The crest was no fortress, only a ragged rise of stone with a crooked tree jutting from its crown. Yet it was all they had. The hunters had dragged fallen branches into a crude barricade, piled rocks where they could, lit torches to stave off the dark. Their fire spat and hissed under the rain, but still it clung to life.
Below them, the wolves gathered.
The downpour drummed harder, turning the world to a blur of gray and black. Dara's eyes, sharper than most, traced the lines of the plateau they had claimed for their last stand. The rain had washed the skin of soil away, and the truth revealed itself. This was no hilltop but a slab, half-buried in the earth like a loose tooth jutting from the crest.
She scanned their surroundings. Behind them was a deep pit that almost encircled them except at the front. The pit was slowly flooding and softening the ground into sticky mud. She studied their options, whether to jump off or to fight head-on.
Jumping off now would surely hurt them, but the most they would suffer from was a sprain. Yet, it would save them, at least temporarily. They could gain time to strengthen themselves while in there. But then, her thought told her otherwise. Once they do that, they cannot wait for the wolves' attack once the flood drains away. They would have to climb up. But climbing through slick mud would weaken them further.
They have no more medicine. The remaining dried meat that they brought along was almost gone. They would just weaken further, not gain strength in that way. As if the wolves knew, they were mocking the hunters again with their chorus of howls.
I swung again the heavy horn from my back and blew on it the way my father taught me. It has a deep note that couldn't be imitated by just blowing on it. I was short of breath, my lungs were exhausted. I couldn't repeat that for some time.
"Let me try." Joeren reached for it, eyes desperate to prove himself useful.
Barik hesitated, then passed it over.
The boy blew. Pfft. A feeble hiss. Again. Pfft. His face turned scarlet; his lungs were trembling. On the third attempt, Waaang! Not the deep, rolling tone that Barik could summon, but enough.
Joeren collapsed against the barricade, out of breath, but a faint spark of pride flickered in his exhausted eyes.
Dara took my horn and blew repeatedly. The sound was pathetic, a desperate whimper in the face of so much fury. Her breathing shallow, she blew again but there was no more strength. The wolves didn't even flinch.
The horn had always carried more than sound. To Barik, it carried his father's voice; firm, unyielding, promising the clan's blood would never break. The horn had been passed down three generations, carved from the tusk of a river beast slain when their people first settled these lands. His father had once told him: When you sound it, you are not calling for help. You are reminding the world that you still stand.
Three wolves had suddenly charged. The horn fell from Dara's hand. Rian, even with a wounded foot, was not slow to act. He swiped the wolf with his spear. Cugat and I fought with the other two.
Joeren gripped his bow with an arrow nocked in advance, knuckles raw and pale. His eyes darted between the shadows. "They're wearing us out," he muttered, lips cracked from biting them.
"They always wait," my voice was flat and hoarse. "But hunger wins, in the end."
Joeren swallowed hard.
The wolves could wait until they were too weak to fight; then, the wolves would attack again.
The barricade was a joke, a flimsy wall of scavenged metal and broken concrete. Only the fire in the burning wood helped. It was all they had, and it was slowly dying, drowning in the rain.
Cugat was on my right and Rian on the left. We are the main defense of the team. Joeren and Dara supported us at the back.
"How many were they?" Joeren asked in a trembling voice.
"There were at least twenty of them before. Probably less now." Cugat replied.
"Or more," I countered, while contemplating. "The pack's elite, the alpha and its loyal entourage, had yet to enter the battle."
"Either way, we have to save our strength and munitions. "We'll be outnumbered at least four to one."
Dara still has ten arrows. She gathered them from the last fight in the cave. She also has a long knife, a machete, typical for a tracker like her. Joeren has twelve arrows, all of them unused.
The Alpha, howled a long one. An order to attack. A wolf slammed its massive body against a loose slab, and I barely managed to brace it with my spear. Another leaped, claws scraping a desperate path up the rock face, only to be swatted back down by Cugat. Rian moved forward to strike a deadly blow with spear.
"Halt!" barely stopping him. Another wolf charged, grabbing his foot with its fangs, trying to pull him down to the pack.
Rian fell on his back while trying to fight off the wolf.
Another two wolves charged from the pack.
TWANG!
Dara's swift arrow forced the wolf to release Rian's foot.
The wolf fell, but not dead. Rian pulled back, his foot bleeding. Cugat and I moved in front and covered for our retreat.
