Three gunshots thundered in the distance, coming from the station. Mercy tried to sit quickly, but Augur’s arm held her in place.
“Don’t worry,” he said.
How could he say that, after the attack the other day?
“I must see,” she said.
“No. Stay here with me. We are safe.”
“Safe from what?”
He had an answer for everything. This time, his lips tucked themselves between his teeth.
“You see this?” she asked.
“I don’t see everything. It’s probably some of the guards doing some target practice.”
Some primal instinct told her to investigate. She stood, making sure to hold the pup steady. She shifted him around to her backpack so she could run on all four feet. Somehow, through all the marching and swimming, this maneuver had become second nature. Or the baby had grown used to it.
She trotted past Mag, who immediately let out a loud bark, summoning the other guards to follow.
They ran single file alongside the tracks, past the train and through the station, where several packs of wolves slept in the courtyard. A few of them lifted their heads to see what was going on.
The tracks curved into the overgrown grass, where a team of guard dogs shouted and barked. Mercy could make out their silhouettes on the horizon. The sentries at the perimeter had captured an intruder.
No. They had stopped a deserter. The smell gave it away.
“There are more of them,” one of the guards said. He was a giant Bounty wolf, with green paint glistening on his face. “Follow the scent. They’re injured. Can’t get far.”
Mercy approached the scrum of wolves who piled on the deserter. She could smell that this was a female who could not bear children, a scent she had grown accustomed to in Mudfoot country. With so many guards surrounding her, the deserter stopped struggling.
“You gonney,” one of the Bounty wolves said to her, aiming his pistol. “Traitor! You and the others.”
“What happened?” Mercy asked.
“They stole one of the canisters. The others got away with one. This one fell behind.”
The wolves stepped away so that Mercy could see the deserter. As they spread out, Mercy’s guards crouched into their fighting stances, hind quarters lifted, teeth bared.
It was Urna. Blood dribbled from bite marks on her neck and front paw. A random swipe of a claw had torn part of her ear off. The pup awakened and began to cry softly at the sight of this wretched animal.
Mercy turned to Augur. The human stood far outside of the circle. For all his talk of becoming more like the wolves, he knew to stay out of this.
He also knew—or must have known—that whatever was about to take place could not happen any other way.
“Where is canister?” Mercy asked her sister.
“Gone,” Urna said.
Mercy stood over them on her hind legs. She expected Urna to cower in fear, as this was exactly what Wex would have done. But her sister remained still.
“You know what the canister holds?” Mercy said.
“It holds tomorrow.”
Tired of speaking the human language, Mercy jerked her head forward and huffed. It signified a simple question: Why?
Urna replied with a howl that began with a whooping sound and faded into a long hiss. Mercy knew it well. It was Dregger’s warning signal. If the two sisters ever needed to run away from danger, they would call out this song and meet at the nearest high point.
Urna howled again and again. The pup tried to mimic her with a high-pitched song, a sound of pain and regret.
Mercy turned to the Bounty wolf and stuck out her hand. The wolf placed the gun in her palm. The weight of it made her hand drop to her hip.
In the years to come, in the great paradise that she saw in her visions, she would tell herself that she never would have done any of this had she known what it would cost. She would also tell herself that her sister died long ago, and that it was the Damnable betrayed her pack, not this creature before her.
Urna let out a last howl that faded in a broken voice. Mercy raised the gun and fired. The bullet caught Urna at the base of the neck. She slumped to the earth. Mercy fired three more times into the torso, until the body stopped jerking with each round. Steam rose from the wounds.
Mercy handed the gun to the wolf. “Put her on train,” she said. They would bury Urna at the hook in the river, where, really, she died a long time ago. One day, the yellow flowers that bore her name would grow there again.
As Mercy walked away, her guards formed a wide halo around her, with old Carsa taking the lead, the twins Mag and Quick in the rear.
The pup let out Dregger’s howl a few more times, then fell asleep.
