The Job
Fenrir wrapped his cloak tighter around him as he dejectedly sat in the deep snow, his back propped against a tree. What little body warmth he had left was slowly melting into the ground beneath him, the wetness of which was beginning to seep into his clothes and his bones. He had been shivering for so long now that he barely noticed it. Which was not a good sign.
He longed for a fire, but even if he had managed to find wood that wasn't sodden with dampness, his fire lighting kit had been "lost" days ago. A fire would have kept him warm. It would have also kept away the shadows, some of which he was now convinced were slyly moving just outside the periphery of his vision.
As an experienced hunter he knew that the cold and exposure was an efficient killer, but he wasn't worried about that at the moment. He was afraid something far deadlier was waiting in the shadows and would come for him tonight.
******
He had taken the job a couple of weeks ago. It seemed simple enough, a wolf was killing cattle in the area and the local villagers had hired him to track and kill it. It was what he did for a living and he was good at it.
The village had been on the edge of Myrkr Forest, and just as he suspected, the wolf tracks had led straight into it. So, with his pack pony Felagi in tow, he had followed the tracks.
Even though he hadn't worked this far west before, he wasn't daunted when the villagers kept telling him how large and dangerous Myrkr Forest was. In his experience villagers were the same the world over, always prone to being scared and exaggerating. Every area he had worked in had its own version of the "
dark forest
". Finrir had walked into plenty of "
forests of no return
", only to walk out again a couple of days later with a new wolf pelt or two.
But things had started to go wrong on the third day in this forest. Up until that point the wolf's tracks had been easy to follow, but then all of a sudden, they had just vanished. It wasn't as though the wolf tracks had just petered out or had been obscured by other animal tracks, they had just vanished. Fenrir spent half a day trying to find new sign of the tracks, he had even backtracked in case the wolf had doubled back on him. But there was no sign.
Given no other choice, Fenrir kept going in the direction the wolf had originally been travelling in when he had lost it.
Then it started to snow two days later, and in this part of the world, when it snowed, it didn't do it in half measures. By the second day of snow, it was up to his calves as he trudged along.
At the time he had thought the snow was a good sign. He might have lost the wolf's tracks for now, but as he got nearer the wolf's lair, tracks in the snow were far easier to spot than tracks in the mud.
But that was before his luck had run out.
Felagi had been killed two days later. Normally his four legged travelling companion was unflappable, the pony had even faced down a snarling half-starved wolf once, holding the wolf's attention until Fenrir had been able to deliver the killing blow. However, on that fateful evening Felagi had suddenly taken off, braying in fear as he went, taking all of Fenrir's provisions with him.
It had taken him over an hour to catch up with the unlucky Felagi, and when he did, he almost wished he hadn't.
Hunters are no strangers to death, but this wasn't just death, this was slaughter. Vicious, angry, wanton slaughter. A look of terror still evident in the pony's rigid expression. Fenrir had absolutely no doubt that this had been done by the wolf he had been tracking.
Even though Falagi had been with him a long time, Fenrir wasn't a sentimental man. Instead, he left the pony to the carrion animals and worms whilst he began the search for his missing equipment and possessions.
At first, he had thought the pony must have dropped his equipment as it had fled in blind panic. But the more he searched, the more he became convinced that something, or someone, had ransacked and taken his possessions. Apart from the sword and knife that still hung from his belt, all of his weapons were gone, as was his food, most of his spare clothing, and his fire lighting kit.
If it had been bandits that he had been tracking, he would have called what had happened an ambush. But that wasn't possible, he had been tracking a bloody wolf and wolves didn't ambush their pursuers.
After considering his options, he had reluctantly come to the conclusion the wolf would have to wait for now. Without food, fire or spare clothes, his first priority was to find a village where he could re-stock. But which way to head?
In the end he decided to keep travelling in the direction he had been going. Myrkr Forest was certainly larger than he had anticipated, but he had been walking near enough in a straight line for over a week now. Surely he must be closer to the other side by now? It couldn't be far, could it?
But that had been three days ago and after days more walking, he appeared to be no closer to the forest's edge.
Fenrir sat in the snow, hungry, wet and cold. His eyes had begun to close by themselves, either through exhaustion or the numbing cold. If the wolf didn't get him tonight, he knew the cold certainly would.
Then, in an instant he was fully awake as he heard a low powerful sounding growl from immediately behind him, so close that he could feel the hot wet stinking breath on the back of his neck.
