Frost Wolf (16 page)

FAOLAN AND HIS TWO SISTERS traveled in a companionable silence for three days. As the sun sank behind the horizon, casting a green glow over the land, Dearlea stopped abruptly. “What are those four sticks?” Ahead of them four sticks of exactly the same size appeared to have been deliberately planted in the snow.

“They aren’t sticks! They’re legs!” Faolan said. “Musk ox legs!”

The three wolves bounded forward. They quickly realized that the musk ox, an elderly female, had been caught in an avalanche. Had she been younger, the herd would have helped to dig her out. But because she was ailing and slowing their travel, they had apparently abandoned her. It was not cruel on their part at all. The musk ox would endure more pain attempting to keep up with
the herd than falling into a frozen sleep. For the three wolves, it was an unbelievable piece of luck. Not only would there be enough meat for the three of them, but there was enough to feed the entire Carreg Gaer of the MacNamara clan. So they would at least arrive with some good news.

Digging down to the body was hard work, and it was even harder to tear through the thick, coarse mat of guard hairs and the soft underfur to get to the meat. The musk ox had apparently died only a short time earlier, because her blood was not yet cold and her meat was still soft.

Faolan cautioned his sisters to eat slowly. “It can’t be good to eat this much meat when we have been hungry so long and living on small creatures.”

“Well, at least it’s warm,” Mhairie said as she bent her head over the steaming pile of meat. This gave Faolan an idea. He knew they were not far from Broken Talon Point and the coast of the Bittersea. But the wind coming off that water sounded different from what he remembered. It sounded like wind driven across a frozen sea. There was absolutely no shelter on Broken Talon Point, and the warmth they had gained from nourishing themselves would drain out of them faster than they could imagine. If they could keep warm, the food in their stomach would
fuel them for longer. Faolan peered at the huge cavity of the musk ox stomach from which they had dragged her entrails.

“We should sleep here,” he said, looking at his sisters.

“What do you mean by here, exactly?” Mhairie asked suspiciously.

“I mean right here.” He nodded at the ripped abdomen of the musk ox. “It’s as big as a small whelping den. We can fit easily and we’ll be warm.”

Dearlea and Mhairie looked at each other, then Dearlea spoke. “One thing, Faolan.” She turned to look at her sister.

“It’s not a bad idea, Dearlea,” Mhairie replied.

“No, it’s a good idea,” Dearlea said.

“Well, then, what is it?” Mhairie pressed.

“There is nothing noble in eating an animal that’s already dead. So even though we didn’t kill this musk ox, we need to perform
lochinvyrr
, for she will have given us both nourishment and shelter.”

Lochinvyrr
was the ritual that wolves followed when they brought down an animal. As the animal was dying, they would gaze into its eyes. Prey and predator would lock gazes as if something were being agreed upon between the two. It was a demonstration of respect in
which the predator acknowledged the life it was taking. The wolf would sink into a submissive posture as if to acknowledge the greatness of the gift the dying animal was giving, while with great dignity the dying animal seemed to say,
Yes, I am valuable. My meat will sustain you.

The musk ox’s eyes were glazed with ice and she stared dumbly into the night that now sparkled with stars, but still the three wolves gathered round her and began to lick the ice from her dead eyes. Soon enough the starry roof of the night was reflected in the musk ox’s eyes, and Faolan, Dearlea, and Mhairie bent down on their knees while grinding the sides of their heads into the snow. They fixed the ox in their gaze and performed the ancient ritual of
lochinvyrr
. When it was complete, they crawled into the bloody cavity of her abdomen and slept.

When they woke several hours later, the copper disk of the sun was trembling on the horizon.

“Still hungry?” Faolan asked.

“No, not really. I ate my fill last night,” Mhairie replied.

Faolan had not yet told his sisters about the
drumlyn
he had built for their mother. He had not found the right words.

The sisters knew that their mother had spent her last days with the MacNamara clan. But that was all they knew, really. They weren’t aware that after she had been driven from the MacDuncan clan and her two healthy pups taken to be raised by Caila, she had found a new mate in the MacDonegal clan, where she’d had a brilliant career as an outflanker. Morag had led a worthy life and Faolan had been determined to honor it in the only way he knew how — by building a
drumlyn.

For a wolf like Faolan, it was instinct to gnaw a bone not just for meat, but to incise it with beautiful carving. The instinct was imprinted on his very marrow. The first time he had ever carved a bone was long before he had even joined a clan. He had been a lone wolf and brought down a caribou by himself. The caribou was a worthy opponent — old, weak, but very clever — and so Faolan had honored her with a
drumlyn
made of her bones. He had dragged her body more than a league and fought off ravens the whole way in order to place her bones near the river on a high bank where they could remain undisturbed. He had found the same sort of place for the bones of his mother. It was close to the tip of Broken Talon Point, and he had planned to head there first and then on to the MacNamara clan with his sisters. But now that they had found the musk ox, he knew they
must go first to the Namara, the clan chieftain, and tell her where to find the meat.

