“Are you sure you’re going to be fine?” Sam asked, concerned.

Tasha turned her head back to glare at him in exasperation as she finished climbing over a particularly thick root. “For the last time, yes, I will be good.” Her words might have been more convincing if he hadn’t heard her hiss from the movement seconds ago. “The sling helps, I feel fine.” Her right arm was swaddled up in Sam’s button down fleece shirt, the arms tied behind her neck to keep it in place.

Sam frowned. She was definitely playing tough, but it wasn’t like he could call her out on it now.

“We should keep going,” Camille called from ahead. “That smoke we saw was far away, and we’re not moving fast.”

Kaisei looked nervously around them, holding a thick branch with white-knuckled intensity. “Are you sure it’s not following us? I think I heard something!”

“No,” Sam said, trying to feel confident. “If it was going to attack us, it would have done it already. Camille’s right, we need to keep moving.” He punctuated this by following Tasha over the thick root, using a stout wooden branch he’d picked up for support.

Sam was lying. He had no idea whether they were being tracked or not. He threw a nervous glance around himself, but saw nothing. Though some pale sunlight had finally broken through the clouds, the forest’s canopy cast long shadows between the trees, hiding patches of ground still muddy and treacherous from the rain, and spreading darkness over the thick damp underbrush of the valley floor.

Every now and then a bush would rustle, and they would all tense up, stopping with real or improvised weapons gripped in their hands, but the moment would drag on and nothing would attack, and they’d uncomfortably have to decide to start moving again, eyes darting uneasily from shadow to shadow, imagining or inventing the beast stalking their every step.

This is stupid. This is stupid and we’re all going to die. We should have stayed at the hut rather than coming out here where the wolf is! It’ll hunt us down and get us, and...

Sam clamped down on the panicked little voice in the back of his head as he kept moving. Rationally he knew they couldn’t have stayed, and that going towards the smoke was their best bet. They’d tried signaling at the other people with their bonfire, but despite adding as much fuel as they could, the wind had picked up harshly above their hill and quickly dispersed the smoke, and even without that they couldn’t be sure the other people would even have seen anything through the thick tree cover. Reason said they had to risk it.

Reason had little to do with it, though. He’d seen that thing up close, had felt its raw physical power and, he knew, had almost died to it. No matter how reasonable leaving the doomed shack might have been, it wouldn’t make the lizard part of his brain shut up about encountering the wolf again.

Still, he had to pretend. He turned to Kaisei and helped him hurdle the root. “Hey man, you alright?” he asked.

Kaisei laughed nervously. “Oh, you know, a walk in the park.” He tried to smile, but settled for a half grimace when he couldn’t. “I think I liked forests better when I was seeing them on YouTube.”

“Hah, I know what you mean. Not as easy as they make it look in Robin Hood, right?” Sam used his branch to push aside a thick clump of vines and held it for Kaisei. “You ain’t getting a horse through this stuff, that’s for sure.”

“Darn,” Kaisei chuckled halfheartedly, “and here I’d hoped Errol Flynn might gallop in and save us, like in the movie. Have you– Ah!” he cried as his foot caught a hidden root, but Sam caught him with an outstretched arm before he could hit the ground. “Oh, thanks. Have you, er, done this a lot?”

“Well, a couple of times,” Sam said. “I went to the Black Hills a few times, but they’re pretty different.”

“A lot of monstrous wolves out of horror movies there?” Kaisei asked.

“Ah, maybe not no. But I think we don’t have one after us right now. You’d think it would have attacked already, right?” Sam answered, navigating through some tall grass.

“I, I guess,” Kaisei hedged, “but for a wolf it sure acted strangely, you know?”

“Uh, not really,” Sam admitted. “I mostly know wolves don’t attack humans, so I guess it is weird there, but maybe he was really hungry?”

“Did it look starving to you?” Kaisei asked. “Had plenty of meat as far as I could tell. And besides, wolves are pack animals, but this one attacked alone. And also, they always target weak and singled-out members of animal herds, but this one just went for whoever was close. Oh, and, you know, it attacked a closed door to break through and get at us on the other side. I don’t think wolves usually do that.”

“I… huh. I guess so.” Sam paused and regarded Kaisei. “You know a lot about wolves, huh?”

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

“Only what I read online,” Kaisei said, adjusting his glasses. “and look how accurate that ended up being. Turns out you can’t trust Wikipedia after all.”

“No,” Sam laughed, “I guess you really can’t–”

He’d barely finished uttering the words when a dark blur with red-striped fur rocketed out from the foliage to his left and slammed into him like the fist of Almighty Angry God.

----------------------------------------

Sam barely had time to realize what was happening before he slammed into the ground, improvised staff tumbling from his fingers, a large and furry shape pressing down on top of him. He had a brief impression of sharp, dagger-like white fangs rushing down towards his face. Quick reflexes were all that saved his life. Operating on pure instinct, he got his hands around the wolf’s neck and pushed, and his arms strained against the beast’s strength and momentum.

