Lolo heard shouting back toward the lodge but by now knew better than to investigate. However, a loud thudding sound changed her mind, and she sprinted back to The Great Hall. What she saw made her feel both sick and angry. Tadellos was standing over Standig brandishing a whip or something like it. Standig’s nose had drenched the front of his shirt, and his hands and arms were up around his head to defend against his uncle’s brutal beating.

She couldn’t help herself. “STOP!” she yelled and ran to move between them. Instantly, she felt a searing pain across her left shoulder and collarbone and grunted from the pain.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t another little wolf, come to play the hero again," Tadellos paused momentarily to snarl.

“Bear Tribe Leader, what could Standig possibly have done to justify this?!”

Tadellos’s face contorted. Before Lolo could brace herself, Tadellos switched targets. She yelped, more from the shock than the pain.

Standig was still too dizzy and disoriented from the hit to his face to stand up. He saw Huo Lohse, still in a defensive position between his uncle and him, turn so the blows would hit her hunched back instead of across her chest. He looked up at Tadellos and saw sadistic pleasure and utter insanity in his expression. Standig started shouting, choking on the stream of blood from his nose and becoming emotional as he begged his uncle to stop.

This was the scene that the council of elders witnessed when they came to investigate the sounds of distress interrupting their meeting.

Tadellos Tragen was so intent on taking his fury out on Huo Lohse Lang that he was oblivious to the commotion around him. The elders were shocked by what they were seeing, to say the least. Some started to shout at Tadellos, trying to make him see reason, others threatened to depose him, but while all of them denounced Tadellos’s abuse, none were prepared to do more than shout and stare.

Philige was one of the last people to exit The Great Hall as he had been sitting near the platform. Unlike the elders, Philige was not shocked by the scene unfolding in front of him, and he knew that shouting at his uncle in this state was useless. Picking his way through the crowd as quickly as possible, Philige moved to intervene.

Lolo refused to yield or buckle under the beating. With each stroke, Tadellos raised his belt high to bring it down with as much force as he could muster. As the belt raised again, Philige caught his uncle’s arm and wrenched it behind his back. Tadellos was caught by surprise, but recovered quickly, jerking away from Philige before he could be properly restrained. For the first time, Tadellos became aware of the other people on the deck and started flailing his belt around indiscriminately at anyone and everyone standing in his way.

People were arriving from all over the lodge to see what the commotion was all about. Tadellos appeared manic; Philige and a handful of guards were now struggling to disarm and subdue him. Lolo was kneeling on the ground, the back of her dress ripped and stained with blood, trying to control the bleeding from Standig’s nose with a cloth torn from her skirt. People near Tadellos were scrambling to dodge the belt he was brandishing.

At long last, Philige managed to tackle his uncle from behind, and the guards assisting Philige took the belt away. Held firmly in his nephew’s headlock, Tadellos’s mania faded with his will to continue fighting. As the de facto Bear Tribe leader, everyone turned to Philige for orders.

“Please escort my uncle to his room, and make sure he stays there until the council and I decide what is to be done,” Philige instructed the guards he released Tadellos to. He then turned to Standig and Huo Lohse. “Are you two alright?”

“I’ll be alright, but Standig’s nose is broken,” Lolo replied as Standig was in no condition to talk. “We need Jadu or Shanti.”

Philige spotted some servants to send for the Bhujes. “Lolo, can you tell me what happened?”

“I didn’t see the whole thing. I was on my way to bed when I heard the commotion. I ran back here to see your uncle hitting Standig with the belt. Standig was already on the ground with his nose like this.”

“Standig, can you tell me the rest?”

Unable to breathe through his nose and trying not to choke, Standig managed to get out, “he wath mad ah me cauth I thaid Lolo ith my friend.”

Lolo looked horrified, but Philige just smiled and nodded.

“I’ll take care of it, Standig.” Philige turned to look at Lolo. “Would you be willing to testify to the council of elders what you just told me?”

Still bewildered, Lolo nodded, and a maid returned with Shanti.

“Broken nose, Standig?” Shanti grinned and turned to wink at Lolo. “You probably shouldn’t hit him so hard next time, Lolo.”

“Ha. Ha. Very funny,” Lolo said, glad for a change in the mood.

