Chapter 30: The Cull Begins

I sat down at the table across from Silas and put my hands flat on the wood.

“Tell me everything,” I said. “From Tuesday.”

Silas took a breath. “I got to Boise on Saturday and I went to the archive on Monday morning and I found Arthur Renn. He had already spoken to your sister. He gave me the copy of the founders’ record and he told me he would come in October with the originals and testify. On Monday afternoon I went to the Council building to file a notice of a claim of blood, and a clerk looked at it and told me to wait, and I waited for two hours, and then a man I did not know came down and told me the filing had been refused.”

“Refused on what grounds?”

“On the grounds that a claim of blood can only be filed by a wolf of the wronged bloodline,” Silas said. “I am not one. The only person who can file it is you, or someone with your written authority, and the Council would not accept my word that you had given it. So I got back in my car and I started driving west.” He shifted in the chair and his face went tight with the pain in his arm. “I got as far as Walla Walla and then the snow came in and the car went off the road outside of Dayton, and I walked to a farmhouse and the farmer gave me a coat and a cup of coffee and I started walking again. It took me two days to get back to this territory. I came in from the north because I did not want to come through town, and last night I came down the mill road and I saw the lanterns in the east field.”

“You went into the field.”

“I went into the field because I wanted to see what was happening and I did not want to be seen doing it,” Silas said. “I got as far as the wall and there was a man on the other side of it with a lantern and a rifle and there was another man with him, and the man with the lantern was stringing wire. I stood behind the wall and watched for a while and then the wire caught me across the arm and I went down and the man with the lantern saw me and shouted.”

“What did he do?”

“He came at me with the rifle. I got up and ran and he fired once and missed, and I went into the trees and I kept going until I could not hear him anymore. Then I sat down against a tree and wrapped my arm in my shirt and waited until it stopped bleeding, and then I walked here.” He looked at the bandage. “Clara Renn found me on her step at four this morning. She put me in a chair and gave me tea and did not ask me a single question until I had drunk it.”

“And the scarf?” I said. “The green scarf. There is a piece of it on the wire and a longer piece in the grass and both of them have blood on them.”

Silas frowned.

“The scarf is Dale’s,” he said. “I saw it. He had it on under his coat, and when he came at me I grabbed at him and I got a hand on it and it came away.” He looked at his arm. “I did not cut it. I do not know how it got cut.”

“There is a third man,” I said. “June counted the tracks. Two went out and one came back and a third came from the road and went into the trees and did not come back.”

Silas was quiet for a moment.

“I did not see a third man,” he said. “But I was on the ground and there was snow in my eyes and I was not looking.”

I got up and went to the window. The snow was still coming down. It was thicker now, and the light in the kitchen was the only warm thing in the whole white county.

“The claim of blood has to be filed by me,” I said. “In person. In Boise.”

“In person,” Silas said. “Before the Council of Alphas on the tenth of October.”

“That is thirty-four days away.”

“It is thirty-four days away,” Silas said. “And the Council has refused my filing and the Beta has strung the east field with silver and there is a cull order with your name on it in a drawer in Boise, and I do not know how we are going to get you to Boise alive.”

I turned around.

“We are not going to Boise yet,” I said. “We are going to the clearing. All of us. Now. Before Dale comes down this road looking for the man he shot at in the field.”

We went out into the snow. Clara Renn put her mother’s box in a basket and her coat on and her boots and a shawl over her head, and Maeve took the kettle off the stove and put out the fire, and Silas leaned on Elias’s shoulder and walked slow down the road. The snow covered our tracks behind us and the wind came up from the north and by the time we reached the gap in the wall there was nothing to see but white.

We were halfway across the east field when I heard the trucks.

They came from the direction of the pack house, three of them, and they came fast, and their headlights swept the field and lit up the silver wire and the snow. I dropped down in the stubble and pulled Silas down with me and the others went down along the wall.

“They are going to the mill,” Elias said.

“They are going to the mill,” I said. “And when they do not find you there they are going to come back along the wall.”

The trucks stopped at the mill road and men got out and I heard Dale’s voice.

“Spread out. Two to the mill and two along the wall. He is somewhere in these trees and he cannot have gone far with that arm.”

“Beta,” another voice said. It was Mr. Hask. “The order says the cull is on the new moon and it says the wolf must be in wolf form. It is not the new moon and we do not know that the man we shot at in the field was the wolf.”

“He was in the field,” Dale said. “He was in the field and he was crawling around my wire and he had a coat on that did not belong to him, and I am not going to wait for the moon to catch a man who has been hiding in this territory for four months. You are paid to hunt. Hunt.”

The footsteps went off in two directions. I lay in the snow with my face against the stubble and my heart going and my wolf pressing at my ribs.

Elias was beside me. His hand found mine in the snow.

“Wren,” he whispered. “They are going to find the clearing.”

“I know.”

“They are going to find the clearing and the stones and Maeve and Clara Renn, and if they find Clara Renn with the box of stones there is nothing I can do.”

I turned my head. His face was close to mine and there was snow in his hair and his eyes were amber and steady.

“Then we do not let them find it,” I said. “Go. Take the others and go through the trees the long way round and get to the clearing and put out the fire and get behind the stone. I will keep Dale in the field.”

“Wren.”

“I am a Gamma of this pack,” I said. “He cannot shoot me in a field in the snow. He can shoot a rogue, and he can shoot a Council investigator, but he cannot shoot a woman whose sister works at the co-op and whose face every wolf in this county has known since she was born.” I pulled my hand out of his. “Go.”

He went. He took Silas under the arm and Maeve took Clara Renn and June took the basket, and they went along the wall in the snow and into the trees, and I got up and walked out into the middle of the east field.

“Dale,” I called.

The lanterns stopped.

“Dale,” I called again. “It is Wren. I am in the field.”

There was a long moment. Then the lantern came toward me across the snow, and behind it Dale’s face, and behind him Mr. Hask with his rifle.

“Wren,” Dale said. “What are you doing in this field at this hour?”

“I have been walking the line,” I said. “I have been walking the line since four o’clock and I have found silver wire strung all through the east field and blood on the wall and a piece of your scarf on the wire, and I want to know what you have been doing in this field at this hour.”

Dale stopped. The lantern was between us and his face in the light was not smiling.

“My scarf,” he said.

“Your scarf.” I held up the piece I had found in the grass. “It was on the wire with blood on it. I have been a border-warden in this territory for four years and I know what a man’s scarf looks like when he has been in a fight in a field at night. So I am going to ask you once, Dale. What happened in this field last night?”

Dale looked at the scarf in my hand. Then he looked at the trees behind me.

“There was a man in the field,” he said. “A man who has been hiding in this territory and who has been working against the Council, and I put wire up to catch him because the hunters could not.”

“And you shot at him.”

“I fired one shot and I missed.”

“And you hit him with the wire.”

“I do not know what I hit.” Dale’s jaw was tight. “Wren. I have known you since we were children. I have been patient with you. I have been patient with your questions and your brother and your border-walking and your refusal to see what is in front of your face. But I am the Beta of this pack and there is a rogue on this territory and a Council order in my pocket, and if you stand in this field one more minute and tell me what I can and cannot do I am going to have you arrested for obstruction and held in the pack house until the claim hearing.” He held out his hand. “Give me the scarf.”

I looked at him. The snow came down between us. Behind him Mr. Hask shifted his rifle from one shoulder to the other.

“Take it,” I said, and put it in his hand.

Then I turned and walked back toward the wall, and I did not look around, and I did not run, and my hands were shaking in my pockets, and behind me Dale stood in the field with the lantern and the scarf and did not say a word.