Chapter 9: The Stone

Forty people stood in the clearing around the Gathering Stone, and every one of them had come to watch a cub get weighed.

Thad stood at the front with Dock on his hip and Wystan a pace behind him.

Tuck sat at his feet in the snow, very upright.

"Don't be nervous," Thad told him.

"I'm not nervous."

"Your tail is going."

Tuck glared at the snow.

"It's cold."

"Right."

The balance was a long ash pole hung from a tripod.

A woven pan hung at one end, and a pile of river stones lay at the other.

Dunstan Thorp stood beside it in his heavy cloak, tally-stick in hand, grinning at the crowd.

"Cubs of five winters weigh eleven stones," he announced. "That's the law. Let us see what the Cave-keeper has made of his black one."

A hunter lifted Tuck into the pan.

The pole dipped, shuddered, and swung.

Thad had weighed the cub that morning in a flour sack on a stick he'd rigged himself.

The number had sat in his head all night.

One stone short.

Six days of stew and honey had closed most of it.

Not all.

The crowd shifted.

Dunstan placed the eleventh stone on the far side with a flourish.

The pole swung low on the stones' side.

Then the pan end began to rise.

Tuck sat in the pan with his notched ear flat and his eyes shut, and his claws dug quietly into the weave.

Thad held his breath.

The beam trembled.

It rocked once, twice, and settled dead level.

A murmur ran through the clearing.

"It's level," the hunter said, surprised. "He's eleven."

Dunstan's smile slipped.

"That's..."

"Level is level," someone called from the back.

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