Jadu arrived carrying a medkit and got to work ordering people around. “Shanti, hold his head still. Philige and Lolo, hold his hands for me. Standig, brace yourself. There are no two ways around it. This is going to suck.” Jadu procured two thin, polished stone rods and started inserting them into Standig’s nostrils. By the look on Standig’s face, this was not comfortable. Jadu then put his fingers around the bridge of Standig’s nose, feeling the break. “On the count of three. One, two….” Something under Jadu’s fingers made a sickening popping sound, and Standig yelped and jerked against the hands holding him down, tears involuntarily flooding his vision. Jadu reached back into his medkit to find some sterilized puffs of cotton. He removed the stone rods and replaced them with the cotton balls. After washing some of the blood off Standig’s face, Jadu made a sort of self-hardening cast from finely ground limestone and sand mixed with water to apply to the outside of Standig’s nose. The cast was then covered with a thin gauze, and Jadu announced that he was done. “Try not to touch the cast until it’s completely dried, and then keep it on as long as possible.”

“Thanks, Jadu,” Standig said, eyes still watering.

“Mn,” Jadu nodded and got up to leave.

“Jadu and Shanti,” Philige stopped them, “would you be willing to testify to the council of elders about Standig’s and Lolo’s injuries?”

“Why?” Shanti asked.

“If it’s alright, could we save the questions until after the testimony?”

Shanti and Jadu looked at each other. They were confused, but they agreed.

“Can I have your attention, please?” Philige hushed the hall full of elders. “In addition to filling the empty council seats, we now have something else of great importance to discuss, but to aid the impartiality of the testimonies, I’d like to first call Shanti or Jadu Bhuje forward to discuss Huo Lohse Lang’s and Standig Tragen’s injuries. For those of you that don’t know, the Bhuje siblings are from Pahaad and have extensive medical training.”

Shanti stood up to address the elders. “Standig, could you join me, please?” Standig moved to the stage. “My brother and I did not witness how these injuries were sustained, but I will tell you what I can see.” Shanti started by pointing to Standig’s nose. “This is probably the most significant injury. His nose has been broken, probably by some sort of blunt-force trauma. If you look on his left cheek, there is some new bruising where something hit him. The dark bruising under his eyes is the result of his nose breaking.”

Shanti then held up Standig’s arms. “I didn’t immediately notice these injuries,” she said, pointing to stripes of angry welts forming on his forearms, “but these abrasions were likely caused by a rod or something long and narrow. When someone has injuries on their hands and arms like this, they are called defensive injuries because they were inflicted while his arms were up, probably to protect his head and face. Standig, do you have any other injuries to show?” Standig nodded and pulled his shirt up to expose more welts mixed with healing Purple Fever bruising on his belly, ribs, and shoulders. “It looks like more of the same,” Shanti said. “You sure took a beating, Standig.”

Shanti sent Standig back to his seat and called up Huo Lohse. “I haven’t inspected your injuries at all, Lolo. Where are you hurt?”

Lolo responded by turning around and pulling her hair over her shoulder.

Shanti gasped at the bloody gashes in her dress. “Lolo! What happened?!” Shanti cleared her throat to try to recover some of her professional demeanor. “Can I expose your back?”

“How? My dress ties at the front?”

“Your dress is already ruined. Would you be ok if I cut it open?”

“I guess so.”

Shanti retrieved a pair of scissors from Jadu’s medkit and started carefully exposing the skin under Lolo’s clothes. Most of Huo Lohse’s back, shoulders, and parts of her chest and neck were swollen like the welts on Standig’s body. Her skin was also broken in bloody ribbons on her back where the belt had hit the most frequently. Lolo’s injuries, though not super deep, were extensive. “It looks like someone hit you with a rod like the one that hit Standig, only a lot more, and a lot harder. This will need to be cleaned and bandaged, and, I’m estimating that this will probably take a few weeks to heal. You’ll probably be left with some scarring,” Shanti said a little breathlessly. “Please tell me that this is it.”

Lolo nodded and tried to comfort Shanti by rubbing her shoulder. “It’s no big deal. I’m alright.”

Shanti turned to Philige. “Can you tell us what happened now?”

