“It’s hard to think of him any crazier,” Edme mused softly.
The trail was steep even for animals with four legs. They slid down the last part, causing a small avalanche of pebbles and loose rock. Old Cags heard this and came trotting over in anticipation of another pup or perhaps a bloody offering of fresh meat delivered by the wolves who worshipped him.
He stopped short and snarled as Faolan and Edme appeared. “Whazz name?”
Faolan and Edme were trembling. They had never been so close to a diseased animal, an animal with the foaming-mouth sickness. They split off in opposite directions as planned. Old Cags stood bewildered. He did not know which way to turn, and suddenly the wolves didn’t seem to be wolves anymore. They were leaping and spinning in the air. For when Arthur had said he would distract the sick wolf with kill spirals, the two young Watch wolves immediately came up with the idea of running a series of scanning jumps. This they hoped would distract the wolf, and the less time they spent on the ground with Old Cags, the better.
The plan seemed simple. When the sick wolf’s attention was sufficiently engaged, Faolan would race to the crack in the rock wall to fetch the cub while Edme and Arthur continued to distract Old Cags with jumps and fantastic flight maneuvers.
Old Cags’s head was spinning as he tried to keep track of what appeared to be missiles of fur and feather streaking through the air. Faolan raced to the slot in the rock and stuck his head into the dim light. The damp shining eyes of a cub met his. Toby looked up, shocked. “Are you here to kill me? Drag me to Cags?”
“We’re here to rescue you. Follow me. Be quick.”
“You came for me?”
“Yes, quick now while Edme distracts Cags.”
The two raced from the slot in the wall. The little cub looked up in time to see an owl dive straight down upon Cags and then see his old wolf playmate, Edme, leaping in somersaults.
“Edme!” Toby shouted. He couldn’t help it. The name just burst out of him.
“Name!” shrieked Old Cags and swung his head in the direction of Edme. At last he had found his target — a real wolf.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DRUMS OF WAR
THERE WAS A FEELING OF UNREALITY as the Namara led an expeditionary force of one hundred MacNamara wolves south and west toward the Black Glass Desert, where the grizzlies of the Beyond had gathered for their drumming. The last war in the Beyond had been the War of the Ember, before the Namara had come of age and long before she was chieftain. Never had there been a war with the grizzlies. Was the world as she knew it falling apart? The seasons were all turned around, and now this threat of war. The Namara knew it had all started with the MacHeaths, for two she-wolves had fled to her and told her of a cub being snatched. For some dark reason that made sense only to twisted minds, the MacHeaths believed they would advance themselves by stealing a cub.
The Namara had brought the MacHeath she-wolves with her. The wolf Katria was an outflanker, and outflankers were good in battle. She only wished the blind wolf Morag was healthy enough to fight as well. Morag’s mate had generously offered his services, but if he were killed, who would care for the ailing Morag?
On their second day of traveling, while they were still far from the Black Glass Desert, a strange rumbling could be heard seeping up from the ground. They were traveling at half press-paw speed. Their hackles raised as the earth trembled beneath their paws.
The Namara howled the signal for a halt. She jumped up to a rock and eyed the troops of her clan. She was a wolf of middling size, with a pelt the color of storm clouds and vivid green eyes. She had a noble bearing, and the calmness of her demeanor concealed the turbulence of her feelings.
These are good wolves, she thought. More than half were she-wolves, but they could fight as ferociously as any male. In fact, she was now leading into battle the largest expeditionary force of she-wolves ever assembled. She had great confidence in her clan, and yet they’d never before gone against grizzlies. These wolves had honed their fighting skills on frequent skirmishes with the odious MacHeaths.
Often, MacHeaths came to the far reaches of the Beyond in attempts to reclaim one of their deserters, and yet, never since the time of Hordweard had they succeeded. The Namara knew that in truth, it should be the MacHeaths they were fighting. But it was too late now. The MacHeaths had wreaked incalculable damage on the Beyond — on all its creatures — and now a war was coming. A messenger had come with the news that the first round of parleys had failed, and all clans were to report to the front. The grizzlies were not willing to talk; they were convinced that a sacred trust had been irrevocably broken. The wolves had no choice but to defend themselves or be destroyed by an enemy vastly larger and stronger than themselves.
