The Pack (18 page)

He shouted a challenge, his breath pluming in the cold air. Claw answered by opening his arms wide to include the giant, his own company, and the fire and the fish. But again came the unmistakable challenge. Claw shrugged his shoulders. Long ago he had decided not to stand in the way of whatever fate had in store for him.

The younger men, though, hissed and moved from foot to foot, cupping their club-heads in their hands. While Claw's own wolf was old now, as he was, and moved round as carefully, their wolves still seemed caged within them. The young men felt a battering on their ribcages, as howls sounded in their ears and their eyes glared with violence.

From the fireside, the women looked on impassively.

Red Dog filled his barrel chest with air; emptied it and filled it again. As he did so, his shoulders opened and he pulled the sledgehammers of his fists up level with them. Like a great bear, he set off, roaring, towards the three wolf men who confronted him. Water sprayed all around him, but never reached his enormous naked chest.

Watching him, Martha could not quell a grudging admiration. She recalled how safe he had made Skreech feel those first nights. To the damaged girl she was, he was all-powerful, worthy of her trust. The worst thing back then had not been his threats, but his crocodile tears.

“Oh my boys, if you only knew how I worried about you; if you only knew what a weight of responsibility I feel. Oh, this harsh, cruel world…”

He never cleared the water.

While he had galloped, raging, his eyes were fixed on the two blind pools above Claw's head. Below his sightline, the first boy-child, ducking low, had brought a sharp-edged stone in a great arc, crashing into his knee. His momentum allowed Red Dog two further, halting steps, before he fell like a toppled tree, face first into the water. With one last yelling lunge, his clubbing fist struck the other child, sending him hurtling into the shallows. Not finished yet, by a long way.

But as he writhed to raise himself, they were on him. A club landed above one eye; another finished him with two blows from behind. Blood oozed into the clear waters of the lake.

With another slight shrug, Claw turned and they left Red Dog beached in the shallows, the water settling around him.

Bradley and Martha saw the blood lust leave each other's eyes. They had lived each swing of the axe. Both had struggled to contain Hunger's urge to join the attack and to howl victory. Now, though, he seemed to accept the moment had passed and was calm.

The wolf men stooped to wash the blood from their clubs. Claw spoke to the child who had been struck and helped him back to the fire. The women skewered sticks into the fish and held them over the flames. The injured child would be fed flakes of fish from the arthritic hand of the wolf leader himself.

As they waited for the fish to cook, the smaller woman suckled her baby. The others sat on their haunches, staring across the water of the lake. Claw looked down on the struck child, reaching his fingers under his headdress to scratch his scalp.
Let me give the boy my next winter,
he thought.
And the next. And the one after that, till he is strong enough for the life we must live.

Bradley and Martha's interest was not in the wolf folk. They watched only to see whether Red Dog had truly been vanquished. They turned to each other and again nodded. Two pairs of eyes had not been deceived. Red Dog had not moved.

But Hunger was not to be denied honoring this victory. His two barks were short and shrill.

Time froze. The wolf folk turned their heads from the fire and stared back into the hazel wood. It seemed that the world held its breath for an age, as Bradley and Martha, muzzling Hunger, tried to become one with the hazel trees, and the wolf folk listened to what the hazel trees could tell.

Bradley dared not turn to Martha, dared not move a muscle, till he heard her breath in a long, slow exhalation, followed by his own.

With a signal from Claw, the baby was tied again onto its mother's back, the struck child lifted to his feet. The wolf folk moved again, silently and warily as they had come, back into the wood.

“Come on,” said Bradley. “We've seen enough.”

*   *   *

Bradley and Martha knew not to tell Victor and Floris about Red Dog and how he had met his fate. Their agitation would have been too great even to know Red Dog had come so close. So it was that Victor's and Floris's shock was the greater when they saw through the McLachlans' kitchen window the monstrous shadow of Red Dog filling out a chair, as Mrs. McLachlan cleaned his head wounds with a cloth from a basin of reddened water.