He started to turn, his fear chilling him more effectively than the numbing snow, he caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye . . . then the world went black as something slammed hard into the side of his head.
******
Captured
Fenrir woke up. That was his first surprise. He had fully expected to be dead by now.
His second surprise was when he found that he was completely naked.
He was covered in what appeared to be a fur cloak, but beneath the fur he was completely naked. Somebody had stripped him whilst he was unconscious. He also became aware of how much the fur stank. This wasn't the work of a professional tanner, or even a fur trader. It looked as though the pelt had been ripped forcefully from its previous owner, scraped clean and left to tan naturally. As a result, the fur, and now himself, had a foul stink about it. Even so, he was immensely glad of the fur. In this cold weather a naked man couldn't afford to be too choosy, even if he did have to breathe through his mouth to avoid the worst of the stink.
He couldn't remember much about the night he was attacked and nothing at all about how he had gotten here. What he did know was that his body ached badly as if he had been in a particularly vicious bar fight and his head was thumping enough that it felt like it was going to split.
Gingerly he managed to stand up, but had to pause when he finally made it to his feet, swaying unsteadily, not sure if he was going to collapse again, throw-up, or both. He hadn't thought his head could have hurt any worse than it had, but the act of standing up had proven him wrong. He was practically wincing as each new hammer blow rang through his head in time with his own pulse.
Still swaying slightly, he stood as still as he was able, waiting until his balance and the pounding in his head became slightly easier to manage.
Fenrir gradually took in his surroundings. He appeared to be in a large circular room. The bare stone walls looked substantial and made him think that he was either in a castle, or possibly a fortified tower. The floors were timber planks laid over timber beams and gave no clue as to how high up he might be. The light came from four small windows spaced evenly around the circular room, but the windows were too high up for him to reach and looking up from where he stood, all he could see was sky through them.
Of most importance were the doors, as they represented his most likely means of escape. Except, escape currently didn't look very promising. There were two doors, one was at his level, the other was on the opposite side of the room at the top of a flight of wooden stairs that appeared to give access to a higher floor.
Each door was solid oak and banded with iron straps. Even fully fit and armed with a sword he doubted he could get through the doors. Maybe if he had a two-handed axe? But not only didn't he have an axe, but he currently felt as weak as a kitten and doubted if he could even swing an axe in his current condition. However, just to prove to himself that he hadn't totally given up, he hammered on the locked doors with his firsts and shouted to be let out. However, he couldn't keep it up for long as his head soon began to pound again and he began to feel dizzy with the excruciating pain behind his eyes.
So, exhausted once again, he went back to where he had left the fur, lay down, pulled the fur around himself and tried to sleep off the worst of the pain.
******
Fenrir was instantly awake. Years of surviving alone as a hunter had sharpened his survival instincts, and even whilst asleep his brain had alerted him to a new noise. Somebody was unlocking the door to his room.
He tried to move quickly, but was immediately floored by a fierce pain that lanced through his head. So, instead he waited where he lay, saving his energy until he knew what he was dealing with.
The door opened and a woman stood framed in the doorway.
The first thing Fenrir noticed was that just like him, the woman was completely naked.
The second thing he noticed was the state she was in. She was filthy, covered in mud and dirt, and what he took to be dried blood was streaked across her chest and arms. She had long dark hair, that despite being a matted tangled mess, almost reached down to her bare hips.
All the while he was taking in her appearance, the woman hadn't moved, instead she just looked around the room before her eyes came back to lock on to him.
Now that he was the sole focus of her attention, Fenrir became very conscious of his own nakedness. He was no stranger to being naked in front of women in certain more relaxed circumstances, but there was something very disquieting about the way the woman was scrutinizing him in such a dispassionate way. Yet, she seemed no more concerned with his nakedness than she was of her own.
Satisfied, the woman bent beside the door and picked up a bowl and something Fenrir couldn't quite make out.
His initial impression of the woman had been that she was either a meek captive or an unwilling slave, stripped naked like him in order to make her feel vulnerable and dissuade thoughts of escape. However, watching her walk across the floor towards him, Fenrir quickly updated his assessment of the woman. She had a burning defiance in her eyes and walked with determination and grace. What he had initially taken as her nervous hesitation in the doorway, he now suspected was a calculating cautiousness. As she got closer he could now see that under all of the mud and the muck, her body was crisscrossed with dozens of scars, some shallow, some deep, some old, some new.
So, probably a slave, but a defiant one. A defiant slave that occasionally needed to be disciplined he assumed.
