The Huntsman's Vow: A Wolf Chronicles Story

The History: 
One day, in the time before time, a pack of wolves took pity on a tribe of starving humans, teaching them better ways to track prey and to hunt. The humans thrived, then used what they had learned from the wolves to kill everything they could find. And so the Ancients (Sun, Moon, Earth and Grandmother Sky) told the wolves that it was time to end both wolf and humankind. The wolf Indru begged for forgiveness, speaking with such eloquence that the Ancients, who loved their creatures, relented. They gave Indru one chance to control the wayward humans. 

Time and again, wolves tried and failed, and the humans were growing stronger. Soon, it would be too late to have any hope of containing their destructiveness. 

Then, a young wolf and a human girl became friends, and began to find a way for wolf and humankind to live together peacefully. Not everyone, however, would be happy about their alliance.

The Huntsman's Vow
DavRian, the most skilled hunter of Rian village, had been waiting for almost an hour behind a sturdy oak where the path from the river met the trail through the pine wood. 

Every third day, his cousin had told him, the girl TaLi took food to her grandmother who lived in the woods far from her village. Twice before, DavRian had stood behind the oak, trying to find the will to speak to her. Both times, shyness had closed his throat and the girl had passed by. 

This time, he was determined to talk to her. He heard her swift, sure footsteps and, as she rounded a bend in the path, gathered his courage. If he could stand steady before rampaging elk during a hunt, he could certainly talk to one girl. Then, just before she reached him, she darted a look over her shoulder and stepped off the path. DavRian frowned at her recklessness; the woods were never safe, but the beasts who roamed them were less likely to attack a person in the open. It was foolish of TaLi to stray from the path. But the girl was young, he thought, and he could teach her prudence. 

She slipped into a clearing among the pines, climbed up on a large log, and set down her basket of food. Then she raised her face to the afternoon sun, and her long, dark hair fell down her back. When she closed her eyes and smiled, DavRian forgave her for her foolishness in leaving the path. He had liked her boldness when he'd first met her, and he liked it now. He wouldn't scold her, he thought, but would sit next to her in the warmth of the afternoon. 

The girl opened her eyes and hummed softly to herself, and nervousness again closed DavRian's throat. What if she laughed at him like the girls in his own village did? It had been two years since he and TaLi had lain side by side, watching the falling stars. He tried to take a step toward her, but his feet stuck to the dry ground as if it were mud. TaLi seemed so content, he thought, that he should leave her alone and come again some other time. He took a step back and his feet let him do it, then another, and he started to turn away from the girl. 

That was when he saw the wolf. It was in the woods directly opposite TaLi, just beyond the clearing, hunting her as if she were a deer. She sat on her log, oblivious to the approaching threat. The wolf, light grey with a white patch on its chest, was not large for its kind, but it was certainly big enough to take TaLi's slender neck in its jaws. 

DavRian opened his mouth to yell a warning, and then closed it. If he shouted, the wolf would almost certainly run away, and TaLi would not truly understand the danger she'd been in. If he let the wolf get close to her and then killed it, she would know that he had saved her. He never missed any beast his spear sought, and knew he could kill the wolf before it reached the girl. Resolve swept away his uncertainty. He could almost see the admiration that would shine in TaLi's eyes when she saw the wolf dead at her feet. She would be grateful to him, and would let him woo her. He would bring her back home as his mate, and his father would no longer think him too weak to lead Rian village.