Morwolves
The meager rays of day cast long shadows over the still white land. Jaed crouched silently by a cluster of bare branched shrubs at the top of the hill and looked down over the frozen slope to where her boat lay on the ice. She had to reach it.
Jaed seemed to be a part of the gray-brown bush, unmoving as her eyes scanned the shadowed snows. She was dressed in torn buckskins, and her long black hair was tied back with a leather band. Her right hand clutched a long knife. Her left arm hung twisted and useless by her side. Blood coated her clothing, and long blood-dried gouges marked her face.
It had been a routine hunt until the Morwolves, the giant black wolves of the northland, attacked. Not for countless years had the Morwolves come this far south so early in the winter. The tribe had expected free hunting another two moons. The northern lands must have been strangled early by the snows for the Morwolves to move south already, Jaed knew. The weren’t due until the killing ice wind swept the lands; then, the Tribe stayed safe in the caves and left the frozen wastes to those dread hunters.
The Morwolves traveled in packs, but hunted in pairs. Jaed was fortunate that she had met no more than a pair on the eastern ridge that morning. She sighted them just as she reached the top of a rise; two massive creatures loping shoulder to shoulder far down the rock-strewn ridge. She knew them from the elder’s whispered tales, and she froze. They stopped and their heads whirled toward her. Taller than the height on a hunter they stood, with their sharp ears pricked forward. Their eyes were burning amber, and the force of their sighting struck her like a spear. They were still for only the blink of an eye, then they leapt and race toward her.
Her ash bow was at the ready for the buck she was hoping to find. She had time to shoot off her four arrows in rapid succession, each finding its mark in the huge black chests. The poison from the arrows slowed them, but still they raced toward her with their yellow eyes gleaming hungrily. She imagined she could hear their hunting cry, their soundless mind call.
The smallest stumbled, then dropped onto the hard-packed snow, felled by the poison. Briefly it struggled, then lay still. The other came on.
Jaed readied herself. The Morwolf leaped. Jaed stabbed out with her knife as she fell to the snow. Powerful jaws clamped down on her arm; claws tore at her. Jaed fought with all the fury of a cornered hunter. Suddenly the giant black body went limp. The Morwolves were dead.
The poison had killed them. Jaed’s knife saved her from dying with them, but not without cost. She was now being hunted by the entire pack. They would have heard the death cries; they all would respond.
Jaed kept her mind as still as her body, not allowing the fear that curled with her to loose itself and scent the air. Around their winter campfires, the old hunters of the Tribe whispered that to be captured by a whole pack was a slow and savage death but to be captured after killing one of their comrades would be worse than death.
She could see them, dark shadows moving silently on the darkening slopes, waiting for her.
She had to go. She leapt from the cover of the bushes and ran till her pulse was a drumbeat in her head and her lungs were on fire. Through the pounding of her heart she seemed to her their silent screams. She could see their shadows gliding down the hills, closing in on her, but she held the thought of the boat in her mind like a shield. She only had to reach it. It would skim over the frozen lake as fast as the wind, much faster than even the Morwolves. She would be safe.
She was almost there. She knew she could make it. Then her foot caught a protruding branch. It had looked like nothing more than a gentle wave of snow. It was frozen hard into the ground. The momentum of her flight hurled her face down in the snow.
She landed hard. The wind was knocked out of her. She twisted, struggling to get to her feet, but her left foot was caught tight. Pain shot up her leg washed over her as she pulled.
The hot hungry scent of the Morwolves filled her nostrils as one by one the massive black creatures silently surrounded her. For a frozen moment her eyes met the yellow eyes of the gray-muzzled one.
She tried to think of a prayer, words her mother had taught, tried to picture her mother knelling before the fire sending soft chantings out into the night. All she could see were the gleaming yellow eyes and all she could hear was the sound of her heart mixed up with the sound of their breathing. The sight and sound filled her mind. Till nothing else existed.
Then she knew.
Jaed heard a scream as fiery pail ripped through her brain, not even aware that the tortured voice was hers. The screams filled her ears and she fell into whirling blackness.
The young Morwolf licked at her injured left foreleg and gingerly got to her feet. She breathed in clean snow-smell and the warm home-scent of the pack, and gave herself a satisfied shake. She felt good, even with the pain. It would soon be gone. The healers would take care of it. Her father’s gray muzzle nudged her gently, “Come, my child.”
Her mind filled with contented Humming of the pack. “You are one of us now Jaed,” the voices sang. “It’s time to go.”
“Yes,” Jaed sang back softly. Limping she fell into step beside her father and, giving an incurious glance at the empty shell that had once been human; she followed the pack up the hill to home.