Eritance - Chapter 11
At that Ciara softened a bit. There was a pause and she quietly said, “I’m not my father. It’s not like I was the one who kept the guards from going to help”. At that, an awkward silence settled between us, with neither one of us saying a word.
We slowly trudged on through the dark forest. After around three hours of walking, I noticed that Ciara was having a hard time keeping up. At this, I sighed, and said, “I’m sure we’ve walked enough for now. The orcs won’t be able to see us from the other side, and it will take some time before they can find our scent. This place is much safer to rest than where we were before”.
After saying that we settled down in a small clearing nearby. Ciara plopped down and breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ll set up some traps, so that we can rest more easily” I said. At that Ciara retorted, “what are you going to set traps with? You don’t even have a sword with you. Everything was lost once we fell into the river”. At that I told her, “don’t underestimate the resourcefulness of a hunter” and I disappeared into the brush.
Ciara did have a point though. It would be hard to create effective traps that would keep us safe without any materials on hand. At the very least, I could set up some simple things that would alert us to the presence of the orcs, should they catch up to us. What I ended up doing was creating a lattice of dried branches and twigs on the forest floor that would easily snap if someone or something stepped on it. I created a large network of these lattice traps at varying distances. They went as far back as one 30 meters from the clearing, with a spacing of about five meters of space between lattices. These lattices were also spread out in a way that they formed a defensive line of about twenty meters. Completing this took around 3 hours. Currently, I was very exhausted. “Well, that should do it. At least we’ll hear them coming and have some time to run away” I muttered to myself.
I made my way back to the clearing and laid down on a patch of soft grass. With that, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep. I had a strange dream of being chased by the spine bear that killed Ross. I became angry in my dream as I saw the bear killing Ross. I tried to save him, but when I approached the spine bear it disappeared and reappeared some distance away. In my rage I ran at the spine bear but then it ran at me too. Right as I was going to strike out at the spine bear, it collided with me and disappeared.
Words kept swarming through my head about an inheritance, and just as I felt that I was about to understand them, a large crack could be heard. With that I jolted awake thinking that the orcs had caught up. I rushed over to Ciara and shook her awake. “What’s going on?” she mumbled sleepily. “Shh” I told her, “you have to be quiet, I think that the orcs may have caught up with us. Something is coming”. At this she became alarmed but remained calm. “What are you going to do?” she asked me. “I don’t know, I don’t have a weapon, so we’ll have to try to run”.
“Wait” Ciara said, as she handed me a small knife. “Where did this come from?” I inquired of her. “Hah, you may not be prepared for danger, but as a girl, I always have to be prepared to defend myself from would be attackers. It must be nice for men to only need protection outside of the villager. I need it, even within the villager” she said. At this I took the knife and she continued “but don’t get any funny ideas. I have other ways of defending myself”. I snorted back at her, “don’t worry. I don’t see why anyone would come after you anyways”. Her face reddened as she was about to snap back, but we both stiffened as we heard another crack.
Coming into the clearing were two dire wolves. The situation was bad, even with a knife I wasn’t confident that I could make it out of here alive. The dire wolves growled and jumped forward at us. We were able to dodge by jumping to the side. I instantly spun around thinking that at least one of them would be coming after me. However, both turned their attention towards Ciara. I guess they thought they might as well take care of the weaker one first. Using this opportunity, I dashed up behind one and stabbed it with the knife in the side. It yelped in pain as it thrashed around. I held on tightly with my arm around its neck.
Seeing its companion in trouble the other one immediately jumped at me and bit my arm. Its powerful jaws were crushing down on my arm. I nearly let go from the pain, but I held on and kept stabbing the other dire wolf with the knife all over the side of its body. Two stabs in the ribs, one in the stomach, and another in the side of the neck.
With each stab I could feel a burning sensation building inside of me. I felt like my arm was being ripped to shreds by the other dire wolf, but with a final stab to the side of the temple, I finally killed one. At that I heard a voice. However, the voice didn’t belong to Ciara. The voice belonged to Ross. “Listen up you dolt. I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks. Why haven’t you listened?” his voice said. I became confused. “You’re dead. I saw you die” I couldn’t help but shouting. “You’re right, I am dead, what tipped you off? Was it my mangled body, or that you didn’t get anymore thrashings from me?” he said in a jovial tone.