Frost Wolf (2 page)

AFTER INVESTIGATING THE TRACKS, Faolan returned to the den to rest, but Edme continued on her scouting expedition in hopes of picking up more of the caribou herd’s trail. Her efforts proved futile, and as dawn broke the next morning, the two wolves set out toward the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.

“Let’s cross the creek here. I think the ice might be thinner and we could get some fish,” Faolan suggested.

It did not take them long to claw through the ice, and within minutes they found three winter-thin salmon.

“It seems wrong catching them when they can barely move. It’s not a fair fight exactly, and they hardly have any flesh on them.” Edme shook her head as she swallowed the last piece.

“Eat the head. Thunderheart always made me eat it. She said it was the most nourishing part.”

Edme shuddered. The notion of a fish head after the promise of meat from the caribou tracks was revolting.

“Go on! Eat it,” Faolan growled.

“You even sound like a grizzly,” Edme muttered as she took a small nip of the fish head.

“I could do worse,” Faolan chuckled.

Thunderheart, a grizzly bear, had been Faolan’s second Milk Giver. He had been cast out by the wolf clan, deemed a cursed one, and left to die because of his splayed paw. The grizzly had rescued him from an ice floe in the river. It was Thunderheart who had taught him to fish during those glorious golden days of his first summer. But now she was gone, as was Faolan’s first Milk Giver. He chewed the fish head and looked up toward the sky. It had started to snow again. He turned his face toward the constellations of the Cave of Souls and Ursulana, the wolf and the bear heavens. It didn’t matter that he could not see the stars. He knew that both his Milk Givers were up there, snug in their heavens.

The wind had picked up and was cutting down from the north like a blade. To head directly into it for the Ring would be hard going, especially on their meager meal of three scrawny fish.

“All right,” Faolan sighed. “With this wind we’d do better tacking across instead of facing it straight on. We’ll
head toward the eastern edges of the MacNab and the MacDuff territories. Let’s go.”

The snow stopped as they left the Shadow Forest behind. There were drifts on the ground, but they were not too thick and Faolan and Edme were able to increase their speed considerably. The sun rode high in the sky, beating down fiercely on them and threatening to put an icy glaze on the trail, which would make it even more difficult for them. Edme was thinking about the irony of the summer sun and the threat of ice occurring simultaneously.
How can a world turn so strange so quickly?
she thought as she trotted along several paces behind Faolan. Suddenly, she saw Faolan skid to a halt. “Not already!” she muttered and accelerated her pace to catch up. She was careful to lock her toes into the snow to avoid skidding.

“Look ahead!” It had begun to snow again, hard. A driving wind flung the swirling gusts smack into their faces, but something else came on the edge of those gusts — a scent. The scent of meat. The snowflakes seemed to freeze in place. The wind stopped and a shadow loomed dark behind the white veil of the blizzard. It was a moose.

The tang of the animal’s meat saturated the air. Could they take down one of the largest animals in the Beyond? This one didn’t look full-grown, but it still could be dangerous. Moose were unpredictable and many a wolf had died after being charged and then impaled on the sharp rack of their antlers.

Faolan’s and Edme’s stomachs churned. A new energy flooded through them and both sprang in a dead run downwind of the moose until he was within kill range. There was no way they were going to let the creature pick up their scent.

Now!
Faolan signaled silently with a flick of his ears. He split off from Edme, heading upwind. Edme tore through the blizzard at such a speed that she left a wake in the wind-driven snow, a narrow path that seemed fragrant with the smell of meat. Within seconds, the moose caught her scent and began to run. He was small for a moose, but he was fast. Faolan drove down on his port flank, trying to turn the moose in a classic outflanker maneuver. Meanwhile, Edme was packing the gap.
Is she packing already?
Faolan wondered. This was risky. The moose was turning too sharply.

“Let it go!” Faolan howled the cease chase call. His eyes widened in horror. Edme was not stopping. The
moose caught a glimpse of Edme out of one eye and let out a bellow that shook the blizzarding sky. He was going to turn and charge.

“Edme!” Faolan cried. He saw something small fly through the air. And then everything stopped for him, everything except the echo of the bellowing moose as it hammered away into what was now a blinding blizzard.

“Edme?” Faolan looked around desperately. The bellows of the moose began to diminish with the distance. “Edme?” His voice cracked.

He saw something stir in a small drift ahead.

“I’m all right. I’m fine,” Edme said as she emerged from a mound of snow. She wobbled slightly, but Faolan could see no blood.

