Way of the Wolf (6 page)

‘OK,’ said Al at last. ‘Let’s have a final look.’ He ran his eyes up and down the two boys.

Two of the bags in the plane were rucksacks, so they had emptied them out and filled them with their supplies: the ropes, the tarpaulin, the plastic bottles Tikaani had found on the plane, a few items from the medical kit – cotton wool, antiseptic cream, a bandage – and a complete change of dry clothes each.

By plundering all the clothes in all the bags – their own, Al’s and the pilot’s – Beck had been able to get them both kitted out in trousers, T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces. Plenty of layers, as he had told Tikaani, combining together to keep them warm. They had light waterproof coats on top; good sturdy boots on their feet; and hats and mittens.

‘You’ll do your ancestors proud, Tikaani,’ Al added.

Tikaani pulled a wry smile. ‘My ancestors would want to know why I wasn’t wearing skins cured the traditional way, in urine. I think I’d rather do it this way.’

Al chuckled, but he sounded weak and Beck prayed for the thousandth time that his strength would last. Beck gave him a final hug and Tikaani shook hands awkwardly.

‘You’ll do,’ said Al with a brave smile. ‘Now go and get me rescued.’

An hour later, Beck found proof that they weren’t the only living creatures walking in the woods.

The way had been easy going so far. The trees weren’t thickly clustered on the tundra, and if there were any bushes, then the boys could simply walk around them. Their boots scuffed through a soft carpet of dead pine needles. Beck couldn’t decide if it was like a huge meadow with trees growing in it, or a huge fir forest with large, grassy clearings.

One tree in particular caught his attention at one point. It was a fir tree and its bark hung down in shreds. Huge gouges had been cut into the trunk by something almost three metres tall – considerably bigger than either of the boys.

‘Uh-oh,’ he muttered. ‘I wondered when we’d find one of these.’

‘That’s bear sign,’ Tikaani said flatly, studying the damaged wood.

Bear sign indeed, Beck agreed inwardly. The bear had treated the tree like a giant scratching post. Claws fifteen centimetres long had shredded the wood like it was cardboard. The animal had been looking for insects under the bark.

He glanced at his friend. ‘Have you seen bears before?’

He wasn’t surprised Tikaani recognized it for what it was. Beck had been trained in what to do in bear country but had never actually met one. Tikaani, growing up in Anakat, could hardly not have.

‘Sometimes, yeah, a long way away. But then I always do
this
.’ Tikaani whacked his stick against the nearest trunk and grinned.

Beck nodded. Tikaani had described the best way to travel in bear country. Make plenty of noise and the bears would probably –
probably
– keep away.

‘They stay away from crowds and they don’t come into town at all,’ Tikaani went on. ‘Which is just one reason why I really prefer living somewhere like Anchorage. Apart from, you know, the hot and cold running water and the central heating and the electricity that doesn’t go off because the generator broke down
again
.’

Beck spotted one obvious flaw in Tikaani’s logic . . .

‘We’re not a crowd and we’re not in a town,’ he pointed out. ‘They might not be so scared of us.’

Tikaani pulled a face. ‘OK, plan B: you keep eye contact, you back away slowly. Dad says that sometimes a bear will stand on its back legs but that just means it’s curious and wants to get a better look at you. It doesn’t mean it’s going to attack. And sometimes, too, they’ll bluff a bit. They’ll chomp their teeth and they’ll slap the ground like they’re going to attack, but they’re just trying to frighten you. Which,’ he added with feeling, ‘would work. I’d be terrified.’

Beck nodded again. So far, so good. ‘They just want to work out who’s dominant,’ he explained. ‘But what if, after all that, they still come at you? Like, it’s a mother bear and you just got between her and her cubs?’

Which is about the stupidest place to be in the whole world . . .
Mother bears, Beck knew, weren’t interested in dominance. Just in seeing off the threat.

Tikaani’s pleased expression froze. Then he thumped the nearest tree twice as hard with his stick. ‘OK. Then we, uh . . . we . . .’ He looked pleadingly at Beck, who raised an eyebrow. ‘Run away?’

Oops
. It looked like they had got to the edges of Tikaani’s education.

‘Only if you want to be dinner,’ Beck said. ‘They can out-run you, out-swim you . . .’

Tikaani glanced up at the nearest tree.

‘. . . and definitely out-climb you,’ Beck finished.

‘So what do we do?’ Tikaani muttered.

‘OK. Brown bears . . .’

‘Grizzlies.’

‘Grizzlies, call ’em whatever – for them, you lie down.’

‘Huh?’ Tikaani stared at him.

‘Play dead. Curl up, lie on your side’ – Beck clasped both hands behind his neck – ‘and put your hands like this. You’re protecting all your squishy bits—’

‘Is that a technical term?’

‘– and you’re really showing it you’re not a threat. But you have to stay like that. They may try to chew your pack or knock you about a bit. If you put up any kind of fight, that’s just going to annoy them.’

‘And that
works
?’

‘That’s what the Sami told me. But that was brown bears. Black bears – you only get them in North America and they like to make the point that they’re different to their sissy Old World cousins.’

‘How?’ Tikaani asked suspiciously.

‘Well, they’re less likely to attack in the first place – but if they do, it’s probably because they’re hungry and they won’t be interested in you playing dead. And they can out-run you . . .’

‘And out-climb me and out-swim me, I got that bit . . .’

‘. . . So you just have to fight.’

‘Fight,’ Tikaani said flatly. ‘I’m not exactly tall. Me, versus a huge bear?’

‘Act aggressive,’ Beck told him. ‘Remember, it’s dominance again. You wave your pack or your coat at it, if you have time to get them off. If you don’t, then you jump up and down, you shout, you wave your arms.’ He held his arms above his head and lunged at Tikaani. ‘
Raah!
You have to show it you’re not a push-over – it’s not worth its while to try and eat you.’

