Guardians of Ga'Hoole 08 - The Outcast

called. I just called them River Legs.”
    “River Legs! Ha!” He cawed wildly. “And what did you call the caribou?”
    Coryn was almost to embarrassed to say. He sighed. “Running Trees.”
    With that, the raven let loose a loud and clamorous barrage of caws. “Hey, mates.” He tipped his head up to the other ravens that were flying overhead.
    “You know what this owl calls wolves? River Legs.”
    “You gotta be kidding!” one of the ravens yelled back.
    “And he calls caribou Running Trees.”
    It felt to Coryn as if the entire sky were laughing at him now. Even the scruffy yearling wolf looked around at him.
    When the raven had recovered himself, he began to speak again. “Them’s not trees on its head. Them’s antlers. Now, here’s how it goes, laddie.”
    Laddie? They certainly have a strange way of speaking here, Coryn thought. It was Hoolian, but with a lot of different words and an odd accent, very similar to Gwyndor’s.
    “May I introduce myself first and ask your name as well?” Coryn asked.
    The raven gave him a dark, piercing look. “We don’t inquire about names in Beyond the Beyond. We preferbeing nameless—us birds, that is. The wolves—now they’re a different story. They all got names. Important to learn those. Every clan’s got a name, it does. The clan that brought down that caribou, them’s the MacDuncans, and Duncan be their leader.”
    “Clans?” Coryn asked.
    “Yeah. Like family.” Though not prepared to give his name, the raven seemed ready enough to talk. “Most wolves travel in packs, but these dire wolves call their packs clans. When a clan gets big, they break into two clans. So there might be as many as, say, five or six MacDuncan clans. But the main one is the one with the chieftain. And that was the main clan that took down the caribou.
    “The dire wolves of these clans are bigger than any wolf you’re ever going to see,” the raven went on. “Special. So I guess they feel they should have a special way of naming themselves. ‘Pack’ just won’t do. So you got your MacDuncans and your MacDuffs and your MacFangs. Oh, a whole mess of them, mostly named Mac-something.”
    “What about that little wolf ? The one they were always chasing away.”
    “Oh, that fella. Hamish be his name. The ravens eat after Hamish, sometimes before he’s quite finished. He doesn’t seem to mind. He’s a nice fella. Sad about him.”
    “Yes, it does seem sad. He doesn’t seem exactly part of the clan. They were chasing him off. Look, all that is really left are the bones.”
    “Well, that’s just the point, now, isn’t it?” The raven blinked, cocked his head, and looked at Coryn with his beady black eyes.
    “I’m afraid I don’t get the point,” Coryn said meekly.
    “You see little Hamish there, he’s got a bit of a lame leg. So he can’t be a good hunter. That means he’s lowranking in the clan. The lowest. Has to eat last and all that. But it turns out he’s a gnaw wolf, or so they think.”
    “A gnaw wolf—what’s that?” Coryn asked.
    “Don’t quite understand it myself. It’s an art with them. They gnaw bones a certain way for the gnaw-bone mounds way out to the west where the Sacred Volcanoes are.”
    “Gnaw-bones? Volcanoes?” Coryn had never heard so many new words in his life. Well, he’d come for an education and, by Glaux, he was getting one.
    “Don’t know what a volcano is, laddie?”
    “No, sir, I don’t.”
    “Well, you see them mountains over there, spewing steam and fire? Them’s volcanoes. The steam and fire comes out of the crater at the top.” He paused. “Now, that’s enough blather. I’m going down to pick what I can off this caribou. You wait a decent time, and after we geta while at it ourselves, you can come down. I’ll warn the other fellas you’ll be coming.”
    “Thanks,” Coryn said.
    “Oh, think nothing of it. You see, laddie, everyone thinks that Beyond the Beyond is a lawless place. Well, it is and it isn’t. A lot of outcasts come here that can’t live in the civilized world. Thieves, egg snatchers, chick-nappers, murderers—hireclaws, you can buy them by the dozen. But we do have our way of doing things. You saw how them wolves brought down the caribou. That’s a strategy. Wolves have the best strategies in the world for hunting. Never seen anything like it. I’d almost trade my wings to be able to think like a wolf.”
    Coryn blinked in surprise.
    “Oh, yes, I would, laddie.” The raven,