21.
Fire Moon
Palva was still angry.
Tir had been nominated to help the tormented and shocked Salka, who had been Sirle’s partner in the forest and therefore also suffered in the renegade’s attack. He led her down the grass tunnel to the Gatherer’s hollow, half-dragging her, as she could hardly stand. When he arrived, Palva was pacing in brisk circles around the clearing, muttering to herself and tearing at the grass with her paws. When she noticed Tir standing at the entrance, supporting the bedraggled Salka, she had launched into a noisy, angry tirade of which Tir had trouble following.
“Sirle!” she spat, lashing her tail. “She took Sirle as well? Never, really, was he one of my favorite packmates—I’d even go so far as to say that he’s better dead than alive—but still, another wolf killed! You’d think they’d hear me out now. But no! They have better plans! ‘Double our efforts,’ they say! ‘We must kill her now!’”
“You had a Council meeting?” Tir said, unsure of whether he should interrupt. “What happened?”
“Everything happened!” Palva snarled. “Never will they learn—never! They think this renegade will come easily—two failed hunts and two deaths should have taught them better by now! And Sirle was strong, too! He was the chief Sentinel, but that tiny renegade cut him down as if he was nothing! I tell you, this is not going to end in our favor—if it ever ends—unless they hear what I tell them. But no! Never! Who wishes to listen to the random ramblings of the Gatherer?” She whipped around and glared at him. “And you too, Tir! I’ll have you know that Leron went to Liyra about your lessons with Xelind, and she agreed with him that it was a good idea to teach you how to fight. Tomorrow, you two will go and fight as usual. And so I have to send Nerasa out with you, to make sure he doesn’t fulfill the good Captain’s command and split you open! I am sure that Nerasa has much better things to do than follow you around to clean up your blood—which she would never have to do had you listened to me in the first place!”
She snarled and lashed at a boulder, her dull claws screeching over the rough surface and leaving long, white scores in the stone. She continued pacing and muttering, occasionally shooting out angry comments to the dumbfounded Tir.
“Er—yes, I’m sorry,” he said. “But Palva, Salka needs your help .”
Palva paused, and her face cleared. She seemed to take a moment to collect herself before padding over to her herb-boulder.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I lost control for a moment.”
Tir nodded as though he understood, watching as Palva made a pile of garlic and poppy. She pounded the bulbs fiercely, juice spurting out in all directions.
“What’s the purpose of having a Gatherer if the alpha never listens? If no one ever listens?” She scraped the herbs onto a flat leaf. “When will she finally listen to me instead of Leron? After how many deaths?”
Still growling under her breath, she padded her way over to Salka, who was now unconscious. Palva quieted as she rubbed herbs into Salka’s gaping wounds—only two, one on her neck and a long gash down her flank that exposed ragged yellow and pink tissue. Tir flinched every time Palva dripped the stinging garlic into the cut, but Salka lay motionless. Tir was beginning to doubt that she was still alive.
“Salka’s not—not dead, is she?” he asked.
Palva snorted. “Would I be wasting my herbs on her if she were?”
Seeing the look on Tir’s face, she added in a gentler tone, “She’s fine. But mind you, a few more seconds and she wouldn’t be. It’s a good thing you came when you did.”
But I never saw the renegade attacking Salka, Tir thought to himself. The renegade just jumped out of the bushes—why? Had she scented me, even through all the blood and fear in the pine grove? Tir shuddered, remembering the ripping snarls and thrashing undergrowth. …Or was she not going to kill Salka at all?
Palva was almost done, Tir could see. Working with the familiar herbs had calmed her, and she was no longer muttering. But Tir could tell that her mind was still working at a rapid pace—her tail was flicking and her eyes were gleaming in that strange way, reflecting the red of Salka’s wounds as she leaned over the motionless grey she-wolf. Salka stirred, one of her bleeding paws twitching on the grassy ground that was wet with her blood.
She opened one eyelid and gasped, fur standing on end.
“Get off!” she said, choking. “Get off! They’re coming!”
“Everything is fine, Salka,” Palva said, waving a garlic bulb under her nose. “It’s only me. You’re safe.”
“Oh—oh, oh, Palva.” Salka calmed; her fur flattened again and she closed her eyes. “I though you were her.”
And she fell asleep.
Tir watched her for what seemed like a long time. A boiling hot mixture of anger, guilt, and sickness was rising up his throat. Two wolves—the renegade had killed two wolves, and almost killed Salka. Even he, himself, had narrowly escaped death under her fangs three times. When would this end?
