Wild Hunt

Uneven

Breath escaping him in frosty clouds, Elliot stomps through the crisp fresh snow, the tall staff in his hand making for steadier footing as he contends with the uneven, icy ground. A next step has his foot plunging down deeper than he expects and he feels the crack of ice beneath his heel. His normally well kept boots are in need of a more thorough repairing, and he finds this out as ice water seeps inside. He hisses in surprise at the burst of cold soaking the sock beneath and sighs. 

Looking forward, he squints a little down the narrow path. Skeletal stripped branches arc over the way ahead, branches Elliot knows are lively with growth and thick leaves in summer. Most of the year round this route is a sun dappled escape from the heat of the sun, a reprise from rain showers, but in the midst of the winter, it provides only a strange barren tunnel, awkward to traverse and cut through with harsh winter sunlight. 

That sunlight is hardly there now, fading fast, and in the growing dusk, the snow has become shapeless, no definition to the hillocks and dips, the low light rendering flat the topography of the land around him. He shivers. 
"Fuck." 

There's nobody to hear it, but the hissed curse to himself somehow assuages the agitation beginning to buzz beneath his skin. Evening in winter is not a time it's wise to wander alone. 

He hitches up the bag on his back, cold gloved fingers curling beneath the strap that crosses his chest and holds it steady. He readjusts his grip on the staff and takes another more careful step, feeling out the ground with the base of the staff first. It's slow, far too slow. 

The path ahead of him seems to grow no shorter but the dark encroaches ever more readily. He hears the first howl a few minutes later, low and distant. It raises goosebumps on the back of his neck and attempts to quicken the pace without breaking his neck on the treacherous path. 

The wolves have always been a threat, and Elliot is afraid of them, he'd be a fool not to be afraid. In this valley, the wolves are king. Skulking monstrous beasts, lean and hardened by cold, made vicious and unpredictable by hunger. They'll take anyone they can get, the old, the young, the foolish. 

The wolves took his father in Elliot's infancy, a mistake cost the man his life. Elliot had never known him, truly, so he did not grieve, merely took heed of the reminder it served. His stepfather had always been a more cautious man, and for Elliot's mother's sake, and the sake of his siblings, he was grateful for that sliver of steadfast dependability that the man offered. 

If he moved quick, he would be home before the wolves picked up his frozen trail. If.

Travelling from his home village of Aylham to the next larger settlement of Tambridge is, in summer, the matter of a pair of strong legs and a couple of hours, setting off early and heading home in the hazy evening golden hour. In winter it is a daybreak slog, tying up business, trade and browsing as promptly as possible, and pushing to head home.

Elliot had gotten there fine, then the snow came, the clear blue sky groaning under the weight of heavy clouds that had Tambridge buried in a flurry of heavy, obscuring snowfall. 

He waited it out in the smithy, content to watch the grizzled man sharpen their kitchen knives, but it didn't seem wont to stop. He had just been resigning himself to a night spent in a warm barn belonging to any gracious stranger that might offer one, when the skies cleared again. 

He should have known better than to push himself to leave with the day so late, but he did anyway. He paid the smithy, packed up his bundles and trudged out into the crisp freshness. In Tambridge, the snow was sparse, already soaking into the soggy frozen mud of the main thoroughfares, and that in itself had led Elliot astray. A short way out of the settlement, where the tracks from carts grow less deeply rutted and the paths less often travelled, the snow was thickly blanketed.