All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 171 - Chapter 180

The horn was a Council horn and it came from the harbour and it came three times and stopped.We went down to the quay.There was a Council boat at the pier and a wolf on the deck with a lantern and a paper and there were six Council guards behind her.It was Ilsa.She came off the boat slowly with her shawl round her shoulders and her white hair pinned up and her old face grey, and she looked at the harbour and the boats and the smoke still hanging over the roofs from the fires of the last fortnight."Luna," she said. "Alpha. The Council has been in session since dawn and it has taken a vote.""Say it," I said."The trial is confirmed for noon and it will be held in the great chamber in front of the whole of the north." Ilsa looked at me. "And there is a thing in the vote that you need to hear. The Council has voted to hear the charge of the breaking of the chain and the three deaths. And it has voted not to hear the charge of the founder's claim."I stood on the quay."What does tha

The horn was a Council horn and it was calling the north to the vote.Rannoch stood at the table with the four elders behind him and the fifth chair empty."The Council has heard the Luna of the Blackthorn Pack," he said. "And the Council will vote on the charge."The chamber was silent."Before the vote," Rannoch said, "there is a thing I have to say and I have been on this Council for thirty years and I have never once said a thing that was not written down for me."The chamber went quiet."I voted against the vote that declared the Luna a rogue," Rannoch said. "And I have been sitting in a room for a fortnight trying to work out which way the wind was blowing. And then a founder got off a boat and stood in a square and told the whole of the north that she was not going to sit in a chair."He looked at me."Luna," he said. "I do not know what a founder is. I have been the keeper of the seal for twenty years and I have read every paper in this building and I do not know what a founde

We went up the hill at noon with the whole of the north behind us.It was not a march. There was no order to it and no column and no banner at the front. There were Blackthorn wolves and rogues and highland wolves and Council guards and wolves from every pack on the coast who had come in for the trial and stayed. There were wolves who had been bound and wolves who had lost a mother to a binding and wolves who had never seen the house of the north in their lives and had come because the whole of the north had come.And at the front of them there was a wolf with white hair and a mate beside her and an old healer with a stick.We came up the hill road to the house of the north.And there were wolves at the gate.They were in grey coats and they had spears and there were forty of them and they were standing in a line across the road.Lorcan was in front of them."Luna," he called. "You will not come up this road."I stopped."Lorcan," I said. "You are the only elder left in the north and

The horn was a Council horn and it came from the square and it came three times and stopped.Lorcan stood on the bottom step of the cellar stair with the paper in his hand and the forty wolves in grey coats turned round."The letter is signed," Lorcan said. "By Ilsa and by Rannoch and by the grey wolf with the broken nose. And it has a seal on it and it has been in my coat for four days and I have been waiting for a founder to come down a stair so that I could read it out in front of the whole of the north."Soren looked at him."Envoy," he said. "You have been my envoy for twenty years.""I have been your envoy for twenty years and I have signed thirty one orders and I have written down everything you told me to write down." Lorcan's jaw worked. "And I have been a coward for all of it. And I am standing on the bottom step of a cellar stair and I am not going to be a coward for the last hour of it."The forty wolves did not move."Read it," Soren said.Lorcan read it.It was short. It

The spring water had gone the colour of old iron, and my hands were still in it when the first guard reached me.I had been kneeling at the pool's edge for what felt like an hour, saying the words Padraig had drilled into me, the old ones, the ones the Council had sanded down and rewritten until they meant nothing. The water had listened the way a wall listens. It pushed back against every line I spoke, and somewhere below the stone floor a low pulse beat against my palms, patient and wrong, like a heart that had been taught to beat out of time.Then boots came down the tunnel, and the rite broke apart in my mouth.The first man through the arch was Council, silver-grey uniform, a short blade in his right hand. He saw me alone at the pool and he smiled, because to him I was a healer kneeling in the dirt. His mistake lasted about three seconds. I came up off my knees with the ritual knife still in my fist and opened his forearm before he could close the distance. He swore, dropped back