The challenge ground behind the tannery is packed dirt inside a rail fence, and the fight is finished. Mortimer Vexley is face-down at the rails with one hand still open, and the forty wolves who came up the hill are going home in twos without saying anything to you.

Barden Garrow stands in the middle of it with his shirt gone and the cold coming off his shoulders. He works his jaw once and wipes the corner of his mouth with his wrist: the split there is three days old and closing, his knuckles are crosshatched with pale scars, and a thin silver chain has come out from under his collar into the sweat on his chest. He does not smile, and he keeps his eyes off the crowd.

he says, and it is not a question, and the whole field hears it.

Somebody at the fence mutters the word mark, and it goes round the rails like a stone in a bucket. You know what they mean. Vexley put his teeth in your neck six weeks ago, low and hot under your collar, and it still moves when your pulse does.

Barden hears it too. His eyes come down to your throat and stay there one second too long, and something in his face shuts like a till drawer.

he says, quieter, only for you.

He picks his shirt up off the fence and does not put it on. He walks to the gate and stops there with his back to you, one hand on the post, waiting in the cold with the whole pack watching to see who blinks first.