"Miriam, they're coming! How did they find us?"
"His Lordship's reach is vast, tree rat."
"No! Leave her alone! NO!"
"Sweetheart, don't look. Close your eyes!"
"Mum!"
Blood. Screaming. A sickening thud.
And then everything went dark.
Plip… plop… plip… plop…
The young squirrel's eyelids flickered, but he kept them shut. Of all the noises that had stormed in his mind during his unconsciousness, only one persisted into the waking world: the steady plip… plop… plip… plop… of liquid dripping into a puddle.
It was bad all around him, he knew. Something told him to keep his eyes shut. Death and danger were all around, and to his knowledge he had not a single weapon to his name…
His name. What was his name?
Panic almost set in then and there. No. Fight this, he told himself. Keeping his eyes tightly closed, he concentrated. He shut everything out; the sounds around him of wind and the running water of a nearby stream, the continual dripping, and the fetid stench that overlaid all other scents in the air.
But nothing came to him. Try as he might, he could not remember. Who was he? Where was he from? Frustrated, he opened bright green eyes…
…To a scene of total carnage.
Four bodies were strewn across the ground before him, all mutilated beyond recognition. A fifth hung from a tree by its tail, and the blood from the hideous wounds dripped into the sickly, congealing puddle below.
Plip… plop… plip… plop…
The squirrel's ears roared, and his vision darkened. No! At last he registered the sticky wetness on his paws, his face, his clothes, and his fur. It was everywhere, all around him. If he licked his lips, he could taste it, and now he could recognize the putrid stink that clogged his senses.
Who did this? he wondered, horrified. The answer came almost instantaneously, when he looked down at his reddened paws.
Grasped tightly in his right fist was a carved wooden medallion. In his left fist was a blood-spattered knife.
A dry, hacking sob tore from the squirrel's throat, and he bit back a scream of dismay. He was the killer. He had done this.
He made as if to drop the dagger, but stopped himself and inspected it. It was a pretty thing, with a curved steel blade, quite long for a dagger, with a polished blue stone in the pommel.
Something tugged at his memory. This blade was his. He could remember feeling it in his paw, slaying his opponents, ripping and tearing through fur and flesh. Yes. He was the killer of these beasts. But these beasts… mayhap they were the killer of something else. He fought to remember, but failed.
As he gazed into his reflection in the bloody steel blade, the answer to the one question from before came to him in an instant. He opened his mouth to voice it aloud, as if to make sure it was real. As if to make sure he was real.
"Todd."