Wolves of the Beyond: Shadow Wolf (3 page)

Great Ursus, what have I done?

But Faolan knew without being told. He had disturbed the order. A gnaw wolf had dared to cut out of the
byrrgis
and run beyond the outflankers! Beyond the point wolves! The
byrrgis
had been broken, and the bull moose had escaped.

HE EXPECTED PUNISHMENT. AFTER
all, that was what gnaw wolves were made for. They got random nips if they came too close to a carcass before the appropriate time, shunnings, often a wallop on their muzzles, and of course they served as the butt of all jokes and pranks. This he could have endured and did endure. But when he was told that Heep would be called to gnaw the bone recording Faolan’s breach of conduct as well as deliver the gnaw bite, Faolan felt nausea rise up in him.

He had spoiled the hunt. He was guilty of one of the most serious infractions of the code of laws that governed so many aspects of the wolves’ lives. He had cracked the
byrrgis
, and even if the wolves had been able to reassemble, they would not chase the moose. Meat gotten through a disturbance of the order was not considered
morrin
. Indeed, it was declared
cag mag
, an old wolf word for tainted meat, and since tainted meat was thought to make one insane, the expression also meant “going crazy.”

But it was not just the meat that was
cag mag
. From the malevolent looks the wolves were giving him, Faolan knew they thought he was tainted, too. He heard their whispers. “He’s more bear than wolf,” one male said to his mate.

“And we,” the mate replied, “have to go hungry because of him!”

But their words were nothing compared to what was coming. Faolan felt his marrow freeze when he saw the tawny wolf, the young outflanker called Mhairie, approaching. He sank to the ground. And oddly enough, the dirt hit his belly faster than it ever had before. He shoved his face into the grit, but before he could utter the first sound of an apology, her words were upon him like a swarm of stinging bees.

“What were you thinking? You wrecked my chance. Do you know how many she-wolves my age are ever asked to run as an outflanker?” She did not wait for an answer. “Of course not. You know nothing. You are an absolute idiot!”

“I know, I know,” he said, his voice hoarse with desperation.

“We’re going hungry and that’s the least of it. We’re lucky no wolves were killed when that moose charged.”

“Look—I think I should just go away. They’ll out-clan me for sure and then—”

But Mhairie cut him off. “Duncan MacDuncan decides that, not you!” she spat.

“Well, why stay around?”

“Why stay around? Look, you mealy-marrowed piece of scat. You have to go to the Carreg Gaer and have a hearing by the
raghnaid
. You can stand up to a moose on your stupid hind legs and prance about like a bear, but you can’t face our court of justice? And just where were you thinking of going?”

“Um…” He hesitated.

“Where? Ga’Hoole, I suppose?”

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Faolan muttered.

There was complete silence, a stunned silence. Slowly, Mhairie began to speak. “Are you blazed? Moon blinked? Have your brains gone
cag mag
?”

“It was just an idea,” Faolan said, trying to drive his
face farther into the dirt while rolling back his eyes so he could see her.

“Great Lupus, you are pathetic! You don’t even know how to do the third-stage submission roll, which, incidently, you are supposed to be doing right now after the initial belly scrape. You don’t know that, let alone anything else about our world. You think you’re just going to
churrlulu
your way through this.”

“I don’t know what
churrlulu
means,” Faolan admitted.

“My point exactly!
Churrlulu
is the owl word for laughing something off, taking it lightly. Go to Ga’Hoole. You don’t speak the language. You don’t fly.”

“I know some owl words. I had a friend, an owl, a Rogue smith.”

“Oh, fantastic. You had a friend, a Rogue smith,” Mhairie sneered, then cocked her head. “Forget Ga’Hoole. You don’t belong there.”

“Well, I don’t belong here!” Faolan answered. He tried to keep his ears laid flat as was proper, but they kept twitching up.

Mhairie sighed. “I still can’t believe what you did on that
byrrgis
. I mean, for the love of Lupus, this was supposed to be my…my…” Mhairie began to stammer. “My
big moment. I could have finished the crimp if it hadn’t been for you.

“Look, I don’t know what the
raghnaid
will do. I’m not sure when they’ll call you. Not with Duncan…” She started again. “Not with Duncan MacDuncan so…so sick.” Her voice dwindled to an aching whisper. But within seconds, the sting was back.

“And one more thing—that tone of yours! You don’t use that tone with me or with any other wolf. You are a gnaw wolf. Everyone knows that you have incredible strength. They saw you jump the fire trap. Wolves are superstitious. There are a lot who think you challenged the order when you jumped that wall of flames. Fractured the Great Chain. But that was survival. Mere survival. Just don’t go around mouthing off and asking insolent questions!”

Why would she say “mere” survival?
Faolan wondered. There was nothing small about being hunted down by a
byrrgis
and jumping over a wall of towering flames.

“What you did in the moose hunt confirms what a lot of these wolves thought back then when you jumped the fire trap. They want you out. They think you’ll bring moon rot. No, not just bring it—that you
are
it. You are walking moon rot.”

“They really believe that?” Faolan was bewildered. Moon rot was the shadow cast during the day by the previous night’s moon. It was believed to be an ill omen.

“It’s no excuse that you were a lone wolf and don’t know the ways of the pack, of the clan. You show no inclination for learning them. Absolutely none whatsoever!”

“But what’s the sense of it all? Lupus gave me strong legs. I learned to jump, to run, and it’s all wasted here. I can’t do any of what I learned—why not?”

“You think it’s all about you, Faolan, just you. Well, it isn’t. The pack is not a single wolf. The clan is not a single pack.” Mhairie flashed him a last angry glance. “As you’ll learn when you face the
raghnaid
.”

Faolan’s tail instinctively twitched between his legs. The
raghnaid
was awaiting him, and his biggest humiliation yet.

THE GNAW BITE WAS A PUNISHMENT
seldom administered. But the high-ranking members of the pack agreed that the infraction of the laws of the
byrrgis
was so serious that Faolan must be bitten. To add insult to injury, Heep was chosen to inflict the bite. Lord Claren, head of the River Pack, and Lord Bhreac of the Pack of the Eastern Scree, both wearing their necklaces of bones, led Heep forth. Heep kept his yellow eyes lowered, but Faolan could see the smile on his muzzle.

A drizzle had started and was quickly turning the dust into a fine, slippery mud. Heep stepped forward to deliver the gnaw bite. The yellow wolf would tear a piece from Faolan’s pelt and possibly his flesh. Faolan would be marked by Heep, cut right to his bone if the bite was deep enough. The idea was appalling to him.

Faolan stared at the ground, not daring to look up. His heart was beating so hard in his chest, it seemed as loud as Thunderheart’s. Indeed, it was as if thunder rolled through him. He pawed the ground nervously with his splayed foot. Faolan could smell Heep’s hot breath as he stepped closer. He would not give Heep the satisfaction of running or even flinching. He braced himself for the first tearing of his flesh.
I must not waver. I must stand here. I will do this, for Thunderheart
. And it was as if the great grizzly’s heart invaded him, not simply the booming sound, but the lifeblood pumping through him. Faolan shifted slightly and planted his feet, prepared to endure the pain of the bite.

He was not sure how long he had stood when he noticed a silence had fallen on the wolves gathered around. What was happening? Nothing. What was wrong? He could feel the other wolves shrinking back in disappointment, as if the drama they had anticipated was fading. He lifted his eyes and saw Heep quivering with fear, those two yellow eyes riveted on the print Faolan’s splayed forepaw had made in the mud. It was a perfect spiral like that of a swirling star. Faolan blinked. He had never left such a deep track before, and the spiraling lines on the pad of his paw were so dim that they had never
left a trace. Had he pressed that hard in his determination not to move? But why was Heep quivering? Everything was turned around. Faolan was supposed to be the one trembling in fear.

“Get on with it, lad!” Lord Claren gave Heep a cuff.

“Oh, Lord Claren,” Heep said as he sank to his knees and began to screw his face into the mud, carefully avoiding the paw print. “I am not worthy of this honor. Thank you. It is very kind of you to offer. There are wolves enough to tread on me in my lowly rankless condition. That I should bite this wolf without doing outrage to the other gnaw wolves’ feelings is…is…is…”

“Is what, by Lupus?” The lord of the pack leaped upon Heep’s quaking head and slammed it farther into the mud. Snarling, he made a grab for Heep’s face and violently shook his muzzle for several seconds before finally flinging him away.

Faolan was mystified. He was the one supposed to be bitten, and yet Heep’s blood scrawled the air like a tracer of red lightning while Faolan stood unbloodied and unbowed. He quickly corrected his erect posture as Lord Claren approached with Lord Bhreac. Faolan arched his back and started the first of his submission postures. He quickly sank onto his knees, but before he could even
begin to roll over to expose his belly, both lords slammed on top of him and clamped him firmly to the ground with their forepaws.

