbit. It came backing out of the dripping water, pulling at the branch with its huge teeth. Fell could see whiskers and little ears now, and for a moment thought it was one of the otters he had hunted in his travels, until he saw the creature’s strange tail—the oddest tail Fell had ever seen. It was flattened like the end of the branches that men used to row their boats across their waters, while the creature’s hind legs were webbed like a duck’s.
Fell had a startling thought. Could this creature be the Guardian the voice had spoken of? Perhaps it was odd that a wolf like Fell had never seen a beaver before in the wild, but in truth they were more common to the northwest, and this one had strayed very far from home. It was still completely unaware of Fell, so keen was it to finish its work, for its mate and kits were waiting deep below the lodge it was building for them. Now the beaver began to pull the log across the ground towards it, twisting and turning its powerful little body, dragging the heavy thing into place.
As Fell watched, he felt a strange wonder, for after his thoughts about man and the power of their minds, here was this amazingly clever and purposeful little animal. Then the beaver stopped and began talking to itself and Fell realised that he could understand it, just like the squirrels. “Vork, vork, vork,” it said, “on, on, on.”