March 23,15 PE
It seems we will never live a normal day again. We stay until we retreat. We win until we lose. We fight until we die. I barely kept my life last night.
I left the camp without the knowledge of my immediate circle. It wasn't the first time I had done so. I have no need to be hand held and accompanied always. Things first went as usual. I took the night air. So much cooler than the day, like a different world. I wandered, watching, breathing quietly, my hand never far from my dagger. I don't know when I became aware that I was being hunted.
With a terrific impact that knocked the wind from me, I was flat on my back with a huge and slavering wolf upon me. I could not catch my breath. I struggled vainly,hands at his throat, feeling the abyss of his hunger yawning before me. Airless, my mind swam in a dream. Teeth denting my throat; weight crushing me, I thought of the little pieces of me that would be in his scat for the next several days. I gripped his massive throat and with all my strength pushed my head back into the leaf blanketed earth, set my neck like a cocked bow and headbutted his snout solidly. I shrieked like a banshee with knowledge of his shock and pain. I felt his rage surge. I tasted copper blood and felt his hunger grow in me, though I knew the salty bitterness was my own. Then it was suddenly over. A sudden shudder then dead weight, but gone from my mind like an arrow wrenched from it's wound. My lungs were crushing beneath. I saw a man. A man...a devil, an angel. Muscled and gleaming at the end of a narrowing tunnel. He lifted the body of the wolf. A fresh cascade of warmth flowed over me and I could breathe again. My eyes locked on his face, dark and unreadable.
That's the last I remember. I awoke on my pallet,wounds dressed, surrounded by a dithering group of attendants with too many questions, few answers and no sense. The night guards had found me unconcious at camps edge, (I had given myself a concussion with the headbutt) but otherwise only bruised and slightly punctured. I should have a tetanus shot if there were such things again. I wish I could say I told them the truth. Instead, a small lie. Only that I killed the wolf alone in a brief and solitary battle. Everyone was appropriately concerned and impressed as if I had not done such things before. I have more than one reason for fibbing. My dreams had told me of a dark man of the forest. |
