Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

his strong legs devouring the ground beneath him. He cut through the headwinds like a burning coal through dry leaves. The track must be hot beneath his paws, she thought. Great Glaux, had a wolf ever run this fast?
     
    The rising moon wobbled like an immense silver bubble on the horizon, spraying a lake of dazzling light across the Beyond. Gwynneth arrived first to find Heep in a shaft of moonlight, prowling with his nose close to the ground while two ragged outclanners—one russet and one brindled with dark gray patches mixed with brown—sniffed around behind him. On the other side of the hills were the salt lagoons, but it was on this northern side that Faolan had buried the paw bones of Thunderheart.
    Gwynneth went into a spiral dive at Heep with her talons outstretched. She did not intend to kill him. She knew she was too small for that, and the other two wolveswould most likely attack, but she could frighten Heep or cause a ruckus, a distraction. Heep reared up, flailing his front legs. The other two wolves rushed in.
    “Stand off! Stand off!” Gwynneth screeched. “By the spirit of Lupus, get out!”
    All three wolves were dismayed. They had never heard an owl use wolf oaths.
    “What are you doing here?” Heep demanded.
    Gwynneth had alighted on a high rock. “No. What are you doing here? No civilized wolf comes down to this country this time of year. There is no game.” She gave a long look at the two outclanners, who were growling low. Their stench was horrendous, for these wolves were known to eat one another during the hunger moons, and it gave them a powerful stink that even an owl could smell.
    The wolves all bared their teeth, shoved their ears forward, and began to lower into attack posture. A signal was given and all three leaped toward the rock where Gwynneth perched, but the owl shot up into the air. How she wished she had brought her coal bucket. Drop one bonk coal on any one of these wolves, and their pelts would go up in flames like a sap tree in the dry season!
    Then Gwynneth spotted the long shadow of Faolanstretching across the slope. At last! The odds were getting more even. She rose higher in the air. How ingenious, she thought. He has come from behind . Within seconds, however, Heep spotted Faolan and spoke in an almost strangled voice.
    “Ah, so you come for the endgame, Faolan?”
    He’s mad, thought Gwynneth. The yellow wolf has gone mad.
    “It’s not my endgame. It’s yours.”
    “Not if I get the bones of your precious Thunderheart.”
    As she hovered above, it almost felt to Gwynneth that she had flown out of her own body and was observing a strange dance of tangled shadows in the moonlight. The four wolves moved about below her, growling and snapping their jaws.
    “Give them up!” Heep snarled. “Give up the bones of the grizzly.”
    “Never,” Faolan growled.
    “Frightened? Frightened to walk the earth without your second Milk Giver?” Heep said.
    “These are her bones; she is dead.”
    “And you are not, but you are nothing without them, am I right?” Heep snarled.
    “No, you’re wrong,” said another voice that startled them all. The Sark sauntered over the top of the hill and stood beside Faolan. The two outclanners crouched into an attack stance and pulled their lips back in a grimace. But Faolan took a step forward, and then another and another, his tail held high, his gaze steady.
    Like a cluster of silver stars in the moonlight, like a constellation coming down to earth, Faolan kept walking slowly but deliberately toward Heep and the two outclanner wolves. Behind him a mist loomed up. Heep and the two flanking outclanners began to tremble uncontrollably. They felt as if their marrow was leaking from their bones. For they saw not just Faolan, new member of the Watch, but a gathering of lochin , beginning with the chieftain Duncan MacDuncan and spiraling back in time to the very first Fengo, who led the wolves into the Beyond.
    “Leave the bones of my Milk Giver, Thunderheart. Leave them now and go to the Outermost. I will not have your blood on my paws.”
    And Heep and the two outclanners sprang into a dead run toward the country known as the Outermost.
     
    By the time the byrrgis arrived, it was too late. “They’re gone, and Heep with them,” the Sark said.
    “Gone?” said Liam MacDuncan. “Gone where?”
    “To the Outermost,” Faolan replied. “Don’t follow them. They won’t be back.”
    Liam MacDuncan cocked his head one way and