“Of course,” Minisino said. “But this is not for Anwatan, though we could certainly include her vengeance in ours. We do this for all the cerva the aganesha have butchered. The time of reckoning has finally come.”

“This is wrong. When one of the herd breaks a leg in a prairie dog’s hole, do you declare war on all prairie dogs?”

Minisino shook his head. “Except these aganesha are not innocent. Have you forgotten so quickly how they butchered your daughter?”

Walker had to take a breath to steady himself, but it was still hard to keep his sorrow and his own anger in check.

“Bogans killed Anwatan,” he said finally. “A handful of them. You declare war on all fairies.”

“I repeat: they are none of them innocent. Those who haven’t raised a hand against us have still stood aside while the damage was done. They treat us like vermin in our own land. I say again, a reckoning is long overdue.”

“I won’t allow it.”

Minisino nodded.

“Except standing there alone as you are,” he said, “there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop us.”

“Do you want me to beg you?” Walker said. “Is that what it will take?”

“No,” Minisino said. “I want you to—”

But he was cut off by a stranger’s voice before he could finish.

“Or maybe you want me to beg,” the newcomer said.

They had appeared out of nowhere, the two men who approached them now.

No, not men, Walker realized. But cousins. The collective surprise of the gathered buffalo echoed in his own chest when he realized who the larger of the two was.

Ayabe, the moose lord.

And with him . . .

An instinctual nervousness tracked up his spine when he saw the coyote in Ayabe’s companion—a cerva’s natural response to a predator—and he immediately looked for the rest of the pack. But the two were alone and Walker made himself relax. What could one canid do in such a gathering of cerva? And after all, he was in Ayabe’s company.

Ayabe.

Walker could count on one hand the times he’d seen the elusive cerva lord. There were always stories of his carousing in far-off places, of week-long poker games and story sessions that went on longer still. But the only glimpses Walker had ever had were from a distance, the proud moose lord ghosting through the cedar woods, or spied in the shallows of a lake, high in the mountains, seen one moment, gone the next. Walker couldn’t ever remember hearing of Ayabe involving himself in a situation such as this. By winter fires, when the stories were told, if a hero went to Ayabe for aid, he was told that whatever trouble you got yourself into, it was up to you to extract yourself from it.

Walker turned his attention back to Minisino. The buffalo war chief had already recovered from his own surprise.