HE WAS JUST A SECRET WOLF

Chapter Thirty-One: The Weight of the River

They argued until the lamps burned low.

The round hall had never held so many people. Bears filled the corners like boulders. Wolves crowded the doorway. Fox scribes sat along the wall with their pens moving, recording everything, and at the long table the three clans sat shoulder to shoulder with a Lion captain, a Lion prince, and a Lion princess who had not said a word in an hour.

Kael sat at the table's edge with Orin's note in his fist, listening to the room come apart.

"We march at dawn," Greymantle said for the fourth time. "I do not say we attack. I say we move a thousand axes to the causeway and make him count them. Cassian is a careful man. Careful men do not hold a prisoner against that."

"He holds the prisoner against us," said Ysolde. "That is the whole of his purpose. If we move, he can say we are the aggressors."

"He already says that."

"He says it to his soldiers. I would like him to say it to a field full of Bears and have them see for themselves that it is false." She pressed her fingers to her temples. "The Law is satisfied. The treaty is void. Every day we do not strike, the Lion captains have to decide whether to believe their Emperor. That is worth more than a battle."

"Time is on his side," said Brannoch.

It was the first thing he had said since they came in. He stood against the wall with his arms folded and his eyes on the floor. Kael had been watching him all evening. He had the look of a man who had been holding his breath so long he had forgotten how to let it out.

"Is it?" said Edda mildly.

"He has the old man. He has the throne room. He has forty thousand soldiers in the empire, and three thousand of them sitting on our doorstep." The big Wolf lifted his head. "We have what? Eight hundred scattered fighters, a thousand Bears, a Fox clan that hasn't fought in three centuries. And a prince who gave away his crown on a causeway."

"Brannoch," said Edda.

"I'll say it." His voice shook. "I wanted him to take the throne. At Hollowroot I said so. I wanted a king who would stand on that causeway and say, The Wolf Kingdom is restored, and anyone who disagrees can meet my axes. Instead he stood there like a clerk and asked the clans to vote."

"That was the Law," said Teyr quietly.

"I don't care about the Law!" It cracked across the hall, and every head turned. "I care about them." He flung a hand toward the window, toward the dark lake and the distant fires. "Three thousand men on our doorstep, and the boy I walked across a lake to protect says he does not want to be king. What good is that to a Wolf with a dead brother?"

The silence was very long.

Kael stood up.

"You're right," he said.

Brannoch blinked.

"I did give it away. I said it in front of the clans, and I'd say it again. I don't want to be a king by birth." Kael kept his voice level. His hands were shaking, so he put them flat on the table. "But I didn't give you away. You're still a Wolf with a dead brother, and you're right to be angry. I just don't think I'm the one you're angry at."

"Don't tell me who I'm angry at."

"I'm asking."

"I'm angry at the Emperor!"

"Yes. And?"

"At Aldric, for being a fool who believed in parleys." Brannoch's chest heaved. "At every Lion on this continent."

"And?"

"At you."

"And?"

The war-captain opened his mouth, and for a moment nothing came out. His eyes moved to Edda, who sat very still with her gnarled hands folded on her staff, and then, slowly, around the whole room. At the Wolves watching from the doorway. At the Bears. At a thin young archer standing near the back with her bow unstrung on her shoulder.

"And at me," he said.

It came out so softly that Kael almost missed it.

"I gave the order." Brannoch's jaw worked. "The morning of the Greenwater. The captain was dead, my sister's husband, with an arrow through his throat, and the whole line looked to me. I was the senior man standing. And I remembered the king's orders. Hold. Make no move. Show no aggression. So I said it. Hold the line." His voice broke. "A thousand Wolves stood in the water with their swords sheathed, and I told them to wait for an answer."

"Brannoch," said Edda, very gently.

"They were slaughtered. Standing. Because I obeyed." The big man's face crumpled. He turned away and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, and his massive shoulders shook. "I've never said it. Seventeen years. I told myself the king gave the order, and the king was dead, and no one could prove otherwise. I carried three brothers out of that river, and every night I thought, if I had only said, draw."

Nobody spoke. Somewhere in the corner, a Fox scribe had stopped writing.

"It wasn't your fault," said Kael.

"It was."

"The arrow was laid in advance. Mace was paid. Cassian planned it so that whatever you did, the answer would be the same. If you'd drawn, you'd have been the aggressors, and the Bears would have killed you anyway." He crossed the room. He had not planned to. He found himself standing in front of the huge grey Wolf, small and thin and half his size. "You didn't lose the Greenwater. It was lost before you got there. And you've been paying for it every day since."

Brannoch lowered his hand. His eyes were red-rimmed and wet, and they looked at Kael as though they had never seen him before.

"I wanted you to be a king," he said hoarsely. "So I'd have someone to give the orders. So I'd never have to give another one."

"I know."

"That's a terrible reason."

"It's a human one." Kael laid a hand on his arm. "I don't want to give orders either. I don't think I'm any good at it. But I'll stand beside you, if you'll stand beside me. And when we march, we'll decide it together. All of us. Out loud."

For a long moment the war-captain did not move. Then he gave a great shuddering breath, and nodded, once, as though something heavy had finally been set down.

"Aye," he said. "I can try that."

It was Ket who broke the silence.

