CHAPTER NINE

THE HEARER

 

 

WALTER SICKERT WAILED and thrashed. His eyes were wide, but the orbs spun around and then high into his head, so that nothing of the black pupils showed.

He had been babbling for hours, for days. Babbling about the Voice, about the Voice in his head and about what it was telling him.

He had been this way, or something like it, for almost a week. He had been wide-eyed, sleepless and staring for upwards of a month, clutching and grasping at anyone who would stop for a moment to listen to his ramblings. Very soon, no one stopped.

They were afraid of him. They were afraid of what he was saying, of why he was saying it, of where the words were coming from.

Walter Sickert was a pup. He had been scrapping for a season or two, but poorly, getting himself into scraps that the betas had to save him from. He was lucky to be alive. He was given the dullest, safest sentry duties, and not trusted, even on the flanks of any war band. He was allowed only to forage close to Warschauer and not to hunt. He had no freedoms and no status in the Warschauer Pack.

But, now, he had the Voice.

He belonged to no familial group, except that his grandfather, Oswald was alive.

He was claiming to be a Hearer. There was a history. His grandfather’s uncle had been the last Hearer in the pack that anyone could remember. Hearers were rare, deader and dead. Only the purest-blooded Aux packs had a Hearer, only the city packs, and they were pariahs all.

This was the Time of Ice and the Hearers belonged to the time of legends. They were not ragged, useless pups.

Oswald Sickert, faithful to the memory of his uncle, heard the things his grandson said. He listened to the pup’s ramblings. He listened and he Believed.

He was old, and he had a pedigree. He had been a scrapper in his day, a lieutenant, tougher and tough. He had the ear of the Pack. He left the pup with the dam, mopping his brow and soothing him as best she could.

The old male made his way through the tunnels, fast and steady, towards... He stopped, watching the curls of his steaming breath rise straight up into the arch of the grey, dripping brickwork above his head. Droplets pinged all around him. It was wet. It was wrong.

He stopped, hand to his mouth, and he pondered.

He could not take this to the pack leader. He could not take this to the lieutenants. They were scrappers, tougher and tough. This was not about scrapping. This was about time and change.

This was about Hearing. Who would listen to him, who would be willing to listen to the Hearer? Who would Believe?

Oswald Sickert stood in the tunnel, alone for several minutes. The grey of the curving tunnel walls met the grey of the gravel beneath his feet, met the grey of the tracks that he did not understand the old use of. He only knew that this was his home. That the Aux lived underground because this was the Time of Ice.

He felt a drop of water land on his forehead and pour down his face. It ran over his brow ridge and dropped onto his cheek before finding a ragged path down past his mouth and onto the felt wrap he wore loosely around his body.

The Time of Ice was over. He was wet.

The old male looked down at the damp stain on his wrap, a dark grey patch spreading on the lighter cloth. He was reminded of some of the things his grandson had been babbling about. He remembered things about water. He remembered things about getting whet. He remembered Walter saying that all the Aux would get wet and then they would all have to get whet.

Oswald Sickert touched the damp patch on his wrap, and he understood. When the ice turned to water the Aux would get wet. And when the Aux got wet they would all have to get whet.

He came to a realisation.

“The tale-teller,” he said, his voice bright and hard in the echoing tunnel. “The tale-teller, him will know the truth.”

The tale-teller, Thomas Wolf, was duly brought to Walter Sickert.

He tried to reason with the pup. He tried to tell him a tale, an old familiar legend, told a hundred-hundred times before, something the pup would recognise, something to soothe him.

“Gene the Hackman, top dog, him done the great Walk Around,” said the tale-teller. “Not for him the darkness, not for him the cold, not for him the Time of Ice. Gene the Hackman, him got whet. Gene the Hackman, him got whet and walked the Earth, and him killed Them.”

Walter Sickert was not soothed.

His eyes rolled back into place and he stared at Thomas Wolf.

His face drained of the last vestiges of colour, and he began to shake all over. He pawed at the blankets and pelts the dam had spread over him, dragging and clawing at them. He thrashed his legs until the covers were dislodged and spread across the cot and into a heap on the floor.

He shrieked in the tale-teller’s face and tore at his chest as the big male tried to reach out to him to calm the pup.

Then the pup bolted. He bolted so hard that he knocked the dam aside. He careened into his grandfather, throwing him against the wall and winding him so badly that the old male crumpled to the floor.

It was several seconds before Thomas Wolf had recovered himself enough to steady the dam. He tried to help Oswald Sickert to his feet, but he was pushed aside.

“Save Walter,” the old male said, coughing for the breath to speak. “Him needs you.”

The tale-teller hurried out of the cell that Oswald shared with Walter Sickert and followed the sounds along the passages and tunnels of Warschauer towards the communal chamber, towards the Pack’s command centre.

There was no mistaking where Walter Sickert was heading. He left a wake of noise and confusion. He stammered and yelled his message at all who crossed his path. He attacked any who spoke back at him, confronted him, laughed at him.

He frightened the Aux. He frightened them into embarrassed laughter, or he frightened them into turning their backs on him.

He despised that more than anything. He struck out at their backs and clawed at their heads, trying to turn them, trying to make them face him, trying to make them listen to his words, to understand his meaning. No one understood.

His message was important; so important.

When Thomas Wolf reached the communal chamber, Walter Sickert was lying face-down on the hard, tiled floor with its chequerboard pattern. A splash of his blood smeared the white tiles. One of the biggest of the beta scrappers had a knee in the pup’s back and was holding his arms by the wrists, pulling them hard towards his knees, making his head jerk.

Walter Sickert was unconscious.

He had stopped talking for the first time in days. He had stopped trying to make the Aux of the Warschauer Pack listen.

The tale-teller was followed into the chamber by the pup’s grandfather.

“Him should be put out of his misery,” said one of the lieutenants, standing over the pup as he lay inert on the tiles.

“Let him be,” said Thomas Wolf. “Him sick. His grandfather, him is Oswald Sickert, him has good standing. Him and I, we will answer for the pup.”

“Let him be,” said the Warschauer Pack leader, rising from his chair at the far end of the chamber. “Let him be, but keep him quiet.”

The lieutenant booted the pup in the ribs contemptuously and walked away.

Oswald Sickert stooped to lift his grandson into his arms, but the tale-teller, bigger, stronger and a dozen years younger, wouldn’t allow it. He carried the pup back to his cell.

Once there, the dam cleaned Walter’s wounds, and salved the bruise in his side.

Thomas Wolf then sent her away to find his pup, Reuben Blades, with instructions to bring back medicines to treat the invalid.

The self-proclaimed Hearer woke wide-eyed and frantic, and had to be held down while the dam administered the precious Corydalis tincture.

The medicinal plants that the Aux used were hard to grow below ground. They were used only sparingly.

The medication worked, and Walter Sickert rested somewhat peacefully for the first time in weeks.

“What will become of him?” his grandfather asked the tale-teller.

“Nothing, old one,” said Thomas Wolf.

“But him tells the truth,” said the old male. “Him tells the truth about Them.”