The Cave

Justin and I decided to work on a story together, with me writing and him illustrating it. We have a full story fleshed out, but this is what is written so far. Pictures will hopefully follow.

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Two pairs of eyes stared at me, reflecting the light from my camp fire as it danced across the walls of the wooded ravine I was in. One pair, large, blue, and friendly, belonged to my companion Snow. A large white wolf, he doesn’t say much, and as such, asks for very little. The other pair, dull, yellow, and menacing, peered out from the cave near my campsite. They belonged to the troll I was hunting, and it did not appear happy to have a squatter.

Now, I realize relaxing in front of the lair of a vicious, man-eating troll does not seem smart, but it had been a long last few days and I wanted to be rested up before our fight. Plus, only a fool chooses a monster’s lair as the sight of a fight, you never know what you’ll run into in such a place. So, I was waiting patiently outside, hoping eventually it would become bored or hungry enough to come out and face me. One thing a hunter must learn is to be patient, and I had mastered such a skill long before.

I tossed Snow a piece of the rabbit I had had for supper, and he chewed on it gratefully. When he finished, he nodded his head in thanks and placed himself between me and the cave troll. With his eyes and my sword and shield within reach, I felt I could relax a bit, and staring into the fire, I felt my mind began to wander. Without meaning to, I found myself reflecting on how I came to be here, a soldier over half a century old relaxing in the middle of nowhere with a wolf and a troll.

Truth be told, I’m not the biggest fan of people. When you’ve lived as long as I, you see a lot, and as a career soldier, a lot of that isn’t good. It had started out well enough, going off to fight as a young man to protect my homeland, but after several long years of campaigns, my homeland fell. Unfortunately, put enough years into war and that becomes a part of your identity, and I just never could bring myself to really do anything else. So, for a long while I ended up as a sword for hire, making what I could with an army before it inevitably fell to someone else. I’m not sure how I kept surviving so many final battlefields, but somehow I always found a way. After awhile though, I grew tired of making friends and enemies only to lose them, and grew tired of so much death. So, combining that feeling with my own skills in survival, I eventually became a scout.

That was a few years ago, and about when Snow came into the picture. I was scouting a mountain pass at the time, and, well, I screwed up. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen.

Anyways, I had decided to find a place to camp for the night. I had seen a small cave up high, so I climbed up to it and, in my haste, did not notice the wolf signs outside as I rushed in. As soon as I entered, I heard some snarling and saw a large wolf in the back feeding her puppies. She struggled to rise and the pups started complaining, so I took the opportunity to shrink down low and back slowly out of the cave. The wolf continued growling, but made no pursuit. Unfortunately, walking backwards in the snow in a mountain pass is not the best idea, and I slipped, rolling down the mountain side and making a rather ridiculous amount of noise as I did so. This, of course, attracted the notice of the enemy (I was spying on them, after all). A group of six of them, possibly a foraging party, had me beaten and trussed up before I could regain my balance after the fall.

Apparently, the enemy soldiers also knew about the cave as well, for they carried me back up and decided to camp there for the night so they could be sheltered while they tortured me for information. Needless to say, I was not looking forward to this.

When we got to the top, the first man to go inside was killed by the mother wolf, who was still riled up from my earlier entrance. Sadly, that was all she could do, and the remaining armored soldiers killed her and her puppies, tossing the corpses outside the cave. I grimaced at this, for no family deserved such a death, and reaffirming that I was on the right side of this particular conflict if these were representatives of the other guys. Perhaps now you can see why I don’t like people much. After that, they got on with the questions and the torturing, which definitely was not my favorite part of the evening. They were very thorough and proficient in their attempts, and I probably would have broken if they had not killed the wolves. Perhaps that sounds foolish given that I was protecting men I had fought and spilled blood with, but that was a somewhat distant feeling, while my anger at what they had just done was fresh. Anger is a powerful force. Eventually, they got tired and bored, so they tied me up and placed me near the cave entrance as far from the fire as possible. In my state, I wasn’t exactly about to go anywhere. Since neither army would march in such weather, they decided they could rest, and promptly all fell asleep except for one man placed as a guard, both on me and on the entrance.

I slipped in and out of sleep depending on how bad the pain decided to be at the time, and during one of my conscious times, I heard the mournful howl of a wolf off in the distance.

The next time I awoke, it was because I felt something huge and furry brush by me. I shifted slightly and opened my eyes in time to see a huge male wolf sneaking into the cave. Sensing my movement, it turned to look at me. Our eyes met, and I swear to this day an understanding passed between us. I remained quiet.

The wolf turned its gaze away from me and crept passed the sentry, who apparently had fallen asleep in a sitting position. It went up to the first of the soldiers and silently ripped out his throat. The dying man’s gargling awoke the others, but slowly (I guess I had worn them out a bit), and the wolf managed to kill two more before the sentry and the leader realized what was going on. They grabbed their swords and cornered the wolf at the back of the cave.

The wolf bristled, and there was death in its eyes, but I knew it had no chance against two armed and armored men. I could not let such a creature die, not after what had happened to its family, so I gathered up what little strength I had left and threw myself at the men. They were looking at the wolf and not me, and my charge had the intended effect of knocking both of them over. This was all the opening the wolf needed, and it made short work of the remaining two soldiers.

I had barely managed to sit up by the time it was all over, and it came over and sat in front of me. We were at the same level, eye to eye, and I was not sure what would happen next. With nothing else to say, I simply said “I am sorry about your family.”
The wolf showed the unerring amount of understanding that I would later become well acclimated to and nodded its head, and I think we both realized we had saved each other’s lives. Then it ran off.

Shrugging, I used one of the fallen men’s swords to cut the ropes that bound me. By the time I was finished, the wolf was back with a rabbit in its jaws, probably the meal it had been out finding for its family when the soldiers came. So, I put the rabbit on a spit over the fire and tended to my wounds while it cooked. I shared the meal with him, and when I left to return to the base, he followed me. I resigned after that, citing the whole torture thing, and took up selling my services as an experienced tracker, hunter, and woodsman. You’d be amazed what people will pay you to do.