Jaws snapped shut with a mighty scissoring motion an inch from his nose, and would have ripped off half of Sam’s face had he been a second late. Slobber flew all over him as he struggled to keep the wolf away as it went for a second bite. As he fought the creature, he glimpsed a spot on the fur matted with dark crusted blood, the place where Tasha had stabbed the thing. With an effort, he moved his thumb into into the gash and squeezed hard.

The wolf yelped in pain as fresh blood spurted out of the wound and coated Sam’s fingers, and it tried to fight against him for a few moments before it rolled off of him. It immediately rushed at Sam’s prone form again, but he rolled out of the way, the wolf’s jaws snapping shut once again on empty air, inches from his head. He didn’t stop to look, scrambling up to his feet, left hand finding the long branch he’d dropped earlier, and he whirled to face the creature again. He was too slow.

The wolf had quickly recovered from its failed bite and gone after Sam’s scrambling form. The moment he’d turned around had been all the opportunity it had needed. It dashed forwards, all thick muscle and fur and hungry fangs, and its jaws slammed shut around the arm that held the branch.

Sam’s forearm exploded in white-hot pain.

He cried out in agony as the wolf clamped down and thrashed. Something in his arm gave way immediately with a series of crunches loud enough that he actually heard them over the beast’s snarls and the pumping of blood in his ears.

That was the Radius and the Ulna, a small, distant part of his brain told him with detached disinterest. Multiple fractures. Immediate surgery required for a chance to keep the arm.

Sam roared, adrenaline pumping through his veins, and he reached into his pocket with his right hand, not even attempting to retrieve his left arm from the wolf’s jaws. He drew Tasha’s knife. With a single motion, he stabbed right into the side of the wolf’s meaty neck. And then he stabbed again. And again. He was screaming the whole time, and Red Stripes was still thrashing, trying to rip his entire arm off, but he couldn’t feel the pain yet. He would, soon, if there were enough nerves for him to.

After the fifth stab, the wolf finally jumped away, snarling, the side of its body a bloody mess, but Sam knew he’d taken the worst of it. His arm was so mangled he could actually see it bending in all sorts of wrong ways, even through the lacerated bloody tatters of his long-sleeved shirt, and he couldn’t feel it anymore. There was no hospital nearby. Without one, he’d lose the arm, then probably die from neurogenic shock, or blood loss, or infection. Or, probably, from getting eaten by a wolf.

The beast’s own injuries, on the other hand, were not nearly so debilitating. It might bleed out, yes, but with so much muscle and fur Sam didn’t think he’d managed to nick a major artery. It would live long enough, as far as he and the others were concerned. It was already crouching to attack again. Sam tried to ready the knife in his good hand again, and suddenly felt faint and wavered, falling down to his knees, good hand barely enough to keep him from flopping onto his stomach. Ah, he thought distantly, there’s the neurogenic shock. That must be the low blood pressure I’m feeling. Guess that’s it for me.

Sam’s vision swam and wavered for a moment before coming back into focus on the faces of the others. They hadn’t moved from their spots yet, the whole exchange having lasted less than a couple of seconds. Why weren’t they moving? They had to move. Didn’t they know he was already dead? They’d be next too when…

The monster prowled forward again, growling, eyes locked onto Sam. It was wary of the knife, but that wouldn’t stop it. Sam tried to speak up, tell the others to run, but he felt so faint, so distant. He was shaking, he realized. So cold.

This was it.

He gripped the knife with the last of his strength. It wouldn’t be enough, but maybe he could buy them a few seconds to get away before the wolf got them too. It would get them all, in the end.

A twanging sound brought his consciousness back into focus, and he saw an arrow sprout from the side of the beast’s head, in through an ear and out the other, with a small spurt of blood. The wolf’s growl was cut out with a sudden yelp and it stumbled once, swayed, then crashed down to its side. Sam frowned, trying to piece the events back together in his head, but the only thing his wavering mind could focus on was the arrow, a wooden thing with small dark fletching that looked like it had actually come from a bird. An arrow? Who still used arrows these days? Maybe… maybe Robin Hood was galloping in to save them after all. Heh.

A hooded figure emerged from the brush holding a large wooden bow, looked at them, and shouted something over its shoulder when its eyes settled on Sam. Sam tried to focus on the words, but the sound was distant, like an echo through a long dark tunnel. The shock and blood loss setting in. But the wolf was dead. That… was good. The others wouldn’t die. And maybe he could just sleep a bit.

He tasted dirt when he stumbled forward. There was more distant shouting all around him, then someone turned him over. In the dark, fading light, he saw an austere woman with her graying hair pulled into a tight bun. She was looking at his arm like a doctor. Was she a doctor? Then she’d know he was gone. There was no way to save the arm now, not after this. She said something he could no longer hear.

Suddenly there was a bright light and warmth flowed back into his arm from her hands. He could feel her hands on the arm’s skin now. He could see them, too. And they were glowing.

Ah, so that’s what it was, Sam smiled faintly to himself, I was just dreaming all along.

He went back to sleep.