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  Garran’s eyes fluttered open, his vision gradually coming into focus. He stared up at the unfamiliar ceiling of a small hut. He could hear the crackling of a fire and could feel the heat emanating from its scintillating flames. The wolfkin could tell by the craftsmanship that the hut was definitely one within Darkfrost Village. But it was not his own.

  His head pounding like a wardrum, Garran winced; the intake of breath curling his lips back, revealing his elongated canines. His mind was a blur as recent events played in flitting, jumbled images that made his head spin. He remembered his hunting trip, and the storm. The ambush...

  As if on cue, pain erupted in his left side. Looking down at his abdomen, he made a grab for the wound, and blanched. His leather jerkin had been removed and a linen bandage had been applied to the gash. The fur around the wound had been cleaned, and the coppery odor of blood had been replaced by the smell of a mixture of herbs and plant fibers coming from underneath the cloth. Someone had applied a poultice to his wound, and took great care to clean and cover it.

  Furrowing his hairy brows, Garran stared at the bandage, as if trying to will himself to remember how he had gotten here. The mutts had ambushed him. He remembered that much. In a hurry to get home, Garran had not paid enough attention to his surroundings. He would have died if not for.. the other wolfkin. The archer.

  “Had me worried there for a bit,” a gruff voice said, startling Garran. Garran grabbed for his mace on his side, but it was not there. He looked around frantically, and saw that his armor, shield, and his mace were all sitting in a neat pile beside the fireplace. He frowned slightly when he noticed some crude stitching in the side of his jerkin where someone had stitched up the gash.

  Garran’s silver eyes then fell upon the black-haired wolfkin with the white muzzle. This was the wolfkin that had rescued him in the woods. Seeing that he’d startled Garran, the wolfkin’s ears drooped a bit apologetically and he put his hands up in a show of peace.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. This is the first time you’ve been fully awake in three days. After those carrion-eaters ran off, I wasn’t sure whether to stitch you up in the woods, or risk moving you and bringing you here. In the end, I didn’t want those bastards sneaking up on me while I was stitching you up, so I opted to bring you home.

  “You lost a fair amount of blood before I got you here. I cleaned the cut as best I could, but had to get it stitched up quick. The cold air seemed to stem the bleeding a bit, but you were bleeding out for sure.”

  Garran made a move to sit up, but was stopped by a searing pain in his abdomen. He gasped through gritted teeth, his long white canines starkly visible as he breathed through the discomfort. He collapsed back down on the fur-covered bed he’d been laying on, wincing and breathing raggedly through the pain, waiting for it to subside. It was like a fire-hot poker was spearing him in his gut.

  “Easy there. You don’t need to be moving around yet. I’m not the greatest with stitches, and I don’t want that gash reopening up on my bed covers if it’s all the same to you,” the male said trying to comfort Garran.

  “We will want to keep an eye on it, though. I’m assuming those curs clean their weapons like they clean their fur; not at all. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get sepsis,” he said a bit more somberly.

  “Greeeeeeeat,” Garran grumbled through a wince. The cracked roughness of his voice surprised him. Have I really been out for three days? he thought to himself. Then lightening his tone as a thought occurred to him, he said, “Apologies. I meant no disrespect to you. Thank you brokta. I owe you my life. My name is Garran by the way.”

  The male wolf bowed his head and put his clawed fist over his heart in the respectful salute of their tribe and said, “It weku, brokta. My name is Sius.”

  The gesture was simple enough. It was a common greeting among male tribesmen and a show of respect to other brothers within the tribe. Loosely translated in a more common tongue, the phrase meant “I am with you, brother” and was a direct representation of the beliefs and traditions handed down within their tribe.

  Ancestors of the Darkfrost Tribe grouped together out of necessity for survival. Food, water, warmth, protection from wild beasts; all of these things required a pack mentality to survive in those times. But it was through that mentality, and that kinship that molded the Darkfrost Tribe’s traditions and beliefs into what they are today. The Darkfrosts had honed these pack skills and they were truly stronger together, as a tribe.

  When a Darkfrost mated pair had a pup, the entire tribe pitched in to raise them and teach them the ways of their world. The entire tribe was one enormous family. This had been the way as long as any Tribe Elder could remember. It was how tribal knowledge was shared and passed down through the generations.

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  Garran shook his head, bringing his thoughts back to the conversation at hand. Garran opened his mouth to reply to Sius’ previous gesture, but whatever Garran was about to say was abruptly cut off by fatigue. Garran felt his eyes grow heavy and his tongue lag. He tried to speak, but his thoughts jumbled. Then, he drifted off to a quiet, peaceful sleep.

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  “Bah! Watch your backside, Garran. Don’t overextend in your frontal assault so that it leaves your tail vulnerable. Unless you want me to chop that accessory off,” Sius said with a smirk as he and Garran traded practice blows on a snowy open field near their hunting camp.

