Wolves Of The Beyond: Watch Wolf Part 11

As the moon moved across the night and began its slide down the western sky, the owl, whose name was Arthur, told the story of what he had seen.

"I was just minding my own business, flying with a Fish Owl over the river, looking for trout. And I saw this little cub a" a cute little fellow." Edme felt her legs begin to wobble, as if her bones had sprung a leak and her marrow were dribbling away. Faolan, too, felt a darkness run through him.

"Go on," Faolan said. "You saw a cub."

"Well, yes, and a wolf stepped out from behind a rock, and the little cub trotted right up to the wolf and wanted to play! Play, I tell you! A baby cub and a wolf."

"The wolf a" what did he look like?" Edme asked weakly.

"It wasn't a he. It was a she. She was gray with some patches of black."

"Did she have a white-tipped tail?"

"Yes! Yes, as a matter of fact!"

"Fretta." Edme whispered the name. "She's a scout for the MacHeaths."

Arthur squirmed a bit. "Hey, how about letting up a little with that foot of yours? You're squas.h.i.+ng my plummels to bits!"

"Go on!" Edme said impatiently.

"So this she-wolf steps out, and at first she seems really nice, but suddenly three more wolves step out from behind the rock. One was pretty ugly. Uglier than you," he said, glancing toward Edme. "Ouch!" Faolan had pressed down sharply on the wing. "You want to break my wing or what?"

"Don't call her ugly! You're the ugly one, to take a dare! Great Glaux!"

"Oh, be quiet, Faolan!" Edme snapped. "I don't give a white splat of seagull p.o.o.p what this creature calls me. Go on with your story."

"Sorry," Arthur said. "Anyhow, it all happened so fast. Two of the wolves pounced on the cub, the other two rushed in, and before you knew it, the cub was being carried away. And a and a"

"And what?" Edme asked.

"Well," Arthur said hesitantly, then just blurted it out. "The Fish Owl, Skylar, he was really courageous and he started to dive-bomb them. But I was scared. I was a coward." It all became very clear now to both Faolan and Edme.

"Because you were a coward and didn't attack as your friend Skylar did, you felt you had to prove yourself. And so you took the dare to find the Ember of Hoole," Edme said.

The Spotted Owl remained silent.

"That about sums it up, Edme," Faolan replied with contempt.

"No, not exactly," Arthur said in a small voice.

"What do you mean *not exactly'?" Edme asked.

"The bears know about it now. There's talk of a war between the wolves of the Beyond and the bears."

"No!" Faolan gasped. "It can't be."

"I think he's right, Faolan. That's the answer to the double s.h.i.+fts and all the meetings in the gaddergovern. Arthur, when did you see the cubnapping?"

"Two days ago. The wolves here probably just found out yesterday."

"It doesn't matter a" yesterday, today, there can't be war. There just can't be," Faolan whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

"Why wouldn't the taigas tell us?" Edme wondered aloud. Then it dawned on her. She looked at Faolan. "It's you, Faolan."

"Of course it's me," he replied in a low voice. His eyes filled with tears. "They were trying to protect me."

"Why?" Arthur asked.

"My second Milk Giver was a grizzly. Her name was Thunderheart."

"What?" The Spotted Owl could barely get his beak around the word.

"Yes. She saved my life. A grizzly bear saved my life."

Arthur was silent for several seconds as he attempted to digest this extraordinary information. Then pulling himself up a little taller and squaring his shoulder feathers, he spoke: "I might be able to help you a" just a bit."

"You? How? You're a coward, remember?" Faolan snapped. Edme nosed him in his flank.

"Be quiet, Faolan. Let him speak. How can you help us, Arthur?"

"I know where they took the cub. Skylar and I followed them."

"So where did they take him?" Edme asked.

"A box canyon with steep walls on all its sides. There's a hidden trail through the brush down into it and a" His voice dwindled away.

Edme lifted her single eye to Faolan and spoke. "And there's a crazy old wolf living down there with the foaming-mouth disease. The Pit. That's where they took the cub."

"Do I get to go, now that I've told you everything?" Arthur asked.

Edme stepped up to the owl and met his gaze directly. "Not quite yet, Arthur. This is your chance to redeem yourself and prove your courage. This is not a dare, this is an order. Think of yourself as a soldier in the first skirmish of the war between the bears and the wolves."

"But I'm not a wolf," he replied in a whiny voice.

