30.
Full Moon
Palva raised her head, blinking against the wind that had picked up the moment the pack had left their redoubt. It was just an hour before dusk; the sun was a weakly-glowing golden disk hanging just above the edge of the horizon. Below, a few scattered wrinkles like ripples in a still pond interrupted the flat expanse where the wind had blown against the blanket of snow.
But Palva did not notice the shimmering landscape. Her mind was a swirl of awful thoughts and her heart was beating to the soft crunching of paws in the snow as the pack moved towards the renegade’s forest. The forest was close now. Even from a distance, Palva could hear the black trees creaking in the hard wind. She shuddered. It would not be long before they were inside of that nightmare. It would not be long before the battle began. Was there anything she could do—anything at all—to stop it now? Palva shivered again, and glanced up at the full fire-moon, which was beginning to show its face.
She was out of time.
“All right, everyone listen to me!”
Alpha Liyra’s voice rang out across the crowd of the pack, sounding faint and distant as it was tossed about by the strong wind. The crunching of paws came to a halt, and heads rose to face Liyra, who was standing tall at the front of the pack.
“Be careful when we enter the forest,” she said. “Be as silent as possible, and keep all senses alert for attack. The renegade pack may have prepared an ambush for us.”
Muttering rose like a swarm of bees from the pack, but silenced when Liyra spoke again.
“If we are surprising them, we have two waves—the first shall be the Sentinels, along with the Council. The second is the Hunters. They will come at my signal. Now, move in!”
The pack surged forward at once like a wave. They swept out across the smooth fields, their paws trampling the white snow and churning it into a muddy slush. Palva followed them, noting with unease that Liyra’s attack plan relied on the fact that the renegade pack was unprepared for them. She knew better—in fact, the renegade was no doubt standing in silent wait, watching them from amongst the dark tree trunks of her forest. It was not long before Palva and the pack stood at the forest’s threshold, where the vast, bare trees loomed over them in an unsettlingly predatory manner. The pack slowed to a creep. They slunk into the darkness one at a time.
All fell silent. Palva’s ears twitched. Even the screaming of the wind had quieted. The forest was no less eerie under snow—covered bushes were contorted into strange shapes, glittering in the shadows. Trees reached out from the ground like thin black arms with spidery branches that clawed the greying sky. But the silence was worst of all. It was as though they had entered a tomb.
Alpha Liyra hissed something from the front, and very slowly the pack moved forward. They were heading in the direction of the river, over which they had pursued the renegade.
Palva wove her way up to the front, slipping around the bristling wolves to where Alpha Liyra was. Liyra was moving with ears pricked forward and a determined glint in her eyes. Beside her walked Captain Leron, whose steely eyes burned like live coals in the dark.
Palva was just about to move up to Liyra’s opposite side to whisper in the alpha’s ear—a last minute, desperate attempt to persuade her that there was another way, that this didn’t have to happen—but Liyra stopped. Palva stopped. The pack behind them stopped.
Growls rose from their throats. Before Palva could react, a shadow emerged from the row of pine trees in front of them. It was a wolf: a large, bristling, fiery-eyed wolf. He was followed by another wolf, and another and another. The renegade pack assembled before them, unnaturally silent as though they, too, were a part of the dark forest.
Palva was startled by their condition. She spied ribs jutting out from their thin pelts, and the snow beneath them was pink from bleeding paws. They looked half-starved. But they were lean and bristling, and their eyes glittered like a hundred tiny fires. These were angry, fearsome wolves. And there were many of them.
The black wolf who had been first to approach them stepped to the front. He looked Alpha Liyra in the eye. His eyes were a strange color, a golden-orange, and his pelt was frosted silver with age. He was older than Liyra, and perhaps more experienced.
Out of the corner of her eye, Palva glimpsed a flash of white amongst the trees. Two pale points of light burned at them from the shadows. The renegade was watching them.
“Good morning,” the black alpha said. Liyra seemed to stiffen in surprise at the low sarcasm of his tone. “This is my pack,” he continued, dipping his head to gesture towards the wolves behind him. “My name is Misari. I am their alpha, but I freed them just last night. They now follow me with loyalty into whatever may arise from this meeting.”
A sudden, sharp intake of breath came from a wolf behind Palva. She looked around to see Tir. His eyes were round and glassy and he was staring at the other alpha in disbelief. He looked terrified. He looked like he was about to faint.
“No,” he whispered. “Oh, no, no—”
“My name is Alpha Liyra,” Liyra said, her voice ringing in the forest’s taut silence. “This is my pack.”
A low rumble rose from behind Palva as the packwolves growled in reply.
“I would wish for this meeting to be in peace,” Misari said. “But I know that that cannot be. You come as the hunters, to destroy us. Any actions we take now will be actions taken in self-defense.”
“Liar,” hissed Liyra. “Trickster. Hypocrite. How dare you call me the fire-starter? It was your renegade who has killed, was it not?”
“I apologize for her. But her actions have been justified.”
“Justified?” Liyra’s voice rose in outrage. “She has committed murder! And you would kill us all in a heartbeat. We do not trust you. Forget your false courtesies; they won’t soften us.”
“Fine then,” Misari said. His orange eyes flashed, dark as the fire-moon. “Shall we soften you with our teeth?”
“Enough talk! You and your wolves will be dead by tomorrow’s dawn.”
“That may very well be. But will you be here to witness it, I wonder?”
“Give us your renegade,” Liyra said. “Give her to us, and I will allow the rest of you to leave.”
“She is not mine to give.” Misari showed his teeth in both a threat and a grim smile. “And even if she were to give herself over to you, my wolves and I still would not cover our fangs. We have come here to draw the blood from your pelts. Any threat to one of us is a threat to us all.”
There was a moment of tense silence, the air crackling with hatred and fury. It was the thick stillness that comes before the break of a storm, as the whole world holds its breath in preparation for the oncoming onslaught.
There was no clear signal, as Liyra had promised, but all at once the hollow erupted into a roar of fur and fangs.