  Garran pivoted on his heels, and brought his shield up just in time to block a blow from his opponent’s practice stick. Garran panted heavily, his breath exploding in foggy puffs of smoke on each exhale. Even now, after three years of knowing and sparring with Sius, he could barely keep up with his friend in a fight.

  Dodging a blow from the left, Garran put his weight into a swing, but his friend was quicker. He felt the stick swack him sharply across his rear, and he let out an involuntary yelp of pain. His friend chuckled, amused, and dropped his stick.

  “That is enough for the day. You are going to wear an old wolf out,” he said.

Garran knew they were stopping for his sake, and not for Sius’. Sius was barely panting. Besides, Sius was only a few decades older than Garran. When one lived to almost four hundred years of age, twenty years’ difference was not much. So at 45, Sius was still young in the grand scheme of things.

  Despite his youth, Sius was good in a fight. Well-trained, and one of the better fighters of the tribe, he had taken to combat like a fish to water. It quickly became apparent to tribe leaders that even veteran warriors had nothing more to teach Sius regarding technique. Anything else he had to learn would be field experience. Therefore, Sius spent his days sparring with other members of the tribe as well as taking regular patrol shifts around the village for protection whenever he could.

  He also trained a lot of the warriors within the tribe for scouting, village defense, and hunting parties. The warrior could fight with any weapon he picked up, but preferred the bow. Sius was exceptional at archery.

  Since Garran had been on the mend from gnoll attack, Sius had been tutoring him with fighting tactics and survival skills. The wound from that day had healed decently, and lucky for Garran, there had been no subsequent infection from the axe blow. Sius and Garran sparred on most days when weather (or time) permitted.

  “So, what do we have to eat tonight?” Sius asked.

  Garran pulled off his shield and slipped his mace back onto his side. Gingerly, he sat on his bedding near the campfire. Trying--and failing--to hide his intake of breath, he retorted, “Well, given that we’ve been fishing for two days, I’d say the options are trout, or trout.”

  Sius’ eyes narrowed and he flicked his long tongue out to lick his furry lips and nose in mock annoyance. “If you put half as much guile into your swings as you do your quips, you’d be a better fighter than me.”

  Garran cocked a furry brow at his friend and straightened the tall collar of his jerkin. “Well you can defeat our enemies with strength and battle-brain, and I will defeat them with my wit and charm. Besides, no one can be better than you at anything, except maybe stitching...” he said absentmindedly running his clawed fingers over the stitched up area of his jerkin that Sius had stitched up three years ago. I really need to get that fixed, he thought to himself, not for the first time.

  “If only all battles could be won with words. And I stitched you up alright. You lived, didn’t you?” Sius asked, laughing.

  “Aye, but it’s more than can be said about my chest piece. Couldn’t you have at least dyed the thread to match? It sticks out,” Garran said, inspecting the repaired portion of his jerkin.

  “I was a bit preoccupied with something else dying on my table at the time if memory serves. Besides, it adds character. Every piece of armor deserves battle scars to tell a tale,” Sius replied, his ice-blue eyes staring directly at Garran. His stare was not without humor, but was laced with seriousness too.

  After a moment, Sius broke the silence, “You did have me worried,” he said quietly.

  “So you’ve said before,” Garran responded, averting his eyes and shifted on his blanket uncomfortably. The truth was, they did not speak of that day often, but Garran knew how close he had come to the Peaceful Sleep. He remembered all too well the feeling of weightlessness and the sound of wind, and a voice calling his name off in the distance.

  “Garran… Garran…” the voice echoed on the wind.

  “--Garran,” Sius was saying, snapping Garran out of his dwam.

  The black-furred wolfkin examined his friend with intelligent eyes for a moment then repeated, “The trout’s ready. Best eat it before it gets cold, then get some sleep. Long trek back to the village tomorrow.”

  They ate in companionable silence and after a time, Garran walked to the edge of their campsite to take first watch. He padded over to a fallen log, brushing the dusting of snow away. Placing his blanket down carefully, he positioned himself in such a way as to avoid sitting directly on cold, wet wood. He sat thinking about his friend and all that had happened. They had been through a lot together in the last three years.

  After Sius had rescued Garran that day, the two had become extremely close. It wasn’t that Garran felt he owed Sius anything, though he absolutely did. He’d meant it when he had told Sius that he owed him his life. But it was more than that.

  It was a kinship. An unspoken bond between them that could only be sparked from a near-death experience. They were brokta, or brothers. However, this was a far deeper connection. They were like brud brokta. Blood brothers. And Garran knew that he would defend his friend to the death if it ever came to it. Little did Garran know, however, that this very thought would soon be tested to the extent of those very words…

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