Chapter 119: The War at the Ridge

The ridge road was two miles long and it came down out of the trees and into the north field and the whole of it was full of trucks.

There were twelve trucks and four hundred wolves and they came down the ridge road with their headlights on and the light of them went across the snow and into the square. The engines were loud in the cold and the exhaust went up white and the whole of the north field was lit up like a fairground.

And in front of them there was a wolf on a horse.

He was young and he had his father's red face and his mother's freckles and he was holding a lantern in one hand and a rifle in the other and he was not the boy who had wrestled his brother in the barn.

He was the older Corrigan boy.

"Pack," he called. "I am the Gamma of the north and I have come with the Alphas of the north to take this territory."

I stood in the middle of the square with the snow coming down on my shoulders and the whole of the pack around me.

"You are a Corrigan," I said. "Your mother is standing in this square and your brother is standing in this square and you are the wolf who sold this pack for a rank in the north."

The boy on the horse did not answer. He did not look at his mother. He looked at the road in front of him and he held the lantern up and he waited.

And then the trucks stopped and the wolves got out.

There were four hundred of them and they came out of the trucks in the dark and they formed up in the north field in lines, and they had rifles and axes and they had silver on their belts and some of them had dogs. They came up the co-op road in a column and the column went all the way back to the ridge and the whole of it was silent except for the boots on the road.

"Elias," I said.

"I am here," he said.

"Get the pack to the wall."

"Wren."

"Get the pack to the wall," I said. "And get the stones into the circle and get June and Ruth and Hannah and Ada Kessler into the trees."

Elias looked at me. His face was gray in the lantern light and his wheat-blond hair was in his eyes and his amber eyes were steady.

"And you?" he said.

"I am going to hold the road," I said.

He did not argue. He put his hand on my shoulder for a moment and then he turned and went and the whole of the Luna's line went with him.

There were two hundred of them and they went across the east field in the dark with their rifles and their axes and their fence posts and they got to the stone wall and they stood behind it and they waited.

I stood in the co-op road with Dale and twenty wolves and the whole of the north in front of us.

The first line came to the co-op yard and the twenty wolves went into it.

I do not remember the whole of it. I remember the sound and the snow and the smell of blood and the wolf in my chest going up and the mark on my shoulder burning like a coal. I remember a wolf coming at me with an axe and I took the axe away from him and I do not remember what I did with it. I remember Dale with a fence post in his hands standing in the gap of the co-op road and not going back.

The first line broke and the second line came.

The second line broke and the third line came.

And then the wall went.

There were four hundred wolves in the east field and the whole of it was full of them and the Luna's line was in the middle of it and the stone wall was down in three places and the stubble was trampled into mud and blood.

I was in the middle of it.

I remember Ruth of the Riverside pack standing on the fallen wall with a rifle and firing until the rifle was empty and then using it as a club. I remember Mrs. Pike with a shovel. I remember the Corrigan boy's mother standing in the field with her hands at her sides and her face turned toward the north and not moving.

And I remember Elias.

He was at the north end of the wall with a length of fence post in his hands and he was holding the gap where the wall had broken and there were six wolves in front of him and he did not go back. He put one down and then another and then the fence post broke in his hands and he picked up a stone.

And then a wolf came out of the trees behind him.

It was a big wolf and it was gray and it was not a northern wolf. It was a wolf in a gray coat with a Council mark on the shoulder and it had a knife in its hand and it came out of the trees without a sound and it went for Elias and Elias did not see it.

"Elias," I said.

He turned.

The knife went into his side.

He went down.

And the whole of the east field stopped.

I do not know why it stopped. I do not know whether the north saw the knife and did not like it or whether the Luna's line saw Elias go down and roared. But the field stopped and every wolf in it turned and looked at the north end of the wall.

I ran.

I ran across the field with the snow and the blood and the wolves and I got to him and he was on his knees in the stubble with the knife in his side and his hands on the ground.

"Elias," I said.

"Wren," he said. "I am all right."

"You are not all right."

"I am all right." He put his hand on the knife. "It is not deep. It went into the muscle and it did not go into the belly." He looked up at me and his face was white and his mouth was red. "It hurts. It hurts a great deal."

I looked at the wolf in the gray coat.

It was standing over him with its hands empty and its face white and it was a wolf I had seen before. It was the archivist's man. It was the wolf who had come in the car with the archivist on the night of the mill road.

"You," I said.

He turned and ran.

I went after him.

I went after him across the field and into the trees and the whole of the east field went with me. The north wolves stopped fighting and the Luna's line stopped fighting and the whole of it went into the trees. I could hear the boots behind me and the breath and the branches and I did not stop.

And then the trees lit up.

It was the circle. It was the heart and the piece and the four from the vault and the sixteen from the territory and it was the whole of the stones in the circle and the light was coming up out of the ground and out of the stones and out of the trees. The dead trees were green again and the moss was green and the snow was melting and the whole of the clearing was lit like a room.

The wolf in the gray coat stopped at the edge of the circle.

There was a wolf standing in the middle of it.

It was a big wolf and it was gray and it had a scar through its eyebrow and it was standing on the flat stone with the piece of the boundary stone in its mouth.

It was Halloran.

"The Alphas of the north have come," Halloran said. "And the circle is open."