Orlan Wolfstone's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Orlan followed the ogre down the slope, the runed hammer still warm in his belt. Before they reached the low woods, a wolf howled behind him. He turned. Smoke rose from the ridge above his new forge. A shape moved through it. Not a wolf. Something bigger, with a mane of fire. He climbed back up. The ogre came with him. At the tree line above the hearth, Orlan crouched. The creature paced along the outer stones. Its coat was ash gray. Its mane burned. Each print it left scorched the ground black. One of his six wolves lay bleeding in the dirt, ribs cracked open, ember light leaking out of it like sap. Five beads now. He touched them once, then let his hand drop. The lion sniffed the forge mouth. If it stepped inside, it would kill the wolf feeding the fire. Then the hearth would go cold, and every weapon he meant to make would stay iron in a sack. Orlan drew the hammer. He did not wait. He walked into the open and struck a black rock at the forge's base. The runes on the hammer flared. The stone rang like a bell. The lion turned its head. It charged. Orlan set his feet. His stone skin was made for this. The lion hit him chest-first and knocked him back three paces, but he did not fall. He brought the hammer down on its shoulder. Bone cracked. The mane flared and burned his beard. He swung again and caught its jaw. Teeth broke on his arm. He felt none of it. He was rock. He hit it a third time at the base of the skull. The lion dropped. It did not die at once. It tried to rise. The ogre came down the slope with a spear and finished it. The fire in its mane guttered out. Black prints steamed in the dirt around them. Orlan knelt by his dead wolf and pressed his palm to its side until the glow faded. He pulled one bead from his beard and set it on the wolf's flank. Five left. Five wolves to feed the forge. Enough, if nothing else came. The ogre wiped his spear. "It was not alone," he said. "There were two sets of prints in the low woods. This one and another." He nodded down the mountain, toward the huts and vendor stands of the market hamlet at the foot of the slope. "The other went that way. Yesterday." Orlan stood. The forge behind him still burned. He had killed the thing at his door and kept his fire. He had also learned there was a second one, and it had gone where people slept. He lifted the hammer, still warm, and started down toward the thatched roofs below.