Never had any wolf force gone up against the grizzly bears of the Beyond. And now this drumming, which was done expressly to stir fear and anguish in their marrow!
It was time for the Namara to address her troops.
“What you hear is not an earthquake. This is bear drumming, like our gaddergludders before a byrrgis. The purpose is to raise their blood thirst and to frighten us; that is all.
“Listen to me, wolves. I am not simple enough, not fool enough, to think you do not fear these bears. I fear them, too. But I am going to tell you something that might shock you. Our real enemy is not the bears.”
There was a hush, and then the gathered wolves began to exclaim and murmur.
“No. It is not the bears we need to fight.” Whispers began to rise, hackles stirred amid the Namara’s troops. “We need to fight the cause of this heinous war, and the cause is the MacHeaths!” Utter silence now fell upon the Namara’s troops. “The MacHeaths snatched an innocent bear cub, ripped him from his mother. And now if we do not stop the MacHeaths, the bears will attack, and we shall have no choice but to defend ourselves. So our first war is with the clan we know so well, through our blood and our history. We shall attack the MacHeaths. The MacNamaras, of all the wolves, know how to fight a MacHeath! And in fighting the MacHeaths, we can bring peace to the Beyond!
“Let me speak to you about fear. It is merely the other end of the bone of courage. One cannot exist without the other. Courage, as an ancient warrior once said, is fear holding on just a bit longer. We are fighting for our way of life in the Beyond, for which the first Fengo led us out of the Long Cold. It is worth the holding on, for believe me, it is better for us to fight for something than to live for nothing. We of the MacNamara clan do not trek into war with the jingle-jangle of the tinulaba of our bone necklaces. We do not go in for gewgaws, the decorations of rank, as other clans. For we are she-wolves and have no need of such trappings. We know who we are. We are the toughest frinking fighting force in the Beyond.”
There was a great roar of howling from the troops, a roar as loud as the drumming of the grizzlies. The Namara signaled for quiet and continued. “If a she-wolf does her best, what else is there? No need for medals, or bones scraped up from the battlefield. And when those MacHeaths see us coming, they will raise their hind legs and wet in their own blasted fur, crying, ‘Great Lupus, it’s the frinking MacNamaras and that daughter of a she-wolf, the Namara herself!’”
The she-wolves went wild. The Namara’s voice rose higher.
“And when this war is over, and you have a grandpup and she asks, ‘What did you do in the great war against the bears?’ you can look her straight in the eye and say, ‘Daughter, your granny traveled with the great MacNamara expeditionary force and fought for justice alongside the toughest old she-wolf, Galana, the Namara of the clan!’”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
“EDME! EDME! EDME!”
AFTER ALL THE TERRIFYING HOURS spent in the Pit never uttering his own name, Toby had shouted out the name of a friend. Soon the walls of the Pit were resounding with Old Cags bellowing, “Edme! Edme! Edme!” Long bubbly threads of foam inscribed the air as he advanced on Edme. She quit her jumping. Her intense green eye locked on Old Cags and began to grow dim. It?
??s turning to stone! Faolan thought.
Not only had Edme seemed to freeze, with her eye so dim that it was now as blank as the missing one, as if it had become a void through which her marrow leaked out, but Old Cags seemed steady and focused. A new light burned in the diseased wolf’s eyes, a glowing that spoke of his terror of dying diseased and alone. He is frightened to die alone! Faolan realized. He wants to share his sickness and his final death!
“Edme! Edme!” Old Cags chanted. “I need a name, I got a name, now nothing more will be the same. Edme, Edme, Edme! Come share the foam. We’re not alone. Edme, Edme!” Old Cags was walking steadily, staggering no longer, and closing the distance between himself and a frozen Edme.
Arthur looked down. Has the wolf gone yeep? Yeep was a state in which an owl got so scared in midair that its wings locked, and the bird plummeted to the ground. And it looked as if the same thing had happened to the wolf. Edme stood stiff-legged and dazed as Old Cags advanced, screaming her name.
