When Dar Oakley came, when I first began to understand him and to learn his story, I thought he might tell me what it is to be dead, because he has been, many times; but he says that his own being dead is the one thing he can’t remember. Long, long times might pass for him in that realm, but all he ever remembers is finding himself in life, having begun again, acting in the midst of it with the understanding of one born and raised there. Until a day or an hour dawns and he knows who and what he is, Dar Oakley, sometimes in a place and always in a time far from where he’d been before.
Ponies in winter out on a cold heath, a darkening day once upon a time, far East across the sea from where we are now.
A sharp wind blew their tails against their flanks and hid their faces and their lashy eyes, closed against the cold. It was colder in winter now than it had been, Dar Oakley thought. A number of Crows held to the scragged and wind-bent branches of a tree; they too tended to sit with their backs against the wind, which kept their eyes from freezing, but allowed the wind to lift the feathers of their backs and necks and reach down to the flesh.
The plan was Dar Oakley’s, though he had hardly got out the gist of it before the others took it up and yelled it from perch to perch along the tree line, each passing it on as his own, her own. It meant acting in concert, and it meant having an end in view; and while these Crows could do the one and do the other, whether they could do both at once was less certain.
The four Horses now and then nuzzled the frozen grass, but mostly they stood still close together to share warmth (who doesn’t? Even Crows). The smallest among them was either a youngling or somehow stunted, a bag of bones.
The Crows had gathered in silence, and been ignored by the Horses. They muttered low among themselves as more joined them.
“Who’ll call a start?”
“We’ll know when.”
“I say now.”
“Hush! Hush and wait.”
“Look there,” one called.
Far off over the fields, one of the white-robed monks from a nearby abbey could be seen walking their way, with one of the farmers that the Abbey employed, perhaps coming to gather in these Horses before night. The Crows could see them, but the two of them were too far off to see the Crows, or the Horses either, who stood in the lee of a low hillock.
“Now,” said another.
“All together!” Dar Oakley cried, and the word passed through the branches and up and down until they were all yelling it. The Horses raised their heads—Crows making a ruckus will cause most animals to look up to see the cause—but before they could take it into their heads to move off, Dar Oakley gave another cry, and all the Crows rose up—not as one but in a long wave, one’s rising causing those nearby to rise. Then in a shrieking black crowd they descended onto the Horses. Dodging at their heads and flanks, crying at their ears, they got the four beasts moving in fright—that was the easy part. It was harder to separate the smallest from the other three, and chase him in a different direction: the Horses naturally wanted to stick together. Some of the Crows had to harry the little one daywise while the rest ran the other Horses darkwise, and it was hard for those Crows not to turn and join in chasing after the little Horse when it got separated, and keep driving the other three away. Dar Oakley had explained it—keep after the bigger ones until they were too far from the little one to find it, or lost the impulse to try. It was how the Wolves did it: cut out the weakest.
The three bigger Horses ran as the Crows pressed them. Faces! they cried to one another. Eyes!
Wolf! Wolf! the others cried at the stumbling little one. Run! Run!
The Horse was running in mad circles. The Crows were growing as weary as the little Horse they chased. There’d been little to eat these last short days. Then they had some luck: the Horse turned from the open ground and into a rubbled slew that led down toward the river. The Crows, all at once grasping what must happen, forced the Horse with their screaming and their black wings in its face farther down that way, and almost immediately it lost its footing and plunged sprawling down. It struggled to rise but couldn’t.
The Crows were crazy with triumph. Who are the Wolves? they cried. We are the Wolves!
Dar Oakley ceased his yelling and settled on the rocks above where the Horse lay. Somehow a foreleg had got thrust into a fissure of rock; perhaps it was broken. The Horse’s head twisted this way and that, lips drawn back, a sobbing breath from its throat, blood on a cheek where a Crow had dagged it. The beast wouldn’t live through the coming night.
It was pleasant to sit and watch their prize, but night was coming fast and they had flown far from the roost. One by one they ceased crying, We are the Wolves! We are the Hunters! Two by two they ascended away. In the night the real Wolves would appear, the carcass-openers, and come day the Crows would eat. Eat and eat.
Far behind in the fields, the Brother and the farmer stood arm in arm, afraid and praying: for surely they had seen devils in the form of birds set upon their Horses, drive them far away out of sight, and (for all they could tell) ride them down to Hell.
It was for sure a hellish crew, those Crows in that day, as Dar Oakley now tells of it. The flock he flew with was tightly ranked and more battlesome than others, and the winners of their contests were fearless and fierce—though the winners weren’t always the biggest or the quickest, any more than the top Dogs in any Dog pack are always the largest. Winters, when these Biggers gathered in their favored groves, they socialized with one another; they foraged together, they fought with and cursed rivals and upstarts, and admitted the bravest to their ranks. They mourned those of the gang lost to Owls and accidents, remembered and spoke of them, but that never stopped them from getting out in front when another Owl was to be mobbed, or a Hawk chased off, or a dangerous game played, Come on, come on! The rest of the flock profited by their schemes and their daring, and got a share of the feasts they contrived, laughed at their jokes, avoided their thick bills.
There was Va Thornhill and Kon Eaglestaiclass="underline" they went unchallenged and left alone, even by each other. There was Ta Blue-Eye and his daughter-wife Fin, both with eyes as black as any Crow’s. There was (Dar Oakley can still name them, like a retired officer remembering his old regiment) Big Stonybrook and Little Stonybrook, the tougher of the two; and Rowanberry, loutish and cruel, and sneaky Other Rowanberry. And there was Dar Oakley, who sat midway in this corps, not the strongest nor the most heedless of them but the smartest and most inventive. The plan about the Horse was his—he had in his mind an image not only of Wolves but of People fighters on a raid, and how they’d cut out the weaker animals or the slower females to surround and seize.
Through that cold night he tried to remember when it had been that he had seen such a thing, if he really had. He pressed his memory back and back until, as always, it came at last to a night-darkness, a nothing, into which his thought could not go. Like the night’s nothing, which yields up a world when day returns, he knew this nothing within him wasn’t empty: but that was all he knew.