Lone Wolf

by Kathryn Lasky

  And now Faolan did the most extraordinary thing of all. He reared up and placed his two front paws across Heep’s shoulders to press him down. This was the most aggressive of all the dominance moves a wolf could make.

  This was not a fight; not a drop of blood was shed. But as the four other gnaw wolves watched, they understood that they were seeing something more disturbing than a fight. None of them had any fondness for Heep, but they were frightened by Faolan’s display of dominance. It violated every rule and code of the gaddernock for a gnaw wolf to use dominance signals.

  When Faolan removed his front paws, Heep staggered to his feet and looked around. His eyes were narrow slits. “You made an error, gnaw wolf.” The words seemed to seethe through his teeth, but Heep kept his ears flat and would not look Faolan in the eye. “I could report this. It would be the end for you.”

  The Whistler came forward then and spoke, his thin voice warbling like a wind through a deep canyon. “No, it won’t be the end. It’s the beginning. And you won’t report it, Heep. Trust me on that!” He reared up on his hind legs as well and placed his forepaws on Heep’s shoulders. No sooner had he stepped down than Creakle, who was missing a forepaw, stepped up, skewered himself around so his two back paws were squarely on Heep’s shoulders, and pressed down as well. The earless Tearlach was next, and finally Edme came forward.

  Her single eye was an intense deep green that seemed to sparkle with unshed tears. Before she reared up, she spoke in her high, distinct little voice. “You hurt me, Heep. Not the nip to my ear—that was nothing. The way you spoke was cruel. Believe me, I know cruel. I come from the MacHeath clan. We may be gnaw wolves here at the scrape, but we are civilized. You are an uncivilized wolf, Heep.”

  When she stepped off Heep’s shoulders, the Whistler came forward again. “And now, Heep, you are truly humiliated. Do us the favor of not expanding on your humiliation.”

  Faolan was deeply touched by the loyalty of the other gnaw wolves. And he should have slept well, but his dreams were troubled once more by the tale of the skreeleen and the little pup who kept trying to go back down the star ladder. The images of that little pup mixed with the loathsome clicking sounds from Heep’s teeth. Why couldn’t Faolan put this to rest? How many more bones did he need to find?

  He had been back once and found more, which he had also taken to bury with the paw of Thunderheart. The grizzly had been his mother in life; she could watch over the little pup in death. After all, she knew pups. She had raised Faolan not just on her milk, but had taught him to hunt and to jump! Perhaps she could help this pup jump for the star ladder.

  But every time he thought of the little malcadh, he thought of the story of Skaarsgard chasing after the stubborn star pup who scampered down the star ladder so he could taste the meat of the fox and swim the river to fish for salmon. Who could have no dreams because he had not lived. Once more, Faolan felt deep in his marrow that it was not dreams the little she-pup on the ridge came back for, not ox, not salmon, but vengeance.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE BONE TURNS

  HEEP HAD LEFT THE SCRAPE SHAKING with rage. Rage and fear. He had been wary of Faolan since the very first day, when the wolf had jumped the wall of fire. Rumors had begun about Faolan challenging the order and had trailed Faolan ever since. Everything had been going so well until now. Faolan’s extravagant display of pride during the byrrgis three moons before could not have worked better for Heep. But now somehow, as the old wolf expression went, the bone had turned, and Heep was denounced as the prideful gnaw wolf. But that bone Faolan had incised at the scrape was a profanity! Imagine carving a design of the most important constellation in the night sky and making it look like a bear! This was challenging the order, and Heep would make sure word leaked out about it. The clans, particularly the MacDuffs, were already deeply suspicious of Faolan. Perhaps what transpired at the scrape had happened for the best.

  Heep had spent his life feeling desperately sorry for himself. Of all the afflictions gnaw wolves suffered—missing eyes, paws, crooked throats—his was the worst. There was nothing that compared with the indignity of not having a tail.

