Well, first things first, I am very sorry about the delay.
Mind you, I had lowered myself to requesting reviews last chapter, and having done so I'd hoped for at least some responses to my shame. Many thanks to the provider of the one review I got for that chapter. I hope you keep in touch. The rest of you, bravo, you weren't fooled by the polite request and blackmail. I was clearly trying to waste your time. The milk of human kindness is wasted on me, I can assure you. Very well done. Honestly. I have been put in my place and it won't happen again.
Meanwhile, here's a chapter. A unique enough POV, I think; but don't read too much into it! Much is not as it seems!
The White Wolf
There was no light in the room but for a crack under the door, through which a thin red light which wavered and brightened and darkened in the ways that fire did, not the fire-woman's fire but that of a torch outside the door. There was a man next to it, too; he could tell from the scent, a woollen sweat-smell that was familiar to all those he had smelt recently.
He stretched his long limbs, aching after three days stationary on his companion's bed. He'd thinned a bit, and he needed to drink, as the liquid in a bottle on the desk of his companion had only ever made him unsure on his feet, never refreshed, but his muscles were undiminished beneath his thick coat, his teeth and claws were as sharp as he could ever remember them being, and he wanted action.
Of course, there was some food in the area. A man at the head of a group that smelled of the blood of his companion had tried to enter the room, sword in hand. The direwolf hadn't recognised him, and so his teeth buried in the man's leg and he sent him to the floor and tore out his throat.
The corpse still lay on the floor, smelling bad, and no others had tried to enter. He hadn't yet given in to his instincts to eat it; nothing quite put fear into men like the fear of a man-eater, and doing so would anger them.
Before the man with the sword had come, there had been sounds of fighting and struggling outside, but he had paid it no mind, caught in silent grief for his companion.
He paced the room, as if searching for an escape, though he knew that there was little in the windowless room that could be of use; the only way out, through a hole in weakened ceiling boards and tiles, brought him to a roof that overlooked the courtyard, and he could not escape through there. Not unless all the humans were distracted.
And the boar normally stood guard there, it being the thing which had made his companion leave him trapped initially and kept him there even now. It left every now and then, his nose told him, but rarely, and it came back always with the scent of fresh blood and kill, and it almost drove him to eat his own but some inner repulsion held him back.
Now, however, the boar's scent was covered by that of sweat and breath and the other odours of the two-legged. And noise was rising, and a voice he vaguely recognised was speaking in a tongue he did not, and he took the chance of escape.
He jumped onto his companion's desk, landing silently. The leap to the top of a taller case of wood was trickier; not all his paws would fit - they might have once, but he was smaller then - and he had to keep moving or it would fall.
The next step was a horizontal beam that jutted from the wall slightly. Only two paws touched that, as his head lowered to fit onto a ledge that was overhung; the crawl-space was at least two body-lengths long, but there was snow and light at the end. Slowly and soundlessly he crawled, and with a similar silence pushed his broad head through the thick layer of snow.
His nose emerged first, a cacophony of scents alarming him of the breakthrough. Though for the most part they were the same as those he'd smelt from within the enclosed space, he could now pick up a hint of the boar, though not fresh, rough wildling-scent, stew with little meat, and the faint, telling scent of fire that came with the Red Woman.
The snow was piled on most of the buildings, and his white fur was entirely unnoticed when he had forced his head and shoulders out after his nose, bending his neck down to take snow into his mouth and wait for it to melt. He had done so before in his confinement, but only from within. A breeze ruffled his fur now, refreshing him with a promise of freedom.
He slowly pulled his hindquarters upwards, and, now lying on his side, bided his time. He would not be seen, he had a water source, he was comfortable and relaxed. The two-legged in the courtyard would leave soon, the boar would return, and he would have his vengeance.
He swept the space with his eyes before laying his head on his paws, but the Red Woman had noticed his eyes in that short space of time, and he tensed, the better to run or fight. She paid him no heed, continued speaking as if the predator was not lying in wait above their unaware heads.
He paid it no mind, and slept for half a day.
Woken by sounds from the large place where the men took their food, his ears pricked and nose scrunched. The two-legged pack was making noise, the boar's scent was in his nose, and he was awake and ready immediately.
His enemy gorged itself on a large hunk of meat, ripping and tearing and biting. As strong as it was, the meat was tough; it had not the sharp teeth of his kin. It was entirely devoted to it's task, showing its side to the wolf at no less than twenty bodylengths from where he lay.
He slunk to the edge of the ledge, snow still in his pelt, and jumped onto a clear patch of ground. Snow abandoned his pelt for his surroundings with a soft thump, but he was silent.
The boar paid him no heed as he kept to the shadows and to the snow, it's nose clogged with blood from the tough haunch. He was behind it soon, then, he closed in.
He had almost reached its tail when it sensed something was amiss and spun, only to meet his leap and teeth sinking into it's neck.
The boar made a struggle of it, writhing and trying to squeal, but the noise was drowned by the two-legged din, and by the teeth that tore its life away. Boars were tough, but none were tougher than a direwolf.
The companion of the boar, just as much to blame for the death of his companion as the boar was, arrived seconds later, from another direction to the hall and the noise, and, like the boar, charged at the white wolf.
It was again a silent thing, this time, as the two-legged failed to realise what the direwolf would do. The hunted trying to charge the hunter; some boars would succeed, but this had no tusks and no fur and no thick skin, and he simply leapt and tore out the throat again.
Then, he finished the meat the boar had been gouging himself on, and had started on the boar when a younger two-legged with grey on her face had left the loud place, screamed at him, and run back.
By the time she had had attention paid to her, and came out again, the bodies were there but the wolf was gone, over the barriers that marked the two-legged place and into the woods to hunt and to sleep and to survive without his companion.
He dug a hole into the side of a snowdrift when he could no longer see his former home, curled up, and slept.
