Treaty Bound

Chapter 7: Hide

   I watched in awe as Luke's body bent and twisted, transforming into a wolf in a matter of seconds. Before that day I had never seen a werewolf transformation and the speed and silence of it surprised me. My change the night before had felt like it had taken several agonizing minutes, but as I watched Luke I wondered if it had only been seconds. The sound of bones popping as they were pulled from their sockets had seemed deafening to me but Luke's change was eerily silent. The pain was still there though, agony shown on his face as he strained to hold in a scream until it was no longer the face of a man.

   It was his leather armor and pants that I found most fascinating. As he changed the brown of the leather blackened to match the color of the fur spreading across his body. By the time Luke stood on four legs, his armor and pants had blended away into the fur. In the light of the sun, I could just make out the slightly lighter shade of the fur that used to be the leathers.

   "Bear, NO! You know you are not allowed to kill them anymore. You will break the treaty if you do," Lily yelled through gritted teeth. The anxiety in her voice was enough to pull my attention from my contemplations of Luke's change. She was holding Bear around his thick neck as if she could stop him from running off like he seemingly wanted to. His lips were still pulled back from his fangs and his gray eyes stared off in the direction the smell was coming from. Still, he was quiet as she held him and somehow that seemed even more frightening to me.

   The smell of rotting meat and unwashed clothes was carried to me on a stiff breeze again and I remembered what Luke had said before his change. I was sure I had misheard him. It couldn't have been ogres I was smelling. There were no ogres in the forest or any of the territories the humans occupied. After the treaty was signed the fey had banished them, fearing they were too stupid (or aggressive, depending on who was telling the tale) to be trusted not to break the treaty.

   "Ogres?! There are no ogres in the Oak Forest," I said aloud only to be silenced by a chorus of growls.

   "You are going to get us all killed with your stupidity if you don't shut up," Lily growled quietly through her teeth before returning her attention to Bear. Putting her small hands on either side of his massive head she jerked his gaze from the forest to meet hers.

   "You are going to get me killed or worse if you don't stop being stupid yourself and hide with us," her voice turned from anger to pleading. As I watched him relax and finally turn away from whatever was approaching I found myself once again in a battle with the wolf.

   Lily, who was not afraid of werewolves the size of a bear, was scared now. I still didn't believe ogres were in the forest but that didn't matter to the wolf. All it knew was that Lily was afraid of something and he needed to protect her. A ball of rage and anger he fought me for control, pushing against my thoughts trying to take control over them. And he was winning.

   I fought against his rage with my own. It was my body and I was not going to just let this creature take it over again without a fight. I closed my eyes and blocked out everything around me, trying to focus on keeping control of my body. His primitive, single-minded will was much stronger than my own. I felt myself being pushed aside as I started to lose control of my body.

   I knew I was only seconds away from the change when I felt a stinging sensation on my cheek. Someone had slapped me hard across the face and was yelling at me but I was already so far gone that all I knew for sure was that it was a girl's voice. I figured it had to be Lily, since she was the only girl around and I fought to hear what she was saying, the wolf did not fight me in this.

   "Don't you dare change on me now, handsome," she was pleaded with me. My eyes were still closed but I felt her soft hands on my cheeks, just like she had done with Bear.

   "Open your eyes and look at me."

   It was not me that opened my eyes but still they opened to look down into Lily's pale blue gaze. Whatever she saw made those pretty eyes go wide with panic.

   "No, no, no you can't change now, not now." I could see her mind working behind those beautiful eyes as she looked into mine. At the same time, my mind stilled as the wolf and I stopped fighting and held our breath, unsure of what to do or say in that moment.

   Her eyes softened then as she grinned up at me and I knew she had come to some kind of decision. Lily's arms slipped around my neck as she took a step closer to me, never taking her eyes from mine. Her body pressed against me as she stretched up to softly touch her lips to mine.

   The wolf kissed her back hard as he wrapped my arms around her. I felt his anger and his need to protect her diminish as it was replaced with another primal need. While the wolf was distracted I took the opportunity to push hard for control of my body, forcing the wolf back into its cage.

   You have to understand that I had never even held a girl's hand before that day. Then suddenly my hands were on Lily's curves as hers ran through my hair. Her soft lips pressed hard against mine as she kissed me. My heart started racing and I hate to admit it but I panicked and froze like an idiot. I stood there like a statue until Lily pulled away to look up into my eyes once again.

