The War of the Ember (14 page)

W
olf scouts from the Beyond and owl scouts from various stations were dispatched immediately to report on the progress of the enemy troops that had been surging out of Kuneer. In relays they reported back to Coryn, who was already established in the Beyond. Nyra was reported to have arrived with an advance unit of Pure Ones at the northern border of Ambala, where they had encountered and skirmished with units of Ambalan owls. The casualties were low. And the Pure Ones were now slicing across the northern corner of the canyonlands, choosing a longer route rather than fighting a headwind that would exhaust them.

In the meantime, Coryn looked out upon his own troops from his perch on top of the westernmost yondo, his back to the direction from which the enemy owls would approach. The Band perched on either side of him. He looked out at the harsh land between where he perched and the Sacred Ring. The Guardians numbered
five hundred owls all told. That number, however, did not account for the other animal species from the Northern Kingdoms, which had been streaming in at a steady rate.

The Strix Struma Strikers needed no introduction to the strategy of Gareth’s Keep. The late founder of their unit, Strix Struma herself, had devised it. Behind them was the flame squadron, then the fighting companies from the Northern Kingdoms: the Frost Beaks, the Glauxspeed unit, and an entire division of Kielian snakes who would fight aboard their broad backs. Behind the Glauxspeed were the gadfeathers and the kraals jointly commanded by Madame Plonk. Beyond them, rippling in the dark night like a broad white river, were the polar bears. Finally, lurking around the edges of this mass of creatures, were the wolves of the Beyond in stealth units, or phyrngs, of less than a dozen wolves each, known for the speed and surprise of their attacks.

All in all, it was an incredible assortment of creatures. Never before had such disparate species been brought together to fight as one army. But could these animals so bound to earth vanquish an enemy that soared in the sky? Company by company, the landscape beneath the volcanoes became a solid mass of animals from all parts of the Hoolian world.

Coryn glanced at the unit that Doc Finebeak had just led to the slopes. The crows! He blinked, for among them he saw the white feathers of seagulls. Leaning toward Soren, he whispered, “Are those what I think they are, in among the crows?”

“I believe so. Rumor has it that Doc Finebeak recruited seagulls as well. Together, it is known as the Black and White Brigade. But among the seagulls, their unit is called ‘The Splat.’ They specialize in splat attacks.” Soren paused. “And that means what you think it means!”

“Great Glaux!” Coryn murmured, then began his address to the troops. “Owls, wolves, bears, crows, seagulls. Colliers, Rogue smiths, gadfeathers, kraals—This is a historic moment in the history of our Hoolian world. We have forgotten those things that separate us into species and have come to fight as one. Creatures of honor, creatures of dignity, who value freedom. It makes no difference if we are of fur or feather, earth or sky. You are here because you want to defend your dens, your nests, your ice caves, and because you would not want to be any other place.” He paused and looked out into the sky. The storm had abated, the sky had cleared, and an amazing sight was melting out of the night. Crisp white marks, rather like punctuation points
in the night, marked with bright slashes of orange. “Great Glaux!” Coryn said, astounded. Fifty or more puffins were landing in a tightly packed formation. They made their way to the front ranks just below where Coryn perched.

“Reporting for duty, sir!” Dumpy the Fifteenth said. A frozen fish dropped from his mouth as he spoke.

Coryn continued speaking. “You are here,” he said, looking now directly at Dumpy. “Because you are smart, brave, tough creatures, loyal creatures, good creatures in a world that is threatened by violence. Yes, it is true. Some of us will die. But death must not be feared. Death in time comes to all creatures. Yes, every animal is frightened in its first battle. If that animal claims not to be frightened, then that animal is a liar. The real hero is the animal who fights even though scared. That is courage. There can be no courage without fear. We are all Rogue smiths of courage. We extract the metal of courage from the ore of raw fear. You will transform your fear, and thus yourself. And finally, you will save a kingdom.

“We are going to pin this enemy between these two yondos, these two Hot Gates. And then we are going to come at those Pure Ones in waves and never let up. War is bloody. You are going to have to spill their blood or
they will spill yours. We are few, they are many, but in this land of the Beyond we shall set a standard of valor unmatched in the long history of the Hoolian world. And when you are old and gray, when you are grandmothers and grandfathers and your pups or chicks or cubs ask what you did, you can say, ‘Child, I flew, I ran, I galloped, I fought in the Great Hoolian Army led by the Guardians of Ga’Hoole!’”

And then it was not but an hour later that the sky began to shake, not with thunder but the sound of a thousand wings beating the air. An enemy army of owls so vast, so massive that it was nearly unimaginable.

