21

Whether the Ghostbarrows were waiting for them or not, they’d have to wait a bit longer; the Weald was a huge place, full of nooks and crannies and twisting paths. Fawkes and Hunter marched hard for hours, stopping only for a few minutes at a time to catch their breath. When Fawkes was finally satisfied enough to stop and set up camp for the day, it was already afternoon and Hunter thoroughly exhausted.

“I have to get back to my world,” he told her as he was helping her build a campfire. “At least for a while. Grab a bite, stretch a bit, hydrate.”

“Could you stay for a while longer?” Fawkes asked, catching him by surprise. “Much as I’m used to it, I hate eating alone. Let’s sit by the fire, roast some sausages. Then you can go, spend the night over by your side of the things. We won’t be getting back on the road before dawn, anyway.”

“Uh… sure, yeah.”

So they sat around the fire, roasted sausages, drank some kind of strong, stiff drink from a flask Fawkes produced from one of her countless pouches, and chatted about silly, everyday things. It was a nice change of pace. Hunter didn’t regret sticking around. So far, Fawkes had been more or less the image of dryness and stoicism. It was interesting to see ger wind down and reveal some of her different, softer sides–plus, the sausages were delicious.

So delicious, in fact, that they attracted some unwanted attention.

Biggs and Wedge were the first to spot the beast. “Big fur!” Hunter felt them chatter feverishly through their mental connection, raising hell in his head. “Big eyes, big mouth, big teeth! Hungry, hungry!”

“What the…?”

Special Encounter> You’ve stumbled across an unusual place or occurrence. Your Serendipity quality is now 0.

The next to notice that they had company was, quite predictably, Fawkes. Before Hunter even had time to process what was happening, she was already on her feet and with her blade in hand–her blade which, again, she had drawn seemingly out of nowhere.

“Look alive, lad!”

Hunter was the last to spot the beast. Hiding in the tall brush and inching closer, the massive, russet-furred wolf was easily as big and as heavy as a full-grown man. It sniffed the air, drooling through its huge, scary-looking teeth. It stared straight at Hunter with big, dark eyes burning with intelligence and curiosity and hunger.

Hunter, being Hunter, did the first thing that came to mind.

He offered the wolf a sausage.

***

“You must be out of your mind,” Fawkes said as Hunter fed the big rust-colored animal yet another sausage–the last one. