Their impact was jarring. Ria had not expected the man to be very difficult to knock over with only two legs, but he was like a tree and her rebound sent her sprawling. Cursing her lack in size, she scampered to all fours and tried again, higher this time. Sunlight’s back had been to her the first time but now he was ready and his staff caught her right under the armpits, he made a twisting motion and she flew even further than Fern had, though she managed to land more softly. By then her fury was such that she could barely control herself and she ran straight at him. At the last moment Red Fox whined in agonizing pain where he lay under Snarl’s grasp, but it was too late to help him.
Her momentary distraction at her brother’s cry was her own downfall as Sunlight’s hateful staff fell once more and she collapsed into unconsciousness.
Gerard inhaled deeply, expanding his mighty chest like a bellows. The forest was his, people, animals, trees, he reigned over it all, and he ruled with a stone fist. For the first time in years someone had slipped through his grasp, but not for long.
“It’s just up here my lord, there isn’t a path so they can’t have gone to the town much, that’s why we missed them.”
“Was there not a search made of the surrounding area before moving in, as I commanded?”
“Ya, they searched, must have just missed it.”
“After we are finished here I want to see everyone involved in the scouting so I can determine how best to punish them.”
In the mean time he had some lost sheep to return to the fold. Perhaps he would finally discover some remnant of intelligence in the human race here among those who had so unexpectedly escaped his hunters.
The door gave way easily and he watched as his men flooded the small building. Less than five minute later they were all kneeling in front of him; three young boys, a big redhead, and an old man.
“This bastard,” one of his soldiers said, bashing the side of the large man’s head, “killed three of my men before we finally took him out, and Kale is still having a hard time breathing. I’m goina think of something good for you, you red haired basta-”
“If you don’t silence your tongue you will lose it, and if you don’t leave your Lords presence you will lose your life. I suffer no incompetence and you have tread perilously near the line.” Gerard was far from angry, but he had to maintain discipline. He was actually grinning. Thankfully his magnificent black beard hid the treacherous display of emotion. If this man truly incapacitated four fully trained soldiers… “You caught him sleeping, non?”
“Yes, my Lord.” Another soldier said, saluting as he did so.
“Put them all with the others. I think I may finally have found my man.”
Two
Leif
The blood of three wolves and two men painted the small clearing a glossy red where the sun shone and a deep purple where it lay in shadow. The rich, stifling smell filled his nostrils as it dripped from Leif’s legs, oozing down the smooth leather to congeal into a puddle at his feet. The headless grey beast that lay before him, a dark shadow in the bright red, accounted for most of it, apart from his own ankle wound which he was reluctant to inspect for fear it is was worse than it felt. The fire still burning through his veins was the only reason he had avoided anything worse, but now it was just causing him to bleed more profusely, so he calmed his breath and forced his pulse back down.
“Leif!”
His father’s monosyllabic grunt was muffled somewhat by the great beast pinning him to the ground, Leif dreaded to think what damage the animal had done before its death but pushed those thoughts aside and limped over to help his father. The mound of muscle and fangs was more than half his own size and, even with Cal pushing from underneath, it was an effort to move. His torn ankle didn’t help.
When they finally shifted the tangled mass, Leif was surprised to see his father’s face relatively undamaged, though his arms were a different matter. The coat of blood masked the severity of Cal’s wounds until Leif saw that the wolf was unbloodied. It was all his father’s.
“Hurry, get some bandages.” Cal stated with an odd nonchalance.
Leif was already halfway to the packs.
“Should have obeyed me and went for the kill. Wouldn’t have tackled me if I wasn’t doing your killing as well as mine.” Cal’s gruff tone had no sense of remorse or solemnity at the death of three animals simply defending their home. It was just a fact, with perhaps a hint of reproach at his son’s foolishness.
“We wouldn’t have had to kill any of them if you hadn’t led us straight for them.” Leif was helping his father wrap his arms tightly by then and saw the surprise in Cal’s eyes, faint and quickly subdued as it was. Leif was confused himself, he still couldn’t understand why he had acted the way he did.
It was true that his father had deliberately followed the signs to the wolves den, but he had always gone straight for conflict, and for Leif to disobey Cal was completely out of character. Something inside had felt wrong, some connection with his father had soured and his reaction had been subconscious, though he now recognized a part of it. The brutality Cal exhibited in the village struck him in a way he had never felt before and, when it seemed to reemerge with the wolves, Leif rebelled against it. Perhaps it had always been there and until then he had been too naive to see the truth.
He tied off the bandage and Cal stood, somewhat pale but seemingly stable.
“Check that ankle.” He muttered as he walked off into the bushes.
Leif looked down and groaned. The damn wolf had completely mangled one of his best, and only, boots. He tried to pull it off but quickly gave up and drew out his belt knife. He had made it himself less than a year ago. His feet grew outward just as fast as the rest of him grew upward and he learned to make his own boots long ago. This pair still had a few months of use before becoming too small, but now this one would need to be replaced. He sighed heavily and cut.
