The world was all one color, but not all one shape. Tree trunks twisted up and out of the hard earth like devil’s horns, branching off and lifting their windy whisperings up to the sky. In the cold, clear air, every shape was cut out solid and sharp-edged as a tombstone, or a temple. It seemed almost a sacrilege that the scattered brown leaves were fragile enough to be crushed underfoot.

A single figure made its way through the trees. A limp slowed his progress, twisting the man’s frame to be ever so slightly askew. He matched the landscape.

In spite of the wind trying to muster up some sound from the sullen earth, the trees kept their own hushed company, and the squirrels had all gone off to haunts of their own for the night. The man walked along in relative silence, then stopped, tilting his head back to see the sky.

Wisps of dirty white, left over from a day that could not decide if it wanted to be cloudy or not, bubbled and drifted in pale contrast to the dull purple hue of the highest heavens; and where the west was still alight with the ember-glow of a dying sun, they were rich with pink and gold.

The forest shared none of the sunlight. It had, an hour hence; but now the earth was a uniform brown, fading to black, with only the sharp sparks of sunset beyond the tangled web of devil’s horns–a light as useless as a tea-candle.

The man blinked at the scene, shivering against the bitter, frost-laden air. With a groan, he settled down to sit on the forest floor, crushing the leaves carelessly as he tried, without much success, to rub some of the snarling pain from his leg. It was an old wound that enjoyed being cantankerous about the weather.

If the man had his own way, he would not be out here. He would be home, letting the warmth from a blazing fire and a good cup of tea seep deep into his bones. Reading, perhaps. Or drifting aimlessly to doze. Either would be perfectly satisfactory.

However, whatever powers lay beyond the fast-fading sky did not seem to find much joy in giving the man his own way, so he sat, shivering and watching the ember-light flicker and begin to go out. Occasionally, he had to remind himself that he could not huddle up to the warm glow in the west and warm himself with it. Cold as it was, the reminders did not stop the idiotic notion from drifting into his head. He searched the blackening expanse above him for the white light of the fully-waxed moon, and did not find it. Hiding, he assumed, somewhere in the still-drifting clouds. Not that it mattered. He could feel it starting to pull at him, clouds or no.

With a sigh, he reached up and unpinned his cloak, letting it slide to the ground and feeling slightly irritated by the knowledge that it would probably be damp and very, very cold in the morning. Slowly, reluctantly, he bundled his other clothes in with it, fastening the bundle with the cloak-pin and leaving the whole affair stuffed into the roots of an indifferent pine. He dug his toes into the leaves, ignoring the twist of pain in his leg, doing his best to ignore the shuddering cold. Feeling the world against his skin, if only for a few moments, as the last of the sunlight dribbled away.

The moon gave one last tug, and the first of his bones cracked.

Every other bone followed its example. With a sickening, meaty sound, the man’s frame bent and twisted into something different altogether. Muscles spasmed and tore as they rearranged themselves, skin peeled and ripped, falling to the forest floor to be replaced by a thick coat of fur.

The walker screamed.

* * *

“What was that?” the boy asked, hands freezing on the ties of the very last pack. His face glowed orange in the light of the small fire they’d risked, everyone suddenly as glad of the light as they were of the warmth. The woman sitting beside the fire hugged her bundle closer to her chest, shushing the babe softly, and looked up at the man on the far side of the blaze. He was far enough out of the light so that it only glowed slightly against the streaks of silver in his hair. He halted in shouldering his own pack, cocking his head as though to listen even though the strange shriek had already ended.

“Owl,” he stated, the word sounding as though it had been picked at random from a list of reasonable possibilities, and the boy raised an eyebrow, looked to the woman, and finally shrugged, going back to checking over his pack. Owl or wolf or eldritch demon, strange sounds in the woods were the least of their problems. No one had the energy left for worry. The woman changed the subject.

“Am I allowed to carry a pack tonight, Noctus?”

This only served to settle the frown deeper into the man’s face, and he gave a grunt–whether in reply or in the attempt to shoulder his second pack, she doesn’t know. She raises an eyebrow, and Noctus shakes his head.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Bracchus and I can handle the packs. You’ve got a burden already, my lady.”

“She’s not that heavy,” the woman says, leaning back slightly to keep the babe’s questing hand from snatching the end of her nose. “I can manage more.”

“You can take my pack if you really want it,” the boy says with a flashing grin, and Noctus jerks his head sharply aside, the firelight throwing the lines of his face into sharp relief as he fixes the boy with a sharp look. He scowls at them both before turning away again, out of the firelight.

“We’ve yet to outrun our danger, milady,” he finally says, in softer tones than either of his companions is used to hearing from him. “He won’t be giving up the babe that easy, and I can’t risk her falling into his hands. Or you,” he adds, and it’s more of an admission than an afterthought. “If we are overtaken, I’ll have nothing slowing your steps. Least of all a pack that’s just as easily carried by one of us.”

At that, the woman looks up, the orange light glowing in her eyes.

