Frost Wolf (6 page)

GWYNNETH HAD NOT BEEN IN THE Beyond for several moons. With the confounding weather, she had been forced to relocate from a lovely vale between the MacDuff and MacNab territories in the Beyond to the old forge of her auntie, where she had learned her craft.

She missed the Sark and Faolan, but most of all she missed hearing the wild untamed music of the wolves’ howling, which she had grown accustomed to over the long years she had spent in the Beyond. Of all the owls, Gwynneth knew and understood the ways of the wolves best.

She could have taken over the forge when her auntie died, but she never wanted to. She thought it would feel as if the old Snowy were looking over her shoulders every
time she took up the tongs. But this had not happened during the three moons she had passed in her auntie’s old forge in the Hoolian empire — not until this evening.

Gwynneth felt the slightest ruffle pass through from her mantle feathers to her plummels, those softest and most delicate feathers that edged her wings.
Great Glaux
, she thought, and immediately flattened all her plumage to grow instantaneously sleeker and taller. This was the fear reaction in owls, known as
wilfing
. Gwynneth had grown as slender as a sapling limb. She stood perfectly still, but the feeling did not go away. The woods were mystical in the time just before twilight. Vapors floated eerily through the tall pines and fir trees, draping the branches like cloth.
Was it … ?
She tried to repress the thought.

Was Auntie not at rest? Did the old Rogue smith of the Silverveil have — as the owls said of scrooms who wandered the earth — unfinished business? The vapors that twined around the trees like white ivy had coalesced into a shape — the shape of a Snowy Owl.

Scrooms were given to muffled and mostly incoherent speech. It was often very difficult to understand what they were saying, what messages they were bringing. It became particularly difficult to understand them if one resisted, as Gwynneth was resisting deep within her gizzard. But finally her auntie’s words became clear.

“Disturbed!” The word rang out crystalline and sharp. Gwynneth felt a quiver run along her wing feathers. The mist of the Snowy Owl appeared to tremble and glitter under the light of a fullshine moon. Gwynneth had been clutching a pair of tongs over her fire, but now she dropped them. She felt something slip out from her and rise in the darkness to join the bundle of mist that perched on a limb of the fir tree. And yet she had not twitched a feather — not a plummel, not a covert nor a primary. But still she looked down and saw herself standing by the forge. Her body had
wilfed
to a thinness that was alarming, and her long shadow stretched across the pool of orange light that spilled from the flames of the fire.

Disturbed?
she said, but her voice was as muffled as the scroom’s once had been. Words floated out of her like bubbles. She wondered whether she was speaking or if her thoughts were simply appearing before her.

It is not I who is disturbed
, the scroom replied. Gwynneth felt the voice rather than actually heard it. And it felt just the way it did when Auntie used to scold her.

What disturbance, Auntie?

A … a … helmet. A visor.

Whose?

Your … your …
The clarity began to dissolve, the words to blur.

Don’t go! Don’t go!
Gwynneth thought.

Then the answer stirred deep in Gwynneth’s gizzard.
Da’s. Da’s helmet?

A mark was made for him … a hero mark.

But hero marks are for wolves —

A hero mark for a warrior owl beloved by wolves!

Questions boiled in Gwynneth’s mind, but Auntie was fading away.

A hero mark for an owl? Even for an owl beloved by wolves, it was peculiar! More troubling, however, was the thought that some creature had disturbed her father’s helmet and visor. In the world of owls it was unthinkable. Rogue smiths’ helmets, visors, and battle claws were always treated with utmost respect, especially the ones they made for their own use and not for barter. How would her father’s scroom ever rest if his helmet had been disturbed? How would he ever perch peacefully in Glaumora by the heavenly forge, where the most beautiful objects were wrought with hammers and tongs made of stars, where the sparks from the fires forged new constellations? Gwynneth almost wept when she thought of her da. How could this have happened?

At that moment an icy draft cut through the forest, rattling the limbs of the trees and shattering the last of Auntie’s mist as if it had been ice.

“A hero mark disturbed!” Gwynneth’s voice rang out in the woods and sounded ridiculous to her. Had she gone
cag mag
and imagined the entire occurrence? Was she waking or dreaming? She blinked. She had slipped back into her plumage, which was as puffy as ever, as if she had never
wilfed
.

And yet a presence seemed to linger, like a shadow in her gizzard. It was as if the mist of her auntie’s scroom had saturated the deepest part of her. She lifted one foot and gently raked her talons through her belly feathers.

