Chapter 4: The Yard

I ran.

The soldier shouted behind me, and I did not stop for him.

The yard lay behind the kitchens, a square of packed dirt with a wall of old logs at one end.

I had scrubbed that yard a hundred times, and I had never once run toward it.

Twenty wolves stood along the wall in the last grey light.

My mother was tied upright to the target post with her arms over her head.

Her dress was torn at the shoulder.

There were four knives in the logs around her, and one in the post beside her ear.

My cousin stood at the throwing line with the red cloth tied around her head and a knife in her right hand.

She was smiling.

"Look who got out," she said. "Hold on, Linnea. I'm not finished."

She drew her arm back.

I did not decide to move.

The cuffs dragged at every step, and I crossed the yard anyway, faster than a thrall should be able to cross it.

Twenty wolves saw it and did not understand what they were seeing.

I took my cousin's throwing arm in both hands, above the wrist, and turned it the wrong way.

The bone broke with a crack that rang off the logs.

She screamed, and the knife dropped into the dirt.

"That's for this morning," I said, low, so only she heard.

"Linnea!" my uncle's voice cracked across the yard from the kitchen door. "Take her! All of you!"

Five wolves came off the wall.

They were big men, Beta's guard, in leather and grey wool, and they did not rush me.

They circled, because they had seen the arm.

I put my back to the post where my mother hung and raised my iron fists.

The first one swung, and I caught his wrist against the cuff and threw him into the logs.

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