The night was cold. So bitter cold it pressed against his raw wounds and froze the blood on his matted coat, but at least stopped the burning agony of his afflictions. The gash in his front leg, the tear on his back, numbed by the freezing rain and cutting wind.He didn’t dare lie down and stop. Too do so would have ended his life far sooner than he wished. Why did his legs keep moving, moving him thru the snow-laden woods?Why did he fight against element, time, and fate? Why did he wish to live?What did he have left? His home was gone, buried in the past beneath the cold snow he now tread upon. His family buried with it, left in a past of pain and guilt. He had nothing, no-one, no-place to turn too and call his own, nothing to live for but……revenge. To taste his enemy’s lifeblood and watch Him die in the self-same fashion as the many victims of His filthy plotting. It was a terrible thing too live for but, he had nothing else. He needed nothing else.He didn’t notice when he crossed the scent markings of a wolf pack, or the fact the storm surrounding him had stopped and the clouds had rolled off the moons face. He only vaguely remembered stumbling on the root of a vast pine tree before the bare brown ground rushed up to greet his face. He fell with a thud and found his legs refused his minds command. So he lay beneath the boughs of an ancient pine and his restless mind sought to find peace in the realm of dreams.
The night was so cold.
Coming Gale
By
L.e.g.e.n.d
The sun shone over a land of plain and tundra, where trees only grew in small sparse clumps. Its warming rays lit up a valley in which rested a caribou herd. They came awake with the golden orb, shaking snow from their mighty frames and lowering head and hoof to paw and nose thru the frozen snow and ice for the life-sustaining lichen below. All things must eat to live. So the wolf pack standing at the valleys rim required the meat of the caribou to sustain them in the hard winter months. The alpha female breathed deep thru her nose, drawing air across her scent glands.
They were standing atop a ridge that led down into the bowl shaped depression that was the valley . The wind washed toward them and on the breeze was a story, an old bull caribou with a hind foot torn and useless, grazed at the edge of a band of conifers. The alpha licked her lips and turned to her wolves ,there was no need to speak her pack knew as well as she their prey. Rimgar her capable brown-gray beta was sent skirting the valleys left edge with five other wolves to a stand of aspen. She turned her muzzle to the young pair of twin wolves left out from the main group. Tantip was sent creeping along the edge to the cover of a snowladen bush near the herd and Truetip to the stand of old pine. She stood watching them belly toward their positions freezing whenever a caribou lifted its head.
All was in readiness. She gave a sharp bark and watched as Tantip burst from the bush and sent half the herd running toward the other side ,Truetip appeared as whirling mass of fur bursting from the trees near the old bull who lept into the air and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction.Away from her ready wolves. The alpha took off down the slope cream and brown fur blown back as she thundered across the valley. The old bull gave a game race but the swift and hungry she-wolf cut him off and herded his limping figure straight toward Rimgar and the five. They enclosed around him and with a speed borne of hunger they tore him down. With bloody muzzles they howled their victory cry and looked expectantly at their alpha. She was trotting slowly to where Truetip had cornered a strange creature against a rock embankment.
Truetip spotted her coming and let know his position with a growl,
"I wouldve had that bull the right way if this dogwaste hadn't been hiding in the tree."he snarled and pointed his muzzle toward the bristling creature.
It looked like nothing the alpha had ever seen in her high country home. Its build was wolfish ,but its muzzle was slim and its coloring was that of a silver merle collie.Brown mask muzzle to a silver-gray body covered with dark black spots. Quer golden eyes flecked with green ,glared out from his face. Horrible wounds patched across his frame some dry and scabbed others fresh from his tangle with Truetip moments before. She spoke with soft wonder ,in a voice that calmed the angry creature and her pack," I am Aleu ,Alpha of the Denasaga wolf pack and what name do you go by?"
The cross lifted his muzzle and spoke in a firm tenor, " I am Gale from ta north highlands."He stared at her pack, they had all calmed and were looking to their alpha, all except Truetip. His ears were laid back and his face fixed in a snarling smirk," This dogwaste is here to steal our prey, we should destroy him," he licked his fangs,"he would cry like a pup before the end." The alpha moved to take a step between them ,but before she could move Truetip launched his frame at that of the hybrids, powerful jaws snapping in a bone-breaking crunch.......That shut on empty air. The cross had spun away as fast as his torn frame could manage and as he turned his teeth sliced a furrow down Truetips sleek side. The wolf snarled with rage and rammed his stronger frame into Gales side ,the heavy blow sent him tumbling into the snow. His energy was gone, sapped by the oppressive wounds and yet the game creature struggled nobly to his feet and stood awaiting his fate.