  The tail was the most expressive part of a wolf’s body. To hold it high and wave it indicated confidence, happiness, and dominance within a pack. Held rigid and straight out, it was a clear signal of aggression and impending attack. The tail half-tucked was a sign of submission, and fully tucked meant the wolf was afraid. Heep, whose entire life had been dedicated to humility, did not even have the most important instrument of all to show how humble he was. That was what perhaps galled him the most.

  It was all so unfair. Sometimes he wondered if it would have been better if he’d died on his tummfraw. But when he saw this new wolf violating every single rule of the byrrgis, how could he help feeling superior, even without a tail?

  It was now the deepest part of a moonless night, and Heep heard Faolan stirring. Was that foul wolf going roaming again? One would think that the splayed paw would make more of a track, especially on rainy nights. But the silver wolf was crafty, and Heep believed that Faolan had figured out a way to camouflage his paw print. He was a hard wolf to follow and he traveled so fast. Again, Heep’s mind went back to how it was all so unfair that he had been born without a tail. Even a wolf born malcadh because of his strange paw could devise a strategy to hide his deformity. But what could Heep do without a tail? Grow one? Nothing short of a miracle would make that happen.

  Heep got up and silently made his way out of the gaddergnaw camp. He would try to follow Faolan. The night was dark, but that silvery tail waved like a pennant in the blackness.

  It had been a long night and taken twice as long as Faolan had planned to travel to the ridge of the pup, as he now thought of that sad, bleak place. At first, Faolan had felt as if he were being followed and had taken several detours that added greatly to the journey. But he found some more of the little pup’s bones and then traveled fast to Thunderheart’s paw. He looked forward to the breaking dawn, when gray would start to peel back the dark of the moonless night.

  A northeast wind had begun and brought in a wet, foggy mist. Soon it was drizzling. Faolan peered down at the bones before he buried them, his forehead wrinkling as he scrutinized the marks.

  Violence. That was all he could imagine. Wanton violence seemed to seep from the bones and their helter-skelter flurry of teeth incisions. What animal would have done this? How could an animal be angry at its prey? Prey was a fact of life; there was no need or reason for passion. A defenseless animal like the little she-pup could not have put up a fight. Why this madness?

  Faolan dug down and tucked the malcadh’s bones in so they nestled close to Thunderheart. He then turned north and headed back toward the Eastern Scree. The gaddergnaw gathering on the western slopes of Crooked Back Ridge would have disbanded by now and the packs gone back to their own camps. The fog had thickened, but Faolan knew his way and found it comforting to be wrapped in the vaporous ground mist. Insulated, protected in his downy pelt still thick with winter fur, he was alone with his thoughts and indulged in his dreams of Thunderheart and the pup climbing the star ladder together. In Faolan’s waking dreams, the pup never fell off the ladder and never ever tried to scramble back down to earth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE SARK’S VISITOR

  THE SARK THOUGHT SHE HAD LIVED so long that nothing would astonish her, but now she was staggering in her own den with disbelief. She had experienced two astounding revelations in one day. The first was the murder of the malcadh, and the second was the appearance in her own den of Faolan’s mother! She connected the scent of the she-wolf almost immediately to the amazing wolf who had jumped the wall of fire. Morag and her second mate had come from the MacDonegal clan far to the northwest.

  Only a wolf with the Sark’s exceptional powers of scent detection would have decoded the odors that linked Morag with her long-lost son. It was impossible—at least the Sark believed it to be impossible—that Faolan’s
mother would remember the scent of a son born two years ago. Yet Morag seemed nervous and kept sniffing the place where Faolan had curled up.

  “A lot of wolves come to you?” Morag asked, a tinge of suspicion in her voice.

  “A few.”

  “Do you think you might help her?” Brangwen asked.

  “It’s hard to tell. Come over here to the other side of the fire, dear.” The Sark wanted to get Morag away from Faolan’s spot. Her paws shook as she rolled the compresses of borage and shredded birch bark. “Now, I am making you up some compresses that need to soak in the river before you apply them. You can make them yourself when these are finished. Just borage and shredded birch bark. If there isn’t any borage about, use mosses. You needn’t even soak them if you use the mosses.” Her voice was shaking. She hoped they wouldn’t notice, but of course they had never visited before and might think this was her normal way of speaking.

