He let the weight of the wolf take him down again. The snow should have broken his fall, but it didn’t make much difference. Slaver dripped from Jamie’s fangs, thick and sticky, and the stink of his breath made Gregor gag. Sharp teeth snapped in front of his nose as he buried his hands in the thick ruff of Jamie’s fur to hold him back. He could feel the bulk of muscle in Jamie’s neck, and the thick cords of it flexed against his fingers as Jamie fought him.
Gregor felt his arms start to give under the strain. He grimaced and, next time Jamie reared his head back, Gregor let go of his neck and shoved his forearm into the red, gaped maw as it plunged down. Pain ran black and irrelevant down his arm and into his spine, and a jolt of adrenaline spat out in response as Jamie tore his arm open.
It would heal. Eventually. Gregor gritted his teeth against the pain of being minced and reached out with his free hand. His fingers grazed over a stick, the wet tangle of a dead plant, and finally closed on one of the heavy chipped-granite rocks that the Pack’s pups stacked up to rile the monster before they took their swim.
Not much changed in the Old Man’s territory.
Gregor wrapped his fingers around the rock, hauled it out from under the snow, and swung it in a short, brutal arc. The edge bashed against Jamie’s ruined ear, and a muffled yelp of surprised pain squeezed through Jamie’s clamped-closed jaws. Gregor hit him again. His aim was better this time. He caught Jamie right on the temple, where the fur was too thin to cushion the blow. Bone cracked with a brittle, muffled snap.
Again.
On the fourth blow, Jamie’s eyes dulled and his grip on Gregor’s arm relaxed, torn flesh caught between his teeth as he staggered back. Gregor couldn’t feel his fingers—his hand felt like it was overstuffed with wet sand—but his arm worked well enough to get him back to his feet. He wiped the slabber off his face and stepped forward to swing the rock again as Jamie lurched forward. The edge of the rock, ragged and thickened with ice, caught Jamie on the narrow point of his snout. Blood spurted from his black nose and his teeth snapped off like sticks.
Thatwould take time to heal.
Jamie cringed and tried to stagger away, head down and haunches tucked under him. The unmistakable submission should have been enough. It would have been for the wolf.
Apparently without his wolf, he was worse.
He glanced around for Nick and caught the flap of a tooth-tattered coat as Nick dodged and feinted ahead of Ellie. Strips of torn coat hung from her teeth as she panted and spun to keep up with the dodges and kicks. Nick could have pulled on his feathers—human clothes were less of a hobble to a crow than a wolf—but the bird in him thought this was more fun. Stupid, but for now he was safe.
Gregor tightened his grip on the rock, his fingers grated raw on the rough surface, and started after the cringing wolf. Before he could deliver the final blow to Jamie’s battered skull, Jack yelled his name. Two wolves had his brother down on his knees, teeth locked in his forearm and thigh. Lach, his eyebrow twisted where the forehead had stitched itself back together crookedly, fumbled his T-shirt up with a healed stiff arm and pulled a thin, ash-gall-stained knife out of his belt.
The rank blade was worn hard by years of use, the wooden handle dark from years of being gripped by bloody, sweaty fingers. Acid and ink had buffed the shine off the metal. By rights there should have been a legend around it—that the first Numitor had brought it from Rome, that it had been carved from a Pict’s thigh bone before the truce—but it was too obviously just a knife. Practicality was worked into it, but so was the blood of generations of wolves.
Lach grabbed Jack by the hair and yanked his head to the side. He laid the blade against the thick pulse of the carotid artery and pressed. Tanned skin split easily and peeled back from the coarse stain on the knife, the thin strips of see-through skin dry and withered from contact with the oiled surface. Jack jerked away as far he could, weighed down with wolves and Lach’s fist in his hair. It wasn’t far enough.
“How long did you want to kill your brother, Gregor? How many years did it take?” Lachlan jeered as he dragged the knife back and forward in teasing strokes. “One fight and he’s on his knees. You really think I’m not fit to be Numitor?”
Gregor spat in the snow. “I don’t think you’re fit to be a wolf,” he said. Two big steel-gray wolves circled him on straight, stiff legs, heads down and eyes wary. Gregor shifted his weight and turned as he tried to keep them both in view. They were younger wolves, younger than him. Lachlan’s chosen seemed to be either new or worn, handpicked from the bottom of the barrel either way. “No wolf would have the stink of a prophet’s ass on their breath.”
The jibe had been meant to cut, to confirm Gregor’s suspicion that this—like everything else that had gone wrong since Job dripped his poison in the twin’s ears and sent them south—was the prophets’ doing. He hadn’t expected it to slice down to the pus of an old wound. A sick knot of loathing and glee twisted Lach’s face.
“When the gods come home,” he said roughly, “the prophets will speak well of us.”
He tightened his grip on the knife, ready to lay Jack’s throat open down to the bone. Jack took a deep breath and threw himself backward. His arm ripped free of the wolf’s fangs, flesh and muscle shredded, but he took the one locked on to his thigh with him as he pitched off the edge of the path. The two of them crashed down the slope, through rocks and shrub, toward the shore.
Lach stood for a second, mouth agape like an idiot, and then kicked the confused remaining wolf in the ribs.
“Go,” he yelled. “Get him.”
The wolf apologetically licked bloody jowls and clumsily went over the edge. Lach turned to face Gregor, a rictus smile twisted over his mouth.
“When the gods come home,” he repeated the words like a mantra, “nobody will speak of you.”
The two wolves went for Gregor at the same time—one low and one high, as though it were a hunt and he was prey. Maybe Gregor had fallen, but not that low. He reached for the Wild, the taste of stone on the back of his tongue, and a gust of wind and ice caught the wolf in the air and slammed it into the wall. Something broke, and the wolf huffed out a whimper.
The wolf on the ground was Gregor’s toll. He dove to the side, landed hard on his shoulder, and kicked out with both feet. His heels hammered into the wolf’s shoulder, knocked him off his feet, and Gregor jumped back to his feet before the wolf could recover. He spun toward Lach just in time for the knife to be buried in his shoulder instead of his back.
He’d been carved open on the end of that blade before. It had sliced open every line of ink on his skin and stained it with rowan gall to blister and scar. He’d expected to have the Numitor’s rank scarred onto him with it one day. He thought he knew how rowan burned, but he was wrong.
The knife punched through skin and muscle to grate against his shoulder, and his blood caught fire from the old rowan oils worked onto the blade and carried it through his body. His mouth was dry and stung with blisters, his lungs squeezed tight in alarm behind his ribs, and his muscles spasmed in rock-hard, sting-hot spasms until his bonescreakedwith the pressure.
Nick screamed. Half human panic and half a crow’s fury. The Wild—or the dour shadow of it—darkened around Lach as he wrenched the knife free and Gregor tasted Nick in the back of his throat. His knees wanted to give way under him, but he forced them to lock and hold him up. The shadow of a girl, draggle-haired and wet, leaned against Lach’s back, and he shuddered. Her breath dripped like water, dank and misty, into his ear as she worked her fish-ragged lips.
Lach hesitated and something fogged over his eyes. His hand trembled as the dead thing cuddled closer, like a lover at a bonfire. Gregor’s blood dripped from the point of the knife as Lach hesitated, but Gregor couldn’t unlock his muscles enough to take advantage of the moment.
A hand—thin and ferociously freckled—grabbed Lach’s wrist and hauled him out of the girl’s embrace. For a second, Gregor saw her, gutted from clavicle to pubis and hollowed out by hungry things. Frayed bits of skin floated in the unseen currents as she screamed, face screwed in horrible, mute rage, and then drained away like suds down a plug hole.