Coryn flew to the high tip of the yondo, and Soren to another, both brandishing ice scimitars. A signal was given and the dire wolves rushed out in classic double byrrgis formation. Though they stood only half as tall as the polar bears, they began leaping straight up to a distance that was twice the bears’ height as they herded the first ranks of the approaching enemy owls and funneled them through the two gates to trap them. Colliers of the Sacred Ring swooped down, launching thousands upon thousands of burning embers. The sky sizzled with the red-hot trajectories inscribed against the black night. Behind them, like a massive solid wall, a phalanx
of polar bears reared up. The attacking owls that slipped through the ember grid were batted out of the sky by the bears with their massive paws.

“We are holding them off!” Twilight cried. He and his two brothers together formed a flying wedge that blasted through the capricious winds, heading off any owls who broke through these first barriers of the ember grid and the polar bear phalanx. Some of the enemy did breach these barriers. But the three brothers chased them relentlessly. “Tarn, you fool,” cried Tavis, for Tarn the Burrowing Owl, with a squad of a dozen owls, was advancing on Coryn. The three brothers flew and fought together as if they had been doing it all their lives.

Chase that tail! Let him wail.

Slug him, bug him,

That pile of splat.

Mow him down, the dirty rat.

The three chased Tarn and his small contingent. Meanwhile, Soren and Ruby and other members of the flame squadron pressed, with burning branches, a larger contingent of Pure Ones that was trying to breach the eastern flank. They were not having much success.
Half of those enemy troops had managed to slip by them, but suddenly, as the dawn was approaching, tinting the horizon a cool pink against the hot red of battle, a loud roar went up. It was the Strix Struma Strikers under the command of Otulissa, flying in her late mentor’s position on the windward flank. They had just routed a sub squad that had broken into the armory. Quentin, the quartermaster in charge, an elderly Barred Owl, had tried to hold them off but he was injured. Soren caught all this as Otulissa screamed by him shouting commands: “Vacuum transport needed at armory!” A half dozen sky medics led by Cleve flew by seconds later.

Coryn raced to the armory. “Hold on, old fellow! Hold on!” He crouched over Quentin, who had collapsed in the cave. A wolf was helping by cleaning up the wound to his port wing.

“Coryn,” gasped the old Barred Owl.

“Don’t try to talk now, Q. You have to save your strength.”

“No, Coryn. Listen to me. Dawn is coming. I have an idea. These ice shields. They’re cloud ice, you know.” Cloud ice was ice that was opaque because of trapped air bubbles.

“Q, you shouldn’t be talking.”

“I’m not hurt badly. Not as bad as it looks. You’ve got to listen to me!” There was a fierceness in his amber eyes. “That cloud ice. I’ve been experimenting with it. I got an idea when this wolf was licking up my blood…what’s his name?”

“What’s your name?” Coryn asked, swiveling his head toward a gray-and-black wolf.

“Patches, sir.” His left forepaw was deformed. Obviously, a gnaw wolf who would have been destined for the Sacred Watch if the ember had been buried in the volcano. Coryn felt a stirring in his gizzard. The ember itself was tucked away right now in the armory cave, one bucket amid many toward the back. These buckets were only to be broken out if they were low on coals at the ignition stations and only with Coryn’s explicit permission. It would have been easy perhaps to return the ember in the thick of battle, but before he did it he had plans for it. To himself, Coryn called those plans Operation Death Lure. He would lure Nyra and the Striga into an absolutely indefensible position. There would be no escape. If the ember could be the instrument through which these two owls met their deaths, then it was worth all the grief it had caused.

Coryn turned his attention back to Quentin. “His name is Patches. Now, what do you want to tell him?”

“Patches, young’un,” Quentin said softly. “You got brothers? Sisters?”

“Yes, sir. But you know, they don’t pay me much heed, sir.”

“Now why’d that be?” Quentin asked. Coryn was ready to explode. He did not feel Quentin should be wasting his energy. He could see that the old Barred Owl was growing weaker.

“Because I am lame.”

“Well, I’m not shunning you. You’re important. You cleaned up my blood with that tongue of yours. It’s a rough tongue. Good for polishing. You go get your brothers and your sisters. And you tell them that the quartermaster, that’s me, Quentin, Barred Owl.
Strix varia…
”

“For Glaux’s sake, you don’t have to give your species, Q. Save your breath.”

But Q paid him no attention. His amber eyes were set on Patches’ green eyes. “Get those wolves now. In the back of the cave are four dozen ice shields. Start licking them. Lick them until they glow, until they are burnished, then set them out.” Painfully, he turned his head now toward Coryn. He closed his eyes and spoke. “I want those shields to flash, flash brilliantly, blindingly…do…you…understand? Dawn’s about to break. The
armory faces east—the rising sun. Do…you…understand?”

