Mir's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Her father slept through the morning. Mir left him with the healer and walked out into the pack circle to find the old wolf waiting. He stood with his cane in the snow and his mouth set. Behind him, someone had cleared a wide patch of ground and dragged icy stones into two rings, one inside the other. He called it a trial ring. He said the pack law required the new alpha to pass the old succession trials before the envoy left. He said her father had never taught her the forms because he had never meant to name her. He said refusal was the same as failing. Mir did not raise her voice. She said she would answer him by nightfall. She turned and walked to the healer's hut and sat on the bench outside. Fin came out after her and stood at the door the way he had stood all night. Thera came from the pavilion with snow on her shoulders and stopped in front of Mir. "He wants you to fail in public," Thera said. "He picked a form no living wolf here can judge clean." Mir nodded. She had already seen it. She pulled the small pouch from her coat and counted the rings inside. Twelve plain iron bands, each stamped with the pack crest. She had cut them from a bar over the winter and finished them one at a time. She looked at Thera. "You are first," she said. She put a ring in Thera's palm and closed her fingers over it. "You speak for the twelve. You answer to me and no one else." Thera looked at the ring. Then she looked at Mir and said, "Yes." Mir called the other eleven in one by one through the afternoon. She named each one to a task she had already matched to what they could do. The tracker got the north line. The two who had watched her when her father gave her training away got the runners under them. She put a ring in each hand and said the rank out loud so the pack outside could hear it through the hide walls. When she finished, twelve wolves stood in a half circle around the healer's door, and none of them looked at the old man's ring of stones. She went to Fin last. He was still at the door. She took his wrist and turned it so his palm faced up. She did not give him a ring. She put her hand flat against her stomach and then against his. "I am carrying," she said. He did not move for a long moment. Then he said, "How long have you known." She said, "Since the night my father woke." He closed his hand around hers and said, "Then we hold the ground we have." Mir walked back to the old wolf at dusk. She said she would not stand the trials he had chosen. She said the pack already had an alpha and twelve ranked wolves under her, and any wolf who wanted a trial could bring it to them. The old man looked past her at the twelve standing behind her in a line, each with an iron ring on the hand that would hold a blade. He struck his cane once against the frozen ground and walked away. The stones stayed where he had set them.