Palva sprinkled a few more bitter-smelling drops of garlic juice into Salka’s bloodied fur, and then dropped the squashed bulb into the grass. She padded back across her hollow and lay down in the grass, her head pressed into her stained paws. She sighed.
“Palva,” Tir asked timidly. He looked up at the Gatherer. “What will we do?”
Slowly, Palva raised her head. For the first time, she looked defeated.
“I don’t know, Tir,” she said in a hollow voice. “What do we do?”
Tir looked away, to the red-stained grass where Salka was lying, her flanks speckled dark with foam and blood.
“I was hoping you would have an answer,” he mumbled.
Palva groaned, and rose to her paws, shaking bits of withered grass out of her pale pelt.
“Listen to me,” she said, her anger with him quite evaporated. “You know a lot of things, whether you believe it or not.”
“What’s changed? Whatever happened to me being an idiot?”
Palva groaned. “You’re not an idiot, Tir,” she said. “And I’m sorry for calling you one. Not an idiot, but perhaps just a bit too trusting. It wasn’t really you I was angry with, anyway—and you know that. The only idiot in this pack is Alpha Liyra, though, unfortunately, she’s the one in charge.”
“I don’t think you should—”
“Forget what I should or shouldn’t do, because it’s beyond help now. What I was trying to say is that you know much more about what’s going on than you think you do—that I am positive of.”
Tir thought on this for a moment, his head tilted to one side. “So are you saying I forgot something? As Seilo has?” It was an interesting idea, but he doubted it.
Palva shook her head. “Seilo hasn’t forgotten anything, Tir. He can’t remember what he never really knew. What I’m saying is that something is buried, like the names buried in Seilo’s head. It is there, certainly. You just need to clear away the dust.”
“How will that help?”
“It will help everything.”
Silence.
Tir did not understand what Palva was saying at all. It was Palva who knew something, not him. Palva was hiding something; he could read it from the way she spoke. Why must she always speak in riddles? It was getting increasingly annoying.
“What do you want me to do?” he said, seized with a sudden suspicion.
Palva gave him a long, piercing look. There it was again—that conspiring glint in her pale eyes.
“I want you to go speak with the renegade,” she said.
Tir fell down into the grass.
“Are you insane?”
Palva’s pale eyes glittered. “Don’t you dare say that word to me. But I’ve decided it’s time I took matters for myself. I’ve put up with this long enough—there’s a fine line between disobeying orders and doing what I know I should. And I know I should, but they will never hear it.”
Tir’s mind was reeling. It was the stupidest—and not to mention most dangerous—idea
he had ever heard. And Palva was telling him off for being too trusting?
“She tried to tear my throat out!” he said.
“But she didn’t.”
“I don’t know why she didn’t!”
“You don’t need to know. There is a reason. You survived the fire, Tir, and now you have survived the renegade who has made it her mission to destroy all else. I don’t know why—no, don’t look at me that way; I don’t know why—but I do know that there is a reason.”
Tir lowered his eyes, scowling. What was Palva trying to say? He glanced up at her again, furtively, but the Gatherer was as cool and unreadable as usual, and Tir could only guess at what she was thinking.
“She’ll skin me alive,” he warned. “Alive, Palva. To be honest, I’d rather she skin me dead. But apparently you’d rather have it her way.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, of course not,” Palva tilted her head to one side. “But I don’t believe she will harm you. I don’t believe in coincidences, either. And I don’t believe that this will end until someone does something.”
Tir growled, scuffling his paws.
“I won’t go,” he said. “This is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Are you sure? Are more deaths and blood the brighter solution?”
“But how do you know it’s going to keep going on like this? She can’t keep running from us forever. How do you know we’re not going to kill her in the next hunt?”
“Do you want her to be killed?”
Tir was silent for a long time. “No,” he said at last, in a small voice. “But it can’t go on forever, Palva, it just can’t.”
Palva closed her eyes. “No, it won’t go on forever,” she said. “But who knows where we’ll all be when it ends? It could go on until we’ve all been destroyed, and that would be long enough.”
“But—”
“Look, Tir!” Palva said, sweeping her tail up to the sky. The dusky sky was darkening, and a half-moon was beginning to show. Tir followed her gaze, and he gasped.
“Palva! The moon—!”
“—is orange,” Palva finished for him. “I know. It has been orange ever since it returned the night after Blacksky, when the renegade first threw down her threats. It will be orange until its full, and then it shall fade as it wanes.”
“But why? There must be some reason.”
