Guardians of Ga'Hoole 02 - The Journey

start digging and show the rest of us how. We’ve got to bury these coals before a wind comes up and carries them off and really gets a fire going.”
    It was hard work burying the coals, especially for Gylfie, who was the tiniest and had the shortest legs of all. “I wonder what happened here?” Gylfie said as she paused to look around. Her eyes settled on what she thought was a charred piece of wood, but something glinted through the blackness of the moonless night. Gylfie blinked. Glinted and curved into a familiar shape. Gylfie’s gizzard gave a little twitch and as if in a trance she walked over toward the object.
    “Battle claws!” she gasped. From inside the cave came a terrible moan. “Get out! Get out!”
    But they couldn’t get out! They couldn’t move. Between them and the mouth of the cave, gleaming eyes, redder than any of the live coals, glowered and there was a horrible rank smell. Two curved white fangs sliced the darkness.
    “Bobcat!” Twilight roared.
    The four owls simultaneously lifted their eight wings in powerful upstrokes. The bobcat shrieked below, a terrible sky-shattering shriek. Soren had never heard anything like it. It had all happened so suddenly that Soren had even forgotten to drop the coal that he had in his beak.
    “Good Glaux, Soren!” Gylfie said as she saw her dear friend’s face bathed in the red light of the radiant coal.
    Soren dropped it immediately.
    There was another shriek. A shadow blacker than the night seemed to leap into the air, then plummet to the ground, writhing and yowling in pain.
    “Well, bust my gizzard!” Twilight shouted. “Soren, you dropped that coal right on the cat! What a shot!”
    “I—what?”
    “Come on, we’re going in for him—for the kill.”
    “The kill?” Soren said blankly.
    “Follow me. Aim for his eyes. Gylfie, stay clear of his tail. I’ll go for the throat. Digger, take a flank.”
    The four owls flew down in a deadly wedge. Sorenaimed for the eyes, but one was already useless, as the coal had done its work and a still sizzling socket wept small embers. Digger sunk his talons into an exposed flank as the bobcat writhed on the ground, and Gylfie stuck one of her talons down the largest nostril that Soren had ever seen. Twilight made a quick slice at the throat and blood spattered the night. The cat was no longer howling. It lay in a heap on the forest floor, its face smoldering from the coal. The smell of singed fur filled the night as the bobcat’s pulse grew weaker and the blood poured out from the deep gash in its throat.
    “Was he after the battle claws—a bobcat?” Soren turned to Gylfie.
    When the two owls had been at St. Aggie’s, Grimble, the old Boreal Owl who had died helping them escape, had told them how the warriors of St. Aggie’s could not make their own battle claws so they scavenged them from battlefields. But a bobcat? Why would a bobcat need battle claws? They stared at the long sharp claws that extended from the paws of the cat and looked deadlier than any battle claws.
    “No,” Twilight said quietly. He had flown over to the cave and now stood in its opening. “The cat was after what was in here.”
    “What’s that?” the three other owls asked at once.
    “A dying owl,” Mrs. Plithiver said as she slithered out from the cave where she had taken refuge. “Come in. I think he wants to speak, if he has any more breath in him.”
    The owls moved into the cave opening. There was a mass of brown feathers collapsed by a shallow pit that still glowed with embers. It was a Barred Owl. Although that was hard to tell, for the white bars of his plumage were bloodstained and his beak seemed to jut out at a peculiar angle. “Don’t blame the cat.” The Barred Owl moaned. “Only here after…after…they—”
    “After they what, sir?” Gylfie stepped closer to the skewed beak and bent her head to better hear the weak voice.
    “They wanted the battle claws, didn’t they?” Soren bobbed his head down toward the dying owl. Did he move his head slightly as if to nod? But the Barred Owl’s breath was going, was growing shallower.
    “Was it St. Aggie’s?” Glyfie spoke softly.
    “I wish it had been St. Aggie’s. It was something far worse. Believe me—if St. Aggie’s—Oh! You only wish!” The owl sighed and was dead.
    The four owls blinked at one another and were silent for several moments. “You only wish!” Digger repeated. “Does he mean there’s something worse than St.