  “And if it doesn’t work?” Brangwen pressed.

  What am I supposed to say to that? she thought. If it doesn’t work, she goes blind. She won’t be able to hunt. She’ll become a burden to her pack, her clan. Their share of the meat will diminish. It was obvious to the Sark that this she-wolf had been a great hunter. Probably a great outflanker. She had massive shoulders and powerful back legs. Now, because of her failing eyesight, every step she took was tentative. She seemed even more feeble than she actually was. It was odd with wolves that went blind. They could be perfectly healthy in every other respect, but when their vision began to go, they were forced to engage with their surroundings in an entirely new way. They moved much more slowly, more cautiously. As the world around them faded, they began to withdraw. Their very muscles seemed to contract, and the wolves receded into themselves, occupying an inner landscape until only a brittle shell was left of the wolf that had once existed. It was a kind of living death, a retreat of the body and a contraction of the spirit.

  “If it doesn’t work—” The Sark sighed. “These are questions I cannot answer. But if it doesn’t work, perhaps you should consider joining the MacNamara clan. As you have probably heard, they are very tolerant of females who have served well but have become old before their time.”

  “But that is so far,” Brangwen said.

  Morag remained silent. She did not stir. It was as if she were already far away.

  The Sark watched as Morag and Brangwen wound down the narrow, twisting path that led away from her camp. She shoved more moose patties into her kiln and then went back into the cave for the memory jug that contained the scraps of her recollections of Faolan—from the first time she saw the splayed paw print that led to his jump for the sun to his most recent visit. She pressed her muzzle into the throat of the jug and began to whisper.

  “On this day, the last of the winter moons, there came to my den the she-wolf Morag, mother of Faolan the malcadh, mate now of Brangwen and member of the MacDonegal clan. I fear she might have picked up a trace of her son’s scent. She is a strong wolf, deep of chest, with powerful haunches. I would guess an outflanker, but her days of running the byrrgis are over. She suffers from the milk-eye disease and, I fear, will soon be blind. May Lupus watch over her until she climbs the star ladder.”

  The Sark walked from her den and looked up, scanning the sky for Gwynneth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE STRANGER

  FAOLAN HAD LOST TRACK OF THE number of trips and the number of bones he had retrieved from the ridge. And yet he was as frustrated as ever. He simply did not understand how the little pup could have met such an unconscionable death. Until things became clearer, Faolan was hesitant to build the drumlyn he had planned for the she-pup. He did not want to disturb the bones further by gnawing through that white squall of marks to tell the short story of the pup who died dreamless on the ridge. So each time he found a bone, he dutifully took it to be buried in Thunderheart’s paw. As long as they were within those clawtips, he felt the grizzly would keep them safe.

  Shortly after Faolan left the ridge, two other animals of the Beyond began to comb the slope just below the tummfraw. Gwynneth hovered annoyingly close above the Sark as the wolf sniffed the rocky terrain.

  “Would you give me a bit of space here?! There’s hardly enough air for us to breathe, let alone for me to pick up a scent,” the Sark snapped.

  “Sorry!” Gwynneth replied.

  “Remember what I told you. You’ve got the eyes. I’ve got the sniffer. You should be flying well above me, trying to spot bones in the runoffs down this slope. I’ll try to pick up a scent.”

  “Yes, of course,” Gwynneth said. The Sark knew, however, that Gwynneth couldn’t resist hovering and would be back shortly. But the Sark herself was stymied. She felt as if she were trapped in a web of scents. It had been easy to pick up the malcadh’s scent. After all, the pup’s mother had been in the Sark’s den for two days and three nights. Faolan had arrived soon after the mother, and he, too, bore the scent of a live pup. But mingled with those three base scents of the pup, the mother, and Faolan were other odors, similar yet distinct, that seemed hopelessly entangled. A moose had passed this way, as had a cougar. But another wolfish scent was buried beneath all that. Possibly from the MacDuncan clan, but then again, it might have been a MacDuff wolf. As to which pack in which clan—that would be even harder to determine after all these moons. And finally, overlaying all these odors was the fresher scent of Faolan, who had visited this tummfraw many times. Curious! All the scents were layered in a vaguely chronological order and yet at the same time scrambled in a manner that made no sense to the Sark. The one thing she knew for certain was that, when Faolan had arrived at her cave, he had borne with him the odor of a live pup, and it was while Faolan was still at the cave that Gwynneth had witnessed the brutal attack. By the time she had landed, the pup was dead and the wolf had vanished.

