When he woke again the shadows had lengthened, the hedges on either side of the road keeping almost the entire thing in shadow. They were moving slower, now, the horse walking at a moderate pace. He was back in place across the horse’s back legs, and he wondered for a moment if he had reawoken at the same point in time. He hurt less now, the pain in his cheek only flaring now if he made sudden movements with his face, although the rest of his body still felt slow and tired.

The horse started to slow again, and he lifted his head to look at the road before them. They came to a stop at a wooden gate leading onto a well-worn path through a field tall with crops. The rider dismounted, sliding from the horse with practised ease, and went to open the gate. He watched her, wondering why she was still clad in armour, and then wondering why he was with her.

His voice took two attempts to actually come out- at first, there was no sound and he just mouthed the words. “Where’s my mother?”

She paused, the gate open, although she did not turn to look at him. The horse moved forward unbidden, joining her on the field-side of the gate. “She…” she trailed off, and Eldred got the sense that she was struggling to find words.

Eldred felt concern eating away at his insides, and he struggled to sit up again, suddenly feeling constrained. With the gate closed, the rider moved over to help free him, helping him get positioned at the front of the saddle. She mounted, sitting behind him, her arms either side to hold the reins. “Where is she?” he asked again as they started to move, “and what happened? Why isn’t she here, too?”

“I needed to get you away from that town, and to see a doctor,” she said, the sentence starting slow as she pieced it together. “Your mother couldn’t come with us.”

Alarm flashed across his mind, and he twisted to look at her. Still he saw nothing through the eye slit, and he couldn’t tell if she looked straight ahead, or at him. “Why couldn’t she? We need to go back for her-”

“We cannot.” The words were quick and brooked no argument, and Eldred’s concern only deepened.

“I want to go home,” he insisted, trying to look around the rider to see if he could spot his hometown. He’d never been far from it before- never far enough not to be able to see it, at least. From this vantage point he couldn’t, but he was sure if he found a hill or something he could spot it.

“It is not safe for you to go back,” she said, “You will need to stay with me for a while.”

He shook his head, looking up at her again. “I don’t want to, I want to go home. Why do I have to stay with you?” The last question was added after a brief silence. He was starting to wonder if what she said about him being ‘safe’ was really true.

He thought he heard her sigh, and then she spoke again. “You are in danger if you remain in that town. I am here to protect you, and keep you safe. I am afraid you have no other choice.”

Stunned, he went quiet. He wasn’t convinced he had no choice- he could find his way back, if he could get away from this person. Something tugged at his thoughts- something he was forgetting, something important.

Taking his lack of further protest as acceptance, she continued, changing the subject. “How do your wounds feel? Are you in pain?”

He bristled, reluctant to tell her. “No. They’re fine.”

“You do not have to pretend,” she said after a moment. “I need you to be honest with me if I ask you about your well-being- it is my responsibility to make sure that you are healthy.”

“Why?” he asked, annoyance creeping into his words as he pushed the sensation of something just out of reach from his mind, “I don’t even know what to call you, I don’t know who you are, why should I tell you anything?” He didn’t like the edge of petulance that he heard in his own voice, and kept his eyes fixed on the black-tipped ears of the horse to avoid letting her see his face and the conflict that was upon it.

She let out another long sigh before she spoke again. “You can call me Ness. For the foreseeable future, I am to be your guardian. This is because your mother is unable to care for you, and because there are no others that you can go to. It is my duty, my obligation to take this role because many, many years ago, I promised your father that I would ensure your safety if ever you needed it. There is no one else who can fulfil that purpose for you.” She paused, and Eldred could sense that she was looking at him, although he wasn’t really sure how. “Do you understand?”

He squirmed a bit in his seat. The annoyance was gone, stripped away by her words and the meaning behind them. There was no one else? He remembered something cold, a sleeping face, crawling along the floor. His next question was obvious to him, he just didn’t want to ask it.

“Do you understand, child?” she asked again, there was some attempt to gentle her tone, but it wasn’t entirely successful.