Floris put her hand to her mouth and let out a silent scream. Victor crouched his fists to the ground to steady himself, a high-pitched keening cutting through the cold air.

Neither would leave the barn with Bradley to check whether what they had seen was a ghost.

“You saw him!” Victor said. “You saw him. Didn't tell Victor. Didn't tell Floris.”

“We thought he was dead.”

“Dead. Dead.
Is there. Is himself.
All the big of him. The bully of him.”

That was not the picture Red Dog presented to Mrs. McLachlan when she challenged him with his history. Through the window, Bradley saw his forehead lift and settle, lift and settle, as shock mixed with calculation.

“He's an injured man, badly injured,” Mrs. McLachlan argued with Bradley and Martha afterwards. “You
know
I couldn't turn him away. He barely made it to the gate, half naked and drenched with blood. He has brought firewood and fish and potatoes he wants to share with you as a peace offering.”

“Peace offering!” Bradley said.

“He denies nothing, but claims he was a protector in hard times who has changed. Believe me, he's no threat to anyone.”

“You can't say that,” said Martha. “You can never say that.” But she had insisted she would face him with Bradley. See him, eye to eye, in his defeat. As long as Hunger was with her.

*   *   *

“Red Dog,” said Bradley. It was an accusation.

“Ah, bless me … No … Well yes, who used to be Red Dog sits before you in his shame, but not the Red Dog you knew.”

“No?” said Martha.

“Oh no, not that one, my dear Skreech, I thought you were—”

“Save it, Red Dog,” spat Martha.

“Yes, yes, but let me … As I was saying, not that Red Dog. But one who has had the worst of times and seen all the errors of his ways. One who delights—yes,
delights
is not too strong—in seeing those he can make things right with sent before him now.”

“Never,” said Bradley.

“Oh, never is such a long time, my friends.”

“We're not your ‘friends'—and I'm not Skreech.”

“Well, you're the ghost of him if you're not.”

“My name's Martha.”

“Martha, Martha, is it really? Good lord, all this time. What a blind old dog Red Dog's been in more ways than one. But what stories we've got to tell.”

“Stories? Pah,” said Martha.

“Stories,” said Red Dog. Bradley and Martha looked at each other.

“I mean, what harm can Red Dog be? Look at him, in the dock before you, wearing nothing but his shame.”

True, with his face wounds fresh, his head bandaged, Red Dog looked shorn of his former menace. Inquisitiveness got the better of them both.

Red Dog squatted over the kitchen grate. No finger of smoke got past him. Every so often the fire spat as a drip of fat from the fish fell from the skewer.

“Oh, nice fish, lovely fish. Fish for my … sometime, perhaps, who knows?… my friends…” Red Dog chanted at the fish. He poked around in the embers with a twig and skewered a potato.

“Please,” he said, “sit, eat. There's lots more potatoes in there. Show a bit of trust to an old dog.”

“Yeah, sure,” said Bradley. But the smell of the fish and the creamy innards of the potato Red Dog had broken open—with a laugh at his black, burnt fingers—proved too inviting.

“Just one trick…” Bradley said. And perhaps Hunger still picked up the odd word or two, for he began to growl with renewed force.

“Oh, Red Dog's done with tricks. No tricks left. Absolutely trickless, is Red Dog. But here, please let me at least give a potato to the champion there. He looks as if he's about to tear me to shreds.”

“Yes,” said Bradley, growing in confidence with Hunger's steady, snarling display. “Hunger doesn't forget. Just one trick, remember…”

“On my poor, misbegotten, miserable life, I swear. Besides, wouldn't you relish hearing the story of Red Dog's calamitous fall?”

Red Dog lifted the fish from the fire just in time, for the flesh simply fell off the bone. They picked it up with their fingers—white, sweet flakes of it. They wanted to shut their eyes to taste it the better, to hear only the sound of the fire and of Hunger crunching the head and the bones, but they dared not take their eyes from Red Dog.

And the potatoes! They came out of the fire like black cannonballs but, once split, they released a rush of steamy pleasure.

“Where did you get these potatoes, Red Dog?” Martha asked.

