All Chapters of Bound to a Dying Man: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

We sent Nessa out at dawn with word to the tavern and the boats and the market, and by eight in the morning the nine wolves who had come from the Blackthorn house were in the yard behind the rented house, and four more had come down from the boats and did not know what they were coming down for.Twenty two wolves in a yard behind a house at the top of the market. It was the whole of the Blackthorn Pack, apart from the wounded who could not travel and the four who had stayed behind.Ronan stood on the step with the morning light on him."I have brought you here because there is a thing this pack needs to see," he said. "You have been told a great many things in the last month. You have been told the Alpha is dying and the Alpha is mad and the Alpha has been bewitched by a rogue healer with a debt on her name. Some of that was true and some of it was not and I am going to stand here and tell you the whole of it."He told them.He told them about the false bond and the spring and the pap

Lorcan came into the kitchen with his grey coat on and his notebook in his hand and two Council wolves behind him in the hall."Alpha," he said. "Luna. I see the pack has been busy this morning. There is a crowd in the market that has been standing there since eight o'clock and half of them are wearing Blackthorn colours.""Say what you came to say," Ronan said."I always do." Lorcan set the paper down on the table and turned it round. "The Council has settled on a charge. It is not the charge you were expecting."I looked at the paper.It was short. It said that the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack had entered into a bond with a wolf of the founder's blood without the leave of the Council, and that the bond was unlawful under Council law, and that the Council required the Alpha to appear before the elders and answer for it."That is not a charge against me," I said."No. It is a charge against him." Lorcan sat down without being asked. "You are on the roll of healers and you have a recei

Soren did not let her speak."The binder will be heard in due course," he said. "But before the Council hears a binder who has broken her oath, the Council will establish what the healer is." He turned to the thin wolf on his right. "Elder Rannoch. You have the record of the bloodline."The thin wolf stood up with a book in his hands. It was a big book, bound in cracked brown leather, and it was so old that the boards had warped and the corners had been mended with brass."The Council has kept a record of the founder's bloodline for two hundred years," he said. "It is not a complete record. It was not kept in one place and it was not kept by one hand. But there is a list of names and there is a list of descriptions and there is a portrait."The chamber was very still. I could hear the wind at the windows and the sound of somebody in the back row breathing through their mouth."There is a portrait in this book of a wolf of the founder's blood who came before the Council a hundred and t

The doors of the chamber opened and Bran came up the aisle.He had his grey coat on and his broken nose and his old mended boots, and he came up the middle of the chamber with two wolves behind him and a paper in his hand."Elders," he said. "I am Bran of no pack. I have a claim on this Council seat and I have had it for thirty years and I have been too polite to say so. I am not polite any more."Soren stood up."You have no claim on this seat.""I have a claim on any seat that falls vacant," Bran said, "and I have spent a year buying votes and boats and wolves on this coast and I have enough of them to make a claim stick." He put the paper on the table. "But I did not come here to take a seat from an old man. I came here because I have been listening at the door for an hour and I heard something I did not expect.""And what was that?""The founder wolf," Bran said. "I have been buying hunters to bring her to me alive for a month and I have been doing it because a founder wolf is wor

The grey thread did not come off my hands.I washed them twice in the basin by the window and it was still there, wound round my wrists and my fingers, thin and grey and cold. It did not hurt. It sat on my skin like a cobweb and it went up my arms and into my chest and it was tied to something at the bottom of me that moved when I breathed.I did not have time to think about it.Ronan's heart was going wrong. I put my hand on his chest and I could feel it, a hard fast beat and then a stumble and then a hard fast beat again, and there was nothing steady in it."Padraig," I said. "Where is Padraig?""Gone to the mill." Nessa was at the door with the blankets. "He has gone for the bags.""How long?""Five minutes. He took Oisin's arm."Five minutes was a long time.I got Ronan's shirt open and put my hand flat on his chest and I said the old words, the ones my mother had taught me for a heart that will not settle. I said them slowly and I put the beat of them into my hand and I tried to