“We go, and we take them. Then use it on the baggage train.”
“Right.”
It sounded like a crazy idea, but if it worked…
Kasha doubled over and followed them to the green chain moving on ahead. Reince pulled out a stolen hand ax as they neared their target. Three trolls were guarding the last wooden vehicle. Alongside the vehicle were felines, each of which were in some armor and pointy helmets.
“Who are those?”
“Prisoners, must be. Don’t think about it, just go now!”
Reince threw his ax at the troll farthest away. Kasha and Meiss bolted out and pounced upon the throwers before they could even fight back. The Grimeskins dropped. Reince’s ax must have hit, as well. The cats jumped back. Two unsheathed a knife and one aimed a bow at Kasha.
“We can’t let you have this…” One of the cats said. “They’ll kill us if you take it.”
Reince growled at the cats. “Just pull! Keep moving the wood and stay quiet!”
The cats looked at each other for a second, then complied.
“See. We don’t want to keep this thing of yours. We just want to fire it a couple times,” Reince told them.
“Keep pushing!”
The cats put their heads down and tugged onward.
“…And you felines are going to help us with that.”
The cat looked suspiciously at Reince, who was already examining the catapult.
“Ah-ah. Don’t even shout for help,” Meiss growled. “Or you’ll be dead, too.”
“I wasn’t going to,” the cat frowned from beneath his triangle-shaped helmet.
“Is this loaded?” Reince pointed to the catapult.
“It is.”
“Kasha, get up there. When I say so, cut the rope. We’ll aim at the supply cart in the middle.”
“Just wait,” the cat said. “You can’t just fire it. It won’t hit.”
Reince narrowed his eyes at the cat.
“Here,” the cat said. “Let me calibrate the distance first.”
“You know if you sabotage this, your life will end,” Reince warned.
“I know,” the cat replied. He came up to the catapult and made a square over his eyes with his paws, then adjusted the shaft of the catapult.
“There. Try it now.”
“Here it goes…” Kasha said to himself, and cut the rope with a hand ax. The rock went hurtling like a meteor into the baggage train. It hit the ground with a thud, and the explosion clapped through the train, smashing wood and strewing people and goods all about.
“Direct hit! Time to go!” Reince shouted over the screams.
“Wait!” The lead feline called out.
“Could you… punch me? They won’t believe our story if I’m not injured.”
Reince smirked and decked the cat in the eye, knocking him cold onto his stomach and throwing off the cat’s helmet. The three wolves sprinted off into the grass for shelter.
Gully
“You think this is going to make them angry?” Kasha asked.
“Heh. They should’ve thought harder about that before bothering us,” Reince answered.
Kasha looked back to see the smoldering mess now well behind them. He wondered if anyone back in the village even knew about all the resistance the three of them were doing.
“One of these days. We’ll get back there. Back home,” Meiss said to Kasha.
For now, their new ‘home’ was a hideout on the other side of the gully.
“Keep running. You can bet they’re behind us,” Reince interrupted.
Kasha looked back. If the Grimeskins were there, Kasha didn’t see them. They would soon be at the gully, where he and Reince would be plotting their next move against the Grimeskins.
“Do you see that?”
Kasha spotted a bad omen. Far ahead of them, the large, warrior Grimeskins were pushing through the sunflowers, with their backs turned to the wolves. That meant the monsters were already in Shattered Paw territory, on the other side of the gully.
“Get down!”
A hand ax flew at them and narrowly missed Kasha’s head. Two wolftaurs leaped out in front of them. A green ax thrower rode atop each one.
“Now we got you… I knew we’d finally get them, boss!” One of the throwers screeched out.
“There’s nowhere to run now, wolfies! This land is all ours!”
“Kasha. Meiss. Run off,” Reince whispered.
“But—”
“Just go. It’s the only way.”
Reince took the blood-stained hand ax and flung it at one of the throwers. The wolftaurs leaped at them and Kasha took off with Meiss toward the precipice.
“Don’t look. Don’t look, just go,” Kasha said to Meiss, and pulled him down. Within a moment Reince’s screams echoed all through the bottom of the narrow valley, following them as they ran. It went on for minutes.
“Gods damn what are they doing to Reince…” Meiss cried out.
“We can’t… We… We just keep going. Keep going and forget all this,” Kasha found himself answering.
The two of them sprinted through the seemingly endless gully until the sun began to sink.
“Come on, stop,” Kasha broke their silence. “I can’t go any further.”
It had been hours since the two had spoke. Meiss nodded and sat down on a flat rock.
“Kasha? I don’t mean to say anything, but where are we going?”
It was a fair question.
“Well. I heard if we follow this gully it eventually leads to the forest wolves. Somewhere. Not sure where.”
“…And that’s where you think we should go?”
“Yeah. I do. You don’t have to come with if you don’t want.”
“…Just kind of hard to leave the only place I’ve known.”
“It will be harder for Grimeskins to find us in the woodlands. Maybe we can organize something there. Find others.”
“Maybe.”
“Should be more food there, too. I haven’t eaten all day.”
The two wolves picked themselves up and continued down the gully. Trickling water piqued Kasha’s ears, and the source was soon revealed to them: The mouth of a tiny stream. He looked into the distance and saw the stream widen out from his vantage. Moonlight bounced off the dark, churning water.
Kasha dipped his paw into the briskly-moving stream. Growing up, he’d heard several times that the way to the forest wolves was to follow the gully river to its end, then trek north for seven days. Meiss seemed to have the same idea.
“Follow this stream, right?”
“Right. However long that takes,” Kasha said over the voice of a hooting owl.
The tiny creek opened up as the two wolves walked along it. Fingers of running water joined with the stream, until the current kept both of them from the deeper parts. They passed a pair of oak trees as some point far into the night. They stopped and looked at each other for a moment.
“You as exhausted as I am?”
“Yeah. Let’s sleep here. It’s safe as any other place.”
Kasha dropped his weapon and fell into unconsciousness before he could even notice. He was exhausted, and his mind was happy to get the rest it had been deprived of that day. Sleep came quickly and easily.
“G’hahahahaha!”
He was shocked back into wakefulness by a laugh right ahead of him. He sprung to his hind paws to see a hulking Grimeskin standing before him. Kasha leaped back and noticed Meiss was gone.
“Meiss!”
That was when Kasha felt another monster behind him, and it was too late. He turned around and felt a hard, green fist slam into the side of his head. Kasha spun around and landed in the water. His vision blacked out as he felt his body being pulled underneath the current.
The Pass
Asril was awoken by Ani’s short, panicked breaths.
“I… I just can’t fight this anymore…”