Lone Wolf

the wolf encountered any other creature and bit it, that animal would go mad and die, too.
    The bear scent made sense now. It was a grizzly sick with the disease, who had attacked and infected the wolf. Most likely the grizzly was dead by now, but the wolf prints were fresh. Something must be done.
    Angus MacAngus turned and began to howl into the  summer morning, the shadow of the previous night's moon sailing overhead. Moon rot! An ill omen especially when coupled with the meaning of the skreeleen's howling and the splayed paw print.
    Angus knew he must alert the other clans of the danger. He must summon all the packs of the MacAngus clan and those of their neighbors, the MacDuncans, for a gadderheal. The word must be spread from the MacAnguses to the MacDuncans, from the MacNamaras to the MacDuffs and even to the loathsome MacHeaths. For this disease could spread faster than any howling. It might already be too late. The pack might be doomed. The clan might be doomed. Indeed, all the wolves of the Beyond could be annihilated.
    ***
    And so the call went out, summoning the chieftains from the three nearest clans to a meeting in the MacAngus gadderheal. In the feeble trickle of moonlight, the chieftains made an eerie sight. Their own bodies seemed to have dissolved into wraithlike apparitions. Bedecked with headdresses and necklaces of gnawed bones, their shoulders were draped in cloaks from the pelts of animals, the ceremonial regalia required for meetings in the gadderheal.
    A low ground fog obscured their legs so the wolf chieftains appeared to float across the landscape, their motion accompanied by the clinking of the gnawed bones.
    Once inside the MacAngus gadderheal they paid obeisance to Angus MacAngus, lowering themselves until their bellies were flat against the ground. Although they were chieftains, tradition required that when called to the gadderheal of another chieftain, the visitor must acknowledge that clan's supremacy. Duncan MacDuncan, the eldest of the chieftains, began to lower himself painfully on arthritic legs.
    "Enough, Duncan," Angus said softly. He then quickly turned to the others. "I have summoned you here because last night our skreeleen howled the gwalyds of the first Fengo."
    Tension sizzled in the cave beneath the crackling of the flames in the fire pit.
    Angus MacAngus huffed and continued, "And this morning I discovered a splayed paw print in the shadow of moon rot."
    Loud gasps were followed by mutterings. "Terrible ... terrible."
    "It has been so long since the foaming-mouth disease came here."
    "Not long enough," Duncan MacDuncan growled. "And we are far from any colliers or Rogue smiths," he added, staring into the fire pit. The wolves, unlike the owls of Ga'Hoole, had no skills with fire. The only fires they used were in their gadderheals. They bartered kill shares of meat for coals from Rogue smiths and colliers. There was, however, one other use for the coals in their pits, and that was to kill any animal afflicted with the foaming-mouth disease by driving it into the flames of a large fire trap. The first time they had used this strategy it had been easier to make the fire, for the diseased wolf had staggered into the region of the Sacred Volcanoes where hot coals and embers were plentiful. But now they were a vast distance from any such resource.
    "There is always the Sark of the Slough," Duffin MacDuff said quietly.
    A chill seemed to pass through the air at the mention of the strange wolf.
    "A last resort," Drummond MacNab whispered.
    "Is there any choice?" Angus McAngus asked.
    "Falling star ladders, moon rot, doom, and the Sark of the Slough," MacDuncan muttered in his leathery voice. "I'd say not. No choice. No choice at all."

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
    ***
    THE SARK OF THE SLOUGH

    THE WOLVES OF THE BEYOND, always concerned with order, believed that the system of rank and position that prevailed on earth corresponded to a superior one of the heavens. To disregard, upset, or affront this ranking could breed chaos in the world of wolves. There was a design to all set by Lupus, the heavenly spirit who glittered in the constellation of the Great Wolf. Lupus had set the design, and it must be followed.
    The gnaw-bone necklaces that the wolf chieftains wore were not simply a symbol of their office, but a symbol of the Great Chain that linked the wolves to the heavens and reflected everything -- soil, water, rock, air, and fire. The wolves divided living things into two classes: