Chapter 40: The Storm on the Coast

The boat came into the harbour with the Council flag snapping at the mast and twelve wolves on the deck, and it did not stop at the pier. It came on past the pier and nosed up to the slip and the wolves came off it in a line.

Ronan met them at the top of the slip with eight warriors behind him and Bran's two at his shoulder.

The leader was a woman in a grey coat with a face like a hatchet and a seal in her hand.

"I am Petra, of the Council's guard," she said. "I am here on the envoy's order to place the Blackthorn Pack under review and to secure the person of the healer known as Fiadh pending investigation."

"On what charge?" Ronan said.

"On the charge of unregistered practice and the unlawful binding of an Alpha." Petra held up the seal. "Step aside, Alpha. This is not a request."

Ronan did not step aside.

"You will not take her," he said.

Petra looked at him and then at the eight warriors and then at Bran's two, and something in her face changed. She was counting.

"Alpha," she said, "I have twelve and you have ten and half of your pack is standing on that wall watching and not one of them has come down to stand with you. Do not make this a fight you will lose."

It was then that the sky broke.

I have been on this coast for a month and I have seen weather come in fast, but I have never seen anything like that. The wind came off the Atlantic like a wall and the rain came with it, and the whole harbour went white in about ten seconds. The Council boat lurched against the slip and one of the twelve went down on his knees. A shutter came off the pack house and went end over end across the road.

Petra shouted something and her wolves broke formation and ran for the boat, and the boat's crew were fighting the ropes, and Ronan grabbed my arm and shouted in my ear, "The house."

We ran.

The pack house roof had already gone in one place. The wind had taken the slates off the east side and the rain was coming into the dormitory and the young wolves were running about with buckets and blankets and Nessa was standing at the bottom of the stairs shouting at them to get the bedding down to the kitchen.

Ronan went up. I went after him.

The dormitory was a mess of wet straw and broken slate and the rain coming in sideways through the hole in the roof, and there were four young wolves in there who had no idea what to do and one of them was crying.

"Get the bedding out," Ronan said. "Leave the rest. Colm, get up on the roof and see if you can get a tarpaulin over the hole before the whole thing goes."

"I cannot get up there in this."

"Then get four others and hold each other on and do it." Ronan had his coat off and his sleeves rolled. "Fiadh, the sickroom. Get everything off the floor and onto the shelves, the water will come in under the door."

I went down. The kitchen was full of wolves and bedding and the fire was smoking badly and the water was already an inch deep on the flags. I got my tins up onto the top shelf and my book and the page and the ledger into a cloth bag and hung the bag on a hook by the chimney, and then I went back up the stairs with an armful of blankets.

We worked all night.

There is nothing like a storm for showing you what a house is made of. The roof leaked in three places and the rain came in under the doors and the sea came over the harbour wall twice and the boats in the harbour went up and down like corks. Ronan was on the roof twice with a tarpaulin and a rope round his waist, and I was in the kitchen with my tins and a pot of willow bark tea for the ones who had been out in it, and somewhere around two in the morning we met in the corridor with our clothes wet through and our hands full of blankets.

He stopped. He looked at me.

"You have got a cut on your forehead," he said.

"So have you."

"That is not a cut, that is a bit of slate."

"It is a cut. Sit down on the step and let me look at it."

He sat down on the step. I got my cloth out and cleaned the cut and he sat there with his eyes shut and the rain going on outside, and the whole pack went past us in the corridor with buckets and bedding and nobody said anything at all.

I saw them look. That was the thing. They looked at the two of us on the stairs with the storm going on and one of them said something to another one and the other one nodded.

Around four the wind dropped. It dropped all at once, the way it does on this coast, and by five the sky was grey and clean and the harbour was full of wreckage and the boats were all still there, which was more than anyone had hoped for.

We came down into the kitchen and there was no bread and no fire and every wolf in the house was sitting on the floor with a blanket round their shoulders looking like they had been dragged through a hedge backwards. Ronan stood in the doorway and looked at them.

"There is no bread," he said. "There is no fire and there is a hole in the roof and the Council's guard is sitting on a boat in the harbour waiting for the weather to clear so she can come and arrest my healer." He looked round the room. "But the house is standing and every wolf in this pack is in it. That is a good night's work and I will not have anyone tell me otherwise."

Somebody laughed. It was Colm, and it was a tired laugh, but it was a laugh.

And then the kitchen door opened and Maeve came in.

She had been out in the storm. Her copper curls were flat to her head and her coat was dripping and her face was grey with tiredness, and she stood in the doorway with her hands at her sides and looked at Ronan.

"Alpha," she said. "I am calling a challenge. I am calling it this morning, in front of the pack, and I am calling it under the old law. A dying Alpha cannot lead this pack through the twenty eighth and every wolf in this house knows it."

The kitchen went silent.

Ronan looked at her for a long moment.

"I accept," he said.