The weight of the two wolves was crushing, and once again, Faolan braced himself for a mauling. He could barely breathe. He heard the lords begin to talk in low whispers. “Positively unspeakable,” Lord Claren said.

“Yes, but that is just the point. That’s why he must be taken immediately to the Carreg Gaer so the chieftain can talk to him.”

“But the chieftain is dying! The
raghnaid
can deal with this gnaw wolf later. There is no rush.”

“He must go while the chieftain still lives.”

Something within Faolan wilted. Although he was nearly numb from the crushing weight of the two lords, he could still feel shame. Duncan MacDuncan had treated him with patience and respect when Faolan had jumped the wall of fire. To face the chieftain again, disgraced, would be worse than any gnaw bite.

THE CAMP OF THE CARREG GAER
was smaller than Faolan had anticipated but situated in a region of lovely soaring cliffs with a creek running right through the middle. Some young pups were chasing one another across the shallows, their hind paws furiously splashing up water and flinging mud.

Along the banks, elder wolves were playing a game called
biliboo
with pebbles from the creek and knuckle-bones. The game was one of strategy and required great mental concentration. Played by four wolves in teams of two, the pieces were moved from one side of a complicated pattern scratched in the dirt to another. The paths through which they moved were intricate and governed by a rigid set of rules. Faolan had often tried to watch in his own pack and understand the intricacies of the moves.
The players never spoke a word during the game, and it seemed as if their pieces flowed across the pattern, almost as if they were never even touched by the wolves’ muzzles or paws.

Faolan had been told to wait by a red-speckled rock to be called into the cave for the
raghnaid
. He looked up into the star-powdered night, searching for signs of the new constellations that appeared during the Caribou Moon. He found great comfort in searching the sky, hunting for the old familiar constellations that had sailed through the nights in the seasons he had spent with Thunderheart.

It seemed colder than normal for this moon, and he wondered if the creek the pups were playing in would be frozen by morning. But there were not even glimpses of the first stars of the snow moons yet.
Curious
, he thought. He scanned the sky for other constellations. Faolan especially liked the star picture that the grizzly bears called the Great Claws. Thunderheart had told him that the owls called it the Golden Talons, and he’d learned that the wolves called it the Great Fangs. But the constellation was almost gone now and would not return until early winter. Other constellations had begun to rise. That of the caribou would climb higher and higher following
the horns of the Caribou Moon during the frosty autumn evenings, and soon the caribou’s mate and calf would walk behind him across the night. Faolan missed the Great Claws. He didn’t even like the wolf name for the constellation. The Great Fangs—how stupid! It made him think of slobber in the skies, long threads of saliva spinning off into the night just like Mhairie running with the
byrrgis
.

Talk about a temper! He had never experienced such a drubbing. It was so different from the usual abuse. That slobbering mouth never quit! Although she had not slobbered when she stood over him, yelling her head off.

He looked up again, searching for the Great Claws, which would always remind him of Thunderheart.

When he glanced away from the stars, he saw a thin, white wolf looking at him as she passed by the rock where he waited. His blood froze. He got up to move away but still felt her eyes on him. There was no mistaking who this wolf was. Lael, the clan’s new Obea. The Obea was the female wolf in each clan responsible for removing deformed pups from the whelping den, tearing them from their mother’s milk to take them to a
tummfraw
, a place of abandonment where the pup would die. If the she-wolf he had seen with Lord Bhreac and Lord Claren
delivered a
malcadh
, it would be Lael who would carry it away. Unless, of course, the mother went
by-lang
and succeeded in losing herself and the pup in the deep away. Faolan felt the green eyes of the white wolf following him.

A pup now ran up to where he was waiting.

“You’re big for a gnaw wolf,” the pup said. “I mean you’re big for any wolf.”

“Yeah,” said another.

“He’s bigger than my da.”

“My da and my mum put together!” said another.

“Hey! He should be doing a submission roll.”

“But he’s so big,” whispered a rust-colored wolf.

“Doesn’t matter, he’s a gnaw wolf.” The other pup came forward. She, too, was rust colored and must have been his sister.

“You’re supposed to get down, you know. I mean, you’re already in trouble.”

“Yes, yes, I know. Sorry.” Faolan began to sink to his knees.

“You talk funny, too,” said the bossy little wolf.

“My mum says he talks like a bear.” A new pup had now come up to watch the spectacle by the red rock.