She had come forward without anyone noticing, small and quick and grey with dust, her thin face set in the stiff, careful look of someone who had been listening for a long time and had decided not to cry. She stopped at the edge of the table. Her bow hung loose at her side.

"Healer," she said. Her voice was very quiet. "Teyr said something to me this evening. I didn't understand it. He said to ask you about my mother."

Edda's face changed.

"Ket," she said. "Child. Not here."

"He said she had a name. Dessa." The girl swallowed. "He said she was a scout at the western ford. And I heard the Princess read the ledger, and it said, Dessa has gone to find the captain. And then you all stopped talking, and looked at me, and I thought, that's my name. That's what she was called." Her dark eyes were enormous. "Is she dead?"

The hall had gone utterly still.

Edda rose. It cost her; Kael saw her wince, and put out a hand, and she brushed it aside with one weathered finger. She crossed the floor, slowly, leaning on her staff, and stopped in front of the young archer.

"I do not know," she said. "I have wanted to tell you every day for fifteen years."

"Tell me now."

"Your mother brought you to the oak on a winter night when you were two. She said she was going back for something and would return before spring." The old healer's voice trembled. "She did not. I have never known why. But the ledger says she went to tell Captain Hale about the arrow. It says she would not go along with it. I think, child, that she tried."

"And she was killed for it."

"I think she may have been."

Ket stood very straight. For a long moment she did not make a sound. Then, slowly, as though someone had cut the string that held her up, she folded at the knees and sat down on the cold stone floor. She did not cry. She only pressed her palms flat against her face and sat there.

Nobody moved. Then Brannoch, of all people, crossed the room in four heavy strides and knelt down beside her. He did not speak. He put one great scarred hand on her thin shoulder, and left it there.

"She tried," the war-captain said, after a while, in a voice like gravel. "Whatever else, she tried. I knew a man who didn't. I'd rather be her child than his."

Ket made a small, broken sound. And then she was leaning into him, shaking, and the whole room looked away.

Much later, when the clans had gone to their rest, Sorrel found Kael on the gatehouse wall.

The night was clear and cold. The moon hung huge above the lake, and across the water the Lion fires burned in their long orange lines. Kael sat with his back against the parapet and his knees drawn up and Orin's note open in his hand, reading it by the light of the moon.

"You should sleep," said Sorrel.

"I can't."

"No." The Fox sat down beside him. "Neither can I. My mother is up in the hall, writing letters to every Fox in the Four Lands. I think she means to have the whole continent informed by morning." He glanced at the note. "What are you looking for?"

"Something I missed."

"The hearth?"

"Yes." Kael turned the paper over. "He said he kept the stone, as he promised. That means the letter is still there. Under the loose stone in the cottage floor. I walked past it every day of my life." He rubbed his eyes. "The Emperor doesn't have it. If he did, he'd have used it. But he wants it. He's wanted it for seventeen years."

"So he'll look for it."

"He already has." Kael's voice was low. "They burned the cottage. But the stone is under the hearth. Fire doesn't destroy stone. If he sends a rider to Ashdown, a good one, someone who knew what to look for..."

"Then he'll have it in a week."

"Less, if he rides hard."

Sorrel was quiet for a time. Below them, a lamp swung on a chain, and its light slid across the water.

"Then we must get there first," he said.

"Yes."

"It's two hundred miles."

"Yes."

"Through the whole Lion army."

"I know." Kael almost smiled. "It's not a good plan."

"It's a terrible plan." Sorrel's mouth twitched. "I'll go with you. Obviously."

"You don't have to."

"I've told you, I've stopped being anywhere else." He nudged Kael's shoulder with his own, lightly. "Besides. I've always wanted to see Ashdown. I'm told it's very small."

Kael laughed. It startled him, a short, helpless sound in the cold air. For a moment the grief and the dread and the weight of the whole day seemed to lift, and he felt, absurdly, as if he might be all right.

"I'll have to tell her," he said. "Aurelia. I swore."

"I know."

"She'll want to come."

"I know that too." Sorrel's face turned gentle. "She's earned the right. But Kael, think about what happens if she does. If the Emperor's daughter is seen riding north with the Wolf prince..."

"He'll say she's been taken."

"And he'll have an excuse to march on every Fox city between here and Solhaven."

Kael closed his eyes. It was the oldest kind of trap, the one without a door. Either he left her behind, and went alone, or he took her with him and gave her father the war he wanted.

"I'll tell her in the morning," he said at last. "And we'll decide it together."

"Wise."

"I'm learning."

They sat there until the moon began to set. And far out across the lake, so faint that only a Wolf's ears could have caught it, he heard the sound of a very large army beginning to turn in its sleep. Wheels. Hooves. A long slow creak, like a door opening in a great house.

He lifted his head and listened.

"What is it?" whispered Sorrel.

"They're moving."

"Toward us?"

"No." Kael's heart had begun to pound. "Away. North."

The Fox went white.

"They're breaking camp," Kael said. "Not all of them. Only the cavalry. I can hear the horses. They're riding for the northern road." He rose, slowly, and stood at the parapet with the cold wind in his face. "The Emperor isn't waiting for us to decide."

Across the water, in the dark, a thin line of torches had begun to stream out of the Lion camp like a river of sparks. Moving fast. Moving north. Toward the Greywood, and the high country, and a small village by a forest where a cottage had burned down to its stones.

"Sorrel," he said. "Wake the Princess."