Lone Wolf

them just breaking over the bluffs behind him.
    One wolf against a byrrgis.' I'm doomed! He could hear their pace. It was not press paw yet. They did not go full out until they were close, to conserve their energy.
    A frantic thought flashed into Faolan's mind. His chest was broader than many of the wolves he'd seen, not just the yearlings but the full-grown wolves, too. Thunderheart had made him jump and walk on two legs, and pressed him to eat the richest meat. Now he could take bigger, deeper breaths to propel himself  forward. That would be his strategy. Let them catch up to me on the flats, and I'll fool them into thinking they almost have me and then press paw on the hills. There were several hills ahead; there was a slim chance he could outrun them.
    But as he leaped forward, grief coursed through him. He could not believe that the wolves of the Beyond were trying to kill him. Gwynneth had been wrong. He cut off the thought and slowed. He could hear their panting now, and four long shadows stretched on either side of him. They were catching up. Just ahead was the first bluff. Faolan sprang forward as he reached the beginning of the incline and began to streak toward the crest. The sound of their footfalls receded. The shadows of the outflankers that had been closing in vanished. He knew there was another long flat stretch ahead where they would catch up again. Could he wear them out? How long could he spin out this game with them?
    Faolan reached the flats all too soon. The wolves closed in on him again, steering him toward something brighter than the sun. Too late Faolan saw it, a wall of fire in the gap between the two lakes. It was a defile. They were hunting him as he and Thunderheart had hunted the caribou.
    There was no sound except for the wolves breathing. He was being driven into a wall of fire. He could feel its heat reaching for him. An immense heat. He could hear it now. Crackling. Spitting. The fiery tongues licking the air, gulping, raging. Closer and closer he was driven. I have no choice hut to die.
    The words streaking through his mind angered him profoundly. The fire was upon him. The sun reeled in the sky as the word NO.' exploded in his brain. He opened his jaws and his chest expanded with air, as if he were swallowing the sky. I have jumped for a tree, jumped for a raven, jumped for a cougar. I shall jump for the sun!
    ***
    Overhead, the dark shape of an owl's wings cut the blue-ness of the sky. Gwynneth soared in growing alarm on the warm updrafts of the fire as she began to understand what was happening beneath her. She had seen the smoke from a distance and come to explore, for fire was an unusual occurrence in the region of the salt lagoons. She now hung on the warm ledge of air in horrified dismay. It's Faolan, Great Glaux, it's Faolan! They think he has the foaming --
    She never finished the thought, plunging in what the  owls called a kill-spiral toward the wolves, screeching, "Stop! Stop!" But her cries were swallowed by the roar of the fire. And then her wings seemed to seize up, freeze. The wolves jolted to a stop as a silver streak arced over the wall of fire, clearing the highest flames.
    ***
    "Yeep" was the name of the condition that had afflicted Gwynneth when her wings locked. Luckily, she recovered her wits before smacking into the ground. By the time she had regained her flight instincts, the wolves had begun to howl.
    "Idiots! Absolutely idiots!" the Sark of the Slough fumed at the chieftains, who stood with their jaws gaping. The sight that they had just witnessed was one of terrifying beauty and grace. Had the wolf sprouted wings? How had he soared so high? It was easier to believe that he might have been scorched by the sun.
    "Go ahead and howl, the lot of you! He no more has the foaming mouth than any of you! There was enough evidence. One paw splayed! Not two, not three. Not four, not... not eighteen!" the Sark roared in a thunderous baying.
    Duncan MacDuncan limped forward.
    "Bow down, bow down," a captain from the MacDuncan clan growled at the Sark. "Show your respect."
    "No, no need! No one should perform the submission rituals," the old chieftain said wearily. "It is my fault. I'm too old to be chieftain."
    "Oh, no. No," several wolves protested.
    "Yes!" MacDuncan growled. "When your memory shreds and you forget that a year ago a malcadh was born with one splayed paw." A silence fell upon the wolves. MacDuncan looked about and nodded at a gnaw wolf, a yearling