“Move! Edme! Run!” Faolan shouted.
It was as if she were ensnared in a terrible web that grew vaster as it reverberated with the din of her name, Edme, spinning through the Pit. The sticky threads of disease ensnared not just Edme but all of them.
Then the air seemed to split, the whining filaments of sound ripped apart as a blur of feathers bolted from above. Old Cags jerked, and then there was a terrible shriek — the alarm call of a Spotted Owl.
“Arthur!” Faolan let the name slip before he could stop himself.
“Arthur!” The sound was muffled, for Old Cags had a firm grip on Arthur’s port wing, which hung broken between his jaws.
“Run,” Arthur cried. “Get the cub and run!”
They heard delicate owl bones crunching between Old Cags’s jaws and saw blood dripping from his mouth. Edme raced to Faolan’s side, where the cub huddled. They were still close to Old Cags, but the sick wolf was was so absorbed with his new partner in death that he paid them no heed. They watched the light fade in the Spotted Owl’s eyes. Even the jewel-like sprinkling of white spots across the top of Arthur’s head seemed to grow dull.
“Out!” Faolan ordered.
And the two wolves and the cub raced up the trail.
High above, on the edge of the rim, they looked down to the floor of the stone hell of the Pit as life expired in the brave young owl.
And it all began with a foolish dare, Faolan thought. There was a loud crack of thunder, and the sky splintered with lightning. And still they stayed as the Spotted Owl teetered on the threshold of death.
Toby looked up at the two wolves. He sensed they were in some deep trance as they watched their friend dying. The word the cub did not know was lochinvyrr, a death ritual that was instinctive among wolves. An urge flowed through them to acknowledge the dying animal’s value.
The silent flyer will be gathered into the greater silence, Faolan thought. Speed you to Glaumora now. And he wondered if, as for wolves, the owls’ Glaumora had a star ladder and a kindly spirit guide to help Arthur on his way. He looked toward the eastern horizon so bright with sun that the stars seemed far away, and then took one last look at Arthur. One wing was nearly torn off. But surely there is a spirit owl who will help fly him to Glaumora, surely! Faolan thought.
Now there was not much time.
Faolan knew that he and Edme must race with the cub to the Black Glass Desert, where the wolves and bears would battle. He had to get to the Fengo so the word could be spread that the cub was safe! Even from this vast distance, it seemed to him that he could hear reverberations of the drumming. A day and a night … a day and a night. That was how long Thunderheart said the bears massed. The very air seemed to throb with the sound of the pounding of the grizzlies’ feet. There wasn’t much time left now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE BLACK GLASS DESERT
SOME CALLED IT THE DARKLANDS after the black sand made of glass fragments that absorbed nearly all light and reflected nothing. On this night, the blackness seemed to devour even the stars, the sliver of the newing moon, the threads of lightning that didn’t flash or crackle but seemed to hang limply in the sky like gauzy cobwebs.
Faolan, Edme, and the cub stood on a cliff overlooking the desert, the rock beneath their feet trembling with the drumming of the bears. They could see the massive silhouettes of rank upon rank of bears. A gap of perhaps half a league separated the bears from the wolves, who were far greater in number but appeared, in comparison, like dwarf creatures.
Within Faolan a terrible war was already raging. I am as much bear as wolf. How can one part of me lift a paw against the other?
He closed his eyes for a moment and pictured the spiraling lines on his pad — swirling in the night, like embers caught in the twisting hot drafts from a volcano’s crater. He sometimes imagined that the spinning tracery that had marked him as a malcadh spoke of something not cursed but sublime. That the swirling design whispered of another pattern, a larger one of infinite harmony. Faolan knew that deep within him, two elements, bear and wolf, combined to make his essence, make him who he was. Now his marrow was turning bitter; to kill a bear was unthinkable. He raised a paw and gently stroked Toby’s shoulder.
“I can’t see my mum from here. It’s too dark.” Toby had flattened himself on the ground and was hanging his head over the edge of the cliff to peer out into the blackness.
“We’ll find her, dear,” Edme said consolingly.