Gwynneth had not learned of her father’s death until long after the war. She knew that he had not died of his wounds on the battlefield but had lingered, and died some time later. There had been rumors of where he had breathed his last, but nothing more. Gwynneth had gone to his forge and set things in order, thinking that perhaps he had made it back there to die. She had even gone to the Sark of the Slough, whose sense of smell was renowned, and asked for her help. But the Sark could not sniff out a trace of Gwyndor and had finally convinced
Gwynneth to give up her quest. Now someone else had found the grave and violated it, perhaps even taken Gwyndor’s battle helm and mask. Gwynneth must take up the task again, find her father’s helmet, and set his hero mark to rights.

CLOUDS ROILED OVER THE JAGGED, ice-sheathed cairns of the Blood Watch. The night turned lavender as the sun sank, and the cairns spiked the sky like fangs gnawing at the dwindling light.

At this distance it was impossible to ascertain if there were guards standing the Watch. The hackles of the five wolves rose as they stopped and looked at the cairns. They were the boundary between justice and lawlessness, between the civilized world and the savage. Between wolves of the Beyond and wolves of the Outermost.

“You can’t really tell from here if there are any wolves on the Watch,” Edme said.

“And I think those cairns are farther away than they seem. At least a half day’s run,” Faolan said.

“Let’s call that a walk,” Edme said with her usual good humor, but Faolan looked at her. Was she more
tired than the rest of them? He remembered how fast she had been when she streaked up on that moose calf. Would she be able to muster the energy to move as quickly now?

“Oh, I just hope we can find Mum.” Mhairie’s voice was like a soft moan.

Edme and the Whistler exchanged glances.

“Well, all we can do is try,” the Whistler replied. He was regaining his strength now on a fairly steady diet of rodents. Still, they were all approaching the edge of starvation. Their stomachs were constantly rumbling, and rodents never satisfied them for long.

Under Mhairie and Dearlea’s guidance, the wolves had become experts on slicing into an animal’s life-pumping artery and consuming its blood. Every time they did this, the Whistler, Faolan, or Edme would thank the sisters, and the sisters would demur, saying, “Oh, it’s just Mum. She’s the one you should thank. She taught us everything.”

Faolan looked at the sisters as they were speaking of their mother one day. Their pelts had lost their luster, and their hip bones were beginning to jut out from their skin. They had both been such beautiful wolves, and now they were shrinking before his eyes. He turned again to
look at Edme. She never complained, and he realized that, oddly enough, he no longer heard her stomach rumbling. It was as if her body were consuming itself. And the rodents seemed to be thinning out; it had been at least three days since they had found a mouse nest.

They paused to search for mice runnels, little channels in the snow that indicated a mouse had passed through a drift to get to its nest.

Dearlea pawed at a snowbank. “Mum said that once when she was a little pup, she and her mum got separated from their pack in a sudden spring storm, and they found a nest of snake eggs and ate them. She told us they weren’t that bad.”

“But the snakes must all be hibernating right now,” Edme said.

Faolan began to think of the bears. They had not spotted a single bear in all their days of travel. Had the peculiar behavior of the weather tricked the bears into thinking it was winter? They wouldn’t have enough fat on them to sleep the full year through. Were they tucked into caves, falling into some sort of death sleep?

“Mum said the snake eggs tasted a bit sweet. At least I think she said that,” Mhairie said almost desperately. It was as if she were trying to hold on to every memory of
Caila, as if these recollections nourished her, fed her almost like food.

“Remember the time that Mum brought down two snow hares almost at once?” Dearlea asked.

“We helped her, Dearlea. She said it was a practice
byrrgis
. Remember, we had to organize the younger pups, and you and I got to be turning guards.”

“Oh, yes. How could I have forgotten that?” Dearlea was clearly shocked.

The sisters’ talk of their mother increased as game became scarcer. More memories flowed back to them of lessons their mum had organized, stories she had told them, Litha Eves when they had all danced together under the first sliver of the Moon of the Flies. All this they related to the three
malcadhs
, who had never known their first Milk Givers.

But Faolan, Edme, and the Whistler bore the sisters no ill will and only hoped that they would find Caila. Faolan had become increasingly nervous about her as they traveled toward the western border.

Oddly enough, the five wolves had not come upon any of the dance circles the Whistler had described as they traveled west. Mhairie and Dearlea were beginning to wonder if somehow their friend’s imagination had gotten
the best of him. The travelers took turns breaking track. Mhairie and Dearlea were so accustomed to running together that they were moving side by side through the drifts, slicing a wide path through the snow.

