Guardians of Ga'Hoole 06 - The Burning

gizzard madly quivers,
But for her dearest of friends
She vows she shall deliver.
    Like the lily of the avalanche
The glacier’s icy rose
Like a flower of the wind
The bright fierceness in her glows.
    The bravest are the small
The weakest are the strong
The most fearful find the courage
To battle what is wrong.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Waiting for When
    W hen do you think it will be?” Digger said.
    “What will be?” asked Eglantine.
    “The invasion, what else!” Twilight boomed.
    “I think it might be soon,” Digger replied. “I think that was what the weather chaw was all about.”
    “Yes,” said Otulissa. “I think you’re right, Digger. Ezylryb seemed quite delighted when he detected that storm band approaching.”
    “How was Soren on the weather chaw, Otulissa?” Digger asked.
    “Fine,” she replied. “But the real question is, will he fight? I mean, how far does this passive combat thing go?”
    Soren had been perched outside on a branch just above the sky port and heard it all. In a flash, he was in the hollow.
    “I’ll tell you how far it goes. It goes to the point of not teaching idiots like Skench and Spoorn to use firefighting, and that is all.” He wheeled about and lighted on the perchopposite Otulissa. “I shall fight, Otulissa. Make no mistake about that. By Glaux, I shall fight with all my heart, with all my brains, with all my gizzard.”
    “All right!” Otulissa said in a somewhat subdued voice. “Just asking.”
    Ever since Soren had announced himself as a gizzard resister, Digger had sensed a separation between Soren and the rest of the band and he didn’t like it. They had to be a cohesive unit. Even though they were often in separate chaws, in any battle there was always a coming together where they found mutual support and shared their strengths. Digger knew that they desperately needed to come together again in some way before the invasion. The only way he could think was perhaps not the most honorable. “Not to change the subject,” Digger said, with every intention of doing just that, “but did you know that there’s a parliament meeting going on as we speak?”
    “To the roots!” Twilight and Otulissa both said at once.
    “Yes, my thoughts exactly,” Digger replied.
    “Me, too?” asked Eglantine.
    “Of course,” Digger said.
    Twilight looked at Soren as if to ask if he was coming as well. Soren blinked. “Of course!” He shook his head in dismay. Had his friends thought he had changed that much?
    “And so you see, my distinguished members of the parliament”—Boron the Snowy monarch was speaking—“the enemy expects us to invade on the night of the coming eclipse, and they expect us through the entry of the Great Horns. It is the easiest approach, the way of the prevailing winds. In fact, in Bubo’s and Soren’s mission to cripple the Devil’s Triangles, they found this very region to be the most strongly fortified of all.”
    Digger, Twilight, Eglantine, and Otulissa looked at Soren. So that had been his mission. Soren shrugged.
    “Now,” Boron continued. “Ezylryb has just returned with his weather chaw and has some news to report.”
    “Yes.”
    The owls, pressing their ear slits to the roots, heard the gruff voice with its familiar twang of a Krakish accent.
    “As has been implied by our esteemed monarch, what we have in our favor if we attack now is surprise. We are two days from the eclipse. They are expecting us on the northeastern front through the Great Horns. It was the young Spotted Owl, Otulissa, who, in her preliminary invasion plan, first came up with the notion of coming in on the back side, opposite from this front.” Otulissa puffed up a bit at the mention of her name. Ezylryb continued.“We have something else that will help us considerably—a storm system is moving our way. It is forming directly out of the northeastern portion of Hoolemere. So there will be sea winds in which all of us are accustomed to flying. They will not deter us. But these winds hovering on the brink of winter shall be plump with hailstones, a fair amount of electricity, and general slop that will not please the enemy.”
    “But what about Skench and Spoorn and the remnant owls from St. Aggie’s that have joined us, Ezylryb?” Elvan, the elderly colliering ryb, asked. “It will be a problem for them.”
    “We shall try and set up the kind of airtight vacuum often used in the Northern Kingdoms for transporting injured owls through the katabatic