Darren Shan – The Vampire Prince (страница 4)

CHAPTER SIX

THE SHE-WOLF treated me the same as the three cubs, making sure I got enough milk, covering me with her paws to keep me warm, licking behind my ears and around my face to clean me (I crept away when I had to go to the toilet!). I remained with her for a couple of days, slowly regaining my strength, cuddling up to her and the cubs for warmth, surviving on her warm milk. It didn’t taste good, but I was in no position to complain.

Pain racked my body as I recovered. Bruises covered every last scrap of me. My cuts weren’t too serious – the cold restricted the flow of blood – but they stung like mad. I wished I had some of Seba’s healing spider webs to apply to them.

The more I thought about my slide down the mountain stream, the more incredible it seemed. Had I really done it, or was this some crazy dream? If not for the pain, I might have believed it was the latter, but dreams are painless, so it had to be real.

More incredible still was that I hadn’t broken any major bones. Three fingers on my left hand were broken, my right thumb was sticking out at an alarming angle, and my left ankle had blown up like a purple balloon, but otherwise I seemed to be OK. I could move my arms and legs; my skull hadn’t been cracked open; my backbone hadn’t been snapped in two. All things considered, I was in astoundingly good shape.

As the days passed, I stretched and tested myself. I still slept beside the she-wolf and drank from her, but I started getting up to take short walks, hobbling around the glade, exercising lightly. My left ankle pained me terribly, but the swelling subsided gradually and eventually returned to normal.

As my strength returned, Streak brought me meat and berries. I couldn’t eat a lot in the beginning, but I sucked plenty of blood from the small animals he brought, and my appetite increased swiftly.

Rudi spent a lot of time with me. He was fascinated by my bald head – I’d had to shave my hair off after it caught fire during one of my Trials of Initiation – and never tired of licking it and rubbing his chin and nose over it.

After four days (possibly five or six — I hadn’t kept a clear track of time) the wolves moved on to a new patch. It was a long march – seven or eight kilometres – and I lagged behind most of the way, helped along by Streak, Rudi and the she-wolf who’d been suckling me (she now regarded me as one of her cubs, and mothered me the same as the others).

As punishing as the trek was, it was beneficial, and when I awoke that night after a long, dreamless sleep, I felt almost as good as I had before my descent down the stream. The worst of the bruising had subsided, the cuts had healed, my ankle barely troubled me, and I was able to eat normally.

That night, I went hunting with the pack. I couldn’t move fast, but I kept up, and helped bring down an old reindeer that several of the wolves were tracking. It felt good to be contributing to the pack after they’d done so much for me, and I gave most of my share of the meat to the she-wolf and cubs.

There was a nasty scene the next day. The dark wolf who’d objected to my presence when Streak brought me into the pack had never accepted me. He growled and barked whenever I came close, and often snatched food from my hands while I was feeding. I avoided him as much as I could, but that day, when he saw me playing with the cubs and handing meat out to them, he snapped.

He charged at me, barking wildly, meaning to drive me off. I backed away from him slowly, not showing any fear, but I didn’t leave the pack — if I let him chase me out once, he’d never stop hounding me. I circled around the wolves, hoping he’d lose interest in me, but he followed, determined, snarling menacingly.

As I prepared to fight, Streak darted between us and faced the darker wolf. He raised his hackles to make himself look big, and growled deeply. It looked as though the dark wolf would back off, but then he lowered his head, bared his fangs and lunged at Streak, claws extended.

Streak met the challenge and the pair rolled away, biting and scratching at one another. The wolves around them hastily cleared out of their way. Some younger cubs yapped with excitement, but most of the older wolves ignored the fighting or looked on with only mild interest. They were accustomed to quarrels like this.

It seemed to me as though the wolves were going to tear each other to bits, and I ran around them worriedly, hoping to prise them apart. But as the fight progressed, I realized that, for all their barking, snapping and clawing, they weren’t doing a lot of actual damage. Streak’s snout had been scratched, and the dark wolf was bleeding from a couple of bites, but they weren’t out to really hurt each other. It was more like a wrestling match than anything else.

As the fight wore on, it became obvious that Streak had the beating of the other wolf. He wasn’t as heavily built, but he was faster and sharper, and for every swipe to the head he took, he delivered two or three of his own.

All of a sudden, the dark wolf stopped, lay down and rolled over, baring his throat and belly. Streak opened his mouth and clamped his teeth around the dark wolf’s throat, then let go without breaking the skin and stood back. The dark wolf got to his feet and slunk away, tail between his legs.

I thought the wolf might have to leave the pack, but he didn’t. Although he slept by himself that night, none of the wolves tried to chase him away, and he took his regular place in the hunting pack the next time they set out.

I thought about that a lot over the next day or two, comparing the way wolves handled their losers with how vampires handled theirs. In the world of vampires, defeat was a disgrace, and more often than not ended with the death of the defeated. Wolves were more understanding. Honour mattered to them, but they wouldn’t kill or shun a member of their pack just because it had lost face. Young wolf cubs had to endure tests of maturity, just as I’d endured the Trials of Initiation, but they weren’t killed if they failed.

I wasn’t an expert on the subject, but it seemed to me that vampires could learn a thing or two from wolves if they took the time to study their ways. It was possible to be both honourable and practical. Kurda Smahlt, for all his treacherous faults, got that much right at least.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A FEW more days slipped by. I was so glad to be alive, I was savouring every moment of it. My body had healed almost completely, though faint bruises lingered in certain places. My strength had returned. I was full of vim and vinegar (one of my Dad’s expressions; I never figured out what it actually meant), raring to go.

I took hardly any notice of the cold. I’d grown used to the nip of the wind and the chill of the snow. The occasional strong blast set me shivering, but most of the time I felt as natural wandering about naked as the wolves.

I’d been accepted as an equal member of the pack now that I was back on my feet, and I was constantly out hunting — since I was able to run faster than the wolves, my services were in great demand. I was gradually coming to terms with the way they thought and communicated. I couldn’t read their thoughts but most of the time I had a good idea what they were thinking — I could tell by the way they hunched their shoulders, widened or narrowed their eyes, perked or dropped their ears and tails, growled or barked or whined. On the hunt, if Streak or another wolf wanted me to go to the left or the right, they only had to look at me and twitch their heads. If a she-wolf wanted me to play with her cubs, she howled in a certain soft way, and I knew she was calling me.

The wolves, for their part, seemed able to understand everything I said. I rarely spoke – there wasn’t much need for words – but whenever I did, they’d cock their heads intently and listen, then reply with a yap or gesture.

We moved around a lot, as was the wolfen way. I kept an eye open for Vampire Mountain, but didn’t spot it. That puzzled me — the reason the wolves met out here in the wilds was to converge on the mountain and eat the leftovers that the vampires threw to them. I decided to ask Streak about it, though I didn’t think he’d be able to comprehend my question or fashion a reply. To my surprise, when I mentioned Vampire Mountain, the hackles rose on the back of his neck and he growled.

“You don’t want to go there?” I frowned. “Why not?” Streak’s only reply was another growl. Thinking about it, I guessed it had to be the vampaneze. The wolves must know about the purple-skinned invaders, or else they’d simply sensed trouble and were steering clear of the mountain.

I had to do something about the vampaneze, but the thought of going back to Vampire Mountain scared me. I was afraid the vampires would kill me before I had a chance to explain about the vampaneze. Or they might think I was lying and take Kurda’s word over mine. Eventually I’d have to return, but I was delaying as long as possible, pretending to myself that I was still recovering and not fit to make the trip.