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She adored the feeling of the cool, packed earth beneath her bare soles. The height of midsummer was approaching, and only the deepest hour of the night brought sweet respite from the sun’s heat now. In the velvet shadows, the forest path was a deep, endless corridor between silvered trunks. The world around her was anything but silent, for a shrill chorus of crickets, frogs, and other unseen creatures sang endlessly from their refuges under toadstools and rotted logs.
The scent of the cooking-fire drew her. Despite its pleasant savor in her nostrils, the expectant images that hovered in her mind were of dark-painted faces, sharpened spears, and wild eyes. Her fingers stroked along the roughly carved handles of the knives strapped to each hip.
There. Ahead. A flicker in the gloom. Yellow-gold.
Her toes clung to the soil, carefully and firmly curling about root and pebble with each silent step. No voices reached her ears. Perhaps it was a solitary hunter or scout. Her pulse thrummed with anticipation.
The first flutter of movement brought her swiftly behind the trunk of the nearest tree. She noted how pleasing the rough bark felt in its scratch against her bare shoulder. A dagger was eased free of its sheath, and held in her right hand. The fire’s smoke was thicker here, and grey wisps were floating past her hiding place, illuminated by the light of the flames. She smelled more than wood burning. Someone was preparing supper.
Her muscles tightened, and she leaned slowly, an inch at a time, until one eye peered out around the tree. The fire was plainly in view, a small blaze within a conscientious circle of rocks. Two sturdy branches had been driven into the earth on either side, and a thinner beam balanced between them over the embers. Revulsion blossomed within her as she stared towards the hunk of meat skewered there. Most of the flesh was charred and blackened beyond recognition, but at one end, she saw with horrifying clarity that there were five human toes.
Rage tensed her jaw, baring her teeth and wrinkling her nose. She leaned a little more, looking for the camp’s resident. But there was no one. Her honey-colored eyes swept from one side of the small clearing to the other, probing the shadows beyond the firelight. “Where are you, dragon-filth?” she hissed under her breath.
As if on cue, the sound of a foot shuffling in the leaf litter came from behind, and she leaped from her hiding place, whirling to face it. With the fire to her back, she planted her bare feet wide and curled her body downwards like a spring.
From within the tendrils of smoke and shadow, a figure emerged. Her mind’s eye had crafted him perfectly. Woad-painted eyes stood out starkly in a bearded face. Their whites glowed, the irises sharp in contrast; eyes of a bloodthirsty savage.
“Whose leg feeds your belly tonight, dragon?” she snarled, making a spring towards the Wild-man. But there was no collision, and she felt no strike of retaliation. Her body hurled forth into the trees, her feet sliding on the cool dirt as she halted and turned again.
Now the man stood silhouetted before the fire, his bare arms held out slightly from his sides. Even now, she could see those crazed eyes in his swarthy face. “Speak!” she barked, preparing to charge again, her breast heaving. “Speak while you still have a tongue! Which of my kin fell that you might befoul them so?” The man stood silent, and his brazen refusal to answer stoked the rage within her, and she leaped forward again with a cry.
And again her target eluded her blade. Only empty air met her slashing knife. She spun wildly, searching the ring of flickering light. There he was. Ten paces away again. How was he moving so swiftly, and soundlessly?
A cold tremor passed through her, rattling her bones and weakening the fingers clutching her dagger. “Speak! If you are not a phantom…” she demanded.
A high, keening howl suddenly broke from the darkness close at hand. Her focus faltered, and she looked towards the sound. “Dunnian?” she murmured.
The Wild-man moved, though she did not see his feet carrying him from one place to the other. Now he was at her left, still staring from the edge of the fire’s light. “Speak, if you are real, damn you!” she shouted.
The flames suddenly rose with a fierce roar, and she recoiled from the heat, throwing up her left arm to shield her face. The leg on the spit was consumed and taken from her sight. The scent of the smoke became acrid and noxious, blood and bone were in the ashes and embers that floated on the wind past her cheeks and hair. Her breath choked in her throat, and she stumbled away towards the yawning maw of darkness under the trees.
Once she felt able to suck in a clean breath, she glanced back towards the camp. The fire had burnt itself out all at once. Not even a faint glow of embers remained. The air was clean and soft, with no trace of smoke or ash. She inhaled deeply through her nose. Nothing now, but the smell of soil and green life.
She looked down at the knife still grasped in her right hand. Trembling fingers slowly fumbled it back into its sheath, and then she wilted slowly to the forest floor, curling her knees up to her chest and bowing her head.
A low chuff came on the softened breeze. She lifted her eyes to see a wolf standing a dozen paces away. He was the color of soot and had pale eyes that gleamed with the starlight filtering through the boughs. “Are you real?” she whispered shakily.
Quiet paws carried the animal across the small space, until his cold nose bumped against her bare arm, and then he grinned. Fangs gleamed white while his tongue lolled forth, and she could feel his hot breath pulsing against her skin. “You are real, Dunnian, aren’t you?” she said again, and then reached out to lay her arm around his neck, burying her face into the thickness of his fur.
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