Rise Of The Hunters - Chapter 43

Xun was tired. He had not had a chance to get some good sleep in a while, and the past couple of days had been very busy. He stood on top of a cliff, overlooking the valley. It had taken him hours to get there, then to climb it. He still needed to get the meat up and everything situated before he could sleep for the night.

Examining the cliff ledge, he found a thin cave that extended back seven feet or so. There wasn’t much of a roof in the cave, so anytime it rained or snowed, it would collect inside, but he decided it would work for the night.

Several hours later, he had managed to haul all of the meat up, as well as the wagon and enough rocks to shield the light from his fire from prying eyes. A nice fire was cooking some of the meat for his supper, and his eyes were drooping from exhaustion. If the cave looked promising in the light of day, he would convert it into a smoker to cook the rest of his meat. Laying his head on his knee for a moment, he fell asleep.

A noise jerked him awake, and Xun realized it had started snowing in the night. Everything was quiet, hushed after the snowfall. Panic coursed through him. He must have been far more tired than he thought. Slowly moving his eyes, he tried to see what had awakened him without moving his body. His heart was beating a mile a minute.

The fire had died out at some point in the night. The meat that had been cooking over it was covered in snow. The wagon sat next to him, piled high with the meat that he fervently hoped had not spoiled yet. Then he heard it again. The noise that woke him.

A small furry tail bobbed in a tree before him. The pointed nose of a grey squirrel twitched as it watched him. Then, jumping to another branch, the sound of snow rushing to the ground hit him. His eyes watched as the tiny creature jumped from branch to branch, knocking the snow off as glistening snowfalls in the early morning light. It paused to look at him again, standing on two legs, holding its paws in front of it. Then it was gone, running up the side of the tree and out of view.

Blinking a few times, Xun realized he was cold. This wasn’t the first time he had been out in the snow, but it was the first time he had faced winter without a secure home lined up and stocked with food. He thought about the compound that was down in the valley before him, and wondered if he could consider it as a secure home? There had been more monsters and werewolf attacks in this small valley then he had every encountered before.

But this was the best compound he had ever lived in. If only the people who lived in it weren’t so picky about things he felt were very important to survival, like what food and how much he could have to eat, or the type of clothes he could wear, or even the location he was allowed to sleep in.

The sounds of birds searching for their morning food, finally stirred him from his thoughts. Brushing the snow off of himself, he stood and took stock of the ledge he had worked so hard to get to the night before. It was a good twenty feet off the ground, not easily accessible to anything without hands to climb. Werewolves wouldn’t have a hard time, but he figured there wasn’t much he could do if a werewolf found him.

The cave he found, was not much more than a deep crack. After much thought, he decided to continue with his plans to convert it into a smoker. As he moved to the edge of the cliff to start climbing down, he noticed a figure moving through the trees below him. Crouching to make himself less noticeable, he saw that it was Hayden.

Before he could straighten and call out to him, he noticed that Hayden was acting oddly. He kept glancing back behind him as he moved through the trees, almost as if he was being followed, or was afraid of being followed. With a frown, Xun waited a while before climbing down, just to see if someone was following him.

Sure enough, the three boys that had picked on him before were following his tracks left in the snow. Xun was puzzled why Hayden was leaving his tracks for them to follow, then decided he must be used to the idiots bothering him.

Grinning with an idea in mind, Xun carefully climbed down the cliff, then made his way over to the tracks the three had left in the snow. Looking at them for a moment, he just had to shake his head. They had no concept of how to hunt. They were walking without watching where they placed their feet and with the new snow, they should have been stepping in each other’s tracks, but instead each one was breaking his own path through the snow.

Following at a distance, he watched as Hayden slowed down, allowing the three to catch up to him right about the edge of a river. It had slowed to almost a trickle with the onset of winter, and Hayden was pretending to decide whether he wanted to cross or not with the ice that had formed on the edges. The three bullies moved in to do what bullies everywhere do, and that’s when Xun acted.

Alex and his gang whipped their heads around in panic, no longer caring about Hayden. A huge grin almost broke out on Hayden’s face as he must have figured out it wasn’t a real wolf, but he was able to cover it quickly with a look of annoyance at seeing the boys right behind him.

Xun went to howl again, when a real wolf howl replied from the other side of the river. Everyone turned in unison, even Xun, as a large beautiful wolf stepped out of the brush and looked at them with deep golden eyes.