“Oh, ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies.” Red Dog touched a forefinger to his nose. He almost seemed to be enjoying their company. “Oh, here's another one,” he said, just when they thought they were all gone. He juggled with it—“Oh! Oh! Oh!”—then threw it lightly to Martha.

“Room for one more?”

As they turned the potato skins inside out and licked into the crevices, the white veins of flesh, before tossing the empties to Hunger, Red Dog stared into the grey ashes of the fire and told them his story.

*   *   *

The night Hunger had defeated the Hound of Hell should have been the crowning glory of Red Dog's power struggle with Black Fist. Instead it had been the night his world had begun to fall apart.

It wasn't the fact of the supposed chemicals that had blunted the Hound's fighting prowess. The powers that be were not interested in these little spats. In fact, they encouraged competition between those whose destinies they controlled. Black Fist's complaints to the Invisible City might have been swept aside altogether, if it were not for the fact that they were linked to the escape of Red Dog's captives. And if these had simply been absorbed by a rival gang in the Forbidden Territories or had scampered back to the Zone from which they evidently had come, well then, there would have been no cause for anything but mild amusement among those in the Invisible City.

But matters were more serious than that. The security of the Invisible City itself had been breached. The escapees had broken into The Mount and stolen a valuable worker. Such things could not be allowed to happen. Black Fist's complaints were upheld. More, they were backed up by the weasel—“My very own
Loot
-tenant”—who'd become Black Fist's second in command. Red Dog was finished.

“So what happened?” asked Bradley.

“Well, there's no court of appeal at the Invisible City,” said Red Dog. “That's what's invisible about it. Not the buildings or the people who live there, but the power. The power guards itself through its invisibility and the whole city takes its name after it. Clever, eh? Too clever by half for poor old Red Dog.”

“So what happened?” Martha took up Bradley's question. She wanted the whole story from Red Dog. She wanted to feel his story; to weigh the truth of it; to see how far, if at all, he could be trusted.

“Simple really,” said Red Dog. “The Invisible City wouldn't trade with me anymore. The word got out to everyone. And all those poor souls—those defenceless children, of whom once you, Skreech—Martha, begging your pardon, was one—had their guide and protector made powerless, as powerless as you see him now.”

“So?” said Bradley.

“So they left me. Each and every one. No choice, they said—if they dared say anything to me before they left. They went to Black Fist—Black Fist and that ungrateful wretch. It didn't happen at once of course. First, it was a drift. Then the discipline went. And without discipline … I became simply a figure of mockery for them. Black Fist let it be known it wouldn't be safe for me to stay around, so one night I fled—fled in the only direction I could. North.

“And here you have found me. So if you want to mock old Red Dog, mock him. If you want to stick red-hot sticks into him, do so. For Red Dog can run no farther. It is up with him. If you cannot believe change has entered an old dog's heart, then let my end be here—and let those who have brought me the light of humility be the ones to do it.

“But for Mrs. McLachlan's sake, for the sake of young Sundep and all his memory means to these fine folk, perhaps you'll give a sinner a chance. And if you do, I'll promise to keep out of your way, till my debt to these Good Samaritans is paid.”

Bradley and Martha both harrumphed, the closest they could get to a believe-it-when-we-see-it position. But there was nothing—not potato skins or sweet flakes of fish—that would buy the trust of Victor or Floris. Floris scurried to the farthest corner of the barn, while Victor growled and spat at Red Dog whenever he came near.

*   *   *

There was a small field beside the farm. “It's where we grow stones,” Mr. McLachlan said.

“For the stone soup?” said Red Dog.

“That'll be it,” said Mr. McLachlan, thinking,
Yes, he could see why children would be scared of this man, but there was nothing wrong with his sense of humor.

He had always meant to clear the field; felt that without the stones it would be possible to till and to plant it with something that wouldn't demand too much of the earth, a hardy strain of cabbage perhaps. The small stones he could rake off himself—in fact, tell a lie, these children had already cleared most of them—but the others, the ones that had been rooted there forever and a day, he could barely bend down to, never mind shift.