It was Conna. In the torch beam, again the wolf seemed to Ben to be enormous, at least twice as big as the man he was attacking. His huge jaws opened wide and he seized the Hunter’s scalp with a terrible moan, and for a second Ben thought he would actually bite the man’s head off. A second later the great beast dropped lightly to the ground and was gone.
The Hunter cursed and ran to Ben to seize the torch from him. Ben was screaming for his mum and dad, but he was shut up with a blow across the face and pushed to the back of the barn while the Hunter searched about. When he returned, he shone the beam in the boy’s face.
Ben cringed in the light of the beam. He was still carrying Greycub under his arm.
‘I’ll have that,’ growled the Hunter. He snatched the cub away and ran out of the barn. By now Mr Tilley was on his way but the Hunter pushed past him and in seconds had disappeared. The whole thing was over in two minutes.
Ben flicked on the electric light to the barn and together they searched for the source of that scream of pain that had come from behind. There they found one of the farm cats with the stubby crossbow bolt through its mouth and poking out of the back of its head. In the dark the Hunter had mistaken its eyes, glowing in the farmyard light, for those of Silver. The two farm dogs, Bell and Clapper, that Mr Tilley had tied up to bark an alarm, were found outside still chained to their kennels, both dead, with crossbow bolts through their heads. The Tilleys searched high and low that night with torches and again the following morning, but of Silver, of Conna and of Greycub they could not find the slightest trace.
5
AS SOON AS he heard John Tilley out in the yard, the Hunter thrust Greycub into his coat pocket and ran as fast as he could down the track to his car, waiting on the main road. Trying to toss the crossbow over his shoulder he slipped and skinned his hands on the iron-hard frozen earth. He scrambled to his feet, cursing his luck. In his pocket, Greycub whined and he cursed the cub, too. It was a poor substitute for the two dead wolves he had promised himself for that night’s work. Well, at least the two wolves were on the loose now, and he could get at them again.
It was three o’clock in the morning. The roads were clear and the Hunter raced his car south back home. In the back seat, Jenny crouched low, keeping well out of his way. The Hunter had not counted on the boy being in the barn. The brat had put him off, and given that monster the chance to attack. Why, the child was lucky not to get a bolt through his helpful little neck! And how could his parents be so irresponsible as to let their son sleep with wild animals – dangerous animals at that, as the wounds on his own head and face showed.
In fact, the wounds were minor. He examined them in the car mirror and couldn’t believe that the skin was broken in only a few places. From the noise that brute had made, he thought his whole scalp had been torn off, and he was badly shaken by the experience. The wolf could have killed him – it certainly had the chance. But so deeply ingrained was the wolves’ instinct to leave humans alone, that Conna had been unable to do any real damage.
It had taken the complete breakdown and destruction of the pack to persuade him to touch the Hunter at all, and give Silver the seconds she needed to run past.
The Hunter lived in a small farmhouse on the Sussex Downs, a house he had bought when he found out that there were wolves thereabouts. He did not dare begin tracking Silver and Conna just then, now that the alarm was up. Best to go back home, get some sleep and pick up the track the next night while it was still fresh.
He was about halfway home when a disturbance in his pocket reminded him that he had something else to sort out, and he pulled into a lay-by to examine his night’s prize. Greycub was trying to crawl out, and the Hunter looked down at the blunt puppy-nose and pricked ears, and the small bright eyes, peering cautiously under his pocket flap. The cub crawled right out onto the seat and seeing the Hunter, hunched his back and began a peeping growl, that was evidently supposed to be fierce. Unsmiling, the Hunter watched him.
He decided not to wring Greycub’s neck. He thought the cub might come in handy later in tracking down Silver and Conna. Also, he might make a pet of him. So far he had told no one about the wolves or of his hunt. He wanted to make sure all the wolves were his. But when there were none left, then he would enjoy telling his hunting friends the stories of the three-year hunt. How much more telling these stories would be if he had a live wolf sleeping with its head on his feet while he described how he had killed off its entire race.
