Lone Wolf

disinterest. Faolan was still high in the rimrock. He began to weave through the shadows as he monitored the wolves watching the caribou. He noticed the few subtle signals pass among these four wolves -- a yelp, a flickering of ears, a head toss. Soon, two of the wolves peeled away from the herd. It wasn't long before they returned with the rest of the pack. The caribou immediately increased their speed. And then the scene became an exact replica  of what Faolan had studied so closely on the rock walls in the Cave Before Time. Four females began pressing in on the herd, nipping at the flanks of the caribou on the outside edges.
    Swiftly, the herd split. The female wolves in front of the formation of the pack began to bear down on two elderly bucks. Faolan watched it all. Eight females nipped at one buck's heels, trading off in alternate spurts of speed to conserve their own energy, yet keep the caribou pressed to the limits of his own endurance.
    Faolan had brought down a caribou using his own ingenuity and what he had remembered from the cave paintings. But he had been alone. There was an incomparable beauty to what he saw now: the pack working together, smoothly, flawlessly. The splendor of it called to him. He did not know it, but the wolves had a word for what Faolan was seeing: hwlyn, spirit of the pack. Faolan craved that which he could not name.
    ***
    Faolan watched the wolves for several days after that first morning. For the most part, he kept to the ridge, conducting his surveillance with extraordinary caution. He stayed downwind of the wolves.
    The ridge ran for a great distance above a valley that  was a thoroughfare for many clans of wolves. It seemed to Faolan that normal territorial rules were not observed here. There were practically no scent markings, which must mean that it was open hunting to all clans.
    He spotted something and crept down closer. It was the first time that he had seen a pack with what he thought might be a gnaw wolf.
    He wanted to watch carefully and see exactly what this meant. Gwynneth had said a gnaw wolf's time in the pack was hard. The wolf had to prove itself.
    The pack had brought down a moose just before he spotted them. Faolan watched closely as two members, a she-wolf and a male, approached the carcass slowly, almost reverently, and then sank to their knees and began to tear at the belly and the flanks, the tenderest parts of the animal. After they had eaten for a bit, the male raised his head and nodded toward four others of the pack who now walked toward the carcass. The gnaw wolf, a small yellowish wolf, hung behind. And not only did it stay back, one of the other wolves gave it a sharp head butt and a nip that sent the gnaw wolf yowling. The she-wolf who had eaten first raced over to the gnaw wolf, peeling back her lips in a ferocious low growl. The gnaw wolf flattened himself on the ground, rolling back his eyes until the whites shone like the gauzy shadows  of two moons in the daylight. He yelped and whined pitifully.
    The other wolves ate and ate. The gnaw wolf began to creep a bit closer, always slithering forward on his belly. If he got too close, a wolf broke away from its gorging and charged the gnaw wolf, snarling.
    Will he ever get to eat? Faolan wondered. How long must he wait?
    But while the wolves' treatment of the gnaw wolf was harsh, they did not seem vicious like the wolves of the Outermost. There seemed to be some greater purpose to their actions. But it was nonetheless mysterious. Finally, when the pack wolves had eaten their fill, a silent signal was given and the gnaw wolf approached. There was hardly a shred of meat left on the moose carcass. The she-wolf who had eaten first trotted up to where the gnaw wolf was trying to salvage a bloody tendril. She gave him a soft head butt and disgorged a pile of steaming moose flesh. The gnaw wolf groveled, mewled, and whined his gratitude. To Faolan, the groveling was the most revolting part of it all.
    ***
    Not every pack had a gnaw wolf, which seemed fortunate to Faolan after witnessing the treatment of the small  yellowish wolf. He saw similar scenes over the next few days. It was hard for him to reconcile or make sense of the gnaw wolves' treatment with what Gwynneth had told him of the exalted status they could attain when they became members of the Watch at the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes. They seemed to be utterly despised by the others in the pack.
    Faolan asked himself the same question over