Chapter 65: Fiadh Runs

The grey coats came down the steps and there were twelve of them and they had a paper in the hand of the one at the front.

"Fiadh the healer," he called. "Stand where you are."

I did not stand where I was.

I ran.

There is a lane behind the Council house that goes down to the river and there is a bridge at the end of it, and I went down the lane with my boots slipping on the wet stone and the grey coats coming behind me. Oisin shouted something. Ronan shouted my name. I did not stop.

The bridge was old and narrow and there were two Council wolves on it.

I turned left along the river bank instead and went into the pine wood on the far side.

The wood was thick and dark and the ground was soft with needles and there were roots under the needles that caught at my boots. I ran the way a healer runs, which is not fast and not well, and behind me the grey coats came into the wood and spread out.

I could hear them. I could hear everything. The wolf was awake in my chest and it had opened my ears and my nose and the whole wood was loud with the smell of pine and wet earth and twelve wolves.

There is a stream to the north, said the wolf. Cross it. Water hides the scent.

I went north.

I crossed the stream at a place where it widened over stones and I went up the far bank and into the trees and I stopped behind a fallen pine and put my hand over my mouth and breathed.

They came to the stream and they stopped.

I could hear them talking. One of them said something about the scent and another one said it went into the water and a third one said to spread out along the bank.

I stayed behind the fallen pine.

And then the wolf in my chest stood up.

Shift, it said. Shift now.

I cannot. I do not know how.

You know. You did it in the heather. Do it now.

I put my hands on the fallen pine and I shut my eyes and I reached for the door.

It came.

It came worse than the first time because the first time I had not known what was coming. It came over me in the wood with my hands on the pine and it turned every bone in my body over and my jaw came out and my back went down, and I put my face into the needles and I bit down on the pain and I did not scream.

When it was done I was on four legs in the pine wood with the needles in my fur and the whole world bright and sharp.

Run, said the wolf.

I ran.

I have never run like that. I do not have words for it. The wood went past me and the ground went under my paws and the air came into my chest and the whole of the north went by in a blur of green and brown and grey. I ran up the bank and over the ridge and down into the next valley and I did not stop and I did not look back.

And then the ground went out from under me.

There was a drop. It was not a big drop, ten feet maybe, a cut where the stream had undercut the bank, and I went over it in the dark and I came down on the rocks at the bottom.

I felt something in my shoulder go.

I lay at the bottom of the drop in the shallow water with my legs under me and I could not get up. The pain was white and it was in my own shoulder this time, not Ronan's, and I could not get my front leg under me and the water was coming up around my chest.

Shift back, said the wolf.

I cannot.

You must. The water is rising. Shift back and get up the bank.

I shifted back.

It hurt more than the first two times put together and when it was done I was lying in the water in my own shape with my arm wrong and my shoulder on fire and the stream coming up over my legs.

I got up.

I got up on one arm and I got my knees under me and I crawled out of the water and up the bank and I got behind a rock and lay there.

The wood was quiet.

And then I heard them. Not the grey coats. A different sound. A wolf, and then another wolf, and then a voice I knew.

"Fiadh!"

Ronan.

He came down the bank with his shirt torn and his chest bare and he had shifted and shifted back and there was blood on his hands that was not his. He went down on his knees beside me.

"Fiadh. Fiadh, look at me."

"I am here."

"Your arm."

"It is out of the socket." I got my hand on it. "I can put it back but I need you to hold me still."

He held me still.

I put my shoulder back myself, which is a thing I have done for other wolves a hundred times and which I hope never to do for myself again. I bit down on my own wrist and I turned and it went back in with a click and I saw white and then it was done.

Ronan had his arms round me.

"Where are they?" I said.

"Gone. They went down the stream and I came up the bank." He put his forehead against mine. "I thought they had you. I thought I was going to come over that ridge and find you in the water with a grey coat standing over you."

"They did not get me."

"No."

I lay against him in the dark with my arm strapped to my chest and the pine needles in my hair.

"There is a bothy up on the ridge," he said. "I saw it from the top. It is not far and it is not on any road. We can get there before dawn and we can rest and then we will work out what to do about the hearing."

"The hearing is at noon."

"The hearing was at noon and now there is a warrant out for you in a Council town and a cell under the chamber with iron rings in it." He got his arm under me. "We are not going to the hearing, Fiadh. We are going to the bothy and we are going to get you warm and dry and then we are going to think."

He got me up.

We went up the ridge in the dark with his arm round me and my arm strapped to my chest and the pine wood behind us, and the bothy was a low shape on the skyline with a roof and a door.

We got inside.

There was a hearth and a stack of peat and a bed of planks along the wall.

Ronan got the fire going and I sat down on the planks and he came and knelt in front of me and took my face in his hands.

"You are freezing," he said.

"I know."

"You are freezing and your arm is out and there are twelve grey coats in that wood looking for you." He put his forehead against mine. "And I am going to say a thing now that I should have said in the mill."

"What?"

"I cannot do this without you," he said. "I have been trying to do it without you since the spring. I have been trying to be an Alpha on my own and hold the pack on my own and carry the shame on my own, and I am not able to do it. And I am not asking you to stay because I need a healer. I am asking you to stay because I do not want to be in this world without you in it."

I sat on the planks with my arm strapped to my chest and the fire going and the smell of peat in the air.

"Then ask me," I said.

"Stay," he said.