The Spring Between Us

Chapter 91: The Challenge I Accept

Ruth came up the mesa road at a walk.

She had the horse she had taken from the wagon and she had a knife at her belt and she came through the gate of the pack house yard with her auburn hair down her back and her grey jacket torn at the shoulder and her grey eyes steady, and the whole of the canyon was in that yard.

Sten was in front of her with his sword drawn before she was ten paces in.

"Stop," he said. "You are a prisoner of the Council and you are under sentence and you will get down off that horse."

Ruth got down off the horse.

"I am not running," she said. "I came up this road at a walk with the knife at my belt and I did not draw it. I have come to say a thing to the pack and to the Luna and then I will go back to the wagon and you can chain me to it yourself."

Sten looked at me. I nodded.

Ruth came into the middle of the yard and stopped in front of the porch steps where I was standing. The whole pack was in the yard and the whole of the autumn gathering was in the road and the Chancellor was on the porch with her hood up and her arms folded. The spring house was running behind us. The creek bed had water in it.

"Luna," Ruth said. "You called the spring."

"I called the spring."

"Then the pact is alive and the pair is alive and the canyon is alive." Ruth put her hand on her belt where the knife was. "And there is a thing in this yard tonight that has to be settled before the Council takes me to the capital and hangs me in the autumn gathering. The pack has no Beta. The seat is yours and the pair holds it and the pack has eighteen wolves who stayed and twenty two who left and no Beta at all."

"Sten is Beta."

"Sten is a warrior and a good one and he will make a Beta in ten years. He is not a Beta now." Ruth lifted her chin. "So I am going to do the thing I have been wanting to do since the spring. I am going to challenge the Luna for the seat. In the old way. In the circle. In front of the pack."

The yard went loud.

Sten stepped forward with his sword still drawn. "You are a prisoner and a murderer and you have no right to challenge anybody."

"I have every right," Ruth said. "I was the Beta of this pack for eleven years. The old law says a Beta may challenge a Luna for the seat and that the challenge must be heard and that the pack must witness it. And I am going to be hanged in the capital in a month. So this is the last thing I will do in this world and I am going to do it properly."

The Chancellor came down off the porch.

"Beta," she said. "You have confessed to murder in front of the Council. You are under sentence. A challenge under the old law is a matter for a pack and not for a Council, and I will not stand in the way of it. But I will tell you plainly that if you win this challenge, the Council will still hang you for the murder you have confessed. There is no seat and no pack and no challenge that will save you from the rope."

"I know," Ruth said. "I am not doing it to save my neck."

"Then why?" the Chancellor said.

Ruth looked at me.

"Because I killed her mother," she said. "And because I sat in a cellar for four weeks and listened to the whole canyon tell the truth about me and I could not say a word. And because the last thing I can do in this world is to stand in a circle in front of the pack I served for eleven years and let the Luna take the seat from me with her own hands." She put her hand on the knife at her belt and then took it off and put it on the ground. "The challenge is to the seat, not to the wolf. I will fight her in human form, and she may fight me in human form, and the winner takes the seat. That is the old law and it is in the third volume and the clerk has read it."

The clerk, who had come up the mesa road with the wagon and was standing at the gate with his book, said, "It is in the third volume."

The yard was silent.

I came down the porch steps.

"Ruth," I said. "I am not going to fight you."

"You have to. The old law says a challenge must be heard."

"Then hear me. I am not going to fight a wolf who has confessed and who is under sentence and who will be hanged in a month whether she wins or loses. There is no honor in it and there is no seat in it. If you win, the Council hangs you and the pack has no Luna and no Beta. If I win, the Council hangs you and the pack has a Luna who beat a chained wolf in a circle. There is nothing in this for anyone but you."

Ruth looked at me for a long moment.

"Then I will say the rest of it," she said. "The challenge is not for the seat. The challenge is for the truth. I have confessed in the Council hall and the clerk has written it down. But the pack has not heard it from me. The pack has heard it from a paper and a clerk and a Council wagon. The old law says a wolf who has done a wrong to a pack must answer to the pack in the circle and not in a Council hall. So I am asking the pack to hear it. Not the Council. The pack. In the circle. Tonight."

The yard was silent.

Old Tomas came forward out of the crowd. He was leaning on his stick and his face was grey and he said, "Luna. She is right. The old law says a wolf who has done a wrong to a pack answers to the pack. Not in a Council hall. In the circle. And she has done a wrong to this pack and the pack has not heard it from her." He looked at Ruth. "And there is a thing I have been wanting to say to her since the day she was hanged in a crate. I want to hear it from her mouth. Not from a clerk's book."

I looked at the pack. I looked at Sten and Berik and Cal and Inge and old Tomas and the eighteen who had stayed and the twenty two who had left and the whole of the autumn gathering in the road.

"All right," I said. "The circle. Tonight. In the old way. But not for the seat and not for a fight. For the truth. You will stand in the circle and the pack will stand around it and you will say what you did. All of it. And the pack will hear it and then the pack will decide what to do with you before the Council takes you."

Ruth looked at me.

"That is not a challenge," she said.

"No. It is a hearing. And it is the last thing you will get from this pack." I turned to the yard. "Build the circle. In the old way. Stones and a fire and the whole pack around it. And get the clerk and his book and the Chancellor and the whole of the autumn gathering. We are going to hear the Beta say what she did and then we are going to hear the pack answer."

The yard came alive. Stones were dragged from the wall and the fire was built in the middle of the yard and the benches were carried out of the hall, and by the time the moon was going down the whole of the canyon was standing in a ring around a fire in the middle of the pack house yard.

Ruth stood in the middle of the ring with her auburn hair down and her grey jacket torn and her hands at her sides.

I stood at the edge of the ring with Hank beside me and the mark on my arm bright and the law book and the box of rulings in my saddlebag and the Chancellor at my shoulder.

"Beta," I said. "The circle is open. Say what you did."

Ruth said it.

She said it the way she had said it in the Council hall, and this time she said it to the pack. She said the wolfsbane in the cup and the rogue at the railhead and the rope on the wrists and the south track and the horse going over the rim. She said the money from the company and the lease she signed in my name and the seat she wanted and the four weeks she sat in the chair and could not sleep. She said the crate in the yard and the cellar under the Council hall and the lie that she was dead.

It took an hour. The fire burned down and a warrior put more wood on it. The whole of the canyon stood in the ring and did not make a sound.

When she was done she stood in the middle of the ring with her hands at her sides.

"The Beta has spoken," I said. "The circle is open. The pack may answer."

Old Tomas came forward with his stick.

"Ruth," he said. "I have known you since you were a girl. I stood at your funeral and I said the words and I cried for you. And you were in a cellar the whole time." He looked at her. "I am not going to forgive you. Not tonight and not ever. But I am going to say this. You came up that road tonight and you stood in this circle and you said it to our faces. And that is more than the Council man did and more than the old clerk did and more than the envoy did. So I will not spit on you. That is all I have."

Ruth nodded.

And then Cal came forward out of the ring.