Swiftrunner listened numbly to Will's account of the previous night until the boy finished and leaned back on his chair to wait apprehensively for his response.
"You gave him your master's goods without his permission," Swiftrunner said after a while. He stood up and opened his desk drawer, pulling out some silver coins, which he handed to Will. "Tell him to come to me if that isn't enough to repay the debt. I don't want you to be in trouble with him for helping your pack."
Will took the coins uncertainly. "Th-thank you? I'm sorry for costing you money, I didn't think about... I just didn't think."
"Actually, I think you were thinking more than any of us." Swiftrunner sighed and threw himself back into his armchair. He leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his temples to hide his face for a moment. I should have followed him. I could have brought him back before...
He drew in a breath, composed himself with effort and looked up again. "Why didn't you come to me right away?"
Will squirmed. "I was afraid of the guards. I thought they would chase after him if they knew he had left, and I guess I was also scared they would punish me for helping him."
"I wouldn't have told them," Swiftrunner argued.
"But I was all bloody from touching him," Will said in an uncharacteristically small voice. "They would have seen."
Swiftrunner tightened his jaw and reminded himself that Will was just a boy. A boy who had already taken serious risks to help a packmate who might be beyond help, and a boy who did not deserve to be harassed with second-guessing. "All right. Thank you. You can go now."
Will scurried away, letting the door swing shut behind him, and Swiftrunner dropped his head back into his hands. Behind him, his bedroom door opened and he smelled Sundancer's light, grassy scent before she touched his shoulders. He tensed under her hands and she drew back slightly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "If I'd let you go after him..."
She sounded like she meant it, and he felt instantly guilty for the moment of resentment he'd felt toward her. "It isn't your fault. I needed to stay and make sure you were all right, I couldn't have gone haring after him. I wouldn't be much of a mate if I was more concerned with my wayward Striker than the mother of my sons."
She perched on the arm of his chair and stroked his back in silence while he sat and stared dully at the fire. He felt like he were underwater, as though the air had become unbearably heavy and pressed him into the upholstery until he thought he might stay there until he died. After only a few minutes, though, a log settled with a shower of sparks and broke the spell, and he turned suddenly and clung to his mate, wrapping his arms her waist and clutching her to him. "What have I done," he moaned.
She cradled his head against her breasts and made low, soothing sounds as his shoulders shook.
"I brought us here," he said thickly, "and now the pack is falling apart. Bonecrusher's a lost cause, Gatekeeper and Will are hardly ever around, and now this. Did I make a mistake?"
"No," she said sharply, almost angrily. "No, you didn't. Our wolves died - and worse - in the Forest, too. At least now we have the chance to choose, to become something better."
She pulled away and strode back into their bedroom, leaving him feeling naked and vulnerable, like she'd pulled off a bandage and exposed the raw wounds beneath. He sniffed and wiped his eyes, angry with himself for being so pathetic. Then she returned with their sleeping firstborn in her arms and slid into his lap.
"Look at your sweet boy," she said, snuggling up against his chest. "When he was a baby werewolf, he could only hope to be a werewolf. Now he is a baby human, and he can be anyone he wants. He is free. Look at him, and then tell me you still think we should live as beasts. "
He obeyed, gazing down at the peacefully dreaming cherub, the fat pink cheeks and the little pink fingers holding on so tight to the fluffy blankie. And, though he knew he was selfish, he realized he would make almost any sacrifice to secure a future for this boy.
Nightsong accepted the glass of water from Sundancer, but didn't drink, too distracted by what Swiftrunner was telling her. Finally she set the glass down on the table beside her.
"I don't understand," she said. "He's your Striker. He's pack. How could you just give up on him like this?"
Swiftrunner gave her a helpless look. "There are laws. And, please, you have to understand – our pack is already on fragile ground here. Teagan's packmates aren't happy about us sharing their territory, especially after what Bonecrusher did. If they get too scared, they'll try to drive us out. Then where would we go?"
"This is all my fault," she whispered. "If I hadn't rejected him-"
"Excuse me," Sundancer said sharply. "Am I missed something? Because I'm pretty sure beating an innocent man to death was his idea, not yours."
"Did anybody ever explain any of this to him?" Nightsong cried. She rose and began to pace across the room. "Or did we all just expect him to read our minds and know what was expected of him?"
"He knows it's not okay to go around killing at random," Sundancer scoffed.
"But I... I never..." Nightsong wrung her hands and paced some more, stopping at last in front of her tiny window. "Can I have tonight off?" she asked finally.
"Of course," the two Alphas said simultaneously. Swiftrunner took his mate's hand and led her from the room, leaving Nightsong alone.
She gazed unseeing out the mullioned window for a long time, at clouds moving in stately grace across the sky and swallows diving through the air above the barns below. Then she went to her wardrobe and pulled out her cape, throwing it around her shoulders. She walked quickly down the stairs and out the main gate, through the courtyard, across the bridge and up the front stairs of Firetooth's house.
The door swung open easily, revealing the cluttered living room she remembered. The sunlight streaming through the door and windows made the interior seem even more dingy and depressing. It stank of hopelessness. She wandered slowly through the empty house, pushing open doors to bedrooms and pantries that looked as though Firetooth had only entered them for as long as it took to scavenge any blankets or pillows for his nest in the living room. She found herself back in that one room, the only room he'd apparently used, and looking down on the blanket nest.
There was a lump in the center of the nest. Kneeling, she pulled back the top blanket to see what he'd hidden, and went very still.
When she'd been given her new dresses, she'd forgotten about her old tunic, the one she'd worn on the long trip out from the Forest. She hadn't even noticed it was missing, but here it was, enshrined protectively in his bed as though it were the only thing in the whole building that he valued.
