Chapter 123: Fiadh's Strength

The horn was a Ravenscar horn and it came from the ridge.

I went to the window.

There were wolves on the ridge. Twenty of them at least, and there were torches and there was a line of them going down toward the harbour, and the light from the torches moved on the wet heather like something crawling.

"They have come back," Ronan said.

"They have come back and they have brought more." I turned round. "Colm. Get every wolf in this house into the hall. Oisin, get the wounded down to the cellar and put the coal chute bolt across it. Padraig, the writ."

Padraig was already at the table with his pen.

"It will take an hour," he said.

"Then it will take an hour and we will hold the house until it is done."

I went down to the hall.

The nine were there. Nessa was there with her face still black with coal. Colm's brother was there with his arm in a sling. The woman who had signed Maeve's paper and had come back was there with a poker in her hand and her sleeves rolled.

"Right," I said. "There are twenty wolves on that ridge and there will be more by morning. There are nine of us in this house and two of them are wounded and one of them is a healer. We are not going to go out and meet them. We are going to hold this house until the writ is written and then we are going to send it north and then we are going to hold it until the Council answers."

"Luna," Colm said. "There are twenty of them."

"There are twenty of them and there is one door and there is a stair and there is a hall." I looked at him. "I have been in nine packs and I have never once been in a house that was taken by a wolf who did not have the patience for a long night. We are going to be patient."

We held the house.

They came at the door at eleven and we had the tables up against it and they came at the windows at midnight and we had the shutters barred. They came at the coal chute at two and found it bolted and they came at the back door at three and found Colm and his brother behind it.

I did not shift.

That was the thing that surprised me. I had shifted four times and every time it had hurt and every time I had been frightened. This time I did not shift at all. I stood at the top of the stairs with my hands on the rail and I called down to the wolves in the hall and I told them where to stand and what to do and I did not once feel the wolf come up.

There was a moment around two in the morning when the door gave.

It gave six inches and a Ravenscar wolf got his arm through the gap and Colm's brother put his weight against the table and the woman with the poker hit the arm and the arm went back. And I stood on the stairs and said, hold it, and they held it.

And around three the back door came in and there were four Ravenscar wolves in the kitchen and Oisin met them with a knife and Nessa threw a pot of boiling water and the four went back out through the hole they had made.

I did not shift.

I do not know why. I have thought about it since and I do not know. There was something in my chest that was steady and warm and it was not the wolf and it was not the false bond. It was the nine wolves in the hall and the mate in the bed upstairs and the fourteen on a harbour wall in the north who had stood for a founder they had known for two months.

I did not need the wolf that night. I had something better.

At four in the morning they stopped.

I went to the window.

The ridge was empty. The torches were gone and the line was gone and there was nothing on the harbour road but the dark.

"They have gone," I said.

"They have not gone," Ronan said from the bed. "They have gone to get more."

"Then we have until morning."

I went down to the hall.

The nine were sitting on the floor with their backs against the walls and their faces grey and their hands dirty. Nessa was asleep with her head on Colm's shoulder and her mouth open. There was blood on the flags by the door and a chair in pieces by the window and the fire had gone out.

They all looked up when I came down.

"Luna," Colm said.

"The ridge is empty," I said. "They have gone to get more and they will be back by morning. But we held the house and we held it all night and there is a writ being written upstairs that is going to go north with the first boat."

The hall was quiet.

And then the woman who had signed Maeve's paper stood up.

"Luna," she said. "I signed a paper against you in the spring and I have been sorry for it since the night the rogues came over the border. I have been in this house since I was a girl and I have never once seen a wolf hold a line like you held it tonight." She put her hand out. "I am with you."

Colm stood up.

"I am with you."

And then the rest of them stood up one after another and said it and the sound of it went round the hall.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs.

"Thank you," I said. "Now get some sleep. We have until morning."

I went back up.

Padraig was at the table with the writ in front of him and his pen down and his old face grey with tiredness.

"It is done," he said.

I picked it up.

It was three pages and it was in Padraig's careful hand and it said that the Luna of the Blackthorn Pack, Fiadh, healer, of the founder's line, did hereby offer to the Council of Alphas the ledger of the ritual network, the list of the nineteen, the letters of the keeper Eamon, and the full claim of the founder's bloodline, in exchange for a writ of protection for the Blackthorn territory, a healer and a surgeon to be sent to the coast, and the opening of the spring under the northern seat for the healing of a silver wound.

And at the bottom there was a line for my name.

I signed it.

Ronan was asleep in the bed with his shoulder bound and his face grey and the silver still in his blood.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my hand on his chest.

And the door opened and Nessa came in with her face white.

"Luna," she said. "There is a wolf at the gate. He is on his own and he has a white flag and he is asking for you."

"Who is it?"

Nessa looked at me.

"It is the envoy," she said. "It is Lorcan."