“Edme, wh … what …” Faolan could barely form the question. “Why would you do such a thing? That was
cag mag
! To make a move like that, to cut in.” His eyes darkened with disbelief.

“I know … I mean, I know now. But all I could think of was meat. It was scary. Or it’s scary now to think that I did this. I was just so hungry.” She looked at Faolan. He was shaking.

“Edme, if he had killed you … if …”

“I didn’t mean to fighten you, Faolan.” She was suddenly filled with a terrible sadness. She came up to Faolan and nuzzled his shoulder. “I’m here, Faolan. I’m just fine. I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“Do you promise?”

Edme was silent for several seconds. “I was driven by an urge that made me senseless. Even a sensible wolf can lose her mind. I won’t let it ever happen again. I promise.” She paused. “But I did learn one thing.”

“What was that?”

“Faolan, I got so close to that moose I could smell milk on him — old milk.”

“Old milk? You mean …”

“I mean that was a calf moose. He should have been with his mum. They always stay with their mums to nurse until the first of the snow moons. You know that.”

“His mum must be dead,” Faolan said.

“If that happened, usually another moose cow would have taken on the orphan, like a second Milk Giver.”

“In other words, this might be the last moose in the Beyond.” This was not a question, but a statement.

FAOLAN AND EDME WERE EXHAUSTED by the time they entered the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes. They immediately headed toward the den they shared near the volcano known as Stormfast.

“Uh-oh, guess who’s coming.” Edme sighed. Faolan didn’t even have to look to know who Edme was talking about. It was Banja, the red wolf who seemed to take a special delight in tormenting Edme. Banja, like Edme, was missing one eye. But sharing the same deformity didn’t make her empathetic in the least. Sometimes Faolan got so angry at the bitter she-wolf that he felt like body-slamming her.

“You two will be late for your shift,” Banja growled. “We need all the wolves possible. Too many cairns are untopped.”

Cairns of bones had been constructed to look out on the five volcanoes of the Ring. On top of each one, a wolf perched to guard the powerful Ember of Hoole and protect it from graymalkins, the treacherous owls who might attempt to seize it. This task, regarded as a sacred one, had been entrusted to the wolves by the owls of the Great Ga’Hoole Tree over one thousand years before. The balance of not just the Beyond but of the entire Hoolian empire depended on this trust. The ember must never fall into the talons of a traitorous owl. But as the hunger moons of winter stretched into the summer, Watch wolves had been called upon to go out to scout for meat. With an incomplete Watch, cairns were often left “untopped.”

Colleen, an earless silver wolf, was passing and caught the edge of Banja’s rant.

“Banja, don’t be ridiculous. For Lupus’ sake, these two have been out on scout for four days. They need to rest, but even before they rest, the Fengo would like to see them in the
gadderheal
.”

“What? They are being called to the
gadderheal
?” Banja seemed stunned. “But the
raghnaid
is about to meet. I was on my way there.”

“As I am myself,” Colleen replied coolly.

“But young wolves never attend
raghnaid
meetings. It’s an offense.”

“An offense to what?” Colleen pressed.

“An offense to … to …” Banja stammered. “To the order.”

Colleen, ever patient, tipped her head to one side. “Banja, these are difficult times. We are being stressed in ways we’d never imagined before.”

“Therefore the order needs to be maintained.”

“The spirit of the order will be maintained. It is the spirit that keeps the codes and laws of the Beyond alive.” Colleen turned to Faolan and Edme. “Now come, you two. The Fengo is waiting.”

As they entered the
gadderheal
, Finbar, Fengo of the Watch, rose from the pelts on which he had been resting.

“Welcome, Faolan and Edme. Do you have any news of the herds?”

“No good news, I’m afraid,” Edme replied softly. She briefly described the prints from the caribou herd that seemed to circle endlessly and then inexplicably vanish.

“Disturbing, very disturbing,” the Fengo murmured. “So they are trying to migrate along their usual trails, but somehow lose their way.”

“Yes, sir. So it seems. But there is something even more disturbing.”

“More disturbing?” the Fengo asked, and shoved his ears forward.

Together, Edme and Faolan described their encounter with the young moose. By the time they concluded, a thick silence had fallen upon the
gadderheal
. Finally, the Fengo cocked his head to one side and whispered into the dimness of the cave. “Old milk. Old milk,” he repeated, then simply shook his head in wonder. “And not a sign of a bull or cow around, you say?”

