26.
Dissent
As Nerasa had predicted, Xelind was the new chief Sentinel.
If he was surprised by this decision, then he did not show it; in fact, there was a good chance that he had known it was coming for a long time. Tir was not surprised and neither was Palva; the Gatherer had retreated to her hollow after the announcement, muttering darkly about conniving weasels and shooting glares over her shoulder as she left. Palva, for once, was not alone in her misgivings. Indeed, every wolf in the pack had exchanged dismal glances following the announcement. Every wolf in the pack knew that it was Captain Leron’s doing.
On any normal occasion, the position would have been fought for amongst the Sentinels on a designated Fang night, and there were many whisperings amongst those who were not chosen about whether or not Xelind would have been the one who would win—was he the right wolf for the position? The chief Sentinel must be the strongest fighter out of all the Sentinels, as Sirle had been.
But Alpha Liyra had promised the position to whoever was the one to kill the renegade—and no one had done so.
Liyra had stated, as a rather weak explanation: “He was the only wolf brave enough to attack the renegade alone.” And he was; he had leapt at her as she was cornered—only to be flung headlong into a tree. But he had come the closest out of any of the Sentinels. So Xelind was the new chief Sentinel—there was no arguing with the Alpha’s choice, even if it had been made for her by the Captain.
An hour later, Xelind was sitting with the rest of the Council in Alpha Liyra’s den, busy licking his cuts as he waited in calm silence for the meeting to begin. Simetra and Captain Leron were flattened against opposite walls of the cave, Simetra glaring poison and Leron trying to hide his smile. Alpha Liyra herself was standing in the entrance to her cave, the seeping grey light of dawn forming a misty halo around her fur. Palva was not there.
“May we begin?” Simetra growled from her dark corner. “My paws are beginning to ache.”
“The Gatherer isn’t here, chief Hunter,” Captain Leron said with an exaggerated patience. “The rules dictate that we may not begin without a full Council present, and despite her lack of relevant input, we must treat the Gatherer fairly—”
“Enough, Leron,” Liyra interrupted. “She is coming. She must have heard my howl.”
“Everyone heard the howl,” Xelind said, surprising the others by speaking. They turned to stare at him; he pretended not to notice, and continued licking his cuts. “And Nerasa the Sentinel did tell her about the meeting. I was there, you know.”
“What did she say?” Liyra asked.
“She wasn’t pleased.”
“But she—”
“She says she won’t have anything to do with this…‘bloodbath’ any longer. She’s resigning from the Council.”
Alpha Liyra shifted.
“Oh, no, but surely she couldn’t have meant that.”
Xelind raised his brow. “She sounded resolute to me.”
No one said anything for a few moments. Alpha Liyra was looking a bit uncomfortable.
“Well,” she said. “We cannot begin without her. We need her.”
“No, no, we don’t,” Leron said. “Leave her; she was kind enough to make things more convenient for us. Now we may begin, as it seems that the full Council is present.”
Liyra remained at the cave entrance for a few more moments, looking out to see if she could catch a glimpse of the disgruntled Gatherer. At last the alpha sighed and, turning around with some reluctance, padded back into the cave’s darkness.
“Fine then,” she said. “Let’s see if we can sort this out.”
And she looked at Captain Leron.
“There is little to be discussed, Alpha,” Leron said, detaching himself somewhat from the cave wall and moving closer to the center of the huddled group, where he stood beside Xelind. “I’m afraid our options have been limited for a long time—thus far, we have let the renegade dictate the terms of the fight. We have not been firm enough.”
A long silence followed; the Council wolves seemed unwilling to speak. At last, Simetra gave him a look of disgust, and growled, “We’ve sent our entire pack out to kill her on her own land. Is that not assertive enough for you, Captain? We did what we thought was best; we’ve been trying to end this—”
“With all respect, chief Hunter,” Leron interrupted. “We hesitated. We should have struck down this renegade the moment we discovered her existence—and for that, I take the blame myself. I should have killed her on my first patrol of this land, but I, too, hesitated.”
“That’s hardly something to take blame for, Leron,” Liyra said, her brow raised in surprise. She had been watching him speak with a thoughtful eye, and now she turned her attention to the others. “No one would have expected you to jump to immediate conclusions; why, how were any of us to know what this renegade was going to mean?”
