Thela of Palan -2- Painted Wolves (Patreon)

The boy who was nearly a man, Striker, kicked more sand over their little fire. They had let it burn too long, but Longeyes’ fever had worried them both. After a good early meal and more rest, though, the older man seemed recovered enough to continue their trek.

The boy pushed his long black hair out of his face and used a leather band to tie it back low against his neck. He took his spear from where he had leaned it against a tree, and checked his belt that his obsidian knife and jade axe were both secure and where they were supposed to be. The tanned length of antelope hide also held up his wolfskin kilt.

Longeyes stood at the end of their little campsite, next to the river, and peered upward toward the hills south of them. His brow furrowed. He squinted a moment, held a hand up to shade his eyes, then turned his head and spat into the dust. “Someone is on the mountain.”

“Who is it?” asked Striker moving to stand beside his uncle and peer up at the mountain too. He couldn’t see anything that caught his attention but this did not surprise him. Longeyes had earned his name.

“Who?” Longeyes smiled. “As far away as he is, even I am lucky to know he walks on two legs and so is a who and not a what.” He frowned. “At least, I think he has only two legs but there is something strange about how he travels.”

Movement did finally catch Striker’s gaze but he could make out no details. Something moved on the mountain and there should be no one else in Challenger Valley while he completed his Test. If it were a beast, he could kill it, and if it were judged sufficiently dangerous enough he would be judged favorably. And if it were human, he could capture the stranger and that would be a good outcome, too.

“Whoever or whatever it is,” said Longeyes, “it’s coming this way.” The flashes of colors they both could see now looked strange.

Striker hefted his spear suggestively, pointed with it, and grinned.

Longeyes grunted and led the way, looking for somewhere he could set the boy up in ambush against the stranger.

 * * *

Henry’s tires didn’t suit the ground Jacob had to cover perfectly, but riding was still better than walking and pushing the bike. He avoided the wooded part of the landscape. Oaks and pines he thought he recognized along with some that might be willows along the narrow and frequent watercourses. But other trees he didn’t know, like the dark-leaved shrubby ones that grew in clumps on the edge of the denser patches of woods. The only trees he knew with that color of leaves were the ornamental Japanese plums found in Los Angeles area gardens. They made this country seem dark and gloomy.

The birds he saw disturbed him more than the trees. The crows, they looked like crows or small ravens perhaps, had two red bars and one white one on each wing and a grizzled grey patch on the throat. He’d never seen or heard of such corvids. They sounded like crows, and traveled in groups like crows, and posted sentries like crows. But they didn’t look like crows.

There were red-capped sparrows and bright yellow finches, orange-breasted oriole-types, and a bird that looked like a scrub jay with green wings and a black-striped tail. And a perfectly ordinary looking mockingbird sang at him from one of the oak trees.

He took his phone out again and snapped some pictures, but he still had no bars and put it back again. The strangeness of the situation didn’t seem to be lessened by the seeming normality of the wildlife. It all felt like someone else’s normal and it gave Jacob the whim-whams.

Coming over a small rise he paused, putting his feet down on the dusty track. Ahead, a creek widened into a pond and a group of six or seven animals turned to look at him. They might have been dogs, blunt-faced canines with prick ears and brindle coats. Large dogs? They reminded him vaguely of lean Rottweilers with a dash of Doberman pinscher.

But they didn’t act like dogs. As a group, they left off drinking from the stream and all stood at once, facing him, heads and tails held low.

“Easy guys,” he said, backing up slowly.

One of them gave a low moan, something between a growl and a sub-vocalized kiyoodle and all the rest started trotting toward him. He turned the bike quickly, remounted and began peddling away. He’d been chased by dogs on his bike before, they could accelerate faster and had a higher top speed in a sprint but if the terrain cooperated, he should be able to outrun them eventually. Assuming they didn’t pull him down.

Were they even following him? He risked glancing back and saw several of them lope over the ridge between him and the pond. Seeing him in flight, they immediately gave chase.

He looked ahead, trying to pick a route along level ground, hoping he didn’t hit rocks or branches lying on the path. His pursuers didn’t bay or bark but he could hear that moaning sound again and knew they were gaining on him.

His speed on level pavement topped out at about 25 mph on Henry the mountain bike, and many dogs could run at 30 or 35 for some distance. If he could just stay ahead of them, they’d have to slow down before he would.

But this wasn’t level pavement.

He never even knew what caused him to wipe out, but suddenly he and the bike were tangled up in bushes, and the dogs were snarling and snapping a few feet from his face. One of them grabbed his left leg, and he screamed in pain as the animal tried to drag him out of the weeds.

He kicked with the other leg and felt a meaty impact with a sensitive canine nose. The beast let go, making a noise that would have been comical on an internet video. A sort of “Ka-nurf!” but Jacob didn’t laugh.

He pulled both feet under him, keeping Henry between himself and the pack. Suddenly, two of them seized the bike and began trying to pull it away from him. A screaming, adrenaline-fueled rush got Jacob to his feet. He stood in the midst of the shrubbery, wielding the bike like both weapon and shield, surrounded on three sides by wild dogs.

Jacob had already been bitten several times but he battled on. These beasts did not fight like the Rottweilers they resembled, biting down and hanging on from the beginning. They fought like wolves, rending and tearing their prey, until, weakened by blood loss, it could be bore down to the ground by a change in tactics.

He’d managed to maneuver himself to have a tree at his back, or the pack would have finished him already. Suddenly, the head of the beast directly in front of Jacob seemed to sprout one of those novelty hats with an arrow apparently going completely through the wearer’s head. A really big arrow.

The dog fell dead in front of him. “Die you sons-of-bitches!” Jacob screamed. Allies had arrived in the nick of time like in a western movie and he knew now that he might survive.

Two more javelins fell amid the pack, causing lesser wounds than that first miracle shot. Jacob swung Henry like an axe while screaming a berserker battle-cry and the dog pack broke and ran, still snapping and snarling.

Leaning back against the tree, Jacob looked at his rescuers. Not forty feet away along the path stood two men wearing little more than moccasins, breechclout and body paint. “Not the cavalry, I’ve been saved by the Indians,” thought Jacob before pitching forward from exhaustion, relief, and the adrenalin wearing off.

* * *

Striker peered at the stranger with interest. The fight with the painted wolves had stirred up some dust and the wounded man was coated with grime in his colorful clothing. What was that he held in front of him? Some kind of basket? A net, perhaps? What was it made of? Metal? That would be a lot of metal, nearly as much as the whole tribe owned presently.

The man stumbled away from the tree where the wolves had cornered him, almost falling on his face. Only holding the odd thing in front of him kept him semi-upright.

Striker started forward, but Longeyes put a hand out in front of him. “That thing he holds is magical, he was using it to fly with before the wolves pulled him down. Be careful of touching it.”

The boy snorted. “It didn’t save him from the pack. I did.” He pushed the older man’s arm out of his way and strode closer to the stranger. His head held high and his voice confident, Striker hailed the man. “You there! What are you doing in the Valley of Testing? What tribe are you? I am Striker, of Rivernest. How are you called?”

The man, bleeding from several wounds, leaned on his strange device and gabbled something in an unknown language. He waved vaguely at himself, the dead wolf at his feet, and in the direction the pack had disappeared then at Striker himself.

“I accept your thanks,” said Striker, correctly reading Jacob’s body language and grinning with the pleasure of knowing that passing his test was within reach and this day he would be a man.