The rain was relentless.
It wasn’t falling heavily. She thanked the gods that they weren’t in the midst of a downpour. But darkness made seeing and hearing tricky enough for those who were seeking. She, seeking the brigands. And they, seeking their mysterious, escaped prey. The quietly pattering rain added in its own themes to the shadowed forest. Clouds obscured moon and stars, making human eyes strain for any wisp of light by which to navigate. Puffs of misty fog gathered in the spaces under the boughs. The endless whisper of a thousand droplets hid the sounds of any creature that moved over the leaf-strewn earth, and played tricks on the ears. And every inch of tree, rock, and soil was soaked, soggy, and slippery.
The rain meant that her bow would not serve her as she wished. She was loathe to leave it behind, and it rankled her instincts to do so. But while the young huntress had a heart of fiery impulse, she was no fool. It would do no good to fumble with a heavy, rain-soaked bow or wet, overstretched string, and miss any target she may come up against.
Nor did she believe herself capable of bringing down many Blackwold men on her own. She was swift and scrappy, but no match for a full-grown man in a violent rage. Particularly without her bow; the great equalizer. Any scuffle would rely on quick movement and sure strikes of her dwarf-forged blade, and then darting away into the shadows again.
Despite the hand that rested on the hilt of the dagger, she was not longing for a fight. Rather, she wished to study the movement and number of the brigands who were tramping through her homeland. But more urgently than this, she desired to find any clues to the whereabouts of the man they hunted.
He had walked this woodland with her before, but that had been many years ago now. And it was not in darkness, in rain, nor pursued by bloodthirsty thieves. It did not feel likely that he would find his way easily, nor that he could recall the secret paths that led to her hidden camp.
It might not even be him…
…yet my heart says it is.
As she crept from one pool of shadow to another, moving close to the earth, crouched down, one hand bracing into the grainy mud for balance, images played in her mind. A vivid imagination was a blessing and a curse. She saw the southerner as she thought he might look now; a bit of grey at his temples, perhaps a few crinkles at the corners of his eyes. But those bright blue eyes surely had not lost any of their luster. Nor the ease with which his smirking grin could pierce a lass straight through. She saw him ducking and dodging his foes, laughing quietly under his breath, slithering through the dark veil of the rain to smoothly escape their grasp.
But the image flipped without her permission. He wasn’t smiling, and he wasn’t dancing fleet-footed through the forest, toying with his captors. He was lying on the ground, a hand on his belly. His handsome face was etched with pain, and crimson oozed through his fingers, mingling with the rain, drizzling over his clothing.
It was this image that she latched onto. It made her stomach tighten, and her pulse thud hard behind her ribs. It sharpened her senses and sent a burning determination throbbing through her veins.
Find them. Find HIM.
She trotted swiftly back to the site where the Blackwolds had been camping around the fire. They were gone now, and she hissed out a curse. She drew near to the fire-ring, the embers still smoking and spitting as the raindrops cooled them. She circled the site, stooped low. A few bones from their meager supper had been tossed carelessly into the dying flames. But in their haste to depart and hunt the escaped man, they had also left behind an unwitting gift for the woman; a host of footprints. They were growing soft and blurry in the rain-soaked dirt, but there was enough to tell which way they’d gone.
She pursued them at once, peering into the gaping maw of blackness under the boughs. Familiarity with the forest allowed her to move more easily than most, though she stopped every few paces, and waited to see if the wood would reveal any clues to her through eyes, ears, or nostrils.
A scurrying noise broke from a thicket to her right, and she startled, whipping her knife from its sheath. Two pinpricks of light gleamed at her in the shadows. It took a few seconds for her mind to grasp that these points of reflection were only a foot or so from the ground, and could not be a man. The creature stood still long enough for her sight to adjust, and perceive the pointed snout and triangle ears of a fox. She exhaled a relieved breath, and this seemed to serve as a farewell to the animal, for it turned and continued on its way, slipping out of sight.
She rounded the thick trunk of an ancient oak, pressing against its rough, wet bark. It was here that another sound came to her. Difficult to separate from the whispering, pattering rain at first.
There. Breathing.
The knife was still in her hand. Her fingers clenched around it. She was not a woman who possessed human bloodlust. Her weapons were for hunting, for meat and furs and feathers. Few and far between were the times she had ever attacked another person. A trembling ran through her gut, and she took a slow breath in, closing her eyes briefly.
The breathing seemed to stutter then. It was not the quick, rapid breath of a man filled with alertness. It did not sound like the breath of someone hunting for prey, nor of someone being hunted. It was slow, and deep. She heard a sharper, nasal sound that bordered on a rattling snore.
The sound was close. Closer than she’d realized at first. Who in the gods’ name would be sleeping out here? No camp, no campfire, just sprawled out in the rain?
The huntress slithered around the tree, an inch at a time. Cautious, every muscle tightly wound and ready to spring.
There. A boot. Her head leaned out another inch. A leg. No movement.
The man had shoved himself into the cleft of the old tree’s split trunk. Only his feet had broken loose and flopped out into the open. A drunkard? Surely not. Those boots were not the patched-up Blackwold sort. Nor were they the rustic garb of a Breeish man. They were large, black, and finely crafted.
Surely. Surely, she could not be this lucky.
Wariness slipped away, falling like a receding tide. She moved closer, kneeling down as she came around to see the crudely concealed figure in full. Even with most of his form hidden in blackness, she knew. What meager light was given her, it was enough.
Dagramir. Sleeping in a tree. Of all the ways she’d ever imagined seeing him again, this was not one of them.
“I can’t feckin’ believe it,” she whispered to the rain, while a weak smile trembled onto her lips.