“I had planned to take you first to the
drumlyn
of our mother.”

“Drumlyn?”
Mhairie asked.

Then Dearlea spoke up. “Is that one of your Old Wolf words, Faolan?” The sisters were used to Faolan blurting out Old Wolf words and even bearish expressions.

“I suppose so. I used it before I had ever heard the word ‘cairn,’ which is what wolves call a bone mound.”

“So …” For once, Mhairie’s tongue seemed to stumble in her mouth. “So you got her bones and … and —”

“Morag’s bones were not ready to be carved yet. I first found other bones to tell her story on, and since then I’ve made two trips back. Our mother’s bones are beautiful.”

He read the slight confusion in his sisters’ eyes. For them, bones were carved to inscribe laws, to honor the Great Chain that ordered the wolf world, or to chronicle events. That was all. The notion of memorializing a wolf through bone inscription, especially one that was not a clan chieftain but just an ordinary wolf, was difficult for them to grasp. Furthermore, for Faolan to call the bones “beautiful” was eccentric to say the least.

But to Faolan, the bones of his mother were beautiful — they were lustrous with a pale gray patina. The
knurled ends of her femurs rose and fell like waves in a stormy sea. Her skull seemed to shine with a blinding white — all of her bones were lovely. Faolan stepped closer to his sisters. Their fur was stained with blood from gorging on the musk ox, but he caught the golden flecks in their eyes. “You want to know about your first Milk Giver, don’t you?” he said softly.

“Oh, yes,” they answered, although it seemed more like a sigh in the air than actual words.

“I’ll take you to her
drumlyn
and show you the story of her life. But first we must go to the Namara.”

They were standing on the edge of the Broken Talon bight. Normally they would have had to swim across it and follow the coast to get to the Carreg Gaer of the MacNamara clan. But while the waters of the Bittersea churned with gales, the bight was protected from harsh winds and had frozen solid. They could run straight across it, saving a great deal of time.

They were across the bight before high noon, and a short time later, two MacNamara scouts came racing toward them.

“We thought you were musk oxen!” exclaimed the first, a large brown male wolf, skidding to a halt. The other
scout blinked at them, for their fur was stiff with blood and they reeked with the scent of the musk cow.

“Faolan, is that you?” the second scout asked.

Faolan dropped the curved horn of the musk ox he had been carrying for his mother’s
drumlyn
.

“Yes.” He quickly explained about the creature caught in the avalanche. And with their pelts spangled with frozen blood and hoarfrost, the three wolves trotted after the scouts into the encampment of the Carreg Gaer of the MacNamara clan.

Idiot! Idiot wolf!
The words kept up a din in Gwynneth’s brain that she thought could almost be heard by the Sark and Liam on the ground below her. They were following the cowardly wolf on the trail to Gwyndor’s hero mark, to the place where he had died and his bones were resting.

“We’re getting near!” The Sark tipped her head up to call to Gwynneth, who was skillfully navigating through the thick trees of the Shadow Forest.

“Yes, we are. How can you tell?” Liam asked.

“I can smell the rabbit-ear moss,” the Sark replied.

“Oh, yes, I forgot about your keen sense of smell,” Liam mumbled.

“You forgot more than that, you idiot!” Gwynneth called down. She was wearing her father’s helmet and visor now.

A quarter of an hour later they arrived at Gwyndor’s grave and Gwynneth lighted down. “So this is the place?” she asked.

Liam nodded. There was an immense blue spruce tree and even Gwynneth could smell the spicy rabbit-ear moss that crawled partway up its trunk. The moonlight filtering through the boughs of the spruce was tinged a silvery blue and cast a pool of lovely light.
This is a nice place to die
, Gwynneth thought as her dark eyes filled with tears. “And his bones —” Her voice broke.

“In the hollow,” the Sark replied, nodding toward a cavity in the tree trunk not far from the ground. “I can smell them.”

“My father wanted them as high as possible off the ground. That was as far as he could reach,” Liam said in a small voice. “He didn’t want any animals to disturb the bones.”

Gwynneth and the Sark whipped around to glare at him.

“Rather ironic, isn’t it, that his own son was the one he had to guard against,” snarled the Sark.

The Sark felt the softest whisper of a breeze stir across the withers at the base of her neck. She looked up. Gwynneth was hovering up near the spruce’s top branches, gently nestling her father’s helmet into the highest hollow in the tree. In her beak she held a bone — one of the fourteen vertebrae in an owl’s neck. They had nearly twice as many vertebrae as most animals, as she was fond of pointing out. When she had finished safeguarding the helmet and the bone in the new hollow, she alighted on the ground. “I’m going to take every single one of these neck bones and put them way up there.” She spun her head about quickly. “Then Da can keep watch over his hero mark!”

When Gwynneth had completed this task, she perched on a branch just outside the hollow. She looked up through the interlacing branches silvered by the light of the moon. She would wait patiently, she thought, wait for Auntie’s scroom. As she caught the first glimpse of a vaporous mist float down through the branches, she began to
wilf
.