“I should have known,” Leron said, straightening himself. For once, he looked deadly serious. “I am familiar with wolves like her. Outsiders and renegades are the most dangerous creatures on earth; they are loose, unpredictable wolves. I have seen firsthand what they can do, and even Xelind here can tell you about the brutality of which a desperate animal is capable.”
The Council sat in stunned silence. Xelind flattened his ears and continued to lick his cuts; Leron, however, was wearing an uncharacteristically honest expression of angry pride.
“There isn’t any need to be ashamed,” he said fiercely. “Not you, Xelind, and not I—none of us. You, chief Hunter, said that you all did what you thought was best. And, I tell you, I did the same; Xelind did the same. I have never lied to you about the difficulties my pack faced before we joined yours, Liyra. One dangerous stranger can infiltrate a pack like a parasite and take it over from the inside out—I have seen this happen firsthand. But that Xelind and I are alive today—although we are the only surviving members—testifies to the fact that each of us has done what we thought was best. And it worked.”
There was a long, tense silence. Under Liyra and Simetra’s disbelieving stares, Leron appeared to have expanded in the cave; the Captain’s flint-grey eyes gleamed with a strange, violent fervor, and he stood tall and dark against the stone walls of the cave. Xelind, by contrast, had shrunk; he licked his wound raw and bloody, and his ears had flattened so close to his skull that he looked to be little more than a white skeleton loosely draped in fur.
“You are talking strangely about outsiders, Leron,” Liyra said at last, looking wary. “The problem at hand is the renegade’s pack. Surely you don’t mean to say anything about…”
“I told you my misgivings about that one the night the Gatherer dragged him up to our new redoubt.”
“That one?” Simetra burst out, her hostility returned. She bared her teeth in the dark. “You are referring to one of my own Hunters, Captain; I won’t stand these insults! Tir has proven himself as a member of this pack, and I refuse to listen to your prejudices any longer—”
“You don’t find it terribly coincidental, then,” Leron interrupted, raising his voice to overpower hers. “…that we move into this seemingly-unclaimed territory and find, not one, but two unknown wolves? One of which—of course—we let into our pack without any suspicion, just in time for the other to commence attacking us from the outside?”
“Just because this is a battle of hunting rights doesn’t mean you must find blame among the Hunters, for Rya’s sake—!”
“—And don’t you find it coincidental, that this outsider should escape from and return to our pack only after meeting the renegade in her forest? That he should be the first to bring the renegade into the very main of our redoubt, to deliver her first threats? That he is the only one in this pack who has come face-to-face with her multiple times and escaped unscathed?”
“He was not unscathed!” Simetra bellowed, rising to her feet. “He was covered in the wounds of a proper fight—he fought with the tenacity of a true Hunter!”
>
“He was the only wolf to stay behind when the rest of us pursued the renegade last night! You will accuse me of prejudices, but how am I the only one to find all of this suspicious?” Leron paused, and seemed to be fighting back fury. He turned his head, gazing around at the others, and snarled in a sudden fit of impatience: “And for death’s sake, have none of you looked at these two wolves?”
“That is enough, Leron,” Liyra said. Her voice was soft but firm. “You are losing track of the problem at hand.”
Leron turned towards her, looking surprised. “I apologize,” he said in a quieter voice. He seemed to realize that he had lost control; his fur flattened and he offered a slow smile as he struggled to regain his composure, though his grey eyes still glinted with a wild light. “I apologize,” he repeated. “I forget myself. But now that the Gatherer is gone, and given the danger we as a pack are facing, I think it is important that there are no questions unanswered amongst the members of the Council—”
“I have already given you my answers, Captain,” Liyra said, her voice beginning to gain a bit of its old steel. She fixed her dark gold eyes on Leron. “You may put your misgivings to rest. Palva and I have a very good reason for keeping Tir.”
“Forget the Gatherer!” Leron said, a hint of roughness breaking back into his tone. “If you won’t explain things to me, then how can you reprimand me for seeking my own solutions? I tell you, I know what outsiders—”
“Leron!” Liyra snapped. “Now is neither the place nor the time.”
Captain Leron stared at her. He appeared to struggle a bit, and for a moment it appeared that he would snarl back at the alpha. However, he seemed to regain control of himself and his face smoothed back into a calm mask. Beside him, Xelind had at last given up licking his wounds and was now staring at Liyra with an unreadable expression.
