Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

dying chieftain carried great weight.
    As Faolan was led away from the chieftain, he took one more glance at the fire. He blinked and hesitated. In the flames, he spied a pattern that was familiar—a swirl of bright orange and yellow buried deep at the base of the smaller flames hovering just above the coal bed.
    I see it—the same spiral that marks my paw. By my marrow, I see it in the fire of the gadderheal!

CHAPTER SIX
M HAIRIE’S D EN
    MHAIRIE SLID DOWN THE SHORT steep tunnel to her den. She was so happy to have her own private space. The new litter of pups that her mum, Caila, had delivered four months before had made everything so crowded. So she and her sister Dearlea took turns living in this solitary den while the other helped Caila tend the new ones.
    The pups were at that most difficult age. Old enough to get into trouble but not old enough to get out of it. They were fascinated—as all young pups were—by the tantalizing whiteness at the mouth of their den. They thought the white light that flooded the opening was a wall and not simply the light of day. Mhairie wondered if she had felt that way when she was their age. But she could hardly remember.
    Caila had chosen a whelping den with an especially long tunnel. “Keep them from the light as long as possible,” she said to her mate, Eiric. “I can’t go chasing after them if they get out, and you know they always try as soon as their milk teeth come in.”
    Sure enough, when their milk teeth broke in, chaos broke out! Especially with six! The worst part was their howling. Mhairie wasn’t sure why, but wolf pup cries were nothing like the melodious howls of mature wolves. For at least six moons, their howls were sharp barks, like the clash of hard rocks tumbling against one another in a slide. When the earthquake of the previous winter had struck, at first it sounded to her like ten thousand pups storming out of their whelping dens. And then there were the pups’ whiny whimpers when they begged. Not as loud as barks, but annoyingly squeaky.
    Mhairie wondered if she would ever be able to be a good mother. It was so exhausting. How does Mum stand it? she wondered. But Caila did. And who would have thought that Caila would give birth to six lively pups at her advanced age? Not a malcadh among them.
    But now Mhairie felt a terrible loneliness and anger. Why had that gnaw wolf gone and spoiled everything for her? When she came back, the wolves, the outflankers inthe MacDuncan clan who had sent her to run with this byrrgis , were visibly disappointed. Alastrine, the point wolf of the chieftain’s pack, tried to soothe Mhairie in her thick musical brogue, for she was also the skreeleen of the pack. She delighted in using the old wolf phrases that had come with the wolves on the Ice March from the Long Cold more than a thousand years earlier. “Don’t worry, my dear heart. Don’t greet .” Greet was an old wolf word, which meant “to fret.” “You’re so young. Younger than I ever was when I ran with the outflankers. Another day, another hunt, another byrrgis , dearie. Be patient.”
    He wrecked everything was all Mhairie could think. That moldwarp, beslubbering, canker-livered gnaw wolf. She dredged up from her brain every vile wolf curse she could think of and was muttering them into the darkness of her den. These were words that would have earned her a muzzle-flinging nip from her mum. She could almost feel Caila’s jaws clamping down on her and hurling her across the cave.
    But it wasn’t just that Faolan had demolished her first-ever run with the outflankers. There was more to it, and she was almost as angry with herself as with the gnaw wolf. What was it about this wolf that had gotten underher pelt like a summer tick and annoyed her almost as much as her younger brothers and sisters? And yet, just as with her younger pup siblings, she felt a need to look out for Faolan. Or to beat him like the wrath of Lupus and turn his bones to dust!

CHAPTER SEVEN
T HE P AW OF T HUNDERHEART
    FAOLAN SET OFF IMMEDIATELY after being escorted from the gadderheal . Adair had led him to the edge of the Carreg Gaer’s territory and had given him directions for finding the other packs of the MacDuncan clan, as well as instructions in the rituals of contrition. Faolan listened, but his mind was occupied with something else. The words of Duncan MacDuncan echoed in his ears.
    Do you know what a gaddergnaw is?…a contest to select a gnaw wolf—the best gnaw