Chapter 3
He was bleeding as well, although not nearly as much as I was. It was, however, also possible that the blood dripping down his front was my own. I suppose that was more likely. There was a gash along his jaw, however the blood was drying, turning crusty and brown, presumably from an earlier fight. Perhaps with the same beast that had ripped me open.
He had been shouting before he took me in his arms. I wasn't entirely certain how he had driven the beast away, whether it had been with his blade or the simple rage in his voice, but the thing was not dead. I had barely glimpsed it bounding away, still snarling and trembling with hunger or fury or both. The pain was no longer pain, as it had been when the thing had first come upon me. It was not an ache or a burn, not a sting or a throb. It was hiding, burrowing in the crooks of my body, waiting for the right time to slither out and engulf me like a flame. I did not feel much of anything, except for an incredible weight. I might as well have been wearing full iron. Twice that, even. I could hardly move or see, but I lowered my eyes a hair and saw what the beast had done to me. I could not look for long, it was so wretched. It had sliced me open from my left rack of ribs, over my sternum and through my left breast, up to the nook where my jaw and ear met. The cut was anything but clean. Four claws had turned the flesh to shreds, skin hanging over skin, ragged like the hem of a girl's favorite dress. I could see the stark white bone peeking through, veiled by a thin sheet of pink meat, membrane clinging to what it could.
I was not truly there. I could hear him muttering, the man. He'd abandoned his greatsword in the grass when he'd grabbed me, and it lay glimmering and clean in the moonlight. I could not take my eyes off of it, the remarkable weapon, how the light of every star in the sky seemed to bounce off of it and onto this man's bloody armor.
"No, no, no, no, no," His fingers trembled as they hovered over the mess of a wound, down the length of it from my throat to my stomach.
My gaze lifted from the sword in the grass to the man's sad face. I could hardly make it out in the dimness of the night, but I could see the dark hair hanging in his eyes, and his brow knitted with despair. His arm was beneath me, my body hoisted over his knee with my head tucked into the cold breast of his armor. At his collar, there was none other than the fur of a wolf, sewn neatly against the steel. With my nearest hand I reached up and touched it, pressed the pads of my fingers into the warmth of it. It was damp with sweat and blood, the wolf hide at his collar. His eyes bore into my own.
"I am so sorry, girl. By the Nine, what have I done? No, no, no."
He had been hunting it. Stalking the beast in the night, hunting the wolf man of legend. I could assume that much. With a shaking hand he pulled my torn cloak over my bare chest. If I had been more aware, I would have been mortified, knowing my nakedness was bared to some strange man in the night, knowing his dirty hands were all over me. But I was still. I was only half there. His arms tightened around me and he rose to his feet, setting off at as rapid of a pace as he could manage without causing me any more harm. As he took me away, my eyes returned to his blade in the grass, abandoned. As my vision began to darken and my body returned to a slumber, it was the last thing I saw. That lonesome greatsword, shimmering in the grass like a shard of the moon itself.