“Mhairie,” Dearlea began. “Not that I doubt the Whistler, but do you think these dance circles could have been some kind of fancy of his imagination?”

“I was thinking the same myself. It’s hard to tell now with this deep crusted snow, but we haven’t seen any circles since we left the Carreg Gaer — not even a stray paw print.”

Dearlea was quiet for a bit. Then she said in a slow, thoughtful voice, “I would never accuse anyone of lying, but maybe the Whistler was just confused.”

Just as Dearlea was speaking, the sisters came upon a large mound scraped by the wind. The layer of snow left was frozen hard and revealed a circle of crisp paw prints, a circle exactly like the ones the Whistler had described.

“Oh, no!” Mhairie gulped.

“Wh … wha — ?” The question died in Dearlea’s throat.

And then the wind shifted and a terrible stench rose from the ground.

Faolan, Edme, and the Whistler arrived in a flash. The wind had driven the stench to them, too.

“A dance circle,” Dearlea said, looking up.

“But what is that horrid smell?” the Whistler gasped. The sounds gurgled oddly in his throat.

“In my life I have never —” Edme began.

“It’s the rancid smell of a rout,” Faolan snapped. “They’re here.”

“What are you talking about?” Mhairie asked. There was a gold fleck in her eyes that seemed to sparkle with wonder and fear. It kindled something in Faolan, some scrap of memory. But he could not linger on that now. This smell meant danger.

“A rout — that’s what the outclanners call their packs.”

“But why do they smell so awful?” Edme asked.

Faolan’s eyes seemed to grow dim. The four wolves waited silently. It was as if he had retreated to another place, another time. “Long ago when I went in search of Thunderheart, I went to the Outermost. I … I … had an encounter with some outclanners.” He took a deep breath. His lungs filled with the noxious air that swirled about them. “The reason they smell like this is because … they eat one another.”

“What!” the other wolves gasped.

“What are you saying, Faolan?” The Whistler stepped closer. His breath was hoarse, as if it were being torn from his chest.

“I am saying they eat one another and not merely when they are starving. For sport!”

The other wolves were horrified. Their tails dropped and their hackles rose.

“You can’t be serious,” the Whistler protested. He blinked in disbelief.

“B … but …” Edme stammered, and her thin body swayed a bit. “They were dancing here. Are you saying when they are dancing they would …” She could not bring herself to say the words.

“Possibly,” Faolan replied. “Possibly, but I don’t see any blood here.” He looked down at the footprints.

“Sport, you say?” Mhairie asked weakly. “They eat one another for sport?”

“They have what they call
craws
— it’s a fight to the death between two animals.”

“Terrible! Terrible.” Mhairie and Dearlea kept repeating the word in raw whispers as they backed away. The Whistler followed, but Edme stayed by Faolan’s side as he examined the prints.

Finally, they turned to join the other three and then pushed on toward the arching spine of ice. There were more dance circles, each bearing a trace of the outclanners’ stench. But the smell didn’t bother Faolan as much as the prints he had seen. Edme was loping ahead as point wolf to break track, and although it was not his turn to relieve her, Faolan hurried to join her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “It’s not your turn yet and this snow is easier. I really don’t need your help.”

“I didn’t come to help. I came to talk.”

“Get on my other side so I can see you.” Faolan cut behind her. “Something must really be disturbing you if you came up on my blind side.”

“It is,” Faolan replied.

“The prints, right? At the circle the sisters found?”

“How did you know?” Faolan asked.

“I saw them, too.”

“Do you think Caila could have been there?”

Edme sighed. “I saw something that could have been a turning guard’s paw. But I don’t know the MacDuncan paw prints as well as you do. Did the Whistler say anything?”

“Not a word.” Faolan paused. “But the real point is that there were pack wolves dancing, not just outclanners. I think I saw a MacDuff print.”

“Did you catch any familiar scent marks at that circle?” Edme asked.

“How could I catch anything in the thickness of that rout stench?”

Edme stopped in her tracks. “Tell me, Faolan, how has it come to this? How can civilized wolves join lawless ones, savages?”

Faolan nodded toward the ridge. “We think those cairns that guard the border are what separate us from them. But hunger is gnawing us now — gnawing away our spirit, our honor. Everything that makes us wolves of the Beyond has … has …” Faolan stammered. “Has been broken. The decency that makes us so unlike the outclanners is … is …” He struggled to get out the words. “It’s being destroyed. Hunger rules.”