Coryn did! And it was just then he noticed the trickle of blood coming from behind Q’s head. He heard Patches gasp, for the wolf saw it at the same time. “Don’t lick it.” Q said in a low, rough whisper. “Save your spit, lad.” There was a rough billowy hiccup sound, then quiet. A slight breeze seemed to pass through the cave.
Gone, he’s gone!
Coryn thought.
The old quartermaster is…
But before he could complete the thought, Patches was racing from the cave.

F
rom her command position outside the yondos, Nyra squinted into the rising sun. The glare was ferocious. Not only did the sun burn, but two east-facing volcanoes, Dunmore and Morgan, had begun to erupt sporadically. The glare of the flames intensified. The battleground became quiet for the moment. “We shall hold off for now. We need to regain our strength and wait for reinforcements,” Nyra shouted to her troops.

Next to her the Striga perched. He leaned over and whispered to her, “Just eighteen more hours, and then, my dear…”

Nyra once again silently railed at the intimacy of the Striga’s tone. It had no place on a battlefield. “Yes, eighteen more hours until the great hatching. And you feel the first flight could come almost immediately?”

“Yes, I am certain.”

The hours of the day crept by slowly. In each camp the leaders, though exhausted, could not rest. Coryn
was in deep discussion with his uncle and the rest of the Band.

“So,” Soren said, turning to Hamish. “As far as we know there’s been no news from the slink melf as to whether they arrived at the Ice Talons.”

“I doubt they would send any word back. The only way we would know is if someone spotted Namara and her clan of wolves swimming across the Everwinter Sea and up the straits.”

“So we must simply wait,” Digger said ominously.

A young lieutenant from the Frost Beaks appeared. It was a Scops Owl, tiny, with delicate talons. “A message from the enemy: They want to parley.”

“It could be a trick,” Otulissa said immediately.

“Could be, yes,” Coryn said. But he was anxious to hear what they had to say. Was it time for Operation Death Lure? He swiveled his head toward Hamish, who since the war had begun, had become an indispensable advisor because of his knowledge of the territory.

“We can send a wolf guard with you. I would advise meeting them on the high ridgeline just outside the Hot Gates,” Hamish said.

“No,” Coryn said. “I will take only my uncle, Soren.”

Coryn and Soren flew to the ridge. Nyra and the Striga faced them on another ridge.

“Listen to me,” Nyra shouted out. “Do not think that because we are outside the Hot Gates of the Sacred Ring we have retreated. Clever of you to polish those ice shields. But the dawn dies as the sun rises. And reinforcements come. By noon tomorrow your flame squadron, your Strix Struma Strikers, your Frost Beaks will be finished because our hagsfiends will blot out the sun and you will die.”

“Then we shall fight you in the shade!” Coryn replied.

“Be sensible. Lay down your weapons.” The Striga stepped forward on the perch.

“Come and get them,” Coryn said in a deadly voice that rang out. A wild cheer went up from the colliers of the Sacred Ring. “Our parley is over!”

As they flew back, Soren glanced at the shields. Nyra was right. This trick would only work at dawn, but he thought,
Supposing we could form a phalanx of ice shields, overlapping ice shields that could be strategically moved? A mobile unit?
The hagsfiends’ most powerful weapon was their fyngrot, the deadly yellow glare that streamed from their eyes, which induced an instant paralysis and caused
its victims to go yeep. But what if the poisonous yellow glare could be turned back on the attackers?

“We need Otulissa!” Soren said. “I have an idea.”

The fighting resumed shortly after the parley, but there was enough time to arrange flying phalanx. It was composed of the largest owls and captained by the eagles Zan and Streak, who had accompanied the Ambalan owls to the front. The eagles were large enough to manipulate two shields each in their talons and another in their beaks. They would make up the center span of the phalanx. Gylfie flew as the coxswain, or steer bird. Her task was to call out the shifting positions in accordance with the hagsfiends’ movements and the wind. The flying ice shield would have to be navigated through the sky, and the tiny Elf Owl’s navigation skills were unequaled. She was precisely the owl for this job.

As the day dwindled into night, a short cease-fire was called and the moon rose, full shine in its cycle. This night would bring the eclipse. The tension among the animals increased. An unnerving silence settled on the battlefield, a sense of unreality as all waited for that moment when the earth’s shadow would creep across that of the moon, first just nibbling away at its luminous roundness, then gnawing great chunks from it, and finally swallowing it. Would those dark eggs in the ice
nests begin to hatch? After a thousand years, would the hagsfiends slip back once more into the world of owls?

