Chapter 14: Moon Court

I closed my fist on the king's letter before the first guard reached me.

Jorund stepped into his path, and the guard stopped.

Caelan stepped into the second one's path, smiling, with his hands open.

"Gentlemen," he said.

"The lady is holding a dead man's last wish, and I'd hate to see you tear it."

"Seize it!" the Chancellor said.

"Chancellor."

It was a woman's voice from the back of the Hall, dry and old.

The oldest Alpha in Varnmark came forward on a stick, white-haired, with a face like a walnut.

She had sat on the Moon Court for fifty years.

"The law is plain," she said.

"A claim to the Crown Wolf's seat is tried at moonrise by the Moon Court, under open sky.

"No guard may touch the claimant until it ends."

"This is a forgery," the Chancellor said.

"Then it will fail before the Court, and you will have lost nothing."

He stared at her.

The Hall waited.

"Moonrise," the Chancellor said, through his teeth.

The Moon Court met on the hill above Hollin, in a ring of old grey stones.

Thirty-one Alphas stood inside the ring with their packs behind them, and the moon came up huge and white over the east stone.

My Ninth Host had come up the hill behind me, four thousand strong, and stood silent in the dark.

Jorund's hundred and ten wolves held the north gap.

Caelan had gone for the Silverlake wolves and come back with forty.

He said it was a fine turnout for a man who had just burned his own debt.

The Chancellor stood at the center stone in black velvet, with six guards and a silver cup on a table.

"The test is old and simple," he said.

"The Crown Wolf's blood is clean of silver's harm."

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