Firetooth limped steadily southward until he reached the Imperial Highway, then turned west and plodded on. The blood dried slowly on his clothing and became sticky, then stiff, and chafed on his bruises; his knee gradually went numb and, between that and the worsening dizziness, he began stumbling over every crack in the paving. A shift in the wind brought a scent of smoke and blood from the south, but he ignored it since he was helpless to do anything about it.
Shivering, he squinted east at the cruelly beautiful dawn and wondered if it were safe to rest. Then, because he'd taken his eyes off the road, of course he encountered an exceptionally uneven stone. He tripped, staggered and went down on one knee, his good knee by the Lady's grace, but still it hurt like the blazes and nausea swelled in his belly as he breathed several long, slow breaths to steady himself.
Okay, clearly he wasn't going any further. Must find a safe place to den for a few hours... He looked but saw little except rolling fields and, in the distance, a pall of greasy smoke hanging over the horizon. Then he remembered having crossed a small river, narrow but deep, only a short time ago.
Firetooth turned around and limped back to the bridge, eased himself down the riverbank, and crawled gratefully into the hidden darkness under the bridge. His stomach growled and he opened the sack Will had given him. A rush of sorrow filled him as he remembered his packmate's kindness; he would probably never see him again. He blinked hard, determined not to break down yet, and rummaged around for the cheese.
His hand came out with the small jar instead. Curiously, he opened it and sniffed at the goop inside. After a moment's thought, he realized with a flood of relief that it smelled like Morrigan's magical healing goop, and he smeared it liberally over his knee, the huge lump on his head and his battered right hand. Almost immediately, the pain began to fade.
He devoured the cheese and rolled himself up into a tight ball, tugging the sack over him like a tiny blanket, and slept the sleep of the dead.
…...
"I'm so sorry, girl. Really I am."
Firetooth stirred groggily sometime in the afternoon when a man standing on the bridge above him began talking. He stared blankly up at the stone underside of the bridge, slow to wake, while the man continued to speak.
"But I don't got a lot of options. We barely got out of the village with our lives, and I can't even afford to feed my own son, much less a half-breed puppy. Last spring, when I saw you come out of your beautiful mama," here the man's voice cracked with emotion, "and she were so proud o' her first pup, and there you were all freckled like a spaniel and obviously not a pure mabari, well... I wanted to do right by you, but I can't. I just can't. I can't feed you and watch my own baby starve, and I can't find anyone else who'll take in a mongrel, and... and this way... This way it'll be quick and merciful. No dyin' slowly of hunger, no bein' et alive by darkspawn."
A frightened whine, and the sound of a heavy stone scraping across the bridge railing.
"Well... I guess this is goodbye. Sleep well, my sweet pup..."
The man's words choked off in a sob, and Firetooth watched as a bundle was pushed off the bridge, tied to a stone. The bundle sank into the frigid water and the strange man fled, and for a moment Firetooth just looked at the bubbles rising from under the waters until, with a jolt of comprehension, his foggy brain cleared and he threw off his jacket and plunged into the river.
He groped blindly over the river bottom until he found the weakly struggling bundle and tried to lift it. The damned rock was amazingly heavy, though, and he couldn't get the thing to move more than a few inches with the river's current buffeting him. He surfaced for another breath, then went back to fight with the string holding the sack closed, his hands shaking with urgency, until he got his fingers into the opening and yanked on it with one desperate heave.
The drawstring snapped and he thrust his hands into the sack, coming out with a dark, limp body, which he carried to shore and laid out on the dry ground. For a moment he knelt over it in panic, no idea what to do next, and then the dog coughed up an impossible amount of river water and curled feebly into a ball, shivering and coughing fitfully.
Her wet fur was mostly dark brown, but her legs were white and covered in tiny brown spots. He supposed that must have been what the would-be murderer meant by "freckled like a spaniel." Her body was also slimmer than a mabari's, and her ears were longer and floppier, her tail and belly trimmed with longer fur like a fringe. She was lanky and half-grown, with broad, clumsy paws, and looked surprisingly well cared-for, considering she'd been living with a cold-hearted bastard.
Speaking of cold, she could still die if he didn't warm her, quickly. He lifted her into his arms, ignoring her whimpers, and carried her to the edge of the bridge's shadow, leaning out to look for any sign of her previous owner, or guards who might be hunting him. He didn't see anyone nearby, but perhaps a half-mile away a small village had sprung up while he slept. Thin pillars of smoke rose from campfires ringed by tents that were little more than cloaks propped up on sticks, and women and children huddled near the warmth while a pathetically small number of men stood around the perimeter, holding pitchforks, hunting bows, and knives. More than half of the "guards" wore bloodied bandages somewhere on their bodies.
Darkspawn. The murderer had mentioned darkspawn, and a ruined village. Firetooth had had no idea the raids came so close to his territory. Damn it, this was his territory – the arling of Redcliffe's border was still a few miles away. Which meant that Redcliffe's soldiers would be here soon, to look for the raiders. Maybe even his own pack!
The momentary surge of excitement quickly evaporated into hot shame as he remembered why he was here, alone, instead of finishing the afternoon's training with Ser Perth and the rest of his packmates. His arms tightened around the puppy and he slumped against a bridge pylon where the slanting sunlight could fall on the dog and dry her quickly.
This wasn't his territory. Not anymore.
"And it's not yours either, is it," he said quietly to the dog. She flicked her ears and opened her eyes to look up at him. "Not a mabari, but not just a normal dog, either. Not welcome among humans, but not fully a beast. It's okay. Neither am I."
She whined softly and closed her eyes again, turning her muzzle toward the sun.