Edme and Faolan both nodded.

“No sign, sir,” Faolan added.

“Did you find any other game at all? How did you manage a four-day scout with nothing to eat?” Banja asked in an accusatory tone.

Faolan glared at the red wolf. “The same way the other scouts did, I imagine — on the occasional snow hare and three fish that we broke through creek ice for.”

“Please, let us set such trifling questions and explanations aside,” the Fengo said, nodding at both Faolan and Banja. Edme had not been paying much attention to this exchange. She was scanning the cave for Winks, her
taiga
, but there was no sign of the brown one-eyed wolf. She often wondered how Banja and Winks, two wolves
who had both been born with only one eye, could be so different.

“I’ve called this meeting because we have had some disturbing reports from the MacDuncan clan. You may recall that Cathmor MacDuncan, mate of the late Duncan MacDuncan, has gone the way of the star ladder. She was safely guided by Skaarsgard and blessed that it was the time of the Great Wolf constellation.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the assembled wolves.

“ ’Twas a blessing indeed,” Twist said.

“Aye,” said another wolf.

“Now a new report has just reached us,” the Fengo continued.

A current of tension ran through the
gadderheal
as ruffs bristled and wolves shoved their ears forward in sharp attention.

“We have always known that Liam, the son of Duncan MacDuncan and Cathmor, is not the strongest leader. He has now sunk into a deep depression and has begun to wander off for long periods of time. The MacDuncans are being stressed in ways that go beyond hunger. We have even heard rumors that a MacDuncan wolf has been charged with a willful attack on a
MacAngus wolf over meat. The MacAngus wolf died from its wounds.”

Yips erupted from the small group of wolves. Faolan shut his eyes and imagined drops of blood falling from the sky instead of snow.

It was unthinkable that a MacDuncan would do such a thing.

“Wolves are beginning to starve, and now we have this. It is my feeling that the leadership in the clan has broken down.” The Fengo lowered his voice. “And, worse, the Blood Watch has been compromised.” A shiver ran through both Faolan and Edme. The outclanners were the most savage of all wolves, and the Blood Watch ensured that they stayed safely away in the Outermost. If outclanners dared to venture over the border into the Beyond, they were killed immediately. Within the clans of the Beyond, certain wolves were selected very young to train for the Blood Watch. It was a hard post, and they were rotated out of the Watch every moon cycle. Their task was so vital that there were usually plenty of reserves to maintain the Blood Watch.

“Blood Watch wolves have gone
by-lang
,” the Fengo continued.

The
taigas
Malachy and Twist shook their heads
wearily. For a Blood Watch wolf to wander off was unthinkable.

“Edme and Faolan, once you are rested, your first order of business is to go directly to the MacDuncans. Find out what in the name of the dim world is going on with that clan. Then go on to the Blood Watch. And if it is true that they are in a bad way, try and fix the situation. Get more wolves. Stay yourselves, if you have to. The clan chieftain should be in charge of organizing the Blood Watch. But, as I said, we get reports that Liam himself is inclined to go
by-lang
and disappear for days on end. He can’t send out the rotations if he’s not there. Do you understand your mission?”

Faolan and Edme both nodded solemnly.

“Good. Then neither of you is to report for watch this evening.”

The Fengo nodded that the meeting of the
gadderheal
was finished.

As the last of the wolves left the
gadderheal
, the Fengo motioned for Edme to wait. “Edme, I saw you looking for your dear
taiga
, Winks.”

Edme’s jaw began to quiver.

“Winks is quite ill. You know she is the oldest of the Watch wolves. She served in the time before the Fengo
Hamish. But she is weak now. She could use some good meat, of which there is precious little. But I am not sure even that would cure her. Lupus knows if she will last until you return.”

Edme tried to look brave. She tried not to whimper. Her eye filmed with tears as she began to speak. “Winks and Twist were Faolan’s and my first friends on the Watch. They greeted us at the Hot Gates and taught us everything they know. They are both the best
taigas
a Watch wolf could ever have.”

“I know, I know,” the Fengo whispered. “This is difficult for you. I can remember when my
taiga
went the way of the star ladder.
Taigas
are the closest we Watch wolves have to a mother or father.” The Fengo paused. “But you are strong, Edme. You are smaller perhaps than your friend Faolan, but just as strong in spirit. After you have visited Winks, go join Faolan in your den and both of you rest. I have arranged to have some food — not much, mind you — delivered to you. Eat, rest, then on the morrow, set off.”