The Drunk Wolf novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Howl for Us
At her Choosing feast Sorcha ties her cord on the wolfless drunk the clans are mocking, Murdo lunges at her, and Struan turns into a silver-grey wolf that drops the whole hall; the Regent orders the Grey killed on sight.
The Strachan men poured a jug of whisky over Struan's head while he was still carrying the cask.
It ran down his hair and into his collar.
He didn't drop the cask.
He set it on the trestle by the hearth, the way he'd set down a thousand others.
Then he wiped his eyes with the back of his scarred hand.
"Howl for us, drunk wolf," Murdo Strachan said.
The great hall laughed.
Two hundred wolves in their clan tartans, eleven chiefs at the high table, all of them laughing at a man in a stillman's apron.
"Go on," Murdo said. "Show the lassie what a wolfless dog sounds like."
He meant me.
I was sitting at the middle of the high table in green velvet, with a white silk cord coiled in my lap.
It was my Choosing feast.
Before midnight I had to tie that cord on a man's wrist.
If I didn't, my uncle would be crowned in my place at the Hunter's Moon.
My uncle sat at my right hand and smiled into his wine.
"Let the clans have their fun, Sorcha," Tormod said quietly. "It's a feast."
Across the hall, Struan lifted his head.
For one second his pale grey eyes found mine.
Then he tipped his head back and howled.
It was a terrible howl, thin and human and cracked in the middle.
The hall roared.
Murdo slapped the table so hard the candles jumped. "Again!"
Struan howled again.
I knew why he did it.
If he refused, they'd take it out on the stillhouse lads behind him, or on his grandmother Morag.
I had watched him swallow this for ten years, ever since his Turning came to nothing.
I had loved him for six of them, since the winter he crawled out on the loch ice and pulled me out of the water.
I stood up.
The laughter thinned out down the long tables.
Tormod put his hand on my wrist. "Sit down."
I took my wrist back.
Then I picked up the cord and walked down off the dais.
I walked past the west glen chief's son, who straightened his jacket.
I walked past Murdo, who was already holding his arm out with his cuff pushed back, grinning at his men.
I stopped in front of Struan.
Under the whisky he smelled of peat smoke and cold air.
"Sorcha," he said, very low. "Don't."
"Give me your hand."
"They'll kill me for this. Go back up there."
"Let them try it in front of me."
I took his left hand, the one with the burn scar.
I wound the white cord around his wrist three times and tied it.
The hall went dead silent.
Then my uncle began to laugh.
Tormod got to his feet and spread his hands to the clans.
"My niece has made her Choosing," he said. "A wolfless man."
Some of them laughed with him. Not all.
"The Charter is plain. A consort must have a wolf to stand beside the crown. This Choosing is void."
He bowed his head to me.
"At the Hunter's Moon, I'll be crowned. I'll take very good care of it for you."
I didn't look away from him.
I'd known that when I stood up.
I'd rather lose the crown to him in front of everyone than hand it to him by marrying his dog.
Murdo wasn't laughing.
His face had gone dark red above the blond beard.
"You'd pick that," he said. "Over me. In front of my whole clan."
"I'd pick the hearth rug over you, Murdo."
Somebody at the back of the hall snorted.
Murdo's jacket split across the shoulders.
He shifted right there on the flagstones, a huge tawny wolf with his lips peeled off his teeth.
He didn't go for Struan.
He came for me.
I had no time to shift.
A hand shoved me hard behind a broad back.
What happened next I saw in pieces.
Struan bent over.
A sound tore out of him.
His apron split. Grey fur poured down his spine.
The wolf that rose in front of me was bigger than Murdo's, bigger than any wolf in the hall.
It was silver-grey from muzzle to tail, with eyes like ice on the loch.
It caught Murdo in midair and threw him into the hearth.
Sparks went up the chimney.
Murdo yelped and rolled out of the coals with his fur smoking.
The whole hall was on its feet, chairs going over, wolves shifting all down the tables.
The grey wolf opened its jaws, and one word came out of it in Struan's voice.
"Down."
The word went into my spine.
My knees hit the stone.
Two hundred wolves went down with me.
Chiefs. Guards. Ailsa at the door in her green coat, swearing through her teeth with her cheek on the floor.
At the high table, my uncle was on his knees with his forehead nearly on the cloth.
I'd never seen Tormod kneel to anyone. Not even to my father.
He lifted his head.
His face had gone white as the cord.
He said a word nobody in Strathcarn had said out loud in thirty years.
"Grey."
The weight left my spine as the Call faded.
Up on the gallery, the guards scrambled off their knees.
"That's a Grey," my uncle said, and his voice carried to every corner of the hall. "By the Edict. Kill it on sight."
Six crossbows came up along the gallery rail.
Six silver bolt heads caught the candlelight.
Every one of them was aimed at the grey wolf standing over me, with my white cord still tied around its foreleg.
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