The images became clearer, and with them came the recollection. It was like a wall crumbled, releasing the pain and confusion from his fevered crawl to his mother’s side all at once, the surprising chill of her hand- still warm, but not as warm as it should have been- the spreading pool of red, the peaceful, sleep-like expression that had graced her features. “My mother is gone, isn’t she?” he asked, his voice sounding distant to his ears. “She’s gone like my dad.”

This seemed to catch Ness off guard, and the rider took a moment of consideration before she responded. “Yes. I am afraid she’s not coming back.”

Eldred nodded, the weight of the words heavy on his shoulders. “I understand,” he said, very quietly now. He was surprised there were no tears in his eyes- surprised that his throat did not close with grief and sorrow. It didn’t feel real.

“Are you in pain?” she asked again, and this time she did sound concerned.

He caught himself starting to shake his head, opening his mouth to say that no, he was not. Then he considered it, and eventually he nodded. “A bit,” he said, reaching one hand up to his face, brushing what he was certain must be quite the bruise, and wincing at the pain. “If I touch it or move my face too much, it hurts.” It felt swollen beneath his fingers, and the skin was hot even in the chill air.

Ness seemed satisfied with this answer. They were leaving the field now, moving into an adjoining one. She flicked the reigns, and the horse- Ardghal- sped into a trot. “We should reach the doctor tomorrow. Try not to bother the wound too much until then. There’s a place not too far off where we’ll stop for tonight so that you may get some sleep, and I will find something for you to eat.”

He attempted to suppress a yawn, looking up at the sky to see the setting sun, and wondering just how much he had slept today, and marvelling at the fact that he was still tired. If he’d been in his bed at home right now, he would have fallen asleep near instantly. “How long have we been travelling?” he asked as the sky started to dim. They’d passed back out of the fields onto a road again. This time there were no stones intermixed with the dirt, and it was much narrower than the previous road they had been following. The terrain was hillier, as well, and some of the valleys he caught sight of as they ascended a hill were covered in a blanket of trees. Occasionally, he would spot a farmhouse nestled amongst its fields, and even more occasionally he would catch a glimpse of the distant light of a village or town, collective candles and lanterns bright enough to make it visible from some distance.

“Since last night,” Ness responded, guiding the horse onto an even smaller lane that was overgrown with grass and weeds, taking them toward a copse of trees. “I wanted to put distance between us and that town- I am unsure if there were other grims hunting in that area, and I did not want to risk another confrontation.”

“Grims?” he asked, frowning, “Do you mean the dogs?” Thinking back to the day before sent a shudder down his spine, as the memory of the sheer terror he had felt as he ran.

“The dogs?” she sounded confused. “Ah. Yes. I see how you could mistake them as such. They are… similar, but different to dogs. They share some qualities- they are loyal and fierce protectors, and yes, they do resemble one another at times, but there is more to them than that. It… it’s hard to explain, but a grim is not always canine in shape.”

His frown deepened. “Protectors?” He hadn’t felt very protected the day before. Or the day before that, either.

“It is unusual for a grim to change its hunting grounds- usually, they will guard a set location, and they will protect whatever lives there, and hunt whatever is foreign. Those grims were anomalous.”

“Anomalous?” the word was unfamiliar to him, and he glanced back at her, squinting at the glinting sunlight that reflected from her helm.

“Strange. Out of the ordinary. They did not do what I would expect from a grim.”

“Oh.” That made some sense, although he was now quite concerned about meeting other ‘anomalous’ grims. He wondered idly why he’d never heard of grims before- were they uncommon? Did they not inhabit the land around their town? He wondered, then, if he’d ever seen a grim before- especially if they did not always look like dogs. And how could they not always look like dogs? If a cat didn’t look like a cat, it wasn’t a cat any more, was it?

These thoughts continued to circle around in his head as they moved into the copse of trees, tall branches starting to obscure much of the sunlight. It grew steadily darker- from a mixture of the darkening sky and the thickening trees above them- until they stopped on the edge of a dip in the ground.

