Among The Wolves

Run

My eyes snapped open, yet darkness was my only sight. My ears rang loudly. I felt pain everywhere, my breath was gone. I waved my arms against an invisible unknown assailant. My hands groped my neck trying to get air in my lungs again. Nothing worked.

I kicked the ground with my feet and thrashed with whatever energy I had. I couldn't even make a sound as my insides twisted painfully.

Then, suddenly, I was able to draw a breath. Cool forest air filled my airways and I sat up with a panicked grunt.

My skin was wet with sweat and tears were streaming down my cheeks. I heaved as I looked around in the dark night.  Intefunis was still asleep in the same spot.

I placed a hand on my head and tried to breathe deeply. If these episodes were getting this severe this quickly, how long did I have to live? A day? A couple more hours? I certainly did not see myself doing well in a week.

I laid my head back down, how was Ty'Bin doing? I did really hope these episodes were not so tormentous for him. He had so many who relied and needed him. For him tk be in pain like this would…

I wiped more tears from my face as I resolved not to think about it.

Some long minutes passed before I was calm enough to fall asleep again.

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“Can you smell someone coming from that way?”

“I'm not sure, there's so many.”

Twitching my nose, I leaned back in the tree and continued to watch the patrol activities below me. In my meld, the results had been the same as his. Intefunis and I were high up into a tree, looking through the leaves and observing the narrow strip of plain that was set before us. Beyond it was another large stretch of trees, this stretch contained the border to Wos’Theon. However, with the plain swarming with Vakusian guards it seemed unlikely we would ever get past.

“Are we stuck here?” Intefunis asked, "Do you think it is impossible to pass to Wos’Theon?”

I shook my head, “Give me a minute.”

Both Intefunis and I had no watch to tell time other than the burner phone, but I was leary of wasting the battery, so I had to go by pure guess work. Stretching my neck to see more into the distance of the narrow plain, I thought to myself, Should be about now…

A few seconds ticked by then a patrolman appeared exactly as I anticipated. I took a deep breath, trying to calm the stirring excitement. “I think I figured it out.”

Intefunis sat up slightly, “Figured out what?” After sitting in this tree for approximately four hours he was ready for new news.

“The pattern. I figured out the pattern of the guards, they have it pretty good. Pretty much the entire time the strip is being watched, however, there is a small leeway. A span of ten to fifteen minutes where it is not being closely watched.”

Intefunis’ golden brown eyes lit up. “So we can run across?”

I tipped my head, “Not really, there will be a patrolman walking parallel over in that direction.” I pointed to my left. “If we are upright we can be seen, but we can get low so the grasses help cover us, I'm sure we can make it.”

Intefunis said nothing but seemed to understand.

Keeping my voice still low, I asked. “Do you know how to crawl an army crawl?”