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as barks, but annoyingly squeaky.
    Mhairie wondered if she would ever be able to be a good mother. It was so exhausting. How does Mum stand it? she wondered. But Caila did. And who would have thought that Caila would give birth to six lively pups at her advanced age? Not a malcadh among them.
    But now Mhairie felt a terrible loneliness and anger. Why had that gnaw wolf gone and spoiled everything for her? When she came back, the wolves, the outflankers inthe MacDuncan clan who had sent her to run with this byrrgis , were visibly disappointed. Alastrine, the point wolf of the chieftain’s pack, tried to soothe Mhairie in her thick musical brogue, for she was also the skreeleen of the pack. She delighted in using the old wolf phrases that had come with the wolves on the Ice March from the Long Cold more than a thousand years earlier. “Don’t worry, my dear heart. Don’t greet .” Greet was an old wolf word, which meant “to fret.” “You’re so young. Younger than I ever was when I ran with the outflankers. Another day, another hunt, another byrrgis , dearie. Be patient.”
    He wrecked everything was all Mhairie could think. That moldwarp, beslubbering, canker-livered gnaw wolf. She dredged up from her brain every vile wolf curse she could think of and was muttering them into the darkness of her den. These were words that would have earned her a muzzle-flinging nip from her mum. She could almost feel Caila’s jaws clamping down on her and hurling her across the cave.
    But it wasn’t just that Faolan had demolished her first-ever run with the outflankers. There was more to it, and she was almost as angry with herself as with the gnaw wolf. What was it about this wolf that had gotten underher pelt like a summer tick and annoyed her almost as much as her younger brothers and sisters? And yet, just as with her younger pup siblings, she felt a need to look out for Faolan. Or to beat him like the wrath of Lupus and turn his bones to dust!

CHAPTER SEVEN
T HE P AW OF T HUNDERHEART
    FAOLAN SET OFF IMMEDIATELY after being escorted from the gadderheal . Adair had led him to the edge of the Carreg Gaer’s territory and had given him directions for finding the other packs of the MacDuncan clan, as well as instructions in the rituals of contrition. Faolan listened, but his mind was occupied with something else. The words of Duncan MacDuncan echoed in his ears.
    Do you know what a gaddergnaw is?…a contest to select a gnaw wolf—the best gnaw wolf—for the Watch at the Ring of Sacred Volcanoes…. You have it in you, Faolan…. You could be selected. You have fine teeth for carving and you have strength. However, you have no sense. But the gaddergnaw, Faolan—this could be your chance!
    A high-ranking wolf sending off a shamed gnaw wolf normally would have given him a sharp, almost stunning blow to the top of his muzzle, but the slap that Adair administered qualified somewhere between a pat and a thwack. Indeed, it almost missed Faolan’s muzzle entirely, for Adair could not bear to look at Faolan. He sees moon rot in me, but Duncan MacDuncan didn’t. Duncan MacDuncan saw something else!
    “Be on your way, gnaw wolf,” Adair snarled. “Learn from your disgrace! Roll in the scent of your shame. And save any dreams you might entertain of the gaddergnaw . For while you are on your trail of shame, the gnaw wolves’ preparation for the competition will begin in earnest.” He paused, then added nastily, “And you shall miss out!”
    And so Faolan set off into the darkness with his bone of shame gripped in his mouth.
     
    There is a time of night when the world seems almost empty. There is an overwhelming hollowness after the moon has slipped away to another world, and the constellations have slid to another Beyond. The stars expire one by one like the last small breaths of illumination in thedarkness, and the night goes dead before the first weak glow of the dawn.
    Faolan had not traveled far before Alastrine’s first