PART IV
STALEMATE
Chapter 17
A Fair Fight
Falkirk sprinted through the forest, gripping the barrel of his rifle. Behind him, a wolf named Loder—one of Grieve’s lesser sons—tried to keep up.
The trail forked around an enormous red oak with fresh wolf tracks imprinted on both paths. A war party hunting for prey, following the howls of their leaders. The size of the prints and the long strides between each one told him everything he needed to know.
Falkirk slapped the bark with the palm of his hand and turned to Loder. “Which way?”
The wolf bent at the waist and propped his hands on his knees. His tongue hung so low that Falkirk imagined it would fall out of his mouth. Falkirk had never met a wolf who was out of shape before, especially one so young, but this marauder panted and staggered like a pothound on his last legs. Despite Grieve’s disappointment in this one, he nevertheless spoiled Loder with gifts stolen from the human world, including a motorcycle—which he clearly had spent too much time riding.
“I said, which way?” Falkirk repeated.
“To the left, maybe?”
A gunshot thudded in the distance. Definitely from the right path.
“Or the right?” Loder said.
The clap of another gunshot ricocheted through the trees. Falkirk ran toward the sound.
“Stop!” he screamed. “Stop shooting!”
The trees thinned, and the loamy earth gave way to exposed rock. Emerging into the light, Falkirk arrived at the top of a sharp cliff, where a group of wolves took cover behind a row of boulders. Near the edge, something poked its head over the trunk of a fallen tree. Bullet holes riddled the bark, leaving a pile of sawdust on the ground. The person behind the trunk lifted a claw over the top and fired a pistol. The bullet whizzed past Falkirk’s ear. He dropped to all fours and crawled.
The wolves taunted their prey. “How many bullets ya got left, partner?”
“Can’t bury you here,” another said. “We’ll hafta toss you off the cliff!”
Falkirk wriggled his way to Grieve. The wolf sat against a boulder, loading shells from his bandolier into the breach of a sawed-off shotgun. For all his bluster, for all his posturing around the females and bullying, Grieve truly relished battle. It was not an act. Who could ever dethrone someone like this? Who would want his job?
When Grieve noticed Falkirk approaching, he grinned. The little skull on his necklace grinned with him. “Oh, look,” he said. “The husky’s here to save us.”
One of Grieve’s ass-kissers laughed beside him. It was probably his full-time job.
Falkirk crawled closer. “Grieve, listen to me.”
“Father!” someone shouted. It was Loder, running upright toward their position like a complete moron. A gunshot inevitably followed, and the bullet skimmed the rocks and rustled the branches. Loder dropped to his face, shivering.
“Stay down, you fat slob!” Grieve said. He turned to his lieutenants. “There’s no way he’s mine. His mother must have fucked somebody’s pet dog.”
“Who’s firin
g at you?” Falkirk asked.
“Some crazy bat. Can’t fly, must be wounded. But he managed to steal one of our guns.”
Another shot. Falkirk covered his ears as the wolves responded with their own volley. In the silence that followed, a cloud of smoke slid over them before floating off the side of the cliff.
“Is he with someone?” Falkirk asked.
“Yeah. A rat.”
Falkirk shimmied over to the edge of the boulder and tried to peek around it without getting his face blown off. The bat could hardly hide with those ears poking above the rock. Falkirk saw no sign of another.
“Are you sure it’s a rat?”
“No, and I don’t care.”
Falkirk waved Loder over, but the trembling wolf stayed in place.
“Tell him what you told me!” Falkirk said.
Only twenty minutes before, at the edge of the university town, Falkirk had overheard Loder talking with some of the wolves, the ones who were almost certainly forced to be friends with him, thanks to his status as Grieve’s son. Loder mentioned how the patrols picked up two intruders: a bat and a beaver. When Falkirk heard this, he grabbed the wolf by his necklace and demanded to know where. The others made no move to stop him. They seemed to draw some amusement from watching this spoiled brat get pushed around for once.