Edme gave a resounding swat to the owl's face, smacking off a few feathers, which drifted up and then settled on the cairn. Faolan had never seen Edme display such temper. "Let me knock some sense into you, dear," Edme said. "The owls are going to be dragged into this war. So it doesn't matter if you're not a bear or a wolf or an owl. The important thing is not to be an a.s.s. You're going to fly cover for us. Got it?"

But first, Faolan and Edme knew they must go to the Fengo.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

KILLING FEAR.

THE PROBLEM IS THE NAME, CAGS thought in his feverish and disorderly mind. Yes, that's the problem. There were two names the wolves had called this pup who did not look like a pup. Was he really a pup? Cags needed a name. He liked to call out the pup's name, hear it bounce off the walls. It was as if the name crawled around inside the pup's head, and the pup's brain got all twisted up, like Cags's. It got foamy.

But if Old Cags didn't have a name, he couldn't focus. And if he couldn't focus, his terror shrank to the size of a dried-up peaberry in the hunger moons. Old Cags fed on terror a" the terror that he could create. But he didn't know what to do without a true name. So he walked back and forth in front of the rock wall where the pup who was not a pup had hidden himself in a crack.

Old Cags's job was either to scare a pup to death or into a kind of mute insanity. Sometimes the pups who came to him died of hunger if they couldn't find the mice and rats that lived in the Pit, and sometimes they just plain gave up and ran directly at him. Then he would bite at them with his back teeth, which was actually hard for him to do since he had no fangs left, and the pup would die foaming. Cags had not died for some strange reason, and that made him special. The chieftain told him so. He was almost like a G.o.d in the eyes of the MacHeaths, a G.o.d who must live separately in his stone heaven.

It was no fun for Cags when a pup charged him and he bit it. It was all over too quickly. Even their dying became boring if it lasted too long. Sometimes Cags envied their death throes a" their lives had ended, their fear was finished, and their loneliness was over. They could begin to climb the star ladder, which he seemed never to reach in his living death.

The best was when a pup became what Old Cags called stony-eyed and he could make it do his bidding. The pup could chase red squirrels and kill them so Old Cags could eat. He much preferred the taste of red squirrels to rats. And then when the chieftain came, he would praise Old Cags. "You always turn out an obedient pup, dear Cags," he would say. "No more trouble from this one." The pup would leave, his eyes as smooth and lifeless as river pebbles.

Toby peered out from the crack he was squashed into. If he retreated to the rear of the slot, there was more room and he could be more comfortable. But he had to keep a watch on the foaming-mouth wolf. He had found a few mice to eat, but he was too frightened to be hungry. He shook so hard with fear as he watched Old Cags coming closer to the rock wall that he thought his fur might fall off. In fact, his pelt had begun to shed and he simply hadn't noticed it, until a breeze blew into the cave and he saw filaments of his own dark brown fur swirl up into the dim light. He looked around and inhaled sharply. The small stump of his tail was bare, with pink skin showing through. First he was shocked by the stupid pink stub that looked as if it had been tacked to his b.u.t.t with sticky gum from a pine tree, and then he got mad. And when he got mad, it was as if something inside him broke in two. Part of him was still a baby seeking his mother's comfort, and the other part was not a cub any longer. You have to grow up! Grow up! Don't cry. Think! In his mind's eye, a picture formed of his baby self saying good-bye to the cub he was becoming.

Toby pressed his face against the crack and looked out at Old Cags, who was staggering about, muttering something. It's just me and Old Cags, Toby thought to himself. No, he corrected with a sudden burst of inspiration. It's not just me and Old Cags. It's me, Old Cags, and fear. Fear was as much a part of their small company as anything. Fear was alive, with a heartbeat of its own. There were three living things brought together in this stone prison, and one of them had to die. Toby decided to kill fear.

His first task was to listen carefully to try to understand what Old Cags was muttering about. He tried as best he could, but all he could decipher was something about names. Dare he step outside just a bit?

He inched out from the crack for the first time since he had found it. A blade of moonlight sliced across the ground, and he felt the cold, harsh wind on his ridiculous pink stub. Just thinking of his tail made him mad.

Old Cags regarded him with a dazed look. Toby held his breath, but Cags did not charge.

"Whazz name?" The words slurred.

"I told you already."

"They said two names." He swung his head back and forth, his eyes spinning and a small cataract of foam spilling onto the ground. "Need name."

