Guardians of Ga'Hoole 15 - The War of the Ember

scared.”
    “Of what? Your battle claws?” Otulissa asked acidly.
    “No, of the water, Otulissa! They don’t want to get near the water!”
    It was beginning to dawn on Otulissa. They were like hagsfiends, who had an instinctive terror of salt water. Then it seemed for a second as if all the air was being sucked out of the canyon. Otulissa felt herself stagger in flight, but she saw Cleve rocket straight up. It’s snowing, Otulissa thought. It’s snowing blue feathers!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A Distracted Owl
    B uried in a double layer of striated clouds that were streaming with ice crystals, Soren could still hear Wensel’s passage through the air more than two hundred feet below. No owl could hear like a Barn Owl. “That frinking owl is getting distracted!” Soren fumed to Gylfie, who flew just beneath his port wing.
    “Are you sure?” Although as soon as the words were out, she knew the question was ridiculous. After all these years she should know better than to question anything Soren might have heard.
    “An artist!” Soren muttered.
    “Too much imagination,” Gylfie replied.
    Creative, sensitive, and bold, Wensel was nevertheless off the flight plan by at least a quarter of a league. Soren didn’t have to see it to know that Wensel had drifted in a southeasterly direction. It was almost as if Soren could hear the unspoken thoughts that were batting about in that artistic brain and making his gizzardflinch. He’s wondering, no doubt, if he is the one with the ember. Soren sighed. The clouds were thinning in the lower stratum of the double layer. He could fly out of them to give Wensel a good cuff and remind him to get back to business.
    And, truly, Wensel was wondering just that. Do I carry the ember in this botkin? Could I tell if I looked down into the dozen or so coals? Would that lick of blue somehow be bluer than the other bonks? Would I see that wonderful indefinable green that I tried to paint in those legend illustrations and could never quite get? Does that green shine in my botkin?
    As Wensel’s mind wandered so did his flight. Gylfie could tell Soren was getting more and more agitated. “I can hear that scraping sound off his wings, Gylf.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means that Wensel is approaching the Great Horns.”
    “Oh, Glaux!” Gylfie exclaimed. “Old home week,” she said sarcastically.
    The two stony peaks that rose like the tufts of a Great Horned Owl in the canyonlands had, at one time, marked the entrance to St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls, where Soren and Gylfie had once been imprisoned. It had also been the site of a major confrontation in the War of Fire and Ice. A bad place to be. Easyto get trapped between the two horns. Been there, done that. And just at that moment Soren’s gizzard lurched. He heard wing beats, new wing beats, not those of a Barn Owl. Messy, sloppy wing beats. And the whistling of air against featherless legs. More than just two legs, six at least. Which meant three owls.
    “Gylfie,” he hissed. “We’ve got visitors! Or rather Wensel does. Burrowing Owls!” Soren had known that sound at once; the scratch of the wind wrapping around the bare sinewy legs of Burrowing Owls. And Digger wasn’t among these sloppy fliers. Digger had learned how to fly better than any Burrowing Owl he had ever encountered. These three owls, Soren could tell, were definitely tracking Wensel. The contingency plan in such an event was to go to ground if the pursued owl could not lose the pursuers. But going to ground with Burrowing Owls was the last thing one would want to do. They were excellent on the ground. They could run, dig, even heave rocks with those long legs. Wensel wouldn’t have a chance.
    But Wensel was not a Barn Owl for nothing. He could hear as well as any other and suddenly the sickening sound of that wind against bare legs pierced his musings. Holy racdrops! I’m being followed. In that same instant, the lower-level clouds peeled back. Threads oflightning tormented the sky and illuminated the two Great Horns. In another few seconds, he would be trapped between them. He glanced back at his pursuers. His gizzard gave a painful twist. They were wearing battle claws, and not just any battle claws, but fire claws. The tip of each claw glowed with the embedded coals. Wensel felt himself begin to lose altitude. His wings had locked. I am dropping. I am going yeep.
    Frinkin’ racdrops! Soren thought. “Extend!” he called to