Gool by Maurice Gee

time it hurts him. It stabs. Sometimes he howls in the night. That is good. I think of it as I lie down to sleep. But he blames me. He sends men out to capture me and I lead them into swamps, where they drown. They’re food for the dogs.’
    Duro swallowed. It was more than he wanted.
    ‘What about Keech?’
    ‘He has always hated Blood Burrow and I’m Blood Burrow.’ He seemed to think that was enough.
    ‘What happened on the hill, Tarl, after Pearl and Hari jumped?’ Xantee said.
    Tarl looked at her briefly. ‘Blood Burrow and Keech Burrow fought. We killed each other while the Clerk laughed inside himself. Keech had more men but I had my dogs. The other burrows joined with Keech and drove us from the hill. We ran for Blood Burrow. And then Blood Burrow turned on me; they blamed me. So I ran again, with my dogs, and came to the forest, where I live a better life than back there.’ He put a hand on the dog at his side and it wagged its tail.
    ‘What happened back there?’
    ‘Keech made himself king of the burrows. There’s no Blood Burrow any more. No Keg, no Bawdhouse, it’s all Keech. But he hates me, just like the Clerk. He blames me for losing the city and the heights and for the clerks breaking the treaty we made that night. So he sends men out to hunt me. I deal with them in the same way.’
    ‘And you’re the Dog King?’ Duro said.
    ‘Men call me that. But there’s no king. There’s only the leader of the pack. Once it was Dog. Did Hari tell you about Dog?’
    ‘Yes,’ Xantee said.
    ‘He was leader. I was – they did not know what I was. They let me live because of Dog and because I taught them new ways of hunting and killed game out of their reach.’ He touched his knife. ‘Then Dog grew old and they killed him.’ He saw Xantee start. ‘A younger dog challenged him. Dog lost and the pack tore him apart. It’s the way. They let me live. I was still useful. And what I tell them to do they do. But the black dog is the leader. And when I’m too old to run with them –’ he shrugged – ‘they’ll kill me too.’
    ‘Can’t you get away?’
    ‘Why? The pack’s my home. I’ll live with them and die their way.’
    ‘We can take you to Hari.’
    ‘No. He chose another way.’
    ‘But you’ll help him?’
    ‘He’s my son.’ But he laid his hand on the dog at his side – his son too?
    ‘Is that one, and the other one, do they come down from Dog?’ Duro said.
    ‘They have Dog’s blood. Now –’ he turned from them – ‘you’ve told me. The city’s west. The burrows are west. Tomorrow we’ll start. Sleep now.’
    He lay down and closed his eyes.
    Xantee and Duro stretched out on their mats and pulled their blankets tight. Soon, although there were many new things to think about, they slept too.

EIGHT
    Xantee did not count the days; she thought of Hari dying. The forest ran on, never changing, until Duro showed her that the trees were thinning out and getting smaller. They shrank to head height, dry and twisted, then gave way to scrub with knife-point leaves and hidden thorns. Another day in the scrub, with the land falling away in a slope too gradual to notice. After that, bare hills where the sun beat down and fangcats hunted. The dogs would have fought them, and Tarl too, with his knife, but Xantee and Duro pushed the creatures away with their minds. Tarl shook his head contemptuously.
    ‘Dweller tricks,’ he said.
    They were two days in the hills. One of the dogs ran ahead, scouting from side to side. The other stayed in reach of Tarl’s hand. In the mornings, when Xantee and Duro woke, all three were gone, and they came back bloodstained, the dogs red on their muzzles and Tarl on his beard. He threw a lump of meat to Xantee and Duro and they cut it thin and charred it on a low fire. Tarl refused meat that was cooked. He seemed more savage, he talked less, but was always in conversation with the dogs. Yet Xantee was surer of him, less afraid that he would turn on