“A grizzly bear was my second Milk Giver,” Faolan
said, twisting his neck so his face pushed into the ground.
I cannot believe I am doing this. I am five times the size of these pups.

“A bear. Weird! What was it like?” the first pup asked. He was a genuinely curious little fellow and had crouched down a bit to get on eye level with Faolan.

“Are you scared of going in to see the
raghnaid
?” asked a gray female pup.

“Are you
cag mag
? If a bear was his Milk Giver, you think he’s scared of the
raghnaid
?” said the curious pup, who was still crouching.

But they were wrong. Faolan was scared, not of the
raghnaid
so much but of the shame of facing Duncan MacDuncan.

The half dozen or so pups who had crept out from behind the red rock soon became bored and went off to wrestle on a patch of scoured ground. Faolan looked across at them. Two other pups had escaped from their parents’ den and were trying to nose their way into the tussle, but their mother came out, gave them each a swat that sent them flying, and then growled. The pups obediently followed her back into their den.

A shaft of moonlight suddenly poured down and illuminated another she-wolf and her two pups. Their coats were a silvery gray, much like Faolan’s own, and Faolan tried to imagine what his life might have been like if his paw had been straight and not splayed. If he’d had a wolf mother and father or sisters and brothers to play with in the moonlight, to cuff him soundly on the muzzle and make him follow them back into a cozy den. He would have known then that the Great Claws were called the Great Fangs.

Faolan groaned and sank down to his knees, but he would not screw his face into the dirt even though he saw a high-ranking male wolf stride toward him. He rolled to one side and looked at the stars. There was a swirl of clouds that thinly veiled the moon. The clouds quickly scudded away, but for just a moment, they looked identical to the whirl of lines on the pad of his splayed paw. Why had that upset the yellow wolf Heep so much? Heep had backed off from biting him because he was frightened. And yet the first time Faolan had ever looked at those swirled markings, he had found them deeply comforting. He had thought the whirling tracery spoke of something marvelous, hinted that he was part of a larger pattern of endlessly spiraling harmony.

At that moment, Faolan’s reveries were interrupted.

“Up, gnaw wolf,” a pack elder growled. “Duncan MacDuncan is ready to see you. Mind you do the proper veneration and obeisance as you approach. The chieftain is failing rapidly and it is most important that submission rituals be upheld. None of your blasphemous
byrrgis
behavior, cur. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” Faolan said meekly, and rose to follow the pack elder. He was careful to tuck his tail between his legs and lay his ears flat despite having a terrible itch in one that seemed to bother him more, the flatter he laid his ears.

The chieftain’s cave was immense, and in the center was a pit with a fire burning in it. On the wall hung scraped hides and an array of antlers—deer, caribou, musk ox—all of which had the most intricate carvings. Faolan tried to keep his gaze down, but it seemed his eyes were drawn back to the flames.

The clan elders who comprised the
raghnaid
were in their ceremonial headdresses of gnawed bones and necklaces, and it seemed to Faolan that there were only two sounds in the cave—the crackling and snapping of the fire as it devoured the air, and the odd clicking rattle of bones. No one spoke. But when Faolan glanced up, he
saw something he had not expected in their eyes—fear.
Do they really think I am moon rot?
he wondered.

The ancient wolf Duncan MacDuncan was reclining on the pelt of a bull elk. Once he had been a wolf with a dark gray coat, but with age, he was almost white. There were bare patches on his shoulders that revealed scars from long-ago combat. His shoulders almost suggested a landscape of the battlefields he had known. Like scorched earth, it was as if the fur had refused to grow there any longer. His eyes were milky green, the color of the streams that ran down from the glaciers in the high country. There was a notch in one of his ears, and it was not hard to imagine the cougar who had torn it.

Behind him, soaring into the shadows, were two racks of the most enormous caribou antlers Faolan had ever seen. Beside the chief an elegant she-wolf rested on her haunches, her head held high. It was Cathmor, the chieftain’s mate. Her dark gray coat was almost black, and her eyes a lovely shade of green that reminded Faolan of the mossed rocks in the river where he and Thunderheart had fished their only summer together.

“Bring him forth,” the chieftain wheezed. The elder who had escorted Faolan gave him a rough nudge, and
Faolan began the traditional belly crawl toward the pelt where Duncan MacDuncan lay. The sight of this once noble chieftain shocked Faolan. Duncan MacDuncan looked broken, as if the slightest blow would shatter him completely.

