Lone Wolf

meat that devoured Thunderheart's cub. For Thunderheart! The sound of his feet engulfed him and the thunderous heart of the grizzly became his. There was a thin stand of trees ahead. He had almost reached the cougar when the cat leaped up into the tree.
    An image flashed in Faolan's mind. The looming figure of Thunderheart rearing up against a dazzling sun, bright green leaves caught in the last rays as they fluttered down. He leaped now, as he had with Thunderheart. He leaped so high that the cougar made a sound halfway between a snarl and a scream. It was a sound of alarm. But Faolan had clamped on to the cat's paw and dragged him from the limb.
    Stunned, for never had a cat been felled in this manner, the cougar could not react quickly enough. Faolan  sank his teeth into the vein just beneath the cougar's jaw, the vein that Thunderheart taught him pumped the life-blood and must be cut in order to kill. The cougar twitched once, then again. He was dying.
    An instinct rose within Faolan that surprised him. He unclamped his long teeth, and he laid his own head down on the ground so he could look directly into the eyes of the dying cat. They stared at each other for several seconds, and Faolan did not think of Thunderheart. Nor did he think of this animal as a killer of cubs. He thought only of the cougar's grace and speed. And he said, "You are a worthy animal, your life is worthy and shall sustain me."
    The cougar peered back into the green eyes of the young wolf. The light in his own amber eyes was growing dim, and yet there was a flicker of recognition. It was as if a coded message passed between them: I give you permission to take my life. May my meat sustain you.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    ***
    A SAVAGE WORLD

    FAOLAN HAD BEGUN TO RIP INTO the flank of the dead cougar when he heard a rustling in the brush. He raised his head, but no longer in expectation of seeing Thunderheart. As soon as he had looked into the eyes of the dying cougar, he had realized that he was mistaken to think that killing the cougar would avenge Thunderheart's cub.
    Two wolves stepped out of the brush, the first wolves Faolan had ever seen other than the reflection of his own face in the water. He was stunned. They are like me, but so different. He was bigger, much bigger than they were, although they looked older. And they were disreputable, raggedy and unkempt, their coats bearing furless patches that revealed old scars. Both were males, one a dark gray and the other russet. The russet one was missing an eye.
    His face was nearly bald on the side with the missing eye, and Faolan knew that the claw marks on it had been made by another wolf. What animal attacked its own kind?
    Saliva in long silvery threads dripped from the dark edges of the wolf pair's mouths. They edged closer to where Faolan stood snarling over the carcass. Several things became apparent to Faolan as the trio eyed one another. The two wolves were trying to edge each other out as they moved toward the cougar. Although they had tracked him together, the two were not working as a team. They were not cooperating, maneuvering as he and Thunderheart had in the defile, combining Faolan's swiftness and the grizzly's might to bring down the caribou. They had no strategy.
    But Faolan did. The strategy came to him in a quick little burst of insight that flashed in his mind: They want my meat, but I am not going to let them have it. They will have to fight me, but they don't know how to fight together. Greed means I can distract them.
    Faolan tore out a chunk of cougar meat and tossed it into the air. The two wolves scrambled to pounce on it and fell together in a snarling, tumbling mass. Faolan jumped straight into the air and crashed down on top of  them. There was a loud popping sound, then a scream. The dark gray wolf appeared to break in the middle, his lower half skewing to one side and a jagged bone pushing through his pelt. The impact had snapped his spine.
    The russet wolf growled and retreated, swinging his head to see with his single eye, which was now darting frantically from the gray wolf to Faolan to the chunk of meat.
    Faolan's hackles were raised, his head held high, his ears upright and forward. He took a step toward the russet wolf. The wolf cowered, peeling back his lips in a grimace of fear. But still his one eye kept darting between the chunk of meat and the dead wolf. Faolan was growing impatient and tensed himself to spring, but much to his surprise, the russet wolf