The village never warmed to her, but they appreciated the meat and furs that she brought them. Hunters started to nod to her when she passed them in the street, and they’d help her with the game she brought back without giving her a hard time. They knew what dangers the woods held, and they respected her courage.
She didn’t feel particularly brave at the moment high up in a tree, but she didn’t feel afraid either, just weary. She fell gently into a deep sleep, only to be jolted awake by the howling of wolves.
Encountering a pack of wolves alone in the woods was bad, and a pack of dire wolves was the worst-case scenario. They stood chest-high, and while they couldn’t climb trees, they would wait you out until you were too tired, hungry, or thirsty to stay treed any longer. And they were cunning – they’d surround you but remain just out of bow range. They’d watch from afar until you convinced yourself that they’d moved on. If they caught your scent, your options pretty much consisted of a quick death or a slow death.
The howling seemed to come from near and far, everywhere and nowhere, and it was clear that the wolves were on the hunt. Kala felt along her body, taking stock. She had her bow and a quiver with a dozen arrows at her back, a hunting knife strapped to her thigh, and a waterskin at her waist that might last her two or three days with rationing. She steeled herself for the worst and listened intently.
Their numbers were impossible to guess at, but she’d seen packs of five to seven wolves from afar before. The harder she listened, the more the howls seemed farther away than she’d initially feared. She peered about, but the foliage and the dark obscured everything and played tricks on her eyes. Once or twice, she thought she glimpsed a far-away light, but a firefly was the most likely explanation. No hunting party ever ventured this far from the village unless they were lost, and their fear of the woods kept them from penetrating deep enough to get lost. A forest fire also seemed unlikely as there hadn’t been lightning in ages, and surely she’d smell smoke before seeing the fire. The wolves didn’t sound panicked either, just coordinating their hunt.
Moments dragged on, but no ill befell her. Still, she couldn’t relax. She waited, shivering until dawn broke. It had been a while since she’d last heard howling and not once any growling or scratching below her. Did that mean she was safe? She had no idea, but prolonging the inevitable didn’t seem helpful, so she packed up her sling and descended, quietly respooling her warning lines as she did.
When she finally found herself in the lowest branches, she scanned the ground below her. No tracks, no disturbed ground. She was pretty sure that at least one wolf would have investigated her tree if she was indeed their prey. She dropped to the ground and circled the tree with her back to it and her bow at the ready. No sound greeted her. She did, however, catch the faint scent of smoke, or did she?
Gods damn it! she thought. Was her mind still playing tricks on her? She could make out a ridgeline through the trees that was in the direction of the light she thought she’d seen in the night. If she followed it, she could investigate and still keep her bearings.
She stood there, agonizing. You don’t offer your throat to the wolf, her grandfather was fond of saying, but lost hunters could need help, or worse, a forest fire could threaten the village.
Damn, damn, damn, she thought and started off toward the distant ridge. Her nerves were frayed, but the forest wasn’t silent the way it would be if predators were near. Nevertheless, she advanced cautiously.
She eventually reached the ridge, a cliff the height of four or five men that jutted near vertically from the forest floor and extended off into the distance. Easy to follow, at least, she thought. She committed several landmarks to memory, marked a few trees with her knife, and began following the ridge. She found herself subconsciously touching the stone for comfort and did her best to blend into its shadows.
She could smell smoke now but couldn’t tell if she was getting any closer to its source. Her growing familiarity with the smell could be compensating for any increase in its intensity. She cursed the ambiguity of it.
She was rounding a spur that jutted from the ridge when she heard a deep-throated growl. She froze, back to the stone, and drew her knife. It seemed woefully small at the moment. When she wasn’t immediately attacked and disemboweled, and a scan of the forest revealed nothing, she slid farther along the spur until she could peek over it.
