Moonspear Every occasion, know I'm ready for the funeral

And spare details it seemed, he did not.

Dirge listened, his eyes resting on Valour with interest to see just what it was that he would offer them. But as he spoke, he felt the turn of much darker thoughts come about to what was said, and it left him with more questions than answers about these so-called Saints. There had been the gentle murmurings from others about them and what they consisted of, what their practices were, and perhaps they were all none too dissimilar to the tales that they had heard turned about the Nightwalkers, and before them the wolves that had lived in Blackfeather.

He came closer to Hydra then, brushing gently against her.

“Sounds like a charlatan’s pitch if ever I heard one,” he said to her.

There had been too much emphasis on the worth of his newfound comrades; Dirge wondered if Valour had been swindled because of his youth, because of the failings of the pack that he had found himself in charge of. The boy had an ambitious streak to him, he thought, and it had displayed itself time and time again. Running with another, even if it was like what he had been brought up and into seemed not to have curbed it—his leader may have been crude, but so was he in his own minute ways.

“A crude leader often commands a questionable retinue of subordinates—what of the misdeeds that have fallen on our ears from your neighbors and ours? Perhaps you should shed light on those, if you can,” he went on, this time to Valour directly. For as smooth and neutral as he held his tone, it was a challenge on purpose and thinly veiled; if the boy wanted them to throw in so badly with his comrades, Dirge needed more convincing and did not hide his lack of conviction.

skipping the queue with permission; my timelines are a bit sketchy so i tried to be vague here