Philige stood up. “Actually, I’m hoping Standig and Huo Lohse will tell us what happened. Standig, you’re up.”

Shanti and Lolo found their seats and Standig took the stage again. His speech was affected by his stuffed-up nose, but he could once again enunciate his words without choking. “The exchange trainees and I were heading to our rooms. Some of you saw us as we passed The Great Hall.” A few of the elders confirmed this part of Standig’s testimony. “Anyway, we said good-night and split up. I had something to tell Lol-... Huo Lohse, so we stayed behind the others momentarily. After she left for her room, my uncle approached me and we got into an argument.”

“What were you arguing about?” one elder stood up to ask.

“My uncle was angry because I’m friends with Huo Lohse despite his efforts to persuade me that she’s a bad influence on me.”

There was silence.

One of the visiting elders stood up. “Isn’t Huo Lohse Lang the girl that took care of everyone during the Purple Fever?”

Standig nodded. “Yes, she is. And she is my best friend. We’ve been sparring partners for two summers now, and I trust her with my life,” he said without any hesitation. Behind him, Lolo blushed furiously and looked at her feet.

“Well said,” applauded the tall, wispy elder from earlier. “I think many of us in this room would agree with you on that point after our recent experiences with her.”

“Here, here,” agreed the stocky elder.

“And then what happened?” Philige prompted Standig to continue.

“Well, we argued and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground. I was dizzy and my face hurt. I couldn’t see a whole lot. Uncle said something about teaching me a lesson. Then he started hitting me with something. I think it might have been his belt, but I never actually saw it.”

“Very unsporting,” someone shouted and the collective elders started murmuring to their neighbors.

Philige stood up to hush the elders. “Go on, Standig.”

“Well, at some point, I heard someone yell ‘stop’ and he did. I think I might have blacked out for a minute. Then I heard someone else getting hit and opened my eyes to see Lol-... Huo Lohse standing in between me and my uncle. He was hitting her instead, and I couldn’t do anything to stop him or help her. I guess you all know the rest.”

The elders started chatting with each other about Standig’s testimony as Philige called Huo Lohse to the stage to share her version of the story. Once the elders hushed, Philige gave her the floor.

“Hi.” Lolo waved endearingly, though she was feeling very nervous. “Um. I was heading up the corridor to my room but heard shouting and a crash, so I turned around to see what happened. I saw the Bear Tribe leader whipping Standig with his belt. I didn’t really know what to do, but I got in the way so Standig couldn’t get hit anymore. He, that is, the Bear Tribe leader, said that I was just coming to ‘play hero’, and that’s when he started beating me.”

Philige got up to ask her a question. “Lolo, this isn’t the first time you’ve fought with my uncle, is it?”

She shifted her weight uncomfortably and looked at her feet. She knew where he was going with this. “No, it’s not.”

“Can you tell us about your previous experiences with the Bear Tribe leader?”

Lolo looked up, pleading with Philige with her eyes to not make her talk about it.

Philige moved to grab one of her hands and whisper in her ear, “I know it’s painful to talk about, Lolo, but if you can, I think it’s really important that they hear it.”

She swallowed hard but nodded.

“Thank you.”

Huo Lohse turned to face the elders and told them about the incident leading up to her day locked in the isolation room. She talked about how Philige and she were trying to communicate with Standig because he had been locked up for a month for no apparent reason. She talked about getting caught in the bushes, and how Tadellos had hurt her grabbing her face. She talked about how she was carted off to the isolation room when she resisted the abuse, how the room affected her, and how Philige had come to rescue her but ended up getting caught, hit by Tadellos, and then locked away himself for over two weeks. She talked about how cold and dehydrated she’d been that night and why her fingers were so raw the next morning.

When she had finished Philige gestured for her to find a seat before addressing the elders himself. “Council, are you familiar with the Wolf Tribe phrase that goes ‘the quickest way to a wolf is through the pack’?”

The elders looked at each other and nodded. “What does this have to do with anything?”