  “I’ve got something! I’ve got something!” Gwynneth swooped down with a tiny rib in her talons. She dropped it in front of the Sark’s paws.

  The Sark bent down and nudged it gently with her muzzle. “What you have here, my dear Gwynneth, is the bone of a very young pup, perhaps two days old.”

  “Yes, the pup. The malcadh!”

  “Really, you exceed yourself. Indeed, these surpass my own minor achievements. Although your thinking is not what one would call radiant, you can on occasion be a reflection of light.” The Sark peered into Gwynneth’s jet-black eyes. Masked Owls were among the few species that had black eyes as opposed to yellow or amber-colored ones.

  Gwynneth was beginning to feel that this conversation was becoming less than complimentary. She was right. The Sark was slightly miffed that Gwynneth had come up with the first clear evidence of the victim.

  “Some creatures,” the Sark continued, “although not brilliant themselves, have a remarkable capacity for simulating it.” When the Sark became miffed, she could become rather intellectually pompous.

  “Am I supposed to thank you for telling me that I am not so bright?” Gwynneth replied in even tones.

  The Sark was instantly taken aback. “I’m sorry.” Her bad eye began to skitter. “I was unkind. You have brought me a good bone. And look at these marks—an unintelligible blizzard that speaks only of violence and murder and supports what you heard. Why we must ask ourselves. Perhaps that is a more important question than this confounding tangle of scents.” The Sark peered down at the bone. “By method of exclusion, we can eliminate Faolan. He was with me in the cave at the time of the murder. So he could not be the culprit. We do know it is a wolf, for you, with your excellent auditory skills, heard the panting. These teeth marks support that it was a wolf and they cut deeply, deeper than a fox’s teeth yet not with the distinctive slashing of a cougar. The scent marks are too scrambled for me to figure out much. So far”—she began to scratch some lines on the ground—“I can detect five different wolf scents.”

  “Five!” Gwynneth found this staggering.

  “Yes, five. Some are direct lay-downs, as I
call them. Others are indirect, or what we might term remote, scents picked up by association with one of the main players. The pup, of course, is a direct lay-down, as is the Obea’s scent, as well as Faolan’s. But mixed in with these three is at least one other, possibly two. One is a direct lay-down, presumably from the murderer, but the other is indirect, I am fairly sure. The problem is that these two other scents are hopelessly intertwined.”

  “So you can’t sort out which is the murderer’s and which is not.”

  “Exactly.”

  “One could be an accomplice,” Gwynneth offered.

  “True! True.” New light twinkled in the Sark’s good eye.

  Please don’t call me a conductor of light! Gwynneth thought.

  “I must give the notion of an accomplice, perhaps a remote accomplice, more thought,” said the Sark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  THE GADDERGNAW GAMES BEGIN!

  MOST OF THE BEYOND WAS BARREN. Ice-pruned over thousands of years, the land grew few true forests. The soil, poor and thin, could not support much vegetation. But to the south, near the borders of the Hoolian kingdoms, there were vast expanses of grasslands. It was true, Faolan thought, the grass did sing as the dry southeast wind blew through it. But the singing grass was lost now in the barking and howling of the gaddergludder in anticipation of the Gaddergnaw Games. All the packs of all the clans, even if they did not have a gnaw wolf, attended the gaddergnaw. There were festivities, howling by the skreeleens, lively and sometimes acrimonious debates on various finer points of the gaddernock. And this all happened before the competitions even started. The most dramatic moment of the gaddergnaw, almost more exciting in many ways than the announcement of the games winner who would go on to serve in the Watch, was the arrival of the Fengo and the taigas from the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes.