The Drunk Wolf novel · Chapter 19 of 32

Chapter 19: The Blue Coat

The moon came up late and thin over the far side of the glen.

The Guard stood in a ring round the Turning Stone, eighty blue coats in the heather, with torches.

The chiefs stood behind them. The crew stood behind the chiefs, because nobody had told them not to.

The Stone is a grey slab as tall as a man, with a flat ledge at its foot like a table.

My uncle stood at the ledge.

There was a small silver cup on it, and beside the cup a stoneware jug with his red wax still on the neck.

Struan stood in front of him in his white cadet shirt, with his bandaged hand at his side.

"Kneel," said the captain, "and drink, and swear."

My uncle picked up the jug and filled the silver cup.

The smell came across the heather to me on the wind, peat and honey, and under it the green bitter root.

Struan looked at the cup.

He didn't kneel.

"Captain," I said.

I walked into the ring.

Nobody stopped me. I think they'd stopped expecting to.

"Before he swears," I said, "I'd like to ask the Guard one thing. Just one. Then you can carry on."

The captain looked at my uncle, and then at me.

"Ask it," he said.

I turned to face the ring.

Eighty faces in the torchlight. Most of them I'd known since I was a child.

"Every one of you swore on a dram from that jug," I said. "At this Stone. Didn't you?"

A murmur went round the ring.

"And every one of you drank from it first at your Turning. And your wolf came. So it did you no harm."

They waited.

"Now put your hand up," I said, "if you have a brother or a sister who drank from that same jug at their Turning, and nothing came."

Nobody moved.

The wind went over the heather.

Then, on the far side of the ring, a big red-headed guardsman put his hand up.

He looked at the ground while he did it.

"My wee brother," he said. "Six years ago."

Beside him, a woman with a sergeant's stripes put hers up.

"My brother. Last year."

"Which grandparent?" I asked them. "Do you know?"

The sergeant's face changed.

"My mother's mother," she said slowly. "She came from the west glen. Before the Edict."

The red-headed guard said nothing at all.

He just nodded.

I didn't say anything else.

I didn't need to.

Eighty guards were standing at the Turning Stone, looking at the jug with the Regent's wax on it.

My uncle hadn't moved.

"This is theatre," he said pleasantly. "The oath has been sworn on the Turning dram for a hundred years."

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