The quiet thickened. “They will hatch. They will come!” a voice screeched. It was the Striga who spoke. The night grew blacker and blacker as the earth’s shadow slid on its inexorable path across the moon, and into the darkness he whispered, “And when the moon shines again, there will be a new order and I shall rule with my queen, Nyra, the supreme, all-powerful Empress of the Tytonic Union of Pure Ones.”

There was an enormous shree. Coryn recognized it as the voice of his mother, Nyra. She and the Striga were both drunk on the vision of their own impending omnipotence. Coryn thought,
They are defying Glaux. They believe they are Glaux, and that is their fatal flaw!

While every creature on the field of battle tipped its head to watch the moon, Coryn slipped back to the armory. There were still stains of Quentin’s blood on the cave’s floor, though his body had been removed. Coryn dipped his beak into one of the countless buckets, extracted the Ember of Hoole, and, under the cover of the complete blackness of the eclipse, flew toward Hrath’ghar, the very same volcano from which he had taken the ember many moon cycles before. This, Coryn knew, was the most important mission of his life. Many
thoughts streamed through his mind. His gizzard quivered with a storm of sensations. It seemed not that long ago that he had retrieved the ember.
Now,
Coryn thought,
I am returning it.
His greatness had begun with the ember.
But what I do now is greater. This I know.
And Coryn’s gizzard tingled with a joy that he had never before known. He remembered vividly that day when he had retrieved the ember. He had whistled out of Hrath’ghar’s crater with a blazing rainbow of sparks streaming from the ember. The cheers, the wild joy that swept through the air! Within a space of seconds, he had gone from outcast to hero, from the son of tyrants to king of the most noble owls on earth. But now Coryn knew that it was better to release than to retrieve, to yield rather than capture. He neared the rim of Hrath’ghar, then he was in the deep cauldron of its crater. He swooped and flew close to the leaping flames within the crater, which suddenly died down as if to welcome him. Bubbles of lava boiling to the surface popped open like dark mouths awaiting the gift they were about to receive. Coryn dropped the ember quietly, closed his eyes, and felt, despite the fierce heat of the volcano, a cool breeze. A profound relief swept through his gizzard. “At last,” he murmured.
At last!
But he did not linger. The fighting would resume as soon as the moon’s light returned. He would be ready.

At the same moment Coryn dropped the ember into the crater, the first contingent of the blue owls of the Danyar Division arrived. The horizon was touched with a strange blue tinge. So startling was the spectacle of the legions of iridescent owls that there was a lull in the fighting. All eyes were trained on the horizon to the far west. No one noticed Coryn flying over the volcano save one: Hamish, who scampered from a wolf hole dug near the front lines and walked almost casually in the direction Coryn was flying. He did not want to attract attention. But almost as soon as Coryn had taken the ember, Hamish had sensed it, for he had been a member of the Watch. It was like a distant call, a summoning. He felt his leg begin to grow crooked again and the limp return. But he felt his body grow stronger, as was the way with gnaw wolves of the Sacred Watch. His muscles and sinews swelled. Despite his limp, a litheness suffused his body. He was the new Fengo of the Sacred Watch. The keenest, most alert, most powerful wolf became the Fengo. He raised his snout. The she-winds, those winds unique to the Sacred Ring, had begun to blow. He climbed to the top of one of the towering mounds of gnaw bones. These mounds, or cairns, encircled the volcanoes of the Sacred Ring. When the ember lay buried in a volcano, atop each cairn a gnaw wolf sat its watch.
Hamish looked. He saw his old teacher, Banquo, returning to the mound next to his, and then came Fleance, and Donalbain.
They know!
thought Hamish. Banquo gave him a slight nod as if to say, “‘Tis back.” His tilted green eyes sparkled as the moon emerged from earth’s shade. One minute passed, then another, then an hour, and yet there was nary a sign of a hagsfiend. But then in the glare of the full-shine moon, an alarm went out. Wolves, but not those of the Sacred Watch, began to howl.

Hamish was suddenly alert. His ears pricked forward. He tipped his head toward the sky, which was streaked with moonlight. But still no hagsfiends.

“Who is the traitor?” someone roared. Then the MacNamara clan stormed in. Namara had Cato MacHeath by the throat. She threw his body down. “They are coming. The Pure Ones. Hecate showed them the old caribou pass, round back of the yondos. They come now. See them.”

“But no hagsfiends?” Coryn had landed beside the wolf.