“Close enough,” the elder said after a few seconds.

“No! Closer,” Duncan MacDuncan rasped.

When Faolan reached the edge of the pelt, he twisted his neck and began to grind his face into the floor. He caught a glimpse of the fire out of the corner of one eye. His hackles started to rise and then settled, and a calm stole through him.

The chieftain stirred slightly on his pelt. “Easy, my dear heart,” Cathmor whispered, and lay a calming paw on the chieftain’s flank.

What has this lad seen in the flames?
the chieftain wondered.
Does he see that it is about to snow before the snow moons? That this spring, the ice will not crack until it is almost the Moon of the Singing Grass? Is the time of the Long Cold returning?

If Faolan has the fire sight, then indeed he is a special wolf,
thought Duncan MacDuncan,
and a portent of grievous times ahead
. Then the chieftain shook his head as if to clear it of such dire thoughts. He had a last duty to
perform. As supreme leader of the clan and high lord of the
raghnaid
, he opened the proceedings.

“Faolan, gnaw wolf of the MacDuncan clan, the
raghnaid
has been assembled to determine if your actions during a recent
byrrgis
constitute a violation of our laws. Nearly one thousand years ago, when our ancestors were led here by the first Fengo, we planted laws, traditions, and codes of behavior as thickly as the trees of the deep forests from whence we came. Because we believed that a country without laws was more dangerous than one without trees, that without them, dignified and noble wolves could not stand upright in the fierce winds that sweep our land.”

The chieftain then turned to Lord Adair, second highest lord of the
raghnaid
, and called, “Read the charges.”

Lord Adair came forward with a bone and began to read: “As recorded by the gnaw wolf, Heep, of the River Pack of the MacDuncan clan. On the morning after the fifteenth night of the Caribou Moon, a
byrrgis
was assembled on the Burn in pursuit of a bull moose. In the first quarter of the hunt, at press-paw speed, the gnaw wolf Faolan followed meticulously his obligations of sniffing and reporting on the droppings.”

You bet I did
, thought Faolan, as if Heep were right there reading the bone himself.
You idiot wolf who wanted to go in my place with your dry nose and not a trace of dung to report on it!

“I humbly pursued my course on the western flank, a flank much too grand for my base origins. As diligently as possible, I searched out urine pools of the moose and, in my most humble opinion, was able to confirm that the beast was healthy. It was not until press-paw speed had broken into attack speed that I noticed a disturbance that seemed to flow through the
byrrgis,
reaching back as far as my lowly position as a sweeper. It was at that time that I looked up and saw the gnaw wolf Faolan streaking through the
byrrgis
and cutting out to overtake the young and noble outflanker Mhairie, who, due to her outstanding abilities, had been sent from the Carreg Gaer of the MacDuncans. At the moment he overtook her, chaos began to erode the
hwlyn
of the
byrrgis
.”

There was a gasp from the other members of the
raghnaid
.
Hwlyn
was the wolf word meaning “spirit of the pack.” Exclamations of shock and horror swirled through the
gadderheal
. Tails that seconds before were hanging loosely suddenly tucked nearly as tightly as Faolan’s, not in submission but in fear.

“Continue,” Duncan MacDuncan ordered calmly. The wolf Adair read on, concluding with a description of how Faolan had risen on his hind legs, and the bull moose had wheeled about in a panic to charge the
byrrgis
, “thus cleaving the spirit of the pack.”

“Was any wolf killed or injured by the moose when it charged?” Duncan MacDuncan asked with renewed vigor.

“No, sir,” replied Adair.

“Then I say that is rather a…well…promiscuous use of the word ‘cleave.’” Again a shudder passed through the
gadderheal
. For a wolf who was so close to death himself to use the wolf word for dying so calmly was unnerving, if not to the chieftain at least to the others in the ceremonial cave. “What’s this gnaw wolf’s name? The one who gnawed this bone?”

“Heep, my lord.”

“Aaah, Heep, yes, Heep, the one who is always carrying on about being humble. Bring the bone to my pelt so I might examine it.”

The wolf Adair stepped forward and dropped the bone. It rested in the thick pelt of the bull elk inches from Faolan’s muzzle. He had seen a few bones that Heep had gnawed, and once more, Faolan noticed the subtle
scratches made by Heep’s flawed rear-slicing tooth. Either the nick in that tooth had deepened or Heep had been more careless than usual in his work, because it was quite visible on this gnaw-bone.