The Sleeping Army Awakes

Part 52 Wolves on the hillside

Adolphus and his pack remembered where they had found Basil, so Adolphus led, and his eldest son's pack followed on behind, with the youngest's pack bringing up the rear. They picked their way through the sparse trees on the plateau below the reservoir wall and soon reached the damaged pine in which they had treed Basil. The air was still redolent of Basil's fear, which still hung heavily in the air.

Once they were back at Basil's apple tree, the packs converged and sought the direction that Basil had run to the tree from. It didn't help their quest that there had been so many wolves trampling the area while Basil had clung on for dear life, teetering dangerously, terrified of their razor sharp teeth.

The prevailing scents around the tree were really confused and were mostly from Adolphus' pack, but it wasn't too long before one of the younger pack picked up Basil's trail leading back to the count and howled this to Adolphus. Basil was so clumsy that he left quite obvious visible signs to track and once the youngster had discerned the trampled path that Basil had taken with his sharp eyes and had followed it away from the tree, the stench of fear was unmissable for the right nose.

Catching the scent himself, Adolphus quickly resumed the lead, wanting to reassert his dominance on the packs, but he couldn't help being proud of his grandson and the acuteness of the whelp's vision and sense of smell. One day that wolf would have his own pack, be great hunter and have his own grandson Adolphus reflected. It was an odd thought for a wolf to have because until recently Adolphus hadn't had a concept of what the distant future was. He mostly lived in the moment.

Soon the packs were silently stalking the count's scent itself and as they grew nearer, the odour of the explosives that the count was using became unmistakeable. The stinking substance was almost all pervasive, wafted by the wind and filling the air. They recognised the evil stench because most of them had actually witnessed the blasting lower down the hill at the building site.

Adolphus felt some malevolence before him and he knew that this devil was Count Mikula. He stopped abruptly and lay down on his belly, ears alertly scanning for any sound that might indicate that the count was leaving so that they could start removing the cables from the detonators. Taking their cue from Adolphus, the rest of the wolves in the two packs also lay down, bating their breath, vigilantly observing the count curiously, from the cover of shrubbery or outcrops of rock. 

They could clearly hear the count, because he was really in a foul mood. He was shouting and swearing.

"Why I am still workingk vhen I should become relaxingk a little and finish connectingk up all detonators to controllingk unit?" Mikula shouted to the heavens but if the heavens knew anything it did not reply.

It was all Basil's fault of course. Because of Basil's absence, Count Mikula was running dangerously late. So he was cursing that dummkopf slowing him down so. He would have cursed Basil anyway, even if Basil had stayed, because the boy was so clumsy and stupid and half the time he didn't understand his own language. Well, not the way that the count pronounced English anyway!

"Mein Gott in Himmel Basil! I hope zhat you haff been eaten by wolves you stupid schweinhund!" He cursed with his fist in the air. "If you still liff zhen I am findingk you and zhen you vill beingk Wiener Schnitzel!"

Count Mikula wondered what had happened to the boy and what had spooked him enough for him to run away. Surely it couldn't have been anything that he had said or done. He considered himself to be a reasonable employer and he never overworked the boy. He had even made Basil's sandwiches for him in the morning.

If there had been the two of them working together they should have been finished over an hour ago. He had to admit that as useless as the boy had appeared; at least he could have done some of the simpler tasks like moving stuff about or fetching a forgotten detonator. So far Count Mikula had only placed half of the explosive charges with fuses and even fewer of them had blasting wire connected.

Adolphus grew impatient. He could see the blasting wires, or snakes as he saw them, to one side of the blasting area and he believed he knew what to do with them so when Count Mikula was looking away he began creeping towards them.

"It would be much safer to wait!" Samuel's voice resounded in his head.

"You ask me to be a coward?" Adolphus asked.

"No I ask you to be a live hero!" Samuel thought. "You still have a dangerous task to complete and anyway it is often the bravest one, who will wait for the right time."

"And what do we do if we cannot remove all these snakes in time?" Adolphus asked impatiently.

"The run like hell for higher ground!" Samuel advised.

"We will not run from danger!" Adolphus asserted. "We will simply make a strategic withdrawal."

"I will give you as much warning as possible!" Samuel said, "But however you choose to do it, strategically withdraw as quickly as you can without running away!"

Adolphus was torn between being offended and being amused, but he felt growing respect for Samuel, and he knew that the counsel that Samuel gave him, preserved his honour as a wolf, and also taught him a lesson. So at length Adolphus chose follow his advice and live longer by accepting the truth of the situation.