Chapter 65: The Fight at the Fence

I sat in the room with the bars on the window all afternoon and watched the yard through them.

They took Elias at two o'clock. I saw them come out of the barn with him between two Council men and his hands tied and his coat gone and his shirt torn at the shoulder where Rourke had bitten him. They walked him across the yard to the pack house and up the back steps and I heard the door of the room next to mine open and shut.

"Elias," I said through the wall.

There was a moment.

"Wren," he said. "Are you hurt?"

"No. Are you?"

"I have been better." His voice came through the wall flat and tired. "They have put me in a room with a silver chain on the door and a guard in the hall. Ada says I am not to be culled and I am not to be released and I am to be held until the hearing."

"Then we have until the hearing."

"We have until the hearing." There was a pause. "Wren, there is a thing I have to say to you. I have been thinking about it all afternoon and I am going to say it now while I have the wall to say it through."

"Say it."

"The vault. The paper. The Lunas. It is the right thing to do and I want you to do it. But there is a thing about the curse that nobody has told you and I have been carrying it since the circle." His voice was quieter. "If you go down into that vault and you find those Luna files and you put them in front of the Alphas, you are going to break the Council. And when the Council breaks, the paper that holds the land and the territory and the pack goes with it. Every deed and every claim and every register in that vault is going to be void. Including the deed to the mill land. Including the deed to your mother's house."

I sat very still on the bed.

"Which means what?" I said.

"It means that when this is over, this territory does not belong to the Palouse Ridge pack anymore," Elias said. "It goes back to the old pack. To the Luna's line. To you and Hannah and Arthur Renn." He was quiet for a moment. "And there are thirty-one wolves in that yard who stood with you this morning and who are going to find out that the land they have been farming for eighty-five years is not theirs."

I put my hand on the wall.

"They will hate me," I said.

"Some of them will hate you. Some of them will understand. And some of them will ask you what you are going to do about it." He put his hand on the other side of the wall and I could feel it through the mark. "I am telling you now so that you are not surprised when it happens. You are going to be the Alpha of a pack that does not want you."

I sat in the dark with my hand on the wall.

"Then I will be that," I said.

The shouting started at dusk.

It came from the north line, from the fence where the wire had been cut, and it came up the co-op road and into the pack house yard. I got to the window and looked out and there were wolves in the yard with lanterns and rifles and I could see the Corrigan boys and Mrs. Pike and a crowd of others and they were shouting at the Council men on the porch.

And then the crowd turned and came toward the pack house and somebody opened the front door and somebody else shouted a name and the yard went into the house.

I heard the boots in the hall and the guard shouting and the key turning in the room next to mine.

And then I heard Elias.

The door of my room opened and the guard was not a Council man. It was the young border-warden with the red face who had stood up in the meeting, and he had a key in his hand and a rifle in the other and he was shaking.

"They are going to take him to the mill," he said. "The pack has voted. They are going to chain him in the mill and hold him for the cull and they are saying the Alphas will not stop them because the Alphas are in the pack house and there is only seven of them and there is a hundred of us."

"Who is leading them?"

"Mrs. Pike."

I went past him and down the hall.

The pack square was full. There were lanterns and torches and there were wolves I had known since I was a girl and they had Elias on his knees in the middle of the square with a silver chain around his wrists and a rope around his neck and Mrs. Pike standing over him with a rifle.

"Mrs. Pike," I said.

She turned. Her face was hard and her eyes were bright and she did not look like the woman who had made a pie for the pack meeting.

"Wren," she said. "You should be in your room."

"Let him up."

"He is the wolf that brought the Council down on this pack. He is the wolf that has been in the trees for four months and the wolf the Council wants culled and the wolf that made the Alphas suspend you. He is the reason the co-op is ash." She looked at the crowd. "The pack has voted. He goes to the mill and he waits for the cull."

"The cull is not lawful and you know it."

"The cull is what the Council wants and the Council has the paper and the paper is what we have to give them." Mrs. Pike lifted the rifle. "Stand aside, Wren."

I stood in front of Elias and put my hands at my sides.

"No," I said.

"Wren."

"No." I looked at the crowd. "You have all known me since I was born. I have walked the fence line for four years and I have weighed your grain and I have written your tickets and I have never once asked you for anything. So I am asking you now. Let him up."

The crowd did not move.

And then the Corrigan boy stepped out of the crowd with a rifle and said, "My father lost his land in 1962 and nobody ever told him why. I am not going to be the wolf who chains another wolf for the Council."

Mrs. Pike turned on him.

"Put that rifle down."

"No."

And then the crowd broke.

I do not know who swung first. It was a wolf at the back and a wolf in the middle and then there were boots on the cobbles and lanterns going over and a rifle going off into the air. I got my hands on Elias and pulled him up and the silver chain burned my fingers and I did not let go.

"Run," I said.

"Wren."

"Run."

We went across the square with the crowd fighting behind us and the pack house door open and the Council men shouting. We got to the barn and through the barn and out the back and into the trees, and the cold came down on us and the snow came up to our knees and the shouting faded behind us and we ran.

We ran up the ridge in the dark with his hands still chained and the silver burning and my mark burning and my wolf up and pressing at my skin, and we did not stop until we came to the circle.

Hannah and Arthur Renn were there with the stones.

"We heard the shouting," Hannah said. "What happened?"

"The pack has turned," I said. "Mrs. Pike has the yard and the Alphas are in the pack house and the Council men are with them and there are wolves fighting in the square." I got Elias down on the moss and got my hands on the chain and it burned and I did not let go. "I need a key or a hammer or something."

Arthur Renn came with a stone and put it on the chain and struck it and the chain came apart.

Elias sat up and rubbed his wrists.

"Wren," he said. "The vault."

"The vault is under Council administration and the Alphas are in the pack house and the pack is fighting in the square."

"The vault is under the mill," Elias said. "And nobody has looked at it since Ada ruled. Rourke is in the tack room and Ada is in the pack house and the pack is in the square." He looked at me. "If we are going to open that vault, we are going to open it now."

I stood in the circle with the stones around me and the shouting coming up the ridge.

"The Alphas ruled it closed," I said.

"The Alphas ruled it closed on the word of a clerk who forged the motion," Elias said. "And I am not going to let the paper rot in that vault while the pack fights over a wolf in a square." He got to his feet. "Wren. The key is in your jacket. The tunnel is under the mill. The vault is at the end of it. We go now or we do not go at all."

I put my hand in my jacket and found the key.

"Then we go," I said.