“I’m coming to that,” Philige said. “When Huo Lohse was put into isolation, my brother commented to me that he feared this idiom could be applied to situations where a wolf is forcibly removed from its pack. I’ve been doing some research since then. It is a well-documented fact that putting a wolf in isolation is an effective method of torture, and I can cite at least a dozen examples if you find that necessary.” Philige pulled a scroll from his pocket. “It’s clear from my research that wolves cannot exist alone for very long without suffering permanent damage-- both psychological and physical. I asked my uncle if he knew what he was doing by locking up a wolf. His exact words were ‘of course, I did’, and he said this without any regret or guilt before putting Huo Lohse back into isolation. Ladies and gentlemen, I can’t think of a single good reason to torture a fifteen-year-old girl, can you? Furthermore, many of you have gotten to know Huo Lohse Lang’s character firsthand. I know her to be compassionate and self-sacrificing, not a threat, and certainly not deserving of the abuse she has experienced from my uncle.”

Philige had made his point, and the already outraged council was now angry enough to do something about that outrage.

“What do you propose, Philige?” the stocky elder asked.

“I should think that’s obvious, sir. My uncle needs to abdicate or be forced to abdicate his position as the Bear Tribe leader.”

“Making you the new leader?” a visiting elder queried suspiciously.

“Not necessarily. There is precedent for the council of elders to take on the obligations of the Bear Tribe leader until the next leader comes of age or is elected if there is no successor.” Philige procured another scroll of research. “I came prepared to discuss those options too, if you would like.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said the wispy elder. “You’ve proven yourself to be a thoughtful, responsible, and worthy leader, Philige, despite your youth. You’re, what now, almost twenty-one?”

Philige nodded.

“If I’m not mistaken, there is also precedent to allow a younger crown successor to assume the position of Bear Tribe leader in the case of death or disability. I think most of us here have been convinced tonight that Tadellos Tragen is indeed unfit to continue in the role of the Bear Tribe leader.”

“Then, may I propose two motions?” Philige asked. “First, for this council to officially declare Tadellos Tragen unfit for the role of the Bear Tribe leader, forcing him to abdicate. Second, for this council to decide how it wants to handle the matter of succession. If you feel that I am ready, I promise to do my best as the new Bear Tribe leader. If, however, you feel that I still need time to prepare myself for this role, I will respect your decision and do my best to exceed your expectations of me by the time I come of age at twenty-five. To give this council the best chance for free, impartial discussion, I’m going to excuse myself and these witnesses from the remainder of tonight’s proceedings. I will expect to hear your decisions on these matters during our next meeting.” Philige turned to the trainees sitting behind him and gestured for them to follow him out.

Once outside, Philige thanked everyone for their participation in the meeting. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“Philige, how long have you been preparing for a night like tonight?” Standig asked. “You even had research on precedents for leadership succession.”

Philige grinned. “It was a calculated bluff, Standig.” Philige pulled out the scroll and unraveled it. It was blank.

“You’re kidding!!”

“Nope. I’ve studied Bear Tribe leader succession rules. What the elder said is true. In a case of premature death or disability, a younger successor can be permitted to assume the role of Bear Tribe leader. I made up the bit about the council of elders taking on the leader’s responsibilities because it was important to distance any personal self-interests from the real argument to remove Uncle from leadership. Well,” he back-tracked, “I partially made it up. If there is no successor crowned when the current leader dies, the council of elders keeps the show going until someone is declared the new leader.”

“So what do you think will happen?”

“I don’t know. I just know that Tadellos Tragen needs to be removed from the power he so readily abuses. I was serious about the wolf isolation research.” Philige addressed Huo Lohse specifically, “Lolo, thank you for your testimony today. I know that it was no small thing to talk about your experience with isolation, but I’m grateful that you did. It gave the elders the push they needed.”

“I suppose it was worth the discomfort then,” Lolo said. “Are you ready to be the new Bear Tribe leader?”

“Honestly, no. My interest in having Tadellos removed from the position is genuinely because he is a terrible leader. I don’t really want to be the Bear Tribe leader, at least not yet, but I’ve accepted that it is the likely result of deposing my uncle.”

Just then the doors to the The Great Hall opened, and a delegation of five elders emerged looking for Philige. The tall, wispy elder led the group.

“They can’t be done already, can they? It’s only been ten minutes!” Standig nudged his brother.

The elders approached the collection of friends. “Congratulations, Bear Tribe Leader Tragen! The vote was unanimous.”