Ardghal shook his head, long mane fluffing out around him, and Eldred looked around with some interest.

Their stopping place was a roughly circular bowl in the ground, about four feet deep at the very centre. One tree grew in its centre, off to one side, and the circle was otherwise bordered with other trees rising high around them. The central tree, unlike the others he’d seen so far in the copse, was evergreen. The ground around it was covered in pine needs, creating a softer patch of ground before it transitioned into the familiar forest litter of leaves and twigs and branches.

Movement from behind him caught his attention, and he twisted around to watch Ness as she dismounted, sliding from her mount’s back with well-practised ease. She patted the horse’s back affectionately, before turning toward Eldred. “Do you need a hand?” she asked, offering one to him.

It couldn’t be that hard to dismount a horse, could it? At first, he ignored the offered hand, mimicking her as he swung his left leg over to join the right, wincing a little at the ache he was only now feeling. He peered down the horse’s flank, seeing the ground at least as far from his feet as he was tall. He glanced at the offered hand again, feeling some temptation to take it. He hesitated for a moment longer, before deciding to take the plunge, and inched forward on the tip of the saddle, until all very suddenly he slipped down. He let out an involuntary yelp at the sudden effects of gravity, and was relieved when the increasingly familiar gloved hands caught him and eased him to the ground.

He looked up at Ness with some embarrassment, muttering a thanks all the same.

The leaves were deeper than he had expected- his feet sinking in to just above his ankles, and he gave an experimental kick. Leaves fluttered into the air, zig-zagging back down to the ground in a most satisfying fashion. He was about to kick another bunch of leaves when Ness spoke, and he stopped, mid-step.

“There is a stream just over that rise-” she pointed off to one side, between the trunks of two trees on the edge of the bowl. “-The water is clean enough to drink. I am going to see if I can catch anything for you to eat. Until I get back, do not stray from this circle or the stream. Do you understand?”

Eldred, already excited to see the stream, nodded with enthusiasm. “Yes, I understand.”

Ness seemed satisfied with this, and waved a dismissive hand toward him and the stream, turning back to her horse.

He was all too relieved to stretch his legs again. Riding had been a new experience, and hadn’t been all that unpleasant, but he was starting to feel the aches and pains of being jostled around on the horse’s back adding on top of the aches and pains of the previous few days. He glanced back as he reached the edge of the bowl, watching as Ness searched in one of the bags attached to her horse’s saddle for something. He wasn’t sure about her yet- he still knew very little about her, and everything had happened so suddenly he was still sorting out how he felt about everything.

He scrambled up the rise, ignoring how muddy and wet the piled leaves made his hands, and then hurried down the other side in search of the stream Ness had spoken of.

It was rapidly darkening, but his eyes were already getting used to the gloom. He was led more by sound than anything else, the stream suddenly becoming audible when he had rounded the top of the bowl, and only getting louder as he moved toward it. He almost stepped in it when he reached it, managing to halt with only wet toes.

The bank he had stumbled upon was low, the ground blending almost seamlessly into the stream bed, with only a narrow strip of bare dirt or sand between the water and the piled leaves. He knelt, sticking his hands into freezing water and gasping at the shock. He gave himself a moment to adjust, rising the mud from his hands before he cupped the water and brought it up to his mouth. The water was crisp, and felt wonderful in his dry mouth. When his thirst was quenched, he brought up more water to wash his face, wincing as he brushed the wound on his face. Its ache was deep and felt like it went all the way through his face and deep into his skull. The cool helped somewhat with its immediate sting, and after a few attempts he found he was able to probe a little further. There was a cut, a small v-shape where the point of the iron had struck his cheekbone, and it was here that he felt most of the swelling. He didn’t dare poke it too hard, worried of what consequences might meet him if he messed with the wound too much. The swelling continued a little further up his face- he could see more of his cheek than he was used to- but stopped before it reached his nose. He moved his jaw experimentally, finding that it hurt less now than it had earlier, and feeling some relief at that fact.