“Father,” Loder said, “I saw it myself. That’s a beaver with the bat.”
“Like hell it is! I saw it. Too scrawny.”
“Yeah, beavers are fat like you!” someone shouted.
“I told the marauders, but they didn’t believe me,” Loder said.
And Falkirk knew why. Bats and beavers hated each other. Nothing could change that. No matter what was left after the Mudfoot destroyed everything, those two species would fight over it.
“One of the first places the Mudfoot hit was a bat recon post,” Falkirk said.
“Yeah, on the other side of the mountains.”
“The recon post had a jail cell. With beavers in it. Let me talk to them.”
Grieve slammed the last shell into the breech. “Talk,” Grieve said. “The pet from Hosanna wants to negotiate. Look where that’s gotten us.”
“If they made peace with each other, they can make peace with you.”
“Maybe they already made peace with the other wolves. Lots of people have.”
He kept his unblinking gaze on Falkirk, to remind him of all the dogs from Hosanna who joined the Mudfoot cult. Ignoring it, Falkirk surveyed the cliff, hoping to find a place where he could sneak around the shooter. He couldn’t risk luring the bat out from his hiding space. One of these trigger-happy marauders would likely shoot both of them.
“I could climb down the side,” he said. “Then climb up right behind the bat. Maybe I can disarm him.”
A few of the marauders glanced at one another. They preferred a straight fight. Though Falkirk wondered if they were simply afraid to climb it themselves.
“Sure, give it a try,” Grieve said. “But don’t die. I don’t want your baby-mother poking me with her sword tonight.”
Another random bullet cracked against the boulder. Falkirk didn’t even realize he had dropped to the ground, hands on his head, until he spat out a clump of frozen dirt.
“You sure you want to do this?” Grieve asked.
Falkirk brushed some dead grass from his coat. “Don’t worry. I’m not afraid of heights.”
Falkirk arrived at the base of the cliff a few minutes later, after finding an offshoot of the trail that led into the ravine. Though the cliff rose a good thirty feet into the air, it sloped gently, enough to give an inexperienced climber a chance. Falkirk cracked his knuckles, gripped the cold stone, and got to work. When the wind scraped along the side, he held on and waited for it to pass. Near the top, where the breeze whistled at a lower pitch, he heard more gunfire, more taunts from the wolves. The last thing he needed was for the bat to actually get lucky and hit someone. Including him.
His muscles aching and his fingertips rubbed raw, Falkirk waited at the summit for another volley. This time, a pair of bullets whined off the rocks, spinning madly into the ravine behind him. He peeked over the top to find the bat huddled behind a boulder, his head swiveling as he tracked the marauders getting closer, trying to flank him. On the ground, the bat resembled a half-assembled doll, with an emaciated midsection and wings folded against his exposed ribs. A crack ran through his left goggle. His teeth flared out like sharpened white sticks, and Falkirk wondered if this creature could fully close his mouth.
To the left, huddled behind a hunk of granite, lay a shriveled rodent. A female beaver, barely breathing, prone on her side. Her eyes glistened like black marbles as she stared out, away from the promontory, perhaps hoping to somehow fly away from all of this.
With his heart pounding from his stomach to his neck, Falkirk lowered himself below the ridge to give himself a moment to think. A beaver stuck out here with a bat. The Lord worked in mysterious ways. Sometimes, God’s hand scattered everyone at random so they could either find their way back, or carve out a new path.
Falkirk pulled himself up again, ready to face the bat. And as he rose, his snout bopped against the cold steel of the gun. The bat held the pistol awkwardly in the long fingers at the tip of his wing, the bones encased in stretchy leather. His ears twitched, letting Falkirk know how foolish it was to think that he could sneak behind a bat. Behind him, the beaver rolled over to her stomach, propped herself on a weak hand. She squinted and clicked her enormous teeth.
“Another doggie joined the Mudfoot,” she said.