“No.” Namara immediately prostrated herself before her commander, in the position of submission. “There are no hagsfiends. Nor will there be. Eggs destroyed. Mission accomplished, Your Majesty.” Alighting next to
her were two owls, Braithe, a Whiskered Screech from Ambala, and his mate, Fiona. Braithe now stepped forward. “The wolves of Namara fought splendidly, sir.”

The world resolved itself into a velvety darkness. The she-winds died to a whisper and all that could be heard was the crackling of lava bubbles in the volcanoes’ craters. There was a sudden beating of wings. And a shrill cry from Nyra, “Two thousand strong we are now. Surrender the ember and we shall go in peace.”

“Never!” Coryn shouted back.

Why doesn’t he say that the ember is gone? That it is deep in the crater?
Hamish wondered.
What is he trying to do?
And then it struck Hamish. Coryn wanted to use it as the lure. The ember might be buried, but Coryn had unfinished business. And this was, in a sense, the ember’s last glow.
And,
Hamish thought as the reality dawned on him,
Coryn will never rest until he knows Nyra is dead.

“Lay down the ember!” Nyra cried out.

And this time he replied, “Come and get it.”

Coryn quickly seized a bonk coal. Where it came from, Hamish was not sure. Perhaps he had been carrying it all along. Hamish slid his green eyes toward the other gnaw wolves of the watch.
They know,
he thought.
They know.
Coryn might be able to fool Nyra, fool all
the animals who had gathered, but not the wolves of the Watch. They knew that this ember that Coryn now held in his talon was not the Ember of Hoole.

“The moon shines bright! There are no hagsfiends. Dispatch the ice phalanx.” Coryn whispered the command. In the meantime, there were the gusty sounds of the lethal Breaths of Qui as the first Danyar legions began their rout of entire squads of Pure Ones.

There was a small blur as Gylfie whizzed through the air and took up her position. “We shall capture the moon!” she cried out. There was a roar of approval as the flying phalanx took wing and suddenly the night was bright as the overlapping ice shields caught the light from the moon and flung it back into the eyes of the assaulting troops.

Ice missiles sliced the dark while the seagulls led by Doc Finebeak strafed the air just above the Pure Ones with round after round of splat. The enemy was confused and blinded by glaring light and seagull poop. It took three Pure Ones to give chase to one Hoolian owl. Bubo had taken over the position of the fallen quartermaster and was quickly issuing black ice goggles to protect the eyes of Hoolian owls from the glare. Fritha was overseeing ignition stations for the owls that fought with fire. Trees of lightning spread their crackling limbs
in the dark sky as an electrical storm shattered the night and thunderbolts stabbed the darkness.

Coryn, meanwhile, was luring Nyra closer and closer with the ember. Twilight and Soren were trying to protect him, serving as a flanking guard, but Coryn was so quick it was hard to keep up with him or anticipate where he might dart next. With the ember in his beak, a burning branch in his port talon, and an ice scimitar in his starboard one, he was a fearsome sight. But no more fearsome than Nyra.

Twilight’s gizzard seized as he saw a yellow light begin to seep from her eyes. “Great Glaux,” he whispered. “Is she…?” He dared not complete the thought.

Yes. She was becoming a hagsfiend before their very eyes. The yellow glare grew stronger. Soren saw that Coryn had begun to fly unevenly. “It’s the fyngrot!” Did he shout that or did someone else?

Coryn realized what was happening. He was more frightened than he had ever been before. He could taste the bile of his fear. He could feel his muscles locking. He began to stagger in flight. But when he was the most frightened, he stilled his thoughts, reached deep inside himself to the bottom of his gizzard, and from it he extracted the “ore” of his raw fear.
I shall smelt this into courage. I will fight on with my eyes closed if I have to.

At the same time, Coryn had another realization: that although the ember was hidden away and the world was safer, he still had not accomplished all he had set out to do. And if he did not live to be part of that new safer world…well, was not his life a small price to pay for this peace? He knew that he was staring death in the face. And that face was the face of his mother. She had reverted to her true nature. And although his mother’s blood might run through his veins, her nature was not his. He had found his true self in this War of the Ember.

All of his fears dissolved. He was prepared to fly into the wings of death. He had no links to life, no mate, no offspring. But he still had life itself and that he would give gladly, to ensure that Nyra never again tyrannized the world of owls. There would be no peace until she was destroyed. She would never give up. She would always be a threat. This must be the last fight.
It must end here,
he thought. He felt his gizzard throbbing now, not with pain or anxiety but excitement. He was over the crater of Hrath’ghar from where he had first retrieved the ember.