‘No, it wouldn’t be,’ Tikaani agreed. ‘I bet I taste really, really bad and I’d make sure I told them so.’

Beck laughed. ‘Just don’t give them the chance to find out!’

But as the day drew on, they didn’t see any bears at all. Beck made sure they drank from their water supply and ate a little at reasonable intervals, as well as gathering up any berries and mushrooms they passed to carry with them. There was no point in pressing on so fast that they wore themselves out.

‘We’re not going to get three regular meals a day,’ he explained. ‘We just graze as we go.’

Tikaani already knew a lot of the plants, thanks to his grandmother’s teaching. Like the blueberries, which were not easy to find because they grew amongst other plants low down on the ground. The berries were tiny and quivered beneath the fingers at the slightest pressure. If they burst, which was almost inevitable, they stained the fingers with something like sweet-tasting blue ink. They were very moreish.

Beck introduced him to more of the natural delicacies that they passed. There were the pink-tinted shoots of fireweed, whose name came from the colour of its leaves but suited the strong taste perfectly. And coltsfoot, flat green leaves shaped like the ace of spades that they picked straight off the ground.

And then there were plants which neither of the boys could identify for sure. They gathered up likely-looking candidates to test later.

‘So that’s it,’ Tikaani said flatly when Beck offered him some of the coltsfoot. ‘We’re officially eating plants.’

Beck looked at him sideways. ‘Berries are plants and you ate those,’ he said mildly.

‘True,’ Tikaani conceded with a smile. He nibbled at his leaf and his eyebrows went up. ‘OK, it’s not bad.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘And it was good enough for my ancestors to stay alive long enough to produce me, so maybe I ought to show it a bit more respect.’

Beck laughed as they set off again. ‘Maybe they should put that on the packaging. “It kept your ancestors alive!”’

Tikaani fell into step beside him. ‘My granddad would add, “So why are you buying it in a shop?”’

‘So he’s not totally in favour of the march of progress?’ Beck asked wryly.

‘Not . . . totally.’ Tikaani put in just enough of a pause to emphasize the understatement. He pulled a face. ‘Shops aren’t
traditional
. I mean, I do know that food doesn’t grow in supermarkets, right? Everything you find plastic-wrapped or in a tin used to grow in the soil, with dirt and bacteria and stuff. You buy a packet of minced beef and that means a cow died somewhere, with a lot of blood and gore. That’s how it goes. I just don’t see the big deal about doing it all yourself.’

He grinned. ‘I remember once I didn’t want to eat something, and he told me, “Your Uncle Kavik risked his life for this food!” and I was, like, “Well, I wish he wouldn’t,” and I got a clipped ear and sent to bed, so it went to waste and Uncle Kavik risked his life for nothing . . .’

Tikaani sighed. ‘The thing is, if you grow your food on a farm, let someone else do all the catching and cleaning and preparing, and you buy it in a shop, no one has to risk their life and you’ve got time to do other stuff.’

‘Such as?’ Beck asked.

Tikaani chuckled, but there was a sour edge to it. ‘OK, now we move on to my dad. I get on well with him, yeah, but he’s all, “Why do you spend all your time with that computer? Why not get out more?”’

Beck kept quiet. He could sense a frustration in his companion that was bubbling to the surface in the form of words. Tikaani needed to let it out.

‘I mean,’ Tikaani went on, ‘you’re the first foreign friend I’ve met face to face, right? But you’re not my first foreign friend ever. I’ve got several that I only know over the web. We can chat and hang together – we get on really well . . . and we’re in different countries. The world is a huge place and I like to be part of it. How big is Anakat compared to the world? Anakat has a couple of hundred people but I’m part of a culture of millions. You need technology for that which Anakat just doesn’t have.’

He clenched his fists and Beck sensed this was the final outburst: ‘This is the modern world! You need technology!’

They walked in silence for a while after that. Beck thought of the GPS in his pocket. He hadn’t used it lately because he knew how low the power was. He agreed with everything Tikaani said but with one addition: sooner or later, technology lets you down . . .

Fortunately, navigating wasn’t hard. Beck had walked across plains and deserts before, where you fixed your eyes on a point on the horizon and headed for it. Here in the trees you couldn’t see the horizon but you could see the mountains above them. The storm that had diverted the plane was long gone. The sharp, rocky peaks shone with gleaming coats of white snow, stark against the clear blue sky. They were beautiful, but Beck was very glad there was a pass that led through them.

Another few hours, he knew from the map, and they would reach a river. After that they would be in the foothills and then it would be time to rest for the night.

And apart from that clawed tree, there had been no sign of bears, or indeed any other kind of mammals . . .

Something moved in Beck’s peripheral vision. He stopped dead and his head snapped round. Tikaani took a few steps forward before realizing that Beck wasn’t keeping up.

‘Hey? What’s the problem?’

‘Nothing . . .’ Beck murmured. He peered into the trees.

Tikaani was back by his side in a flash. ‘Bear?’ he asked. He took a firmer grip on his stick and Beck could hear him making his tone brave.

‘No,’ Beck said firmly. ‘Not a bear. Come on.’

He set off again and, after a moment, Tikaani caught up.

It had definitely not been a bear. If he had seen anything at all, it had been a sleek shadow, low to the ground, cruising just out of sight through the trees. It moved at the same pace as they did and was in no hurry to go anywhere.

He had seen similar behaviour in his time with the Sami. He knew exactly which animal acted like this. Stalking, in no hurry, waiting for reinforcements.

Beck bit his lip, held his own stick more firmly and decided not to worry Tikaani with it. But he was pretty certain they were being followed by a wolf.