“There is a reason,” Palva said, her voice growing sharp. “Rya is veiled orange with the poison of battle. Fire. An orange moon is not unheard of—it’s happened before, it’s a natural way of the earth. But this moon has purpose. Our war with the renegade will last as the fire moon rises, and will grow in danger as the nights pass. This dispute may seem small compared to the rest of the world, but I assure you, small disputes grow and spread. And I know that if our dispute with the renegade is not solved by the next Blacksky, it will be past all mending.”
A feeling of icy dread gripped Tir’s stomach as he realized what Palva was saying. In his old pack, he had heard of how tiny and personal feuds spread like poison and drew in everything around it until it had grown into something terrible and unstoppable. It was something almost impossible to imagine, but he knew better than to brush it aside. He glanced back up at the darkening sky and shuddered. The orange fire-moon glared at him.
“How do you know all of this, Palva?” he whispered. “It’s not that I don’t believe you,” he added hastily. “But if you told Alpha Liyra, then maybe—”
“Liyra knows,” Palva said. “But she doesn’t think it’s significant. Before you came, there was a—” She cut herself off. “However I know or not, it doesn’t matter,” she went on brusquely, avoiding Tir’s suspicious glance. “But this is why you have to speak with the renegade, Tir. You fell out of that forest fire for a purpose.”
There was a long silence while Tir pondered this.
“But I can’t reason with her,” he burst out. “Did you not see her when she came to ca—when she came to the redoubt? We know what she wants. She wants her own, ridiculous hunting rights. But you know we can’t give her that. It would be a sign of weakness.”
“Would it?” Palva said. “And are they hunting rights? It would be a logical assumption, yes, but can we afford to assume? Tell me, did she ever tell anyone exactly why she is fighting us?”
Tir was quiet.
“No,” he said in a small voice.
“There is much that we don’t know here. Do we really know what is going on? That renegade has a story to tell, and it most likely will not be what you are expecting. I have seen hunting disputes before. They do not look like this.”
Tir gave her a suspicious look.
“You act as though you know what she’s thinking,” he growled, remembering his old suspicion that the Gatherer could read minds. “…Do you?”
“I don’t,” Palva said, tipping her head. “But I do know that misunderstandings can be deadly.”
“You think this is a misunderstanding?”
“It’s possible. Anything is possible. We do not understand the true intentions of this renegade.”
“And you think me talking to her will help. She hates us.”
“But why does she hate us? We don’t know. All we see is an angry wolf. Why is she angry? Could it be that we are wrong?”
Tir stared at her.
“Alpha Liyra would have you exiled for saying that.”
Palva gave a soft, bitter laugh. “Perhaps she would. Alpha Liyra would never be able to see past the blood on the renegade’s paws. So that’s why I’m asking you.”
Tir said nothing, not wanting to meet Palva’s pale stare.
“Talk to her,” Palva insisted. “She will listen.”
Tir’s paws were shaking, but not from the cold. Despite this, his skin felt as though it were burning. His mind was flying through different thoughts and possibilities, and he could barely see the grey, cold fields around him.
He had only half understood anything Palva had said, but the meaning was clear: Speak with the renegade, even at the risk of his life—because someone needs to speak with her, and he was most likely to survive. Compromising had not worked for Alpha Liyra; he would have to try something different.
Tir’s eyes watered, making his vision blurry. He squinted, and was able to distinguish a shining black patch from the endless plains of grey-green. The lake. And scattered around it was the brown mass of the deer herd.
Tir lowered himself into the tall grass, his eyes peeping over the tips. Palva had told him the renegade would be somewhere around here, but how would Palva know? What did Palva know?
He inched forward, using his best hunting creep. He was uncomfortably aware of the fact that the wind was blowing against him—towards the deer, but there was nothing he could do about that.
Closer, he could see a tiny fleck of white amidst the brown flanks of the deer. He continued to move, trying to see through the cold wind that bit his eyes like ice.
The renegade. Tir’s blood went cold. The fur along his back prickled, and his lips instinctively curled up in a snarl. He would not show fear in front of her—but he knew that every breath he took from now on could be his last.
He stopped. The deer herd was so close to him now, he could make out each individual deer from the rest of the herd. And he could see that what the renegade was doing was very strange—stranger than anything he had ever seen before.
She was standing before a tall and skinny stag with enormous, branching antlers. The stag was not frightened or running away; he was standing, calm and still in the presence of this wolf, his predator. Tir couldn’t believe it. Not a single deer in the herd appeared to be afraid of the fierce white renegade.
The renegade herself was raising her head high to see the stag, and her mouth was moving. What was she doing? The stag had lowered his shaggy head to her level, and an old doe was sitting in the grass nearby, her head inclined in their direction.
Tir stared and stared, his heart beginning to pound faster. It almost l
ooked as though she was talking to the deer.