Greycub was growing up fast, but he still needed his milk and a mother. The Hunter knew of a man who lived nearby, who bred pedigree deerhounds for a living. There was a chance he might have a bitch in milk …
He tossed the cub into the back seat with Jenny and drove home. He would take the cub to the Breeder’s first thing in the morning – if it was still alive, that was.
In the back, little Jenny remembered her own pups from years past and nosed the cub against her tummy and began to lick him clean. She paused and licked her lips for a moment, curling them at the strange taste, before she carried on with the wash. Greycub cried for milk before at last the little dog’s tongue lulled him to sleep.
‘—Found him abandoned in a car park. Someone obviously didn’t want the pups and didn’t have the guts to deal with them himself,’ the Hunter said smoothly. The cub draped over his hand looked curiously about, letting out little peeps of distress. It was nine in the morning and he had been without milk for far too long. The Breeder looked doubtfully at him.
‘I thought it was too much just to let him die like that,’ continued the Hunter, ‘and anyway my niece wants a pet so I thought I’d pick him up. I was wondering – hoping – you might have one of your deerhound bitches in milk with a teat to spare for him …?’
The Breeder did not like the Hunter. There was something about the way he spoke that was difficult to trust. This rescue of a dying pup was out of character. But the Breeder was a man to assume the best, and this was the first time the Hunter had shown any sign of seeing animals as other than things to kill. He took the pup.
‘I’ve got just the thing – a mongrel bitch, actually, I keep her for the better milk. The pedigree animals aren’t so good for milk, you know. We’ll see if she’ll take him.’
He led the way into the kennels and to a small room round the back where, on a heap of sacks, lay a black and white dog. Cuddled up to her belly were three pups – two of her own and one young deerhound that the Breeder had taken from a mother with too many pups. Now he stroked the animal’s head; she wagged her tail and licked her pups proudly.
‘There’s a girl – good girl,’ the Breeder said. ‘She’s a gem, this one, she’ll take anything. I could suckle wolves off her and she’d love them like her own, wouldn’t you, girl?’ He patted her on the head and held out the young Greycub for her to sniff. She wrinkled her nose, puzzled at the smell. But she did not object. She knew the smell was not dog, but she did not know it was wolf. Generations ago every hair on her body would have risen. Now she just looked up at the Breeder for reassurance. The Breeder tucked the pup up to a vacant teat. Immediately he began to suckle.
‘Look at that!’ he said in surprise. ‘He’ll live, that one. He’s a fighter.’
The Hunter smiled. ‘That’s very good of you, my friend, very good indeed. Here …’ He took out his wallet and handed over a twenty pound note.
‘That’s to take care of any expenses until he’s weaned. Then I’ll come and pick him up.’
‘No, please – it’ll cost nothing …’
‘I insist. You see, I’ve taken quite a fancy to the little fellow, I just want you to take good care of him, that’s all.’
As the Hunter drove back home to get some more sleep before the hunt began again that night, the clouds overhead were beginning to darken. The cold spell was softening. From his bedroom window, Ben Tilley watched the same clouds and thought that somewhere out there, maybe Silver and Conna were sniffing the air and wondering if rain would come.
/> That afternoon the wolves had their first piece of good luck for a very long time. The frost had broken. It began with snow, but soon the snow was slush and then an icy rain began to fall. Ben, looking with a tearful face out of the window, was soon facing a curtain of rain, a flood, a torrent. Water bounced high into the air from the farmyard and overflowed the gutters on the barn roof. A stream began to flow over the frozen bridlepath beyond the house, and quickly thickened into a river. Soon this river overflowed the bridleway and poured into the farmyard itself, carrying so much old moss, leaves and twigs that the drains were clogged in minutes, and Mr and Mrs Tilley had to dash out in rubber boots to clear them for fear of the house flooding.
Ben pitied the wolves out in this weather, but the stream that flashed past the gate carried not only moss and twigs and old leaves but the trails and scents of the two wolves. The ground for miles around was washed clean of all scent, all tracks. When the Hunter came back he found the earth a clean blank page which was impossible to read.
