Wolves of the Beyond 02 - Shadow Wolf

print Faolan’s splayed forepaw had made in the mud. It was a perfect spiral like that of a swirling star. Faolan blinked. He had never left such a deep track before, and the spiraling lines on the pad of his paw were so dim that they had neverleft a trace. Had he pressed that hard in his determination not to move? But why was Heep quivering? Everything was turned around. Faolan was supposed to be the one trembling in fear.
    “Get on with it, lad!” Lord Claren gave Heep a cuff.
    “Oh, Lord Claren,” Heep said as he sank to his knees and began to screw his face into the mud, carefully avoiding the paw print. “I am not worthy of this honor. Thank you. It is very kind of you to offer. There are wolves enough to tread on me in my lowly rankless condition. That I should bite this wolf without doing outrage to the other gnaw wolves’ feelings is…is…is…”
    “Is what, by Lupus?” The lord of the pack leaped upon Heep’s quaking head and slammed it farther into the mud. Snarling, he made a grab for Heep’s face and violently shook his muzzle for several seconds before finally flinging him away.
    Faolan was mystified. He was the one supposed to be bitten, and yet Heep’s blood scrawled the air like a tracer of red lightning while Faolan stood unbloodied and unbowed. He quickly corrected his erect posture as Lord Claren approached with Lord Bhreac. Faolan arched his back and started the first of his submission postures. He quickly sank onto his knees, but before he could evenbegin to roll over to expose his belly, both lords slammed on top of him and clamped him firmly to the ground with their forepaws.
    The weight of the two wolves was crushing, and once again, Faolan braced himself for a mauling. He could barely breathe. He heard the lords begin to talk in low whispers. “Positively unspeakable,” Lord Claren said.
    “Yes, but that is just the point. That’s why he must be taken immediately to the Carreg Gaer so the chieftain can talk to him.”
    “But the chieftain is dying! The raghnaid can deal with this gnaw wolf later. There is no rush.”
    “He must go while the chieftain still lives.”
    Something within Faolan wilted. Although he was nearly numb from the crushing weight of the two lords, he could still feel shame. Duncan MacDuncan had treated him with patience and respect when Faolan had jumped the wall of fire. To face the chieftain again, disgraced, would be worse than any gnaw bite.

CHAPTER FIVE
T HE L AST W ORDS OF A C HIEFTAIN
    THE CAMP OF THE CARREG GAER was smaller than Faolan had anticipated but situated in a region of lovely soaring cliffs with a creek running right through the middle. Some young pups were chasing one another across the shallows, their hind paws furiously splashing up water and flinging mud.
    Along the banks, elder wolves were playing a game called biliboo with pebbles from the creek and knuckle-bones. The game was one of strategy and required great mental concentration. Played by four wolves in teams of two, the pieces were moved from one side of a complicated pattern scratched in the dirt to another. The paths through which they moved were intricate and governed by a rigid set of rules. Faolan had often tried to watch in his own pack and understand the intricacies of the moves.The players never spoke a word during the game, and it seemed as if their pieces flowed across the pattern, almost as if they were never even touched by the wolves’ muzzles or paws.
    Faolan had been told to wait by a red-speckled rock to be called into the cave for the raghnaid . He looked up into the star-powdered night, searching for signs of the new constellations that appeared during the Caribou Moon. He found great comfort in searching the sky, hunting for the old familiar constellations that had sailed through the nights in the seasons he had spent with Thunderheart.
    It seemed colder than normal for this moon, and he wondered if the creek the pups were playing in would be frozen by morning. But there were not even glimpses of the first stars of the snow moons yet. Curious , he thought. He scanned the sky for other constellations. Faolan especially liked the star picture that the grizzly bears called the Great Claws. Thunderheart had told him that the owls called it the Golden Talons, and he’d learned that the wolves called it the Great Fangs. But the constellation was almost gone now and would not return until early winter. Other constellations had begun to rise. That of the