She had not fully woken to her strength yet, the lone wolf, the sleeping wolf who hunted soft pawed in the dream-lands, pale grey eyes glimmering in the dark.
Had those who walked on two legs looked to her they may have thought her eyes were blue, like their own, but that could not be as she was no longer a cub. A she-wolf on the cusp of adulthood, sinewy sleek with thick silver fur….and grey-silvered eyes. One day...soon....she would leave her familiar haunts driven by the desire to find a mate to hunt with, to play with, to cuddle against in the colder months. But that was not yet. She was not impatient as she lay in the shadows, cool and at peace, the scents of the forest filling her senses.
Then came the day her peace was shattered.
She had been lazily watching the girl for some time. No need to act, no need to intervene in a life of play, and place of belonging. The girl was safe with her pack. She needed no support from the wolf.
But now the wolf scented blood?
Whose blood?
Rising to her paws, a tingling cold assaulted her nostrils, snow upon snow in that otherworld where the girl dwelt. It was snow and ice in the land only her inner sight could penetrate.
But there was also blood.
The she-wolf’s hackles rose, she thought to howl out to the others, but no. There were no others to answer her. Silence was her safest path. She moved, wide round paws now acting as snowshoes as she coursed out of her dream and into an open glade on the land around the place they called Forlaw.
The girl was there. The blood was hers, pooling around her prone form in free flowing crimson rivulets. And close by lay a male of her kind, young like her, the hardened metal biter he would have wielded now out of his grasp…. now...forever out of his grasp for his throat lay open, a ragged bleeding maw.
But the girl, she yet lived. Her face was all but buried in the snow, but her shoulders rose and fell.
The she-wolf turned her honed senses on the landscape, to find movement, be it ever so fleeting, to pick up scent, to catch any sound in the muffled clearing, even as she felt the sharp stab of pain as if it were her own. Pain from a wound to her arm / leg, a slicing cut sharp and deep. Pain from a blow to the head that left a ringing in her ears and a dull throbbing in a head that would not rise.
Pain, so deep a pain from a chosen prospective mate who had perished trying to defend her? The wolf’s own hot-bloodied heart felt as frozen as ice in that moment.
The boy-cub was dead, his body broken like that of a tossed hare, but the girl still lived.
Then the she-wolf caught the scent...or rather four different scents that sharpened her thoughts. At the first and closest two she bared her fangs...orc and warg. The second two she cast from her mind. The horses and men were still far-distant. Too far to aid the girl as the mounted orc returned from the edge of the glade to circle her.
‘Get up, girl’ the she -wolf thought, ‘you must fight for the right to live. You must fight so your companions' sacrifice was not in vain. Get up!
Crouching low in the shadows, she was fully awake, though surprise was not her forte, rather patience and endurance. The wolf knew she must act now, or forever dwell only in dream.
The stench of decay smeared orc surrounded her, of slavering blood-encrusted warg teeth.
It was time!
The girl stirred, one arm reaching out, fingers stretching desperately towards the weapon. She was fighting, she was choosing life.
It was decided in a moment, that blending of fate, that freeing of a new and iron will.
Then the girl was on her feet, her fallen companion’s weapon in her hand. The she-wolf lunged, her own jaws closing on the throat of the warg. One they were, one and the same...a girl fighting for her life; a wolf fighting at her side… or even closer.
And the warg was downed from the shared blows, the orc stumbling with disbelief as the wolf had his arm and the girl her sword at his throat.
When the riders from Forlaw arrived at the scene, searching for two young run-aways...a boy of sixteen winters called Wolfhere, and a girl two years younger… one Yllfa of Edoras, they found them both in the snow. The girl was barely breathing. Close by lay a warg with it’s throat ripped out, and a spear wielding goblin impaled on its own spear, its throat also cut. They saw the track of a wolf entering the clearing too, but not leaving. The snow, the carnage, anything could have covered those marks. It was of little account.
They carried the boy’s body back home. They carried the girl to Trewgifu in the infirmary for healing. They never saw the she-wolf. No one did again for some time.
