(GoG Book 07) The Hatchling (11 page)

“Pull yourself together, for Glaux’s sake. No, I haven’t found anything.”

“ ‘Pull yourself together,’ you say. Easy for you! You’re not falling apart. Pieces of me could be strewn all over the canyonlands—like flares guiding them to us.”

“If there was ever a time not to fall apart it is now, Nyroc,” Phillip shreed at him. “You dragged me out here to find the truth about the Pure Ones and Ga’Hoole. And to do that we must escape from the Pure Ones. You are more than just your feathers. It was not feathers that spoke to those crows. It was not feathers that figured out how to bargain with them and get a free passage. You are brains and you are gizzard. Oh, yes. You made a fine thronken display with your wings, but that was nothing compared to the gallgrot in your gizzard. So don’t let me hear you going on about falling apart.”

Nyroc nodded. He was so ashamed. Phillip was right. If molting was a natural thing, why should he fear it? He and Phillip simply had to get out of the canyonlands. He had to survive. He wanted the truth and more—he
wanted to see a tree, to know the color green, and to maybe even meet his uncle Soren someday. Indeed, the more he thought about his uncle, the more intrigued he became. And when he reflected on what had been revealed to him in the flames of Gwyndor’s fires, his uncle Soren seemed a most extraordinary owl and he longed to know him.

They had just settled in to eat a vole that they had discovered deep in the den. Nyroc had pounced on it and was about to bite off its head.

“Let it go!” Phillip suddenly blurted out.

“Let it go? Are you yoicks?” Nyroc had the fat little fellow gripped in his talons.

“Let it go! They’re back. We don’t want a vole’s blood to give us away.”

Nyroc immediately dropped the vole, which scampered away. He crept up next to Phillip and peered out the small opening of the den.

“Great Glaux, they’re lighting down on the canyon floor! How did they ever find us?”

“I don’t know,” Phillip replied grimly.

“We’re trapped.”

“Maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remember, Nyroc, I told you that these dens are deep. Sometimes there’s a back way out. Let’s go!” Phillip led the way. He flipped his head back as they hopped around the first bend in the den. “If you drop any feathers, pick them up.”

They walked for a very long time in very close quarters. Nyroc had taken the lead. They both felt it was better that Phillip follow in case the young owl molted a feather or two along the way. Phillip had taken some old nesting material from the fox’s birthing bed and was dragging it behind him to cover their tracks. He knew Stryker was a decent tracker. But was he good enough to find them in a fox’s den in a box canyon after they had split up and been so careful circling back?

“Hey, it’s getting wider,” Nyroc called back. “I can almost spread my wings.”

“That’s good.” Phillip was sick of dragging this brushy stuff behind him. The passageway was damp and smelled of dead animals and the scat of creatures he didn’t even want to think about. The walls seemed to weep with water, and there was no moving air. It was not a bird kind of a place at all.

“I’m flying!” Nyroc called back a few seconds later.

The two birds flew through a twisting passageway barely wider than the span of their wings. It felt as if they
were flying in an upward spiral within the canyon walls. They heard rats scurrying about and occasionally the darkness was slashed by the glowing red slits of their eyes. The owls were not tempted to hunt them, even though their stomachs were empty. Indeed, all they thought of was the task. They had become the task, and the task was to escape.

“I see some light ahead,” Nyroc called back.

It couldn’t be much, Phillip thought, for it was almost night. And then as if to answer him, Nyroc called out, “It’s a star.”

They both blasted out from the close, damp, fetid air of the den into the velvety blackness of the night.

“It’s Nevermoves,” Phillip said. “The star that never moves. We must be flying north if we are heading toward that star.”

“Aren’t the Shredders to the north?” Nyroc asked.

“Yes, but don’t worry. We’ll change course before we get there. We’ll cut into The Barrens. Lots of Burrowing Owls there, plenty of ground holes for cover.”

“Dens again!” muttered Nyroc. But he knew he shouldn’t complain. He quickly looked back to see if he was trailing any feathers. “Oh, Glaux! It’s the posse! They’re coming!” Nyroc shreed.

“How did they find us?” Phillip said. “All right. Spiral down,” Phillip yelled.