What she saw caught her off guard. An enormous white dire wolf stood, flanked by two equally gigantic greys, hackles up, growling at a man who sat slumped against the ridge across from the remains of a campfire. He was exhaustedly warding them off with a glowing torch in one hand and an axe in the other. One of his legs was pinned beneath the body of a downed wolf, and the body of another lay farther off, a throwing dagger protruding from its eye.
The man’s strength was failing, and the wolves seemed content to wait him out before finishing him off. The white wolf feinted forward, and the man continued to wave it off, draining the last of his energy. Kala could taste the iron-scent of blood in the air.
She ducked back behind the spur and, as quietly as she could, drew her bow from around her body and removed three arrows from her quiver.
This is madness, she thought, but she was committed. She crawled along the spur until it was only half her height. She stuck two arrows in the ground, burned their placement into her memory, and notched a third. She said a silent prayer to no god in particular and rose quickly to her knees. She loosed the arrow, and before it had even traveled the distance to the white wolf, she was already scrambling for a second arrow.
Part of her brain registered her arrow in the wolf’s side as she notched the second. The wolf spun toward her. She let fly and grabbed for the third arrow. Time stretched between heartbeats, and she could see her second arrow protruding from the wolf’s chest, which only seemed to enrage it. Over its shoulder, the man was waving her away. The great white wolf tensed and roared toward her as she pulled back her last arrow.
In the clarity that accompanies certain death, she felt small. The wolf sprang, preparing to tear her throat out. She made her peace, closed her eyes, and released the arrow. A sickening thump passed through her, and it took her two full heartbeats to realize that she was still standing, well kneeling anyway. Her free hand instinctively felt for her throat as she opened her eyes. The great white wolf lay sprawled across the spur with an arrow buried in its throat and the look of murder fading from its sight.
Remembering the two other wolves, she grabbed an arrow from her quiver and rose to her feet. The wolves faced her uncertainly, and she loosed an arrow at the closer of the two. It struck the animal but didn’t seem to faze it in the slightest, although it didn’t advance either. She reached around for another arrow, and in that moment, some unspoken decision was reached by the wolves, and they turned and disappeared into the forest.
Kala collapsed and burst into tears. Remembering the injured man, she warily rounded the spur, an arrow ready, scanning the trees. It didn’t feel like a ruse by the wolves, but she advanced cautiously, nevertheless. The man had succumbed to his weariness and wasn’t moving. He’d dropped his torch, and his axe lay limp in his hand.
She surveyed him quickly, placed three more arrows in the ground near her, placed her bow within easy reach, and knelt beside him. Glancing furtively at the woods, she took stock of his condition. He was pale and had a nasty bite in his leg that required her full attention. Uttering an oath, she pulled off her belt and used it to fashion a tourniquet higher up his thigh. She rooted through her bag for a roll of fabric, which she used to bandage his leg as best she could.
Was the bite of a dire wolf poisonous, like the stories told to frighten children said? How could she counteract it if the stories were true? The bite was savage, even without poison.
She reached around the man’s waist to reposition him more comfortably against the stone outcropping, and her hand came away damp with blood.
Oh no, she thought and drew aside his tunic to rev
eal the damage caused by a second bite, or claws, Kala couldn’t tell which, only that it was severe and most assuredly life-ending. With no more bandages at hand, she unbuttoned his leathers, and he groaned in the depths of his pain. She stripped off his shirt and cut it into long strips with her knife. She doused the wound with the remains of her waterskin and wrapped the strips of fabric around his waist, tightening them and tying them off to staunch the flow of blood.
She found no other injuries and slumped to the ground beside him. She was marveling at his bright red hair, the likes of which she’d never seen, when she noticed his eyes were open. They were glassy, and he was having trouble focusing, but he reached up and grabbed her shoulder with an intensity that surprised her. She suddenly felt very afraid. He stared into her eyes in confusion.
“Lily?” he asked and passed out.