“I’m not Mudfoot. I’m here to help.” God, let me help someone. He’d watched the soldiers at Cadejo die from a distance. He’d watched Ruiz bleeding out on the deck. Something had to go right for once.
The beaver crawled closer, dragging her flat tail. She sniffed him.
“You’re here to help,” she mumbled. “I’ve heard that before.”
Falkirk’s foot slipped, but he held on and dug his toes into a more solid crevice. The bat squeaked at the sudden movement. He shuffled closer, gun still raised.
Despite his shortness of breath, Falkirk forced out the words. “You’re . . . you’re the matriarch.” He turned to the bat. His jaw fell open. “And you’re—”
“Gaunt of Thicktree,” she said. “Proudest family of the Great Cloud. Protectors of the Sacred Forest.”
And then, something he never could have imagined: she squeaked at the bat—a full sentence in Chiropteran, albeit with an accent, and an octave too low. The bat said something in response, then backed away from the edge to give Falkirk room. The husky dragged himself onto solid ground and took a sitting position. He held his arms in a cactus position to show that he meant no harm.
“I remember you,” the beaver asked. “You’re Sanctuary Union.”
“No,” Falkirk said, lowering his gaze. “Not anymore.”
“We need to speak to someone from Hosanna. We . . . have something. Something they need.”
“You’re injured,” Falkirk said.
“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid.”
The bat let out a sad whistling sound.
A barrage of bullets pinged off the rocks. Falkirk and Gaunt both flattened themselves on the ground. The matriarch hardly moved.
“You were saying,” the beaver said.
“Hold your fire!” Falkirk shouted, his breath blowing out a puff of dust from the earth.
Gaunt crawled to the boulder to fire a few more shots. Falkirk grabbed him by his broken wing, the skin slippery in his paw. The bat spun around, his face so twisted with rage that he resembled a demon. He jammed the barrel of the gun beneath Falkirk’s chin.
“We’re not your enemy,” Falkirk said. “You want to get something to Hosanna, I’m your only chance.”
The bat glanced at Nikaya. The beave
r waited.
“You may have lied to me once,” Falkirk said. “But I never lied to you.”
Nikaya tried to speak, but was seized by a rattling cough. She braced herself on her hand to keep from keeling over. When she finally steadied herself, she stared at the bat for a moment. Falkirk expected them to squawk in their broken Chiropteran. Instead, they used some unspoken language, the kind born of desperation and familiarity. Their time out here had changed them into wolves.
Gaunt withdrew his gun, folding it into his wing. Falkirk rolled away from him and crawled to Nikaya, who slumped onto her stomach.
“We’ll get you some help,” Falkirk said.
“Of course you will.”
Falkirk rose to his feet and waved his arms. “It’s over!” He shouted to the wolves. “They’re surrendering! We need some help over here!”
He knelt beside Nikaya as the footsteps approached. Gaunt placed his pistol on the ground and huddled beside the beaver. With her undersized paw, she clutched the tip of his wing. The bat made a humming noise.
Nikaya tried to draw a breath. “You have to . . . get this bat to Hosanna. Everything . . . depends on it.”
The wolves surrounded them. Gaunt bared his teeth when they arrived. But when Nikaya squeezed his claw, he grew calm again.
“See!” Loder shouted. “I told you!”
Grieve slapped him on the ear. Loder glared at him. “Good job,” Grieve mumbled. The young wolf looked to the others for affirmation, but the sight of the dying beaver left them transfixed.
“You’re a good puppy,” Nikaya said. “I remember. I trust you.”
The bat continued to hum. The wolves kept quiet and listened.
They carried Nikaya on a tarp into the map room. Lying emaciated on the fabric, she resembled a pile of dust pushed into the corner of a room. One of her tiny hands dangled off the side. The other rested on her belly as it rose and fell with each desperate breath. Gaunt insisted on following behind them as they carried her, but he needed to lean on Falkirk to walk. His wing wrapped around Falkirk’s shoulders, a warm second skin.
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