“Down there?” Nyroc gasped in amazement. Below them were The Needles, sharp and stabbing at the sky. Were they even flyable? They looked so tightly packed together it was hard to imagine any space between them to light down. They were not, however, going to light down.

“This is going to be the fanciest flying you’ve ever done,” Phillip said.

The Needles were meant to be flown over, not between, but that was exactly what the two owls were doing in hopes of confounding and losing the owls who were chasing them. Phillip and Nyroc made quick wing shifts, minute adjustments of flight feathers as they threaded their way at top speed between the rocky spires.

It would be easy to get lost within The Needles’ tangled maze of stone and easy to clip all the plummels off the leading edge of one’s primaries. Nyroc’s muscles began to ache fiercely. He noticed that Phillip had fallen behind him for the first time. Nyroc felt every feather shaft as he had never felt them before. The tiny adjustments he had to make to his primaries, to his greater wing coverts, to his tail coverts were difficult and exhausting. But he must keep flying.
Glaux, even my talons hurt!

What was that ahead? Nyroc blinked. There was something projecting from The Needles directly in front of him. Glaux bless, it was a sliver of rock. He settled down upon it. A moment later, Phillip joined him.

“I don’t think I could have kept going,” Phillip said.

“Do you think we’ve lost them?” Nyroc gasped.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Press in as close as you can. The moon is almost full shine and we could cast shadows.”

“Look, it’s starting to snow again.” Nyroc nodded toward some great roiling gusts of snow.

“Yeah. The Shredders are just where you see those gusts. They toss the snow into whirlpools.”

Nyroc saw. It was frightening. He had never seen wind like this. It not only disturbed the snow, but the very blackness of the sky and the light of the moon looked to Nyroc as if they were swirling violently.

Phillip was looking up. He spoke quietly. “They’ve found us!”

Nyroc felt his gizzard drop to his talons. “No.”

“Yes, but they can’t figure out how to get at us.”

“How long will we be safe here?”

“Not long.”

“Why not?”

“Because there is only one tracker in the entire owl
universe who can find his way in here. Doc Finebeak.” Phillip paused. “And he’s flying with them.”

Nyroc looked up and saw an immense Snowy Owl circling overhead, and between his two wings in the middle of his back another feather rose, long and black.

“What’s that sticking out of his back?” Nyroc asked.

“It’s a crow’s feather. That’s how you know it’s him. The crows love him. He’s a hero to them. And he’s feared.”

“In other words, he has free passage,” Nyroc said.

“Yes, and not just here. Everywhere.” Phillip was silent for a moment. “He’ll find a way to us. Probably before that cloud crosses the moon.”

“What’ll we do?”

“Not much choice, eh? Stuck between The Needles and the Shredders.”

The two owls looked at each other.

Then they both roared a great shree, “The Shredders!” And they blasted straight up from the sliver of rock, out and over The Needles, and headed directly toward the lacerating winds of the Shredders.

N
yra watched the Great Snowy closely as he began to speak. The Pure Ones had retreated from The Needles as soon as they saw where Nyroc and Dustytuft were heading. “We have a situation here that is most unusual.” Doc Finebeak blinked and looked in the direction of the Shredders. “Only the Guardians of Ga’Hoole know how to negotiate those winds. I have never seen birds of any species, not even eagles, voluntarily hurl themselves into the Shredders. If they survive it, which I sincerely doubt, they will emerge dazed and confused.”

“But how do we know for sure whether they get killed or not?” Nyra snapped.

Doc Finebeak looked at her in amazement. One of these birds was her son. She betrayed not a hint of sorrow or fear. She just wanted to be sure of his death. It seemed odd.

“I do not understand my son’s rebellious ways, but I will
not
tolerate rebellion,” Nyra said, as if that explained her lack of feeling.

“I see.” Doc Finebeak nodded. Actually, he didn’t see, but that was immaterial. Doc Finebeak came from Beyond the Beyond. Most hireclaws and owls who would do anything for some kind of payment came from there. Mercenaries seldom questioned motives or reasons as long as they got paid. Payment could be anything from hunting rights in certain closely guarded owl territories where prey was plentiful to coals from Rogue smiths, and in the old days—flecks. In their present condition, the Pure Ones did not have much to offer a superb tracker like Doc. But the Great Snowy felt that it was wise to keep in the good graces of a oncepowerful force. He knew that Nyra was a formidable leader. She could rise to power again. He wanted her in his debt.