3
Kala
Kala stood over the unconscious man. “You can’t drop that on me, then die,” she muttered and set about doing her best not to let that happen. She needed to find water, but she couldn’t leave him. Kala decided first to relight his campfire in the hope that it would dissuade predators and scavengers. She picked up his heavy axe, which seemed ill-suited to cutting trees, but used it nevertheless to hack off some branches. She fed them to the fire until it roared back to life, then stalked back to the forest to drag a few fallen logs back into the clearing and arrange them on the fire. Content that the fire would stay lit for quite a while and hopefully not spread, she rooted around among his things for his waterskin. She grabbed her own as well and headed off in search of water.
I might return to a dead man, or I might not be lucky enough to return at all, but what will be will be, she thought resignedly. She read the slope of the land for the slightest hint of decline and followed the rolling terrain until she stumbled across a stream. She filled her waterskin, trudged back to the ridgeline, and followed it back to the campfire.
Returning, she confirmed that the man wasn’t yet dead, so she lifted her waterskin to his lips. He sputtered but managed to swallow some water. She took a long draught herself, put down the waterskin, and set about feeding the fire. Once it looked able to sustain itself for a while longer, she dragged branches into a semi-circle around their position against the ridge and tied her warning lines to them.
The man slept fitfully, but he slept, and while he did, she examined the wolf carcasses. Wolf meat wasn’t particularly tasty, but meat was meat, and their pelts were thick and warm. The meat would spoil before long and attract scavengers, many of which were particularly nasty in their own right, so she spent the rest of the day skinning the wolves. She cut off strips of meat, rubbed them with some salt that she found among the man’s possessions, and hung them to dry by the fire on a rack that she fashioned from branches.
When she was finished with each wolf, she dragged its remains far into the woods and dumped them there. She worked on the last one well into the night, and when she finished, she was so exhausted that she simply collapsed by the fire. She didn’t even have the energy to chastise herself for her lax security. If she died in the night, she’d deserve it. Several times she woke to the sound of scavengers fighting over the wolf carcasses, and while their battles chilled her, they barely roused her.
In the morning, the fire had gone out, so after verifying that the man still breathed, she relit it and rearranged the drying meat. The fire had thankfully kept scavengers away. She tried to give the man more water but had little success. She drank the rest of her water and headed back to the stream for more. Walking past where she’d dragged the wolf remains, she shuddered to find nothing left – no bones, not even blood, no trace at all beyond the trampled ground.
Returning to camp, she found the man still unconscious. She did all she could for him, then whiled away the time by tossing his throwing dagger, which she had pulled from the wolf’s eye. It was extremely well-balanced, but she was a terrible thrower. She sighed and turned to find the man awake and watching her. She hurried over and sheepishly handed him his dagger. He brushed it aside.
“You’re not her, are you?” he asked.
“No, I’m not.”
“You don’t look at all like her mother,” he sighed.
“Lily’s mother is dead. Who is she to you?”
“Sadly, her mother is dead, yes… but I loved her, and she told me to find her daughters.”
“Lily’s mother died in the woods many years ago. I’ve never seen you before,” she challenged him.
“Her mother died in my arms, not two moons ago. She died of illness, not the perils of the forest. In her last lucid moments, she made me swear to find her daughters and explain to them why she’d deserted them. She was ashamed, but she loved them with a passion that broke my heart. She never told me where she came from, only that it was many days’ walk. When I found her in the woods, our shaman said she’d only survived because of her resignation to death. She had no fear and anything that fears no predator can only be poisonous or able to defend itself, so she walked an unheard-of distance before stumbling upon us.” He tried to shift to a sitting position, but winced at the pain and gave up. He went on, “A promise is a promise, and what’s a man without his honor?”
“I could introduce you to quite a few, actually,” Kala replied.
He disregarded her sarcasm and continued, “I didn’t know how to fulfill my promise to find her daughters until I saw an airship a few days ago. I noted its path as best I could and set out in the direction it was headed, hoping that it was bound for your village. I lost track of it quickly, and after several days’ walk, I had no idea if I was any closer to your village. Then the wolves found me.” He grimaced at the effort it took to continue. “Thank you for my life, what little of it remains.”
