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

him. Tarn, architect and chief excavator of the extensive burrowing encampment that the Pure Ones had set up in the Desert of Kuneer before the battle in the Middle Kingdom. He had been the highest-ranking officer below Nyra in the Pure Ones. Who is he working for now? Soren wondered. But then a voice out of nowhere cawed.
    “Hey, he ain’t blue,” said the unexpected voice from high up on one of the Great Horns.
    “And that other one ain’t no Barn Owl,” cracked another.
    The six owls on the ground all looked up, startled, to see where these voices came from. Soren jerked his head back. He had to strike now while Tarn and the other two Burrowing Owls were distracted. He hurled himself into flight while the others were still looking up.
    “You go, owl!” the voice from above them hooted. This is incredible, Soren thought. He caught a flash of silver streaking down from the peaks of the Great Horns as he struck at the Burrowing Owl nearest to him and sent him tumbling. Gotta get him into the air! Soren thought. In the air above, swirling around the peaks, there were more flashes of silvery gray from which taunts began raining down.
He ain’t blue and he ain’t Barn,
    Holy racdrops, it must be Tarn!
    They say he be a genius owl.
    Say he’s a genius, I say he’s a dud,
    Bad-butt owl just like old Kludd!
    Was it Twilight? Two Twilights? The Great Grays were everywhere all at once—and Wensel! Wensel had just taken a piece of brush and, in an insanely daring move, flown directly at Tarn, igniting the brush from his opponent’s fire claws. Now that’s inventive! And crazy! Soren thought. But who are these Grays? The odds had definitely improved with the intervention of the Grays, and Wensel had lit another branch and passed it off to the larger of the two. Gylfie had dashed in and caught a twig midair that had dropped from one of the burning branches. Gylfie could be positively lethal with a burning twig.
Let it burn, let it burn!
    Oh, let it burn, burn him not you!
    A nice burrow stew!
    Burn their butts naked as their legs,
    Now just watch them start to beg.
    “Hey, Cletus!” the other Great Gray shouted. “Got me a stick—it’s all on fire.” In a daring sweep, he rushed in, skimming, just out of reach of the enemy owl’s fire claws, and knocked him off balance. As the owl staggered, Gylfie darted in and ignited his tail feathers with her twig in an almost balletic movement.
    In another two seconds, the owl was consumed in flames. This was all the other two Burrowing Owls needed to see, and they were off in a flash, streaking through the night with the fire claws that had been their undoing.
    Soren, Gylfie, and Wensel collapsed, exhausted. “It’s all my fault!” Wensel said.
    “You’re right about that,” Soren said wearily. “But you sure fought well and you never lost the grip on the botkin.” Soren then turned to the two Great Grays.
    “Who are you?”
    “Cletus,” said the smaller of the two.
    “Cletus? That’s your name?”
    “Nobody else’s.” He turned to the other owl. “Brother Tavis, you know anyone else called Cletus?”
    “Can’t say as I do, brother.”
    “Don’t tell me you’re from the orphan school of tough learning?”
    The one called Tavis shook his head. “No…no, not really. We were pretty well raised until…” His voice dwindled off.
    “Until when?”
    “Until the night Cletus and I went out hunting for our mum. You see, she was sitting an egg. It was supposed to hatch soon. Our da had already died. Killed by one of the earliest leaders of the Pure Ones.”
    “Long before Metal Beak,” Cletus added. “You’ve heard of Metal Beak?”
    Soren nodded.
    “Well,” Tavis continued, “when we came back she was gone. It looked as if the egg had hatched.”
    “We didn’t know what happened.” Cletus now picked up the story. “Then a few nights later we found her body. But no signs of a chick. Just gone. Probably killed.”
    Tavis stepped forward and spoke now. “The times were really bad. There were St. Aggie’s raids going on all over the place. We were young so we just decided to go underground.”
    “Literally!” Cletus interjected.
    “Yeah, we went to the Desert of Kuneer and lived for a long time in abandoned burrows.”
    “That’s why we could fight these suckers so well. We know the ways of Burrowing Owls. And yeah, we’ve heard of this Tarn. Bad-butt owl!”
    “But we always wondered what happened to the chick, our brother or