“I won’t leave you behind.”

“For her sake,” Noctus growls, “You will.”

She looks down at her little bundle again. The babe is awake, playing silently with her hands, fixing her fingers with a frown of complete concentration that reminds the woman, briefly, of Noctus. She stands without a word, hugging the child close as she kicks dirt over the fire. She refuses to be useless.

“Alternately, I could hold the babe, and run away at the first sign of trouble,” Bracchus suggests brightly, shouldering his pack with a wild jangle of tinware, and the woman feels an unexpected grin twitching at her lips. “It’d break my heart, leaving you both to die, but if it’s what must be done–”

“Hush,” Noctus snaps. “Milady’s life is worth a hundred times either of ours. Remember that.”

Her grin is smoored over as efficiently as the fire, and Bracchus is as silent as he can be, a mere jangle of cookery in the moon-muddled dark.

“We must move.” Noctus’s voice is suddenly weary, ragged. The woman wishes she could take some of the weight from his shoulders, but he’s right. Her own little burden is more than heavy enough.

* * *

The walker pads along on four paws. He is used to being alone in the woods, and watches the small huddle of humans with interest, grateful when the woman kills the too-bright, sharp-smelling fire. The humans are moving, traveling in the dark like a wolf-pack when they should be sleeping like the rest of their kind, and his ears prick towards them, curious. They are very loud.

Once they’re out of sight, the beast works its way to its feet and begins to trot after them, following the ghost of a scent on the chill ground.

The leaves do not do so much as shuffle under his able paws, and the night does not seem so very dark to those yellow eyes. The twisting pain of an old wound in his foreleg kept his gait free of easy even-ness, but he’s used to the pain, and keeps pace with the little huddle of humans easily enough.

It was the soft whimpering from the woman’s bundle that had drawn him to them, bringing his curiosity to a peak; and past the scent of the smoke, he had caught another smell–soft, and floury, fresh and unsullied as kneaded dough while everyone else stank of weariness and fear. It was the scent of something very, very young.

It was something other than curiosity that made the wolf trot along after the group. It was the man who was the most afraid–he was as sharp-scented as the smoke, and his words were sliced apart with acid precision. The woman was gentler, her fear muted by a faint lingering of lavender and soap; and the boy was as fearful as his short years had taught him to be, still gangling and half-careless like a yearling buck who had yet to meet with hunters.

The babe, nestled in the woman’s arms, had no fear at all.

The wind, just the bare beginnings of a breeze, shifts; and it carries a scent on it that makes the wolf halt suddenly, turning around to scent the air and stare at the hills behind him. The breeze smells of tar and flame, the not-wolf musk of tame dogs, the sweat of horses and of men. A howl sounds from far-off over the hills, and the walker’s hackles rise as a growl sounds in his throat.

* * *

A sound cut into the night air, eerie and animal. It was distant, but very clearly audible in the cold, and Noctus halted abruptly, holding out a hand as everyone else stopped too, turning with fear-tuned instincts to listen.

The sound comes again, clearer than before. Baying. The woman stiffens, taking an unconscious step closer to him, and Noctus wishes, harshly, that he could know he could protect them all, know that he could keep her and the boy and the babe safe. But he can’t.

“Is that an owl?” Bracchus asks, easy grin wavering slightly.

“No. Dogs.” Noctus feels the growl in his voice, feels the helplessness seeping into his limbs. There’s only one thing they can do. He hopes against hope that it will be enough. “Run.”

* * *

It’s impressive, really, how long the travellers keep running. They’re fast, for tired, half-broken humans carrying packs; but the walker lopes along easily alongside them, and he knows that the dogs with their man-tainted musk are gaining on them all. The humans are growing slower with each passing minute, and the dogs are not. Finally, as the three skid down a long hill, the man falls to one knee, panting, and the dog’s baying echoes all around them, filling the moonlit dell until it seems a part of the air itself.

* * *

“This is as far as I run, Milady,” Noctus says, looking up into her eyes as though dreading to meet a challenge there. Bracchus has already thrown the packs to the ground and is rummaging in them. He pulls a long blade free with a decisive jerk, tossing it in Noctus’s direction and taking a dagger for himself, his face hard and determined in spite of his earlier protests. The woman hesitates for a moment.

* * *

On the outskirts, it is all the wolf can do to keep from running into their midst and dragging her away himself. The dogs are almost on them, almost there.

“Run!” the man bellows like a bull in a bear-trap, and the woman startles, then grows hard and determined herself.

She flees, leaving the scent of lavender and sourdough in the fear-soured air.

* * *

She runs until every step is a knife and every breath is a sob. The babe is wailing, but there’s no help for that; she has to run. She has to keep running.

She doesn’t think of Noctus; doesn’t think of the boy with his clay-hard face, the white-knuckled grip he had on his dagger. She doesn’t think of the dogs and their teeth; she doesn’t think of herself. She thinks of the babe in her arms, instead; thinks of speed and flight and how if she cannot do this, if she cannot get away, then the past fortnight of running and hiding, of sleeping in ditches and shushing the child when she wanted nothing more than to break down and cry along with the babe, will have been for nothing. She puts all her strength into her legs; but all her strength, it seems, is not enough.