“We have healers in our village,” she tried to reassure him. “They may be able to help you.” She didn’t believe it and neither did he.
“We both know I’m not leaving this spot, but it’s kind of you to say otherwise.”
She wiped blood off his chin. He sighed, closed his eyes, and fell quiet again. Kala balled up her tunic and placed it below his head. She took inventory of her possessions and his, then sat down to tend the fire.
Much later, a cough alerted her to the man regaining consciousness. She moved to his side.
“I don’t want to know why Lily’s mother left,” she said. “There’s no reason that can justify the hurt she caused those girls.”
“Fair enough, but her love for them was the reason she stayed alive as long as she did,” he said with an intensity that nearly drained him. He reached out weakly and held her arm. “You’re Lily’s champion?” he asked.
“What does that mean?”
“You look out for her.”
“That’s more Cera, but yeah, I guess I do too.”
“Good,” he murmured, and his grip slacked. “Promise me you’ll protect her.”
“That’s the idea,” she replied offhandedly.
“Not good enough,” he wheezed, “swear it on your honor.”
“I don’t have honor,” she quipped.
“Says the girl who faced down three dire wolves for a stranger,” he pointed out. “Swear it,” he demanded.
“Okay, Okay… I swear that I’ll protect her, and her little sister, too.”
The man’s hand dropped from her arm. “Thank you. I leave her in more capable hands than my own,” he mumbled and lay back, falling unconscious again.
She dragged the remains of his cut-up shirt to the stream and did her best to wash it for fresh bandages. She replaced them, but she could tell that his wounds were worsening. The more the surrounding skin darkened, the shallower his breathing became. It grew fainter and fainter until it failed altogether, and she watched him die.
She didn’t know the burial traditions of his people, so she piled rocks over his body and said a prayer for his departed spirit. She cached his possessions in a hollow in the rock face. His dagger was the only thing she k
ept, and she sheathed it in her belt.
She agonized about what to do with the information that the man had told her. Lily wasn’t ready to hear that her mother hadn’t just left her, but left her and stayed away, and the village wasn’t prepared to learn that there was anything or anyone outside its environs. She decided that she’d have to figure it out later – she’d been away from her village too long and needed to get back.
She built a travois, loaded the wolf pelts onto it along with the dried meat, and began the long, uncertain walk home.
4
Lily
Kala had never been away from the village this long before. It took her three full days to return, dragging the heavy load on the make-shift sled. Every night, she lifted the cured meat high into a tree with her to keep it away from scavengers while she slept. It was a draining trek, but gradually the terrain grew familiar, and she knew that she’d likely reach the village before nightfall.
She stopped to rest her weary muscles and sat leaning against a sapling. She finished the last of her waterskin and put it away. She fingered the tooth that she’d collected from the great white wolf and tied on a cord around her neck. It was a reminder of how close she’d come to perishing. She shuddered and tucked it inside her tunic.
Her muscles protested against getting up, but she overruled them, stood shakily, and stretched. She grabbed hold of her sled with callused hands, and straining forward, she set off again, weaving between the trees.
Gradually, the trees thinned, and she could see a rising brightness that indicated a clearing ahead. When she broke through the tree line moments later, she was surprised by how happy she was to see her village. Perhaps it was only the prospect of a bath and a soft bed that warmed her, but she missed her friends and her grandfather.
It was late enough that the pasture animals were being rounded up and brought inside the safety of the village walls. A child playing with his dog near the gate spotted her, stared at her dumbly for a moment, then sprinted inside the gate. She paid him no mind and trudged forward. Several moments later, the boy re-emerged with Kala’s grandfather in tow. The child stayed at the gate, but her grandfather hurried out to her and hugged her tightly. Feelings of warmth and safety flooded through her. She was home.
Raven's Wings Page 3