As his foot eased out of the leather he was surprised to find little blood and only a few shallow punctures. It didn’t come close to matching the carnage wreaked on the boot. Leif couldn’t imagine how he had escaped the powerful jaws and was pondering the incongruity when he heard an inhuman yelp in the direction his father had taken. In sudden realization he leapt up and ran, ankle completely forgotten as he hurried to stop his father.
Ria
She awoke to blinding pain with no memory of its cause. The smells assailing her senses were overpowering yet somehow disconnected. Steel, blood, and death. The drifting part of her mind, separated from reality by the blinding pain that still bound her movements, was beginning to make connections. Steel and blood meant a battle with humans, but death? Would she have woken if the two-legs were still alive? More; anger and fear, well that didn’t shed any new light, but something in the fear was wrong, some hint of… innocence? The pups!
A high pitched yelp confirmed her conclusion and her eyes flickered open just in time to see Sunlight, the golden haired man, run past shouting something. Her body protested vehemently as she forced her stiff muscles to move. It was agonizing, not only the intense ache from every muscle but even more infuriating were her sluggish movements, taunting the screaming in her mind that demanded haste.
Slowly her head lifted from the ground. Then her front legs moved beneath her, then her back legs. She let out an involuntary whine as her head throbbed ever more fiercely, and then turned toward the commotion. As she lethargically moved to find the source, her eyes took in the clearing and the estranged parts of her mind slid together with a paralyzing thunderclap. Her whole pack was dead.
“Father! Stop! Don’t do this!”
Not her whole pack, not yet.
Ria bolted toward the cries, her body’s grievances disregarded. The second yelp was more distant but just as pleading; obviously the pups had run, or at least one had. She dashed out of the clearing, bounding between two trees, and stumbled over the corpse of Fern. When she got back up a second later she saw what had killed her. Ria remember
ed seeing Fern crash through the bushes after receiving a blow from the staff, but someone had slit her throat afterward; the pool of her life’s blood slowly consumed by the dirt.
As she continued to follow the scent of fear, a new thought began forming in her still pounding head. These cursed two-legs with their hateful steel had killed four wolves, four of her family, deliberately and without any apparent injuries. How was she to do anything for River and Sparrow? She kept on running, but more warily; checking for other scents, any sign that they had heard her coming and were ready to hack her down as easily as they had her brothers and sisters.
She smelled anger again; one strong and hateful, the other… cold somehow, not weaker but less passionate, or rather, less active. The smell of the cold anger intensified and Sunlight appeared in her field of vision. His golden hair was mottled red, its shimmering quality only heightened by the blood as the true sunlight caught it. He had stopped running. Ria cautiously moved forward and to the right, as if to go around, when she saw why the young man had ended his chase.
Before his feet lay what remained of River, her small body crumpled and made to seem even smaller by the jutting blade imbedded in her back. Ten steps further lay the other pup, the same crumpled wreck as his sister. Snarl was kneeling over Sparrow, yanking his other blade from the pup’s neck.
She held in the howl that demanded to be freed, knowing it would only bring her destruction. Sunlight hadn’t moved, but some change in his demeanor drew Ria’s gaze. His face, a moment before drawn in a contorted mix of worry, anger, and disgust, was now blank, as if he had wiped all emotion away as one might wipe dirt from a stone. She shivered. He looked at her. No, not at her, it was more as if he looked through her. She could see his eyes looking in her direction and felt his attention directed at her, but he didn’t seem to see her. She shivered again. He seemed to come to himself, realizing what he was looking at, and made a waving motion as if swatting away a fly, then more energetically, then again with both hands while mouthing a word, “run!”, and she understood his meaning.
“What you waving at boy?”
She heard the dark haired man ask as she turned to run and she caught a last stench of his anger. It was a corrosive thing, destructive, malicious beyond understanding.
Alec
The rattling never ended; bumping, jostling, and constant, ceaseless rattling. With a few more wobbles and bumps the cart slowed to a stop and the driver jumped down to take care of the horses. Alec was one of eight captives in this particular cart, his bulk making it more cramped than could be considered even somewhat comfortable. The bottom of the cage was two overlapping sheets of metal nailed into what Alec assumed was a wooden frame. The bars on the sides were also wood, held together by a mixture of thin metal bands and nails. He would have thought it rickety, easy to escape from, if he had seen if from a distance, but from the inside he could see how truly well built it was. It was the most industrious use of scrap metal he had ever seen.
The sunset was entering its final stages, dark red and purple with bright orange on the very western edge through the thinning forest’s branches, and they were stopping for the night, not that any of the prisoners would leave their cage. It was the third night since he had found the dead villagers and the second since he had killed three of the bastards who took him. He hadn’t seen the boys since then, they were probably in another cart, but the old man… well, considering how kindly they treated the elderly in the village, Alec didn’t expect to see him again.
The driver had unhitched the horses and was feeding them a little way away where they were tied to a tree. Alec was sitting cross-legged to conserve space when a short blond man walked past, banging a stick on the bars of the cage. He was the same one who had fed them the last two days. His lank, neck length, blond hair was more of a dull yellow with streaks of light brown and his short patchy beard was more of the same. Alec thought the brown might just be dirt.
