Chapter 42: Ronan's Choice

The long room was packed by eleven. By half past it was too full to get through and wolves were standing on the benches at the back to see over the heads in front.

I got Ronan into the sickroom and shut the door and made him sit on the cot while I worked. The shoulder I cleaned and packed and bound tight. The cut on his forehead I left, because there was no time for it. The arm with the roots in it I wrapped from wrist to elbow in clean linen and told him not to shift it if he could help it, which was a thing to say to a man about to go into a fight.

"How is the shaking?" I said.

"Better."

"You are lying."

"I am." He held out his hand and it was steady enough. "I have had a cup of Padraig's draught and it has taken the edge off. It will not last past ten minutes and I know that."

I sat down on the cot beside him.

"I have one thing to say to you and then I will not say it again," I said. "Pride is not worth dying for. It is not worth it, Ronan. I have watched men die of pride in mining towns and fishing towns and one very bad winter in the north, and every one of them thought they were doing something noble, and every one of them was wrong." I turned to look at him. "When you go down, and you will go down, I want you to yield. Not for the pack. Not for the seat. Yield for me. Because I am the one who will have to put you back together afterwards and I cannot do it if you are dead."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"I will yield if I go down," he said. "That is a promise. But I am not going down in the first two minutes, and I am not going to stand in that ring and let Maeve think she can have this pack because I was too tired to fight for it." He stood up. "Come on. It is nearly noon."

The long room had been cleared. The benches were pushed back to the walls and the tables were gone and the floor had been swept and there was a space in the middle about twelve feet across. Padraig stood at the head of it with his stick and his old face set. Maeve was already there, barefoot on the boards, with her copper curls tied back and her sleeves rolled.

Ronan walked into the middle of the room and the whole pack went quiet.

"Under the old law," Padraig said, "this challenge is called and accepted. Shifted, no weapons, first to yield or first to be unable to continue. I judge. The healer stands at the edge of the ring and if she calls a stop, the fight stops." He looked at both of them. "Is there anything either of you wants to say before it begins?"

Maeve shook her head.

Ronan looked round the room. He looked at the wolves along the walls and the ones standing on the benches and the ones in the doorway, and then he looked at me.

"Nine years ago," he said, "this pack chose me over Maeve's father's daughter, and I have tried every day since to be worth that choice. I have not always managed it. I have been ill and I have hidden it and I have made decisions that cost this pack more than they should have." He paused. "Whatever happens in this room today, the wolf who stands in this ring with me is a good Beta and a good wolf and she has held this house together while I could not."

Maeve's jaw worked. She did not say anything.

"Begin," Padraig said.

They shifted.

I have seen a great many shifts in my life and I have never got used to any of them. There is a moment where the body stops being one thing and becomes another, and it is not beautiful and it is not terrible, it is just a thing that happens, like a wave breaking.

Maeve's wolf came up red and low and fast. She was smaller than Ronan in the wolf shape, wiry and quick, and she went in low and did not give him time to settle.

Ronan's wolf came up slow.

That was the first thing I saw and the first thing I knew. His wolf was a big animal, red like his hair, broad in the chest and heavy in the shoulder, and it should have been the biggest wolf in that room. It came up and it staggered. It got its feet under it and it stood there and it was shaking, and the whole room saw it.

Maeve hit him in the shoulder and took him off his feet.

The pack made a sound. It was not a cheer. It was the sound of wolves who had hoped to be wrong.

Ronan got up. He got up slower than he had gone down and he turned to face her, and Maeve circled him and came in again, and this time he met her. They went down together in a knot of fur and the boards shook under them and I heard teeth meet and somebody in the crowd shouted.

I had my hands at my sides and my kit at my feet and I watched every second of it.

It lasted four minutes.

He got her once, a good hit on the flank that sent her skidding across the boards, and the pack roared, and for about ten seconds it looked like the old Ronan was in the room. Then he turned too slowly and Maeve came in from the side and got her teeth into the bad shoulder.

He made a sound I have not heard before and I hope never to hear again.

He went down. She had him by the shoulder and his legs went out from under him and he hit the boards on his side, and she stood over him with her teeth in him and her weight on him and the whole room waited.

"Yield," Padraig said. "Alpha. Yield."

Ronan's wolf tried to get up.

It got one leg under it and then the other and it was shaking from the ears to the tail and there was blood on the boards, and Maeve let go of his shoulder and stepped back to let him rise, because a challenge is a challenge and she is not a killer.

He got up.

He got up and stood there swaying on his four legs with his head down and his breath going in great tearing pulls, and then he turned to face her again.

"Enough," I said.

The room turned.

I stepped into the ring. I put myself between the two of them with my hands out.

"Enough. He cannot stand. Look at him. He is on his feet and he cannot stand." I turned round to face the room. "I am the healer of this pack and I am calling a stop. This fight is over."

Padraig struck the floor with his stick.

"The fight is over," he said. "The Beta wins."

The room did not cheer. It did not do anything at all. Maeve shifted back into her human shape and stood there breathing hard with blood on her mouth that was not her own, and Ronan's wolf went down onto the boards and lay there with its side heaving.

I knelt down beside him and put my hands into the red fur and the pull in my chest turned over and went cold.

"Healer," Padraig said, behind me. "Is he alive?"

I did not answer.

Down in the harbour, the Council boat's bell began to ring again.