Chapter 164: The Rogue's Help

The horn was a rogue's horn and it came from the top of the ridge.

I got up off the planks and got my coat on and went out of the bothy.

There were wolves on the ridge. Forty of them, with torches, and at the front of them there was an old wolf with a scarred ear and a mended coat and a lantern in his hand.

Bran.

He came down the ridge with four wolves behind him and stopped in front of the bothy.

"Luna," he said. "Alpha."

"Bran," I said. "What are you doing here?"

"I have been on this road for two days." Bran put the lantern down on the ground. "I have been on the coast road and I have been in the north and I have been in a tavern in the harbour where a keeper's clerk was talking about a bothy in a glen and twenty wolves and a warrant with a seal on it."

The bothy was quiet.

"Then you know why we are here," Ronan said.

"I know why you are here and I know what is in the glen." Bran looked at the valley. "There are twenty Council wolves in the glen and a keeper with a warrant and they have been there since dusk and they have not come up because the gully is narrow and they do not know how many of us there are."

I stood in front of him.

"Bran," I said. "What do you want?"

"I want to give you a thing," Bran said. "I have been a rogue for thirty years and I have been buying wolves and boats and I have been waiting for a seat. And then a healer from Galway told me she would not give a rogue king a war and I have been holding a coast for her for a fortnight." He looked at me. "And I have been in the north and I have been in the taverns and I have heard what the Council is going to do tomorrow."

"What are they going to do?"

"They are going to try the founder in the great chamber at noon and there will be five elders and a keeper and a lord of Ravenscar and there will be a wolf in the chamber who has been paid to say the founder murdered her mother." Bran's jaw worked. "And there will be twenty Council wolves in the glen below this bothy who will take you north tonight if you do not have forty wolves on a ridge."

Ronan stepped forward.

"You want to give us the forty wolves," he said.

"I want to give you shelter and fighters." Bran looked at me. "I have a camp in the highlands above the northern seat. It is not on any map and it is not on any Council road and it has a fire and a roof and forty wolves who have been with me for a year."

"And what do you want for it?"

Bran looked at me.

"I want a condition," he said.

"Name it."

"The rogues have been raiding Blackthorn lands since before I was born," Bran said. "They have taken sheep and boats and they have burned a storehouse in the spring and there is a wolf on your coast who lost a brother to a rogue raid in the year before last. And I have been their king for six years and I have let it happen because a rogue who raids is a rogue who eats."

The bothy was quiet.

"I want it written down," Bran said. "I want a paper with the Luna's name on it that says the rogues will never raid Blackthorn lands again and that the Blackthorn Pack will not hunt rogues on the high road. And I want it done in front of the forty wolves on that ridge."

I looked at him.

"Bran," I said. "You are asking me to make a treaty with a rogue king on a ridge at midnight with twenty Council wolves in the glen below."

"I am asking you to make a treaty with a wolf who has forty wolves and a camp in the highlands and has been holding your coast for a fortnight." Bran looked at me. "Luna. I have been trying to buy a seat for thirty years and I have been doing it with money and hunters and a great deal of patience. And I have worked out that a seat is not a thing you buy. It is a thing you are given by a wolf who trusts you."

I stood on the ridge.

"Oisin," I said. "Get me a paper and a pen."

Oisin got me a paper and a pen.

I wrote it out on the lid of the lantern with the wind coming off the ridge and the forty wolves standing round in a ring and the twenty Council wolves in the glen below.

It said that the rogues of the highlands would never again raid Blackthorn lands and that the Blackthorn Pack would not hunt rogues on the high road and that the treaty would hold for as long as the two wolves who signed it were alive.

I signed it.

Bran signed it.

And the forty wolves on the ridge put their heads back and howled.

We went up into the highlands that night with the forty behind us and the twenty Council wolves in the glen below wondering where the torchlight had gone.

The camp was a mile above the northern seat in a fold of the hills with a fire and a wall and a cave behind it. We got there at dawn and the forty wolves went to their beds and Bran put us in the cave with a fire and a pot of tea.

And Maeve came and sat down beside me at the mouth of the cave with the whole of the north below us.

"Luna," she said. "There is a thing I have to say and I have been putting it off since the mill."

"Say it."

"I have been in the north for three days," Maeve said. "And I have been in a room with the keeper Eamon and a paper and a pen. And there is a thing I did in that room that I have not told you."

I looked at her.

"What did you do?" I said.

Maeve looked at the north below us.

"I told him where the spring is," she said.