“Hey there ya big bastard, I can see you’re enjoying our little cage.” He gurgled a guttural, ugly laugh that sounded more like he was choking. “Get it? Little? Ya, you ain’t coming out for plenty more days, so just get comfy, if ya can.” He slid a bunch of stale biscuits through the bars then followed them with a few skins of water. “Remember, don’t give the skins back and ya don’t get any more water. Not that I care.” He laughed again and Alec thought how nice it would be to find out whether that really was how he would sound if someone choked him.
He walked off down to the next cart and the other captives began rescuing the biscuits from the grass and mud strewn floor. Alec couldn’t stomach the things.
To make sure the captors would never need to let their prisoners out of the cages, they made a hole in the metal floor at one corner. Sometimes people missed and it got mixed in with the mud. It smelled rank. The only rescue from the stink was a daily bucket of water the blond splashed across the floor, though he didn’t seem particular about where the water went or whether it actually cleaned the filth. Hungry as Alec was, he just wouldn’t eat anything that came in contact with the cage floor.
Alec grabbed one of the skins and drank off a third, then tucked it behind his head where two bars came closer together and closed his eyes. The men had built numerous fires and were cooking meat and some sort of vegetable over them. Alec’s stomach groaned as the smell wafted toward him, then turned over when it mingled with the shit and rotting grass. He tried not to think about the fire but it seemed as if trying not to think about something only brought it to mind more strongly. He shivered.
He awoke in a knotted ball of ache, knees against his broad chest and arms wrapped around. His stomach knotted up even tighter as he remembered the cooking food. Something dripped down his back and he jumped a little, every muscle creaking in protest. He reached around and found the water skin. It had begun leaking; not a lot, only enough to chill his spine for who knew how long. He popped off the cork and downed the rest, less than a third of the original amount.
The sky was just beginning to pale and a light breeze ruffled the dying leaves, releasing some to drift lazily down. It was the sounds of the men packing up that had finally woke him. The team was already hitched to the cage and the fires had been smothered again after their rekindling earlier that morning. The cages had been left where they stopped last night, in a line. The front of each cage was solid wood with a seat for the driver so Alec still couldn’t see into any of the other cages.
“Get up and eat you lazy dogs!” It was the same blond man. “If I got to be awake then so do you.”
He tossed the same stale hunks of bread as before and this time Alec snapped his hand out and caught a few before they hit the floor. Blond gave him a startled glance that turned into a glare, but instead of shouting or jabbing at him with the stick he just grabbed the empty skin Alec had left near the bars and walked off.
Alec took slow, deliberate bites, savoring the little taste that remained. It had been good stuff about a week or two ago, thick and hearty with raisins and small nuts. Some crumbles got lost in his beard, thicker than he liked it and beginning to tangle; he wished he could trim it. Then again, he would rather just get out of this damn cage, he felt sure the stench would never wash off.
A little while later they began bumping along again. The woods continued to thin, giving way to more rocky outcrops and densely packed dirt hills covered in tall grass that rippled in the wind. As the skyline cleared he began to make out the mountains and the longing to be free surged.
Grey had appeared a few times that first night, darting through the trees and poking out just enough for Alec to see and know he was following, but Alec worried that he might be caught in the more open landscape. Perhaps Grey knew this; he hadn’t shown himself since the previous morning.
Alec looked over at the other captives again. They must have been in there for a while longer than he had, dull eyes and ever more tattered and dirty clothes that hung from skinny frames. He had tried to engage them a few times before b
ut they didn’t seem to be able to hear him. They looked to be young; two boys and a girl that couldn’t be older than fifteen and a man and three women no older than twenty-five, but they all had the same crushed spirit. Alec couldn’t imagine what use they could be put to in their defeated state. He stopped trying when he did start to think of some and began to shudder. Whoever was doing this was a dead man and Alec was going to see that he knew it.
Three more days went by and the forest was gone. They were surrounded by rocks and hills, mountains towering to the East and endless craggy plains to the West with no more than twenty stunted trees in sight. Occasionally Alec would catch a glimpse of a flock of goats disappearing into a crevice or a large deer looking creature with massive antlers perched on a high rock. Once, through the top bars of the cage mere inches above his crouched form, he spotted a bald eagle soaring towards the mountains.
He began to think it would never end. His muscles were no more than lumps of bruises and his stomach had knotted so tight he wasn’t sure it would ever work properly again, then the endless grey rock finally broke.
It was hard to make out at first, dark brown with spots of bright grey that almost blended with its surroundings, but as they got closer it began to gain definition. Upright logs pointed at the top with scrap metal sheets placed at intervals formed a barrier surrounding an area more than three times the size of the biggest town Alec had seen. The walls, at least four times his own height, were only three sides of the enclosure; the fourth was the huge rock hill, one of many that defined the uneven landscape. It wasn’t quite a mountain but was still ten times again as lofty as the walls. The place was a fortress and Alec had the foreboding feeling that it would probably be his final prison. Just then the huge metal gates ponderously swung outward and the lead cart rolled across the threshold, becoming lost in the shadows.
Of Wind and Waves - Chronicles of the First Age, Book One Page 4