Lyra Willowshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lyra Willowshade knelt over her packmates' skinned bodies and swore to kill the man who took their pelts. He came from the sky in a metal ship. She had tracked his scent three days across the ridges of Rugal. But now another scent crossed the trail, and it was hunting her. A claw-mark scored a nearby tree at twice her height. Below it lay tufts of gray fur torn from one of her dead. The predator had come for the same slaughter that drew her. It followed the smell of wolf blood. And she carried that smell on her hands and her clothes. She could not hunt the poacher while something hunted her. Lyra washed in a cold stream, but the scent clung. So she made a choice. She would stop running. She would set a trap and end it. A voice broke the quiet. "You smell like bait, wolf." The alien pilot dropped from a rock ledge and landed light. Rainbow hair, purple skin, a strange dark suit. Lyra had cut her from her own crashed ship two nights ago. The pilot owed her a life. "I said I'd watch your back," the pilot said. "So I'm watching." Behind her came a second stranger. This one wore armor that glowed blue at the joints. She carried no bow, only a long blade at her hip. "The pilot found me at the wreck," the armored woman said. "She told me a beast is stalking you. I've killed its kind before." Her ice-blue eyes swept the treeline. "It hunts at dusk. That gives us an hour." Lyra did not trust strangers. But three hunters beat one. "Then we bait it," she said. She smeared her bloody shirt over a fallen log in the open. She climbed a tree and nocked an arrow. The pilot hid in the brush with a bright metal weapon. The blade woman crouched behind stone. Dusk came. So did the predator. It walked upright, tall as two men, with hooked claws longer than knives. Its striped hide melted into the shadows. It sniffed the log and snarled, teeth bared. Lyra loosed her arrow. It struck the shoulder. The beast screamed and charged the brush. The pilot fired. Blue light seared its flank. It spun, slashing, and the pilot rolled clear by a breath. Then the blade woman moved. She drove her sword up under the ribs. The predator convulsed and fell. Lyra dropped from the tree and cut its throat to be sure. Silence returned. No scent stalked her now. But the fight had cost her. The dead poacher's trail was three days cold, and now she had spent her arrows and her strength. She looked at the two strangers wiping blood from their weapons. She could not track the killer alone anymore. She would have to ask these offworlders for help — and trust that a debt and a stranger's word would hold.