“It’s simple, really,” he spoke up in a quiet, dead-level tone, startling the others. Even Leron glanced down at him with a sort of vague astonishment. But Xelind gave no sign that he noticed the others’ reactions. “As the Captain said,” he went on serenely. “We have hesitated too many times. We must do what we feel is best.”
“The renegade pack,” Liyra stated, looking puzzled.
Xelind nodded.
In the others’ silence, Leron had begun to smile again. The wild light was fading from his eyes almost as quickly as it had come, and he was nodding to himself, as though to put forth an agreeable face. His eyes were turning back to cold, grey lead.
“They intend to kill us,” Liyra said, half to herself. Her gaze was still fixed on Xelind, who tilted his head to the side.
“If they are like the renegade, then yes, we may assume that.”
“Well?” Liyra demanded, raising her head again to look at Leron. “What shall be our plan of action? I had asked you, Captain.”
“As Xelind said. It’s simple.” Leron paused, and surveyed the Council before him. “At this point, the harshness of our actions will be irrelevant. We must do what we feel is best…and we must make the first move.”
“NO NO NO!”
A bloodcurdling scream exploded in the air from the redoubt below, cutting off the reply Liyra had been preparing to give and stealing the breath from the wolves’ throats.
Fear-stricken, the Council streamed out from Liyra’s den, their fur bristling and tails flying out behind them as they half-stumbled down the slope of rocks and into the redoubt main. Someone was screaming in the dark; twisting sounds of blind fear were echoing from the stones at the far side of redoubt—the cries of an animal in panic.
“What happened?” Liyra cried, skidding to a halt in the center of the pitch-dark clearing and looking around wildly. Leron and Xelind came to a halt close behind her, but Simetra raced past them with a flying snarl, streaking out of the redoubt in violent pursuit of something none of the others could see.
Salka came dashing out of a den amongst the boulders, her eyes wide and fur standing on end. She ran to Alpha Liyra and clung close to her side, as though she were a pup seeking protection.
“The renegade!” she shrieked, tripping over her paws. “In my den! Just now!”
Without waiting to hear another word, Leron crossed the redoubt main to the den in several rapid strides. His own dark brown fur disappeared in the gloom of the den’s entrance, but he withdrew his head quickly.
“She’s gone,” he growled to them. “But her scent still lingers.”
Liyra seemed to sway on her paws.
“The renegade was here?” she breathed. Then, eyes sharp, she whipped around to face the tortured Salka. “Did she attack you?” she demanded. “Did she harm you? Did she kill you?”
“N—no!” Salka gibbered, her eyes rolling back in her head with terror. “But—she just…appeared, and leaned over me.”
Liyra shook her head again and again.
“Just leaned over you? But…that makes no sense,” Liyra stumbled back, dazed again. “She didn’t do anything? Were there any other wolves with her?”
“She was alone,” Salka whimpered. Then, she took a deep breath and seemed to collect her wits. “But—she she said something. She said she came with a message for the alpha. For you.”
Alpha Liyra froze, looking stunned. She exchanged a glance with Captain Leron, and then turned back to the shuddering Salka.
“Well then,” Liyra said, her voice hoarse. “What did the renegade have to say to me?”
Salka shut her eyes tight, and shook her head.
“Salka,” Liyra said in a softer tone. “What did she tell you?”
Salka looked up, her eyes huge and glassy.
“She said that her pack is coming. They’re coming to attack. Within two sunrises. A—and she says there won’t even be…there’ll be no wolves left alive to mourn for our dead. She said to tell you.”
Silence.
At that moment, Simetra came crashing back into the redoubt, spitting and stomping and cursing.
“She got away,” she snarled before anyone could ask. “I think she went back to her forest.”
Everyone in the clearing stared at her, and she flattened her ears.
“What’s wrong?” Simetra asked, quieting. “She didn’t—she wasn’t able to kill…”
Her voice trailed away to nothing as Alpha Liyra closed her eyes and took a deep, shaky breath.
“Go and get Palva, right now. I don’t care if she refuses to come—drag her by the neck, if you must. We need her.”
“What happened?”
Before Liyra could say anything, Captain Leron replied.
“We are too late,” he said, leaden eyes seeming to grow brighter and more alive off of the panicked energy of the surrounding wolves. “The renegade has now made her intentions perfectly clear. We must prepare the pack for battle, before she makes her next move.”