Lone Wolf

either blowing more air into it with bellows or damping it by shoveling dirt on top. After every few blows of the hammer, she plunged the object into a tub of water and then instantly back into the fire so that the metal would anneal properly. The rhythms of cooling and reheating for such a delicate object were complicated. If not done properly, the internal stresses of the metal would cause the object to break. But finally the piece was finished.
    She held it up, still glowing cherry red -- the only light in the foggy night aside from the forge fire. She  blinked, looking at the spiraling coil as it cooled in the misty evening. It was a three-dimensional replica of the spinning lines on Faolan's footpad. "How did I do this?" she whispered in amazement. It was the most intricate piece she had ever made.
    She churred softly to herself, for Gwynneth knew she would have never dared to attempt such a feat if she had known what she was doing, if she had planned it as she had planned the willow leaf. This was a hundred times more challenging than the leaf. How in the name of Glaux did I do this? she wondered. And why?
    She now felt an urge to search for the wolf, to try to pick up his tracks. Not that she intended to meet up with him, but she was eager to see if he had heeded her advice and sought out the wolves of the Beyond.
    The weather was coming in from the west. The stars and moon were obliterated behind woolly clouds and a thickening fog. Nights like these were often used by owls in covert tracking operations, as they could conceal themselves in the dense cloud cover and track by sound alone.
    Masked Owls were members of the Barn Owl family, a species renowned for its auditory skills. A Barn Owl's ear slits were placed on either side of its head, one higher than the other. This uneven set of the ears helped the  owls to capture sound better. But of additional value, the edges of the owls' facial disks had muscles that allowed them to expand their surfaces. This helped the owls scoop up any sounds and guide them to their ears.
    It was not long before Gwynneth found the sound she had been searching for -- the footfalls of Faolan. He had a distinctive rhythm because of the malformation of that forward paw. The spiral pattern in that paw wasn't engraved deeply enough to leave a print except perhaps in very fresh mud, but Gwynneth thought she could almost hear a sound print from the spiral.
    She knew exactly where he was now. The wolf was clawing his way up the rocky scrabble of Bent Wing Ridge.
    Good! she thought. He's smack in the middle of the MacAngus territory. She suspected he had been born into the MacDuncan clan. But it didn't matter. Angus MacAngus would see that he got back to the MacDuncans, if that was his clan.
    But never a MacHeath, Glaux forbid he should be a MacHeath!

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
    ***
    THE RIDGE

    THE OWLS CALLED THE RIDGE THE Bent Wing because the two parts of it joined at an odd angle to form an off-kilter wingspread. The wolves called the ridge Crooked Back and the highest part of it they called the Spine.
    On the first morning after Faolan had left Gwynneth, he had picked up the wet odor of the caribou. And almost immediately he heard the wolves begin to howl. He listened carefully to what he guessed must be the skreeleen, the lead howler, announcing that meat was nearing. Gwynneth had told him about skreeleens. She explained how some skreeleens only howled about matters of prey and hunting, while others devoted their howling to relaying information about pack location back to the clan. Gwynneth had said that although she understood the  wolves' howling generally, she never knew the precise meaning of the message.
    But Faolan understood exactly what this skreeleen was communicating. It was the arrival of a large herd from the northwest. It was traveling at tock-tock pace. Tock-tock was a slow but steady speed in which the clicking of the caribous' tendons was still distinct, not a blur of sound as when the caribou ran very fast. It was the tock-tock speed that caribou used for long distances. Faolan could hear there were several new calves, a half dozen elderly caribou, at least three young bucks, and one young cow.
    It was not long after the skreeleen's message that the first of the caribou herd came into view. Faolan spotted four wolves loping almost lazily along the edges of the herd. He marveled that the herd had not panicked at the wolves' presence. Perhaps the wolves were feigning