Joeren was about to pull the string of his bow. "Don't shoot Joeren." I commanded. "Let the wolf go. It will die bleeding." The group couldn't waste another arrow; there were too few remaining. They could only use them at the right time; when they attacked us head-on, when it's impossible to miss.
"Rian, support me from the back," I ordered. He could barely walk.
"Watch the flanks!" I bellowed; my voice raw. We were all bleeding. I saw a streak of red on Dara's leg. She was not bitten. It was the old wound from the cave. A wolf's head was almost chopped off by her machete. Another had just torn a piece from Rian's leg.
In the chaos, I glimpsed at the alpha. It stood on a rock pinnacle, a massive, scarred silhouette against the acid rain, toying with us. Watching.
I raised the horn again, blood and rain dripping down my face. Booommm. The sound rolled like a stone hurled into the storm. Booommm. My lungs seared, ribs aching. The wolves flinched, unsettled, but not broken.
I blew again, forcing the call past the pounding in my chest. The horn's deep note rolled into the storm. I was out of breath. I needed to regain my strength to blow on that horn again.
The wind howled around us, a constant, deafening roar. The rain was no longer just water; it was a deluge of needles and stones, a sandstorm of cold fury. It slapped our faces, stung our eyes, and made our fresh wounds burn with a vicious, acidic pain. The sky overhead was a constant, crackling spectacle of lightning. Each flash seared my vision, and the thunder that followed was a violent, guttural roar that seemed to tear the very air apart.
"Barik, the plateau was not stable." Dara did not explain, I would know. The topping of the slab was now gone. The slab was half shown. It's like a cantilever hanging on one side.
The hilltop was slowly breaking beneath them.
The slab of stone, half-buried in mud, jutting out like the tooth of some ancient beast; it had borne their weight through the storm. It was their last anchor, the only ground high enough to keep the wolves at bay. But rain had poured without mercy, gnawing at the earth, prying roots loose, softening what held it in place.
Now, with every shift of boot and clash of spear, the slab groaned. Mud sluiced beneath it. A hairline crack spread underfoot, tilting their line toward the pit yawning behind.
If it gave way, they would tumble into the hollow below. It wasn't deep enough to kill them, but the fall, together with the falling slab, would shatter bones, and the wolves would have them penned, helpless. It's not good to jump off now. The slab would fall on them.
My legs shook, not only from fatigue but from the treacherous tilt. I glanced back once into the pit and saw the faint shimmer of water collecting in the muck, black and bottomless in the storm's light. His chest clenched.
"Hold the line!" I barked. But then, I kept thinking, We have to fight the wolves head on, we have to move forward.
"Let's move forward!" Cugat shouted, before I could say what's on my mind. He was more afraid of falling down. And I agreed. We moved forward, slowly, every step too light, afraid of adding more weight. We picked up branches of trees that caught fire.
Arrows were scarce now. Joeren gripped the last few like they were worth more than gold, waiting, waiting for the shadow of a wolf to leap close enough. He had learned not to waste them on the blur of movement in the storm.
"Hold the line while moving forward!" I commanded. My legs shook, not just from fatigue but from the treacherous tilt beneath them. He glimpsed the pit behind; water gleaming, black and endless.
The wolves stopped their assault. They waited for them to come down, but their howls continued.
Arrows were clutched like relics now, their worth measured in blood and seconds. Cugat, the once called the Rock, was now losing hope. Trembling, he whispered: "Wait till they leap. Not before."
A snarling shape lunged at me. I drove my spear forward, and a wolf yelped as the blade sank into its shoulder. But it was just a diversion. Another wolf was already on top of Joeren, its jaws inches from his throat. He screamed, a panicked, inhuman sound. Rian drove his spear, but was not able to kill it. It ran away, limping.
I sensed the slab's grip falter, and it tilted ominously, but it managed to stay in place.
We're going to die here.
The fire was nearly gone. The storm pressed them from all sides.
But then, as if by a miracle, the wind changed. For a moment, the rain subsided, the fire did not die, the wind silenced.
I took the chance, I blew on my horn again. This might be the last reminder to the world that we still stand.
BOOOMMM! BOOOMMM!
Now, in this storm, Barik prayed that the reminder was loud enough.
And in that brief, eerie moment, I heard it. A faint, distant sound cutting through the tempest.
A horn!
* * *