Lone Wolf

fine gnawer. Gnawing is an art. You now qualify to become gnaw wolf, and if you gnaw well, you may go on to join the Watch at the Ring of the Sacred Volcanoes. You will become a member of the clan of the MacDuncans. We shall soon decide which pack you may join, and name you."
    The loneliness that had walked beside him for so long began not to recede, but to contract, to migrate from his side to that hollow within him where it had begun. Now, although he was surrounded by his own kind, he felt more estranged than ever, gaunt with his own loneliness.
    So, Faolan thought, I am to join a pack. And a pack was part of a clan. I am to become a wolf of the Beyond. He looked now at these wolves, the chieftains, the outflankers, and the others who had comprised the byrrgis that had nearly killed him. Was there any wolf that looked remotely like him, one who could have been his mother or father, a sister, a brother? According to Gwynneth his own parents would have had to find new packs that were quite distant from their old one. But they would never have gone to the Outermost. As wary as Faolan now was, he knew that these wolves were decent creatures. They were not outclanners.
    "You will join?" It was a question, not a command, that Duncan MacDuncan asked.
    Faolan nodded.
    "Do you understand?"
    Faolan nodded again.
    "Do you have any questions?"
    Faolan hesitated. "Not a question, sir, but..."
    "But what? A comment, perhaps?"
    "Yes, a comment," Faolan said.
    Again, there was a surge of whispers. "How dare he?" "A gnaw wolf doesn't have comments!" "He'll learn!" "Go on," Duncan MacDuncan said softly.
    "Sir, let the gnaw-bone show that I have a name."
    "A name?" Duncan MacDuncan blinked. "How did you happen to come by a name?"
    The question almost confused Faolan. His name wasn't an accident. Thunderheart had chosen it for him.
    "I was named by my milk mother, the grizzly bear Thunderheart."
    "Your milk mother was a bear?" MacDuncan staggered slightly.
    "Yes. My name is Faolan. That is the name my milk mother, the grizzly bear Thunderheart, gave me." He turned his eyes toward the gnaw wolf Heep, then swept the assembled wolves in the green light of his gaze. "Call me Faolan."