After so much struggle, so much passion, so many revelations, so much disaster, and still in the midst of so much uncertainty, the last thing Heriwulf should have been thinking about was the only thing on his mind: the question of a chieftain for the clan. (He'd given up trying to find smaller names for 'clan', or even 'chieftain'. There simply weren't any.)
Just a few days earlier he'd remarked to himself (actually he'd spoken aloud to Niht while they were out looking for something with a good fur he could sell) how he'd been so concerned, a few weeks prior, about whether the clan could survive without a chieftain, and how that concern had come to feel empty. The clan seemed to be doing well without one. The moots were a bit jumbled, almost aimless, but in a comfortable way, like a family meal; and everyone eventually got around to making their reports. (Save perhaps anyone who probably wouldn't have anyway, even with a chieftain.) Everyone did their work and everything got done. "Perhaps we can get by as we are, indefinitely," he had commented to Niht. The husky didn't have an opinion on the subject; he was clear that Heriwulf was his chieftain, that he and Brunan were over the others in Heriwulf's pack, and that's all he needed.
Then everything fell apart like an avalanche thundering down the side of the Misty Mountains and leaving nothing but wreckage in its path, set off by the fall of a single pine cone.
He'd gotten into a conversation with Faron, ever his foil and the deepest mystery in his life. Things had gotten heated in the usual way, only for some reason, he spoke more freely than he'd ever dared, and naturally, she responded in her caustic way, and over just a few minutes they had cut into each other's spirits and laid bare each other's wounds. Soon after he left, he panicked and ran back, trying to make things better with a stew of truth, lies, and many things midway between, and it seemed to work. His wounds were left to slowly heal, untended, but he could bear that; that was how his life always felt. Her wounds, though, seemed to be somehow scabbed over enough to get by.
But the next day at the moot, the scab proved to be fragile, barely there and soon shredded; and the resulting furor proved a disaster. Faron was going to leave, Eiragerd with her most likely, Ljota and Aelfrida in anger and hurt, poor Hildegund barely able to look up. The business of the moot left unconcluded. He hadn't even been able to pass along warning of the wolves that might be ill, in fact.
And in the aftermath, he'd learned two things, both of which haunted him. Perhaps always would, as long as he lived.
The first: the real reason for Faron's hurt. For how, and why, his words had struck her so much more powerfully than he could have imagined. (Her words had also cut him more deeply than she could know, but not nearly as much.) More than that: what he learned showed him that the criticisms he had laid at her feet, fairly and truthfully, were not at all her fault, and thus wholly undeserved. Merely a sign of what someone else, someone he now knew had paid for his unforgivable misdeed, had done to her. Ironically, knowing this made him sure he could never earn her trust, and yet it seemed somehow it did in some small measure, for without even trying to persuade her to stay, he did so anyway, the next day. (Of course, he'd thought that before and been wrong. He could never really trust her in that way again. But it was still a hopeful step.)
The second, though, was what now took root in his thoughts and drove aside even all this hullabaloo. Eiragerd had said it first: that he should not leave the clan because he was, even if he never admitted it, their leader, and more, that he ought to be. A bafflingly impossible claim particularly at that moment, as he sat in the wreckage of the moot with the clan torn to shreds because of his monstrous misdeeds. How could it ever be more clear that he had no right to such a position, and more, that the clan would never choose him for it? And yet why was Eiragerd saying that, even in the center of her own storm? Even more bafflingly, the next day Faron had spoken similar words -- one of her conditions for her return was that he settle the matter of whether he was to be chieftain and then abide by the result. No more uncertainty, no more ambiguity.
That part at least appealed to him on the most fundamental level. That ambiguity was as uncomfortable as a snake inside your tunic that never leaves. You can tell yourself you can live with it, you can tell yourself you've gotten accustomed to it, but it never stops feeling wrong. So his path, at least, was clear. At the next moot, at the start, he would put forth the question and let the clan decide. After his deplorable behavior, and the near-ruination it had brought to the clan, they would surely tell him no. Perhaps, with any luck, they would go from there to concluding a chieftain was needed, and someone else would be chosen, which would in turn solve his second problem: how to help ensure that the business of the moot, and of the clan, got done, without saying and doing the sorts of things that Faron took as him trying to take on the undeserved mantle of leadership.
For that was the outcome he dreaded: the clan says no, as they ought, then takes no further action, and he is left with a promise to Faron to stop acting like a chieftain if he wasn't one, and yet, no idea what actions he had ever taken that really, fairly, were the presumption of leadership. Sure, he'd called for the moots to begin with, an action that a chieftain would have taken had one been present, and that had set a tone; but he'd labored to avoid building on it, to emphasize that he had only called for the moots because someone had to, not because he, particularly, was the one to do so. And yet from the very first he'd made Faron feel like he was claiming undeserved authority, and even Eiragerd felt the same, and perhaps everyone else had, despite his efforts to avoid doing so, or seeming to do so. So if no leader was chosen, how could he avoid that impression? How could he keep his promise to Faron?
Before they'd ever met she could never trust him because of deeds done to her by someone he barely even knew. After his recent words and deeds, she could never trust him doubly, because he had unwittingly repeated some of those same hurts. And now he had made her a promise he might not know how to keep. This was something he couldn't bear, and it was this, not the disaster he'd caused and the very real fear it was not yet over, that hung over him like that avalanche, just waiting for one pine cone.
