Deadlier than the male - Deadlier Beginnings Part 1
I've shared this story before, a long time ago and I have new followers now, plus I'm working on the story to edit it. If you've read the story and have no interest in reading it again - with or without the improvements and commentary - please feel free to move on and ignore it.
If you've not read the story or you feel you'd like to re-read it and are perhaps curious about the comments and adjustments I'm making, please, grab a cuppa or a glass of wine, sit down, and enjoy the journey.
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Sentinel Exemplar, your Wolfing, a little after your seventeenth summer, was foretold aeons before your birth. Your role amongst us could never be seen clearly and some fretted that your survival and integration into our society would bring destruction upon us all and you should never be suffered to live. Some think that you may yet bring doom upon us, for prophesy interpretation is subjective and may, therefore, be misread.
Times many, you have proven yourself to be loyal and true, yet for all this, you may still be the cause of our downfall.
Take great care that you keep to what is true - for yourself and for Wolfkind and especially for the Lycaeons past, present and future.
I give you this, your story, as a record for you. For your story is remarkable and I believe you should be able to look back on these pages and remember the lessons you have learned over that astonishing lifetime.
Sometimes, if we are given the opportunity to look back, it enables us to look forward with clearer sight.
I believe that some of the memories in this document will be lost to you but here they are, recorded exactly as they happened, without bias or guile. You may do with it as you will. Preserve it, destroy it or hide it away.
I have never made a duplicate for any other Wolf, neither Lycaeon nor Ancient One.
Learn from it, prosper and grow, but stay forever true - as I shall – and someday, the prophesy that we shall meet shall also come to pass.
The Scribe
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One
Hazel walked slowly towards the boundary of the wood. Mika, her wolfhound, was missing and had been gone all day. She had searched for him everywhere in and around the hamlet and it was only her growing desperation to find him that forced her to go looking towards the dreaded woodland.
She pulled her woollen wrap tighter around her shoulders; her pace slowed as she neared the trees.
Desperate men coming home from the battlefields at Agincourt, to find little or nothing left of their homesteads and families were known to turn outlaw. The camaraderie they had shared on battlefields on foreign soil, standing side by side, longbows ready to hurl silent death at the enemy, meant they found it easier to bond with men in similar circumstances than to start a family and home life from scratch.
It was a harsh life whichever way they chose; to have no one dependent on them and no endless toil of working the land, only to give over a large chunk of it as taxes was the more favourable option. Some ex-soldiers made their home in the greenwood where they survived by poaching the King’s deer, sleeping rough and by attacking unwary travellers to steal their possessions.
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Tales and rumours of wandering vagabonds and soldiers returning from the war in France were not the height of her fears. Yes, those tales made her wary, but there were older stories, myths and legends that drove a spike of fear deeper into her heart.
Hazel knew that there was a possibility of outlaws wandering close to that part of the forest but that wasn’t the only danger she was worried about. There were worse things in the woods. Perhaps they would keep the outlaws and vagabonds at bay. As long as she didn’t encounter either before she found Mika, she would be happy.
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She called out for him often, "Mika! Mika!" Listening to hear the deep bark from him, she walked on.
She wandered further into the woods. It was getting late and starting to grow dark and she perhaps should have been thinking about getting home to wait and see if Mika could find his own way back.
Before long she was out of the sparsely wooded area and into the forest proper.
"MI-KA! MI-KA!" she shouted again.
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Hazel’s voice was starting to sound shaky and she was on the verge of tears, but she didn’t stop looking for him.
Dusk was beginning to steal visibility; every shape melted into the next. Trees and bushes were indistinct shadows and she was starting to shiver; not so much with cold as with fear.
Startled at the slightest noise, Hazel at last decided to turn around and go home without Mika.
She turned and froze at the sound of a large branch as it was snapped from a tree over to her left; the noise as it hit the forest floor was followed by total silence.
It was the utter deathly stillness that came after that set her nerves jangling. The noise was not a natural sound made by a creature going about its usual business of survival. Whatever had snapped the branch seemed aware of the noise and was trying to conceal its whereabouts or had deliberately broken the branch and was watching to see her reaction.
Cocking an ear and listening intently, she started moving again. As quietly as possible she picked her way back down the overgrown and, at times indistinct pathway. Whatever was following her was keeping quiet, but the silence that enveloped the wood told her that it had not gone away and the smaller inhabitants disliked it as much as she did; they were either scattered or sheltered.
It was keeping pace with her on a parallel course to her own. She glanced sideways often, hoping to catch sight of it and perhaps wondering if she should want to catch sight of it. Then a grumbling, snuffling noise gave her its location and she was frightened anew. Her fear was working against her and that could only help the hunter.
A faint but deep and sinister snigger made her stop again. It had altered its course and was keeping pace on the other side of her. The hairs on her arms and at the base of her neck rose; her breathing quickened and she shuddered with fear.
Vid 1
Suddenly she was running. It was an act of pure instinct - the urge for flight. She gathered her skirts and ran as though her life depended upon it, running as hard and as fast as she could through the brambles that she had skirted around on her way into the wood.
She swayed off balance, arms flailing for a moment as she saw that she had missed the pathway. She almost stopped and turned back but the beast was too close for comfort.
She was again taken aback when she had to jump over a partially rotten log that had not been on her path on her way in; her skirts almost tripped her as they entangled her legs. She could hardly see anything in front of her because of the darkness, her panic and the undergrowth. The beast was still with her, its noises of pursuit no longer muted; it had given up on a surprise attack. It was keeping pace with her, but at a distance. She had stopped looking for it; there was still no glimpse of it through the trees.
Somewhere on her headlong flight, the hunter had moved in behind her, no longer parallel to her, her heart lurched in her chest as she realised the chase was on in earnest.
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The cover image for Deadlier Beginnings as seen on Amazon.com Link
Image 2 From Google
This is an approximate image of how I see The Scribe in my books. He's an enigmatic, all-seeing, all-knowing character and I really must give him more time in future stories.
Image 3 From Google
Source Morning of the Battle of Agincourt, 25th October 1415
Image 4 From Google
Source Actual picture of the real Sherwood Forest as it stands today.
Image 5 From Google
The image is of an Irish Wolfhound. I hadn't meant for Hazel's dog to look like this, I pictured a more robust, chunkier animal, much like my own dogs (Rottweilers)...
...but Rotties didn't fit just then and I had to make her wait a few centuries to breed the animals into what she (I) wanted.
Vid 1 from Youtube
Ooh exciting. I actually love the lean angular wolfhound and also love Scottish deerhounds. They were breed to hunt wolf and deer with their masters whilst on horseback (not the dog) so they had to keep up with a horse and take down a pretty powerful animal. Lovely story.
Yes they were, which is why I had to go down the wolfhound route.
So far, it's a little tense, but yes, (and thank you) a nice story... but wait ;)
I had read this part before, but still going to read, or re-read the story. I do not think I read the whole thing, just a few random ones you had posted at various times, still even if I have read it in whole a second read can be quite enjoyable.
Thank you. I've read this hundreds of times by now and I'm not bored with it yet.
;)
I still have a trilogy that I read every year the old fashioned way via a paperback book. They are getting old, but still in pretty good shape considering they are from circa 1988/90 time frame. Some stories you just like.
Yes, exactly so! I loved the Narnia Chronicles as a child and I enjoyed reading the stories to my own kids (and reading the books over and over again myself) and I'm now looking forward to when our granddaughter will enjoy them.