If he needs it, I'm not giving it to him, Toby thought. That would be his first move. So he said simply, "I have no name."

Confusion swam in the sick wolf's eyes. He lay down and buried his muzzle in his paws.

Toby had just put the first nick in the pelt of fear.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

BREAKING RULES.

"HOW DID YOU FIND THIS OUT? Who told you about the impending war and the cubnapping?" Finbar was fuming, but Faolan could tell that the cubnapping was not news to him.

"It's out there. Gossip. I heard the owls talking about it."

"The owls don't know a thing."

This was true, but Faolan could hardly say it was a graymalkin who was the source of his information, because he would be in trouble for not sounding the alarm. And in truth, he hardly thought of Arthur as a real graymalkin. He seemed more like a confused youngster than anything else. But Faolan could be dismissed from the Ring if they discovered he had spoken to a graymalkin and had not sounded the howl alarm.

Faolan had also not yet mentioned that he knew where the bear cub was being kept. If the foaming-mouth wolf bit anyone from the Watch, the disease would spread like wildfire. The fewer who went to the Pit, the better. Faolan's intention had been to say that he would like to go talk to the bears, and not mention his and Edme's plan to rescue the cub. But he wasn't sure how to introduce the notion of a parley with the bears.

Faolan would do anything to stop the war. He couldn't tolerate the idea of going against the bears, his second Milk Giver's species. It was like making war on himself. I will die before one drop of grizzly blood is shed.

Jasper, a dark brown wolf who was the highest-ranking wolf of the Watch after Fengo, now stepped forward. One of his hind legs was half the length of the others and ended not in a paw but in a k.n.o.b with claws sticking out of it every which way.

Jasper always spoke slowly as if he were turning over each word before uttering it. "Now a young'un a this is a council of war. Whatever makes you think that you belong in this cave? You've been here, what" a" he looked around with a musing air a" "one moon, certainly less than two, and you feel that you have the right to interrupt this meeting. What could you possibly contribute in this situation?"

Faolan was growing desperate. He would have to tell them he knew where the cub was being held. But it was Edme who stepped forward. She looked up with her single eye into Jasper's large and handsome face.

"Sir, I was a MacHeath. I know where they took this poor cub." The cave grew still. "They took him to the Pit."

"The Pit? You mean it really exists?"

"Yes. It does. It's a terrible place. Let Faolan and me go after the cub." She was careful not to mention Arthur.

Thank Lupus, Faolan thought.

"I know the ways of the MacHeaths, and Faolan knows the ways of bears," Edme continued.

"But it will be dangerous for the two of you," the Fengo said. "Is there truly a foaming-mouth wolf in the Pit?"

"Yes. But the danger of the Pit is nothing compared to the danger of a war between the bears and the wolves. If we can save that cub a"

"I see what you are saying." Finbar paused and thought for several seconds before speaking again. "I have been informed," he said, "that the cub s.n.a.t.c.hed was not any mere cub but the great-grandson of none other than Grizz, the Bear of Bears." There were gasps as the wolves absorbed this latest information. "Yes, so you can understand how truly dire this situation is. Scouts have already brought in reports of the bears ma.s.sing. If they attack, we shall have no choice but to defend ourselves. Therefore, I think it is wise that Edme and Faolan go to the Pit immediately and try to rescue the cub. But, by Lupus, be careful! If one of you is bitten, the other must leave you to die alone. The disease must not be spread. In the meantime, our raghnaid will go and seek to parley with the bears. If you can bring the poor cub back in time, we might be able to avoid war."

Banja now stepped forward. "I do not think it is at all advisable that we permit Edme to go on this mission. She is, after all, a MacHeath. Suppose she decides to join them."

"What!!" Edme and Faolan both barked in astonishment. The Fengo himself seemed to stagger upon hearing Banja's words.

Every hair on Edme's pelt stood up and she suddenly seemed twice her size. "Are you accusing me of being a turnpelt? You think I want to help the monsters who tore out my eye and then killed my mother? You have hated me since the second I stepped into the Ring. I don't know why, but you have."

"Stop!" roared the Fengo. "This is no time for squabbling."

Squabbling! Edme thought. This wolf accuses me of being a turnpelt and he calls it squabbling!

"Banja, I do believe you've lost your senses. If Edme doesn't go, how will Faolan find the Pit?" Finbar demanded.