6
HUMAN BEINGS USE their eyes to know the world. For dogs and wolves it is different. They know things and remember things not by what they look like, but by how they smell, and the very first things a young wolf or a young dog learns of the world about him come through his nose. It was smells that led Greycub by the nose out of the little puppy-world of milk and mother, and into the big, million-scented world – into the hessian world of the pile of sacks he lay on, the smells of hay and straw from the bedding all around him, of disinfectant and wet metal as the kennel staff cleaned out – and the smell of the staff themselves, all soap and sweat, with their dinners and cigarettes on their breath and their clothes full of washing powders and fabric softeners, their skins carrying aftershaves and perfumes, a thick custard of chemical smells. He caught strange, exciting whiffs of the fresh air behind the kennels – the grass and the damp mud, the occasional rank puff of exhaust smoke. There were the meaty smells of the dogs’ food, the smell of their water. There were the smells of the tiles on the kennel floor, of the wooden boards in the passage that led to the house, and the hot metallic smell of the electric heaters that kept the place warm.
Above all there was the smell of dogs. His mother’s milky, warm, doggy smell, the doggy smell of all his foster-brothers and sisters, the smells of the forty deerhounds the Breeder kept – all of them different, but all of them doggy, with doggy breath and coats, paws, wet doggy eyes and noses.
For a young dog, growing up among the smells of his own kind, this reassuring wind of their own dogginess is the first door to knowing who and what they are. Surrounded by an atmosphere of dog, they are dog themselves, inside and out.
For Greycub the wolf, this was not so. Inside the doggy bubble was another smell. It was similar in many ways, but there was no doubt that when his nose turned from the world outside into himself, he found something different. The world was not made up of animals like him. In fact, it seemed that there was nothing else like him around. The pressing bodies of his foster-brothers and sisters were too close and too warm to allow him to feel lonely. But already he was marked apart. He did not quite belong. He knew it, and the other pups knew it.
The pups were all slightly older than Greycub, but they were all interested in the same things – fighting, ambushing, growling, playing tag and being ferocious. The wolfcub was better than all of them at these games. After all, for wolves it is life or death; no one feeds them out of a can. But it was all good fun, and to start with he was more or less one of them, even though he smelled strange. But when the pups began to develop their doggy language, their vocabulary of growls and snarls and squeaks, it became clear that something, somewhere was wrong. Greycub found himself outside their culture.
Now, he began to keep himself to himself, or to wander off on expeditions of his own. Sometimes the kennel staff would try to play with him. He tolerated this, but allowed no liberties. The Breeder was different. Greycub decided early on that this was the one in charge, and he allowed him and him alone to roll him on his back and tickle his tummy, or to throw him up in the air. Anyone else was warned off with his most frightful growls and indignant yelps. Greycub could not understand that the other pups allowed just anyone to treat them like that. The silly oafish little things had no sense of dignity, he thought, and no sense of danger, either, come to that. He could never be like them.
In the middle of so many, Greycub spent his first few weeks alone.
One day in Greycub’s tenth week, the Breeder came through to his corner of the kennel with another smaller man by his side. Greycub was too young to remember the Hunter, but some sense alerted him. He withdrew quietly and sat down on his mother’s foot while the two men talked above his head.
‘There he is, right as rain. A strong little fellow, all right,’ the Breeder was saying. ‘But he’s the strangest thing I ever came across. Look at him watching us. I tell you he won’t let anyone near him but me – and even I can’t take liberties with him. As proud as a little prince! You wouldn’t think he’s a dog, he’s more like a wild animal. Even his foster-mother doesn’t know what to make of him – look!’
The mongrel sheepdog, seeing all this attention to her ward, began to lick him possessively. Greycub put up with this for a while and then tottered off on his big feet out of reach. He growled when she tried to pull him back and she had to hold him down with one foot before he put up with it. He stared up at the two men curiously, disregarding his foster-mother as she licked his belly.
