Garrett Ironpeak's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Garrett dug out the north drift before dark. He staked the creek bank where Aina said the wolves would come. Then he remembered her warning. The pack hunts downwind. They would smell him waiting and strike where he stood unready. His trap meant nothing if his scent gave him away. He had one night to hide it. He opened his old gear chest and dug through it. Beneath the rust and rope he found what he needed. Years ago he had hunted with a trick from the northern trappers. Smear yourself in the scent of the land, and the beast smells only the land. He gathered pine ash, wet clay, and the frozen musk of the creek. He rubbed the paste over his coat until he stank of the tundra and nothing else. He crouched downwind of his own wall, glaive across his knees. The cold ate through his boots. He waited. A branch cracked at the creek. Then a voice cut the dark, and it was not a wolf. "You wash yourself in mud and think you've hidden." A man stepped onto the ice. He wore pelts stitched with bone. His eyes were yellow, like the wolves he led. Wolves flanked him, pale and huge, their breath steaming. Garrett had faced their teeth before. He had never faced a man who commanded them. "Fenrir Blackpaw," the man said. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The pack held still around him like trained hounds. "My children found your creek. But your stink is wrong tonight. Clever." He smiled without warmth. "Clever men still bleed." Garrett stood slow. "You sent them at my walls." "I send them where I please." Fenrir raised one hand. A wolf bristling with ice spikes lowered its head and snarled. "You killed two of mine. That debt is fur and blood." The ice-spiked wolf lunged. Garrett's scent had held; it came straight, not from his blind side. He swung the glaive. Lightning split the dark and caught the beast across the skull. It dropped, twitching, and did not rise. The stakes at the bank did their work on the next. A gray shape leapt the creek and drove itself onto the sharpened wood. It screamed and thrashed and died. Fenrir's smile was gone. He watched two more of his pack fall to a trap he had walked into. He whistled once, sharp. The surviving wolves melted back into the dark. "You bought one night," Fenrir called. "I know your ground now. I know your tricks." He backed toward the trees. "Next time I come myself, and I come from where you cannot smell me." Then he was gone. Garrett stood over the dead wolves, breathing hard. His scent trick had held. His trap had held. But the thing hunting him was not a beast now. It was a man who learned, and who had promised to return.