The first of the dogs lands on her back. Scrabbling paws tear the fabric of her cloak and hot teeth sink into her shoulder.

It’s over. She knows it’s over as soon as she stumbles, knows it too solidly even to care about much more than the pain as the second dog bites down into her leg. Still she hugs the babe close, putting her body in between her and the sets of snapping teeth. The first dog is trying to get at her throat while the second pulls back in an effort to untie her human knot, and she curls tighter, feeling the terror in her belly like some demon or spirit that is keeping her from moving, from crying out. They begin to fight over her, the one with its teeth in her neck pulling one way, the one with her leg pulling the other, and the world goes white with pain.

Then there’s a yelp, and her ravaged leg is pulled for a moment, then falls limp. The beast at her neck lets go, shoving off her at some unseen attacker; another yelp, and all she can hear is her own ragged, panic-heavy breathing and the babe’s wails. With a surge of insane hope, she opens her eyes, thinking to see Noctus and his sword, alive somehow and come to save her.

Instead, she sees a wolf.

Moonlight outlines the creature, silvering the high-held head and pricked ears as cleanly as the icon on some lord’s coat-of-arms. Its teeth are bared, moon-born white stained black with the dog’s blood, fur dripping dark droplets into the stiff leaves of the forest floor. She can hear the rumble in the creature’s chest, low and deep as the far-off thunder of a seaside storm. Slowly, it turns its head towards her, and she stares up into the stony yellow eyes, trying to murmur soft things to the child in her arms. They come out garbled, wet-sounding and tasting of iron, and the wolf looks away, stalking around to settle beside her with a soft huff. His fur is warm against her side.

The iron taste is becoming less clear, the shapes in the moonlight blurring. Even the pain is fading. She’s tired, impossibly so; too tired to think, to speak.

She closes her eyes.

* * *

The babe goes quiet, sometime in the night; sometime after the dog’s baying had faded, accompanied by the shouts and distant cursing of frustrated men who had not found their quarry. The wolf feels the woman grow cold beside him, and stays close to her, letting the blood dry and stiffen on his fur, growling at anything that moves.

* * *

The world does not so much lighten as grow pale. It thins and fades, a ghost of itself, until flecks of pink begin to feather the east and the tree-trunks blacken and solidify in seeming rebellion against the coming light.

The walker wakes to find a world awash in pale yellow, and his own hands smeared with rusted scarlet.

With a wild scramble that startles leaves and squirrels alike, he comes upright and stares at the still, undeniably human figure splayed out beside him on the ground. It’s a woman, her eyes closed almost peacefully, her dark hair matted with blood and glittering with frost.

There was blood on on her–on the ground, on him–and the marks on her flesh were animal, signs of teeth sunk deep and ravaging. She wasn’t moving.

Heart pounding, he took a step back, then another, rubbing flecks of dried blood from his face with an equally sullied hand.

His heels bump against something soft and heavy, and he turns with a start, heart pounding yet harder when he finds another no-longer-living thing lying on the ground. It is black-furred and bloody, eyes glazed open and fangs bared. There is frost in its fur, and blood in its teeth. The man blinks, no longer certain what to think, what to do.

Then, a sound.

It’s a small, mewling sound; utterly unlike a squirrel, nothing like any animal he’s heard.

Leaning sideways to hold a protesting leg, he limps forward, muttering curses under his breath at the cold, and kneels beside the woman’s body, putting a hand on the frosted fabric of her cloak. It’s an odd, sickly business; untangling her stiff limbs as a sailor might untangle rope, but the sound persisted. She’d died clutching a bundle.

A noisy bundle.

That moved.

Flipping the fabric aside, he’s confronted by a pair of brown eyes, staring up at him in surprise. He stares back, faintly horrified, as the surprise turns to upset and the tiny eyes begin to fill with tears.

“Hush, now,” he finds himself saying. “Shh. It’s all right. It’s all right.” he fumbles with the new and unexpectedly squirmy burden, hands unskilled and unsure, before finally holding it close to his chest, making vaguely soothing noises and trying very hard to be warm.

The squirrels chatter unhelpfully. The trees, as usual, are silent; contentedly busy being painted in shades of pink and gold by the rising sun. The woman does not move, but the babe does stop wailing, cutting itself off with a choked sob and desperately stuffing a fist in its mouth.

The man stares, then stands. Manages–barely–not to curse at the twist of pain in his leg. The cold is still cruel, but the child against his chest is warmer than the pale sunlight. It twists in his arms, making discontented noises.

“It’s all right.” he mutters at it vaguely as he begins to walk out of the forest, not entirely sure it’s true. But it will be all right, soon; when he reaches home, and can get the babe warm, and safe, and fed. It will be all right.

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