   "Hello, brown eyes. Welcome back," was all she said before pulling away from me and running off as if nothing had just happened. As the warmth of her body left me to be replaced by the chilly fall air I deeply regretted my lack of experience with women.

   Luckily I didn't have much time to dwell on what had just happened before the squeak of a rusty cart axle broke the silence. At first, I was annoyed that anyone would let a cart get in such bad shape before I remembered who supposedly pulled the cart.

   When the sound of heavy footfalls, breaking branches and crunching leaves accompanied the squeak of the axle I quickly moved to follow Lily. The wolf's instinct to turn and fight, to protect what was his pressed on the back of my mind but I was in control now and I was not letting go. Still, if I had not been planning on staying close to her I would probably still have been standing in the open fighting with myself when whoever was pulling that wagon showed up.

   Lily gracefully jumped up onto one of the thick, low-hanging branches spreading out from an old gnarled oak then raced along it towards the moss-covered trunk. Not even bothering to slow her pace she seemed to run up the trunk a few steps before leaping into the air and over to a branch that had been above her head. A few leaps later she was high up and hidden among the remaining yellow leaves, waving for me to follow her. If that does not sound impressive enough on its own, remember she was wearing a tight-fitting dress as she did all that.

   Finally, something I was familiar with. I had been climbing trees and hiding from people my entire life. I smiled as I jumped up onto the same branch and ran along it, never having to put my arms out for balance. When I reached the moss-covered trunk I just leaped to the same branch Lily had jumped to without stopping to think about the fact that it was six feet in the air and another four feet to my right. I barely stopped myself from cheering when I landed firmly on that first branch. My heart was racing with excitement as I leaped again and again till I was high up in the tree on a branch just below the one Lily stood on. To my surprise Bear was already standing nimbly on a thick branch next to the one Lily occupied.

   The only way I can describe what it felt like in a way you could understand is it had to be how a child felt when they first learn to walk. What I had been doing all my life when I thought I had been running and jumping was more like stumbling and falling. Now, just like when that child took their first steps, it was as if I had just learned how to balance myself and walk for the first time.

   I had another thing in common with a child who had just learned to walk: I just wanted to go, go, go. I wanted to leap from branch to branch and never come down again. Why had we been walking all day when we could have been up here racing through the treetops. Completely forgetting myself in the excitement I was about to ask just that when a soft hand closed around my mouth.

   "Shhhh. They can't smell past their own stench but they aren't deaf," Lily whispered into my ear. She had leaned down from her branch above me and her lips were so close that I could feel her breath on my ear as she spoke. A very unfamiliar and distracting tingle ran down my spine with every word. I was about to mumble through her hand and ask if she could repeat herself when the first Ogre came into view through the branches. I found myself unable to speak at all.

   The ogre must have stood over nine feet tall and was more than half that in width. Its small, hairless head seemed to almost grow out of the mounds of muscle on its shoulders. Its arms and legs were so thick with muscle that I was unsure of how they could even bend. In contrast to the rest of its muscular body, its long torso was huge and round with fat that bounced with every step of its short legs. The only clothing covering the monster's gray leathery skin was a tattered loincloth that was mostly covered by the fat that hung down over its waist. Its overly long arms were stretching back behind its fat body as it ran, holding onto the shafts of a large metal wagon.

   I am not sure what horrified me more in that moment: the monstrous ogre or the condition of the wagon it pulled. At one point it had to have been a work of art with its all metal wheels, hubs, and axles supporting a black metal cage. Now it was so covered in rust and dents that I was sure it would fall apart at any moment. Especially at the surprising speed the ogre was managing to run on its short legs.

   Even in my current situation hiding up in a tree, surrounded by werewolves, with now four ogres passing right below me, I could not help but appreciate the craftsmanship. Of course, I knew all about prison carts. My father had been very thorough in my blacksmith training. They were originally made during the war to transport prisoners. The bars were made of cold-forged iron to keep fey from using their magic to escape. Later they were used by slavers to carry their "merchandise" from town to town. Since slavery had been outlawed in the Oak Wood territory long before I was even born I had never had the chance to see one in person before.

   I was so caught up in appreciating the cage on wheels that I almost didn't notice the old woman inside the cage. In my defense, she was hiding in a corner of the cage wearing a black homespun dress that blended into the metal. She was looking up into the trees and I got the impression that she was trying to savor the beauty of the sun and the trees in the short time she had left when our eyes met.

   "You can't save her" Lily whispered into my ear but this time her breath did not tingle.