episode 2: Wolves in the Capital
1181 Words
chapter2: Wolves in the Capital.
above them. Short sharp blasts. Active pursuit.
She ran through the gate.
The road outside the city was open ground pale dirt, no cover, the tree line of Ashwood visible in the distance. Too far. She could already hear boots behind them.
"They're close," she said, running beside him now.
"I know."
"How many?"
"Enough."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one that matters right now."
She would have argued but an arrow hit the road six feet to her right and the argument left her completely.
She ran.
Barefoot on packed gravel that bit into her soles without mercy. The white dress silver moons and all streaked grey with ash and road dust. She ran anyway because the arithmetic was simple. Keep moving or don't.
The wolves erupted from the tree line.
All of them the grey one at the front, enormous, the others behind him in formation. Moving as one. No signal. No sound between them. Just the absolute, coordinated certainty of creatures sharing a single purpose.
She watched them come and felt something loosen in her chest that she couldn't name.
Then the grey wolf stumbled.
Half a stride. The great body lurching, correcting. She saw the arrow in his flank dark against grey fur and made a sound before she decided to.
"He's hit"
"Keep running."
"Caelan"
"Keep running."
She kept running. But she watched. The wolf ran on with the arrow in him head level, eyes forward as if pain were simply not a language he was going to speak right now.
"Is he"
"He'll be fine."
"You don't know"
"I know him." he said Flat. Certain. With the voice of someone who means a thing so completely that doubt doesn't have a surface to grip. "Better than I know anything."
The arrows stopped. Range exceeded, or her father had recalculated. She didn't look back to check which.
The tree line was close now. The forest rose ahead dark, dense, ancient. Every nightmare she had been handed since childhood.
A soldier stepped out of the trees directly in front of them.
She had a single second of cold dread I led us here, I chose this road, if this is wrong it is my fault
The grey wolf came out of nowhere.
Not attacking. Simply appearing at the soldier's left flank those gold eyes, that impossible stillness and the soldier looked between the wolf and the man bearing down on him and made the only decision a person could make.
He stepped aside.
They went through.
The forest swallowed them.
Cool air. Green dark. The road disappearing behind the first row of ancient trunks. She ran three more strides before she let herself stop.
Her lungs had feelings. Strong ones.
She pressed one hand against a tree and breathed and did not look at her feet which were also having feelings.
He stopped beside her.
For a moment neither of them spoke. Just the sound of the forest settling around them. Birds. Wind in the high branches. The grey wolf's slow breathing somewhere close.
Then Caelan turned and looked at her really looked, fully, for the first time since the square.
"You knew the city," he said.
"I told you about that."
"Most princesses don't know their city's back alleys."
"Most princesses," she said, catching her breath, "don't have fathers who are trying to kill them."
Something moved through his expression. There and gone.
"Fair," he said.
She looked at him. At the scar. At those pale green eyes that gave almost nothing away.
"The debt," she said. "You're going to tell me eventually."
"Yes."
"Why not now?"
He turned toward the deeper forest. "Because you need to see something first."
"What?"
He looked back at her over his shoulder.
"The truth," he said. "About where you actually are."
- Writer
