trapped chapter one

I saw gold and I took it. A different man might not have. I know that, and from time to time I think back on the hour when I saw the gold and took it. You see, I was hungry. Isn’t it ironic?

I don’t remember much else about that night but the gold and the hunger. I don’t remember the name of the tavern or even the village, but I believe it was some where in southern Fardsfel. I can’t really be certain. For some time I sat dumbly in my chair my mind occupied with nothing but the pain in my stomach. If you’ve never been truly hungry from days of no food, you can’t know what it’s like. You can’t concentrate on anything. It wasn’t until a figure to my left got up from the table to get a drink and left a stack of gold marks behind that I snapped to awareness.

From this moment on, my memory is crystalline.

My eyes to the gold, my eyes to the strangers back walking calmly toward the barmaid. My hand to the gold, the gold in my pocket. I’m up from the table and out the door. For just a moment I look back the stranger has turned to look my way, he wears a hood but I can feel his eyes meet mine. I swear I can catch the glimmer of a smile.

Out into the street and behind some barrels I crouched down waiting for my pursuer. One benefit of a lifetime of running from the guards since childhood. I know how to disappear. For nearly an hour, I waited there suffering even more from hunger. You see I was awake now and had the means to buy myself a feast. This knowledge tortured me. When I finally got to my feet, I very nearly fainted. I had only enough energy to walk to the other edge of the village to a run down tavern before collapsing at a table I think I must have fallen unconscious for a moment before I heard the barmaid’s voice

“Can I get you something to eat Sir?”

I gorged myself on roasts and pies and huge frothing mugs of ale. As the fog of near fatal starvation began to lift. I looked up from my plate to see a gold masked stranger looking at me his vizard glowing by the blinding light of the moon through the window. He wore black leather armor and was a different physique and size from the man I had burgled but I could tell that he knew I paid for my meal quickly and left.

I skirted the edge of the village through a tiled central courtyard surrounded by squalled peasant cottages. There was not a light shining from any window or door. No one was on the streets I could find no place to hide so I took to the road out of town heading for the wilderness. Hunger had pushed me on in the days before, but now I felt what I imagined to be the whip of guilt or perhaps even then it was fear.

I fell twice, rushing down the dark path unused to the slopes and pebbled texture. The sounds of animal life, which I had numbed to, were suddenly very loud in my ears and there was something else in the night, something chasing me.

On the side of the road there was a low wall, and I scrambled over it and hid. I knew enough about concealment to pick a spot where the bulwark sunk slightly so even if some one saw the out line of my figure he would assume it to be part of the wall. It wasn’t long before I heard the sound of running footsteps from more than one person who passed me by and then stopped. There was a moment of whispered conversation and then one of the people ran back along the path towards the village then after a few more minutes. I peered out from behind the wall. A female figure in a dun gown wimple and veil stood in the road. On the other end of the road, blocking the way back to town was a knight coated in dark mail. I could see neither of their faces. For a moment I froze unsure weather one or both had seen me.

“Run,” said the women in a dead voice.

The hill behind me was to steep, so I leapt over the wall and across the road in two bounds. Into the night forest, I ran the maddening jingle of the accursed gold in my pocket I knew I was making so much noise my pursuers could not help but hear me. But now I cared more for putting distance between us than in stealth. Clouds of ash filtered through the moon light, but I still knew it was too bright to hide I ran and ran until I felt all my blood pumping in my head and heart begging me to stop.

I was at the edge of the wood, on the other side of a shallow stream from a vast crumbling house encircled by a rail fence. Behind me, running foot falls in the broken dusty earth. To the south down-stream a distinct sodden splashing of some one moving nearer.

There was no choice. I half jumped and half fell into the mud and dragged myself up the bank on the other side. I rolled under the fence and ran through the open field toward the house. Jerking my head around I saw seven shadowy figures by the fence posts. The cloaked man I had robbed, the man in the gold mask, the veiled woman, the dark knight. Three others too who had pursued me but I’d never seen. And I thought I’d been the stealthy one.

The moon was entirely hidden in a swarm of ash only the stars offered their meager illumination. As I reached the open door of the ruin. I slammed and bolted it behind me. I knew there could be no protection for very long. I looked about the ravaged interior of broken furniture I searched for somewhere to hide a corner, a niche where if I stayed very still no one would see me.

A splintered table lying against the wall looked perfect for my purposes. I crawled under it and jumped when something moved and I heard a frightened man’s voice.

“Whose there?”

“It’s all right’ I whispered,’ I’m not one of them”

His strong-callused hands reached out from the shadow and griped my arms. By shear strength he began to over power me, resist as I might I was no match for this one in my weakened state. The man’s face emerged as the moon came out and shown through the broken window it was the face of a hungry wolf. I would have screamed if the terror of the moment would have loosed its hold on my throat but alas it did not. His great taloned man paws still gripping me I fell back smelling his hot muggy breath surrounded me like the veil of night.

The table was thrown off, and there stood the seven hunters and a dozen more. No. Hunters they weren’t. They were harriers who as hounds chase rabbits and foxes to their master, the hunter, so these had chased me out of every hiding place, expertly pushing me to the lair of the real predator. He wasn’t weak, although he bore a bad leg that made him not as good at the chase as once he had been. And like the hunter, master of the hounds, who lazed behind to finish the prey, so now was he, just a blunt killing machine.

Before my very eyes he made the change to his true predator form. Massive and at peak physique for his age, save for that bad leg he was truly a remarkably terrifying sight to behold. About thrice the size of a human, hunched over, and covered from head to toe in thick shaggy brown hair with a muzzle big enough to fit a mans head, shoulders, or better. Lined with a dagger sharp flesh rending set of teeth this wolf was to be my end.

Shredding my cloths off of my back careful not to cut my flesh the seven had also made the change to varying degrees, as had other members of this pack. Salivating with the premonitions of how I’d taste the predator wolf crouched down on his hind legs and lifted me off the ground both massive paws human in shape each finger crowned with a gleaming talon painfully suspending me at eye level with my death bringer’s pupils. His teeth seemed to grin at me dripping saliva. He licked me across the face with his horrible massive leathery tongue I shuddered in his grip ready to hurl forth the sumpswuish banquet that had merely been slop fattening the pig before it was to be slaughtered. He grinned and lewdly smacked his jowls, savoring my taste, to him I might as well just have been another fattened pig that would sate his hunger and blood lust for human flesh. In these moments before death, I realize that there is something far worse than being hungry. Its being the food. Finally the end came jaws opening wide he began to descend upon me.