“How do we make sure?” Nyra repeated.

“There is a way around the Shredders. I am one of the few who know about it.” He looked directly at Nyra and puffed out his breast a bit. He wanted Nyra to know just how valuable he was. “We will go to the spill-out points on the other side. I know those as well. That is where we will find them, if indeed they survive.”

Uglamore now stepped forward. “Just how many spill-out points are there, Doc?”

“Two or three, at the most. It would be easy for me to find the one they come out of, and remember, they will be confused. Capture should be easy.”

Too easy,
Uglamore thought. This was not the first time he had had doubts about the Pure Ones, their goals, their strategies. Even before The Burning, he had wondered if there might be a better way to train soldiers. He began having these thoughts after a small battle in The Beaks. At that point, the Pure Ones had been better armed than any other group of owls. Their discipline was superb. They had conquered more territory than any other owl army except those of the Northern Kingdoms. And yet they were defeated in The Beaks by far fewer owls, owls who were reported to have little military discipline. It was then that Uglamore began to wonder if a free society like Ga’Hoole might produce a more superior soldier than the regimented one of the Pure Ones. Wits had won that skirmish, not might or discipline.

Since Nyroc’s birth, he had reflected further on these notions. He was drawn to the young hatchling. He shuddered when he saw Nyra’s expectations for him and how she treated him. He wondered how this young hatchling might develop if he had been hatched to a normal owl family, or even more intriguing, if he had been hatched in the Great Ga’Hoole Tree. More disturbing to Uglamore, however, were his thoughts about himself. Even though he was on the brink of achieving the rank of colonel, he had begun to grow very weary of Nyra and her ways.

But where else could an owl of his age go—especially an owl who had distinguished himself for fighting with the most hated union of owls in the world? It was not the defeat at the Battle of The Burning itself that had depressed him but the thought of a future living with the Tytonic Union of Pure Ones. That was when he began to think about the egg that held the new life that would be Nyroc. He actually began to dread the hatching out. And on the night of the eclipse when the egg did hatch out, he had experienced a deep feeling in his gizzard that he could only have described as sorrowful joy. It was said that owls born on such a night as this had upon them an enchantment that gave them unusual powers. Uglamore knew this little hatchling would have powers, but what would they bring him?

So capture would be easy, Doc had said. But perhaps death in the Shredders would be easier for Nyroc. If he did survive, what did he face with his mum? He would be made to go through with the Special ceremony, which he himself had never questioned until now.

Yes,
thought Uglamore,
I passed my Special by killing m dear cousin. So enchanted was I with the old High Tyto, Kludd’s predecessor, that I very soon got over his death.
He had rationalized it to himself until he was certain he’d done the right thing. At the time, it hadn’t seemed to matter nearly as much as
his own ascendancy in the inspiring collection of Barn Owls that would one day rule the world. He had been young then, strong, a skillful fighter, and he was most of all pure, a pure Tyto alba, not one of the lesser breeds like a Masked or a Sooty. Now he wasn’t so sure. Now he had questions.

“Does that answer your question about the spillways, Uglamore?” Nyra asked crisply.

He was about to say
No, General Mam, it does not.
But he was not a young owl anymore. He was beyond his middle years and he had nowhere to go. He would be cast out of any civilized group of owls. So instead he replied, “Yes, General Mam, that certainly does.”

“We will follow Doc Finebeak to the other side of the Shredders to see if Nyroc is…” It was seldom that Nyra hesitated in speaking. She began again. “To see what the outcome is.”

Outcome,
thought Uglamore.
She means, will she find her son dead? And if he is alive, what then?
Uglamore had not meant for this question to pop out. But it did. “General Mam, if Nyroc is alive, what shall be done then?”

“He is a rebellious owl. He shall be disciplined. If he had exhibited this behavior in battle it would be considered treason and he would have to face the most
dire consequences. But he is young and he is rebellious. And I shall give him a second chance.”