Watch Wolf

swearing oaths by their marrow. But Arthur’s own bones were hollow, so he swore by that organ most revered by owls.
By my gizzard, I must help stop this war!
    At that moment, Arthur knew he had crossed some invisible line. It was no longer simply about himself and his poor wing tip. His actions were on behalf of someone else and something larger than himself. There would be no glory, just hard work.
    When Arthur drew close to the first line of bears, he swooped down low, swiveling his head one way, then another, to pick up conversation that might help. The words and language didn’t differ that much among owls, bears, and wolves, but Arthur’s ear was unaccustomed to the thick, rumbling brogue that ran through the bears’ speech like the muffled roar of an underground river. He turned his head toward the southwest, and in the glimmering light of the dawn, he spotted the first of the wolvesfrom the western Beyond approaching — a dark swagging line on the purpling horizon. “Great Glaux!” Arthur murmured. “They’re coming from all over!”
    Arthur was gone only briefly before Faolan and Edme saw him streaking his way toward them again.
    “He came back,” Edme said. “Ithought he might fly away.”
    “He certainly had every chance to.” Faolan paused. “But I had a hunch he wouldn’t.”
    Arthur alighted on a flat rock, shoulder high to the wolves. “The bears are heading south and east. Toward the Black Glass Desert. It’s their rallying point, and there are wolves going, too. Something about a
gaddergludder.
Not sure what that means.”
    Faolan and Edme looked at each other. “A rally — a wolves’ rally before a hunt to raise the marrow and the taste for blood,” Faolan replied.
    “It’s war,” Edme said quietly.
    “It must be. The Fengo and the
raghnaid
must … must …” He could barely utter the words. “Must have failed in their parley.” The Fengo’s voice echoed in their minds:
Words are cheap!
    “How long do the bears rally beforethey attack?” Edme asked.
    “A day and a night, I think,” Faolan answered. He tried to remember stories that Thunderheart had told him about bear rallies. But of course, there had never been a rally for a war with the wolves. They’d only been for small fights over territory.
    Faolan had one thought: No war. He had one speed — attack speed, not press-paw. For Faolan, a war of sorts had already begun, a war between his wolf marrow and his bear heart. This was a war in which there would be no winners or losers. He would lose all, and win nothing.
    So it was at attack speed that Faolan and Edme set out for the Pit, where the cub was held hostage by Old Cags. As they traveled, Edme explained as best she could aboutthe peculiar torture chamber the MacHeaths had devised.
    “I’m not sure why Old Cags never died of the foaming-mouth disease, but he didn’t. The clan feeds on terror, brutality. Old Cags has become — how should I describe it? — their talisman, their charm, for young rebellious pups. They come out of the Pit with eyes like stone.”
    “Moon blinked,” Arthur said.
    “What?” Edme asked.
    “Moon blinked. Before I was hatched, there was this bad place where some owls — bad owls — would take baby owls. It was called St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls. But the truth was, the owlets weren’t orphaned, they were snatched. The bad owls took the babies to a place in the canyonlands that sounds a lot like the Pit. It was a deep, deep canyon, and they made the babies walk around at night under a blazing full moon. It did something to their brains. They couldn’t think. They could only do what they were told.”
    “Moon blinked, you say,” Faolan said. And he quickened his pace.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
T HE P IT
    FAOLAN’S PLAN WAS TO RESCUE the cub and take him to the Black Glass Desert as quickly as possible. Surely, there was time. They had left shortly after midnight, and thankfully the wind was with them. At this speed, they could rescue the cub by the next dawn, and just possibly make it to the Black Glass Desert by evening.
    Edme was intensely worried. Although she had never seen the Pit with Old Cags staggering about in it, she knew it was deep. Even though bears were much better climbers than wolves, it was said that the walls of the Pit were so sheer that climbing them was almost impossible.
    There was a hidden trail in and out of the Pit, but how were they to find it? Old Cags’s brains were such mush that he’d