Chapter 11: Credit

We spent the night outside the gate, by a fire Tobiah built against the dead boar's back.

Before dawn, I cut the boar's heart open with my bone knife and took out its core.

It was big, the size of a hen's egg, and it pulsed blue in my palm.

I notched it. Three cuts, in a fan.

Then I wrapped my thigh tighter, and stood up, and walked in through the open gate.

The fire ring was full again.

The chief stood on the speaking stone.

Brannon stood beside him, washed and combed, with a new eagle feather in his hair.

There was a boar's tusk hanging from a thong around Brannon's neck.

My boar's tusk.

He'd cut it off in the night while I slept twenty paces away.

"The Ridge thanks Brannon Merriden," the chief was saying, "who stood at our gate when the beast came down."

"He ran," I said.

Every head turned.

I limped into the middle of the ring.

Tobiah came behind me with his chin up.

Kell stayed at the gate with his cloak pulled close, too cold to walk any farther.

"Exile," the chief said. "You were told."

"I was. I came anyway. I'll be quick." I turned to Brannon. "Show us your wounds."

He smiled.

"I don't have any. I'm a good hunter."

"You don't have any because you weren't there."

I pulled up the torn leg of my breeches.

The bandage on my thigh was soaked through.

Under it, the tusk had opened me from hip to knee.

The whole ring could see the blood.

"That's a tusk," I said. "Boars don't gore the man who kills them from a safe distance with his tail between his legs."

Brannon's smile stayed on, but it went stiff.

"She got in the way," he said. "I told her to stay back."

"You were a wolf. You couldn't tell anyone anything."

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