How are we going to do this? Faolan thought. There were hundreds of bears out there, maybe thousands, and in the thickening darkness they all looked like one big mass.
There was an awkward fluttering in the air above them. It was an owl, and she was furious.
“Gwynneth!” Faolan shouted.
“Are you yoicks?” she spluttered. “Numbskulls! You’re supposed to be back on your cairns at the Ring. You’re going to get in big —” Gwynneth stopped abruptly. “Who’s that?” she asked, looking at Toby.
“I’m a cub. And I don’t like the way you talk to my friends, stupid!”
“Now, now, dear.” Edme butted Toby gently on the neck. “She doesn’t understand.”
“I certainly don’t,” Gwynneth said. She looked dumbfounded for a moment, but then a light sparkled in her black eyes. “No! The cub!” She gasped. “You’re the missing cub!”
“I certainly am!” Toby growled.
Faolan stepped forward to where the owl perched. “This is Toby. The MacHeaths snatched him and put him in the Pit.”
“The Pit!” Gwynneth murmured. “Great Glaux, I thought the Pit was just a rumor — such a horrifying one that every owl is frightened even to fly over it. A foaming-mouth wolf! How did he survive —”
“They rescued me!” Toby shouted. Gwynneth’s beak dropped open with astonishment. “And you called them numbskulls!” Toby growled low and deep. It was such a mature growl, it surprised all of them.
“Calm down, Toby. Gwynneth meant no harm. She didn’t understand. She’s one of my oldest friends in the Beyond,” Faolan soothed.
“How can she be your good friend if I am?” Toby began to whine, sounding once again like an immature cub.
Edme put her muzzle right in front of Toby’s brown eyes. “Faolan has a large, generous heart. He can be a good friend to many. Now, let’s end this nonsense and figure out how to get you back with your mum and stop this disastrous war!” Edme turned to Gwynneth. “Gwynneth, will you fly back to the Fengo and tell him we have the cub? The word must be spread as fast as possible.”
The two wolves felt the brush of a soft wind gust and the next thing they knew, Gwynneth was soaring above them.
As the owl flew in and was seen to perch on Grizz’s massive shoulder, the drumming seemed to pause. Grizz was the grizzly elder known also as the Bear of Bears of the Beyond. Although the social organization of the bears was not nearly as structured as that of the wolves, the Bear of Bears was a kind of chieftain. He settled territorial disputes between bears and dealt with all
business transacted between the wolves and the bears of the Beyond. Grizz was very old at this point and, despite his size, he was weak. Palsied, blind in one eye, with only dim vision in the other, and with many of his teeth missing, Grizz was clearly not long for this earth. His paw shook uncontrollably as the owl whispered in his ear.
“You say Toby’s been found?” he rasped. “My great-grandson’s been found!”
“Yes,” Gwynneth replied. “He comes now with an escort assigned by the Fengo.”
“Bring him forth and we shall parley with the wolves.”
“What? Impossible!” Dunbar MacHeath stared at his scout. “You’re sure, Fretta?”
“I’m sure. The cub has been rescued.”
“Who? Who rescued him?”
“Edme and the wolf Faolan.”
Dunbar MacHeath’s scar quivered like a boiling river running down his clenched face. “This … this …” His voice was ragged.
The MacHeath lieutenants regarded Dunbar nervously. They’d never seen him like this before.
“Why are you looking at me so stupidly?” Dunbar snarled. “You idiots. This will be our undoing. With the cub rescued, there’s no chance for a war with the bears. We’re finished.” He paused and his eyes rolled up until only the barest crescent of green showed against the whites. “Unless …” he began slowly.
“Unless what, Lord Chieftain?” Malan asked.
Dunbar MacHeath wheeled around to Fretta. “Where is the cub now? Where’s Grizz?”
“Top lieutenants from the Watch have met up with Edme and Faolan. They’re escorting the cub to the center of the Black Glass Desert, to the Twisted Four-four.”
“You mean the four yondos in the middle of the desert?”
“Yes. Grizz is making his way now to the Fengo for a parley at those yondos, not far from where the bears have assembled for their rally. The cub is to be delivered directly to Grizz.”