‘A bit of a loner,’ commented the Hunter.
The Breeder reached down and picked Greycub up. He hung passively in the man’s big hand and looked again, curiously, at the Hunter. The Hunter returned his stare and reached out to ruffle his head.
‘Watch it! There …’ The Breeder laughed as the Hunter snatched away his hand and cursed. ‘I told you – I’m the only one who can touch him. Strange, isn’t it? It isn’t as though I spent much time with him or anything. Even I’m not as popular as I was. A couple of weeks ago he’d have wagged his tail and been pleased to see me.’
‘Strange,’ said the Hunter.
‘It is, isn’t it?’ said the Breeder. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what – I’ve come to get quite fond of the little thing, don’t know why. He interests me. You don’t know what sort of breeds are in him, do you?’
‘No idea,’ murmured the Hunter. ‘I told you – I found him in a car park.’
‘Anyway, what say I hang on to him? I’ll give you one of the other pups for your niece – I don’t suppose it’ll make any difference to her, and he isn’t exactly playful, is he? Hardly a dog for a little girl.’
‘I’d rather not,’ said the Hunter, firmly. ‘As I said, I’ve got an interest in this chap.’
‘Come on!’ protested the Breeder. ‘I’ll tell you what – I want him. I’ll give you one of the pedigree pups, how about that? Little girl with a deerhound – she’ll be the terror of the street!’
‘No,’ said the Hunter. ‘I want him. I’m sorry. I have reasons. The journey I was on when I found him was important to me.’
‘Oh, well, if he means something to you …’ said the Breeder regretfully.
‘Call it sentiment,’ said the Hunter.
7
WHILE GREYCUB WAS weaned with the Breeder, the Hunter had been tracking down the one remaining wolf pack in Gloucestershire. He had been completely successful, as was his custom. Six bodies lay in the deep freeze, awaiting the time when he took them to be skinned and stuffed or turned into rugs, mementoes of the great hunt.
Silver and Conna were still free. He had no idea where they were. These two, together with Greycub, were the last wild wolves in the whole of Britain.
The Hunter had tried his hardest to find Silver and Conna in the past few weeks. Together with Jenny he had crisscrossed the area all around High Pond Farm, and then further afield to all parts of that corner of Surrey. They had walked a great loop along the county borders, but they found nothing.
/> The cub offered the Hunter his only hope. True, weeks had gone by. Greycub had been living with men and dogs for so long that he no longer smelled of the wolf pack, and quite likely Silver would no longer recognise him. Still, beneath the stink of dog and dog food, he was Silver’s own flesh and blood, and pure wolf. If only the Hunter could get the two wild wolves to contact him in some way he might have a chance of finishing them off. Quite how he was to do this he did not yet know. He considered walking Greycub around the countryside, to leave his scent as far and wide as possible, in the hope the wolves might pick it up. Or he might let the cub go and hope it would take him to them. But the cub was his only link with the wild wolves and he did not mean to be parted from him for a moment.
Greycub was growing fast out of his cubhood. His memory of the wild had faded, all but disappeared. It seemed to him that he had grown up with dogs and the mystery of his own strangeness was not solved by occasional ideas that once, long, long ago, there had been another life that in a strange way seemed more familiar than the one he now knew.
He had vague impressions of a terrible night when something happened that severed him from his own past, but he did not actually remember the Hunter. All he really knew was the kennels; but still, he somehow recognised that the Hunter was an enemy, a man not to be trusted, not to obey – a man to resist.
His first instinct was to slip away as quietly and as quickly as he could, without the Hunter noticing. By the time the Hunter had driven home he was quite out of sight, and the man had to search the car before he found him sitting under the driver’s seat. Inside, in the kitchen, while the Hunter turned his back to prepare some food for him, the same thing happened. When the man turned round he had disappeared, and it was over half an hour before he was discovered, buried under a pile of shoes in a cupboard under the stairs. He snarled and went for the Hunter’s hand when he grabbed at him.