Chapter 16: Not Going Back

Lucan let the empty flask drop in the snow.

His back straightened a vertebra at a time.

The grey went out of his face, and his eyes came up gold.

Every Cold Spur wolf in the yard felt him come back, and flinched.

"Hear me," he said, and his voice carried to the woodpile.

"Doyle talks under a root. I've heard what he said."

Hester's hand went to her mouth.

She had not known he would say it.

"I'll answer the Wray girl's challenge," Lucan said. "At dawn, on the stone. I won't be called a coward by a man I put in the cell."

He looked at the eldest.

"Let Galloway out. The knife was never his."

The heavy elder was already walking to the cellar stairs with the key.

Hester said, "Lucan," and he did not turn his head.

"Be quiet, Mother."

It was the first time I had ever heard him say it.

Joss came up the stairs a minute later, blinking at the lanterns.

A red welt ran along his left forearm where the silver had caught him.

The Ridgeback wolves stood quiet for a moment, the cook and the children among them.

Then somebody whooped, and the whole yard broke.

I didn't hear any of it.

I had my arms around his neck.

Agnes put us in her spare room behind the infirmary and went to sleep on a cot in the corridor, loudly, with her back to the door.

The stove was lit.

I made him sit on the bed and held his arm under the lamp.

I smeared the welt with comfrey salve and wrapped it, and he watched my hands the whole time.

"I thought you'd go back," he said.

I stopped.

"Hester told me a claimed wolf always does. I sat in that cell and believed her for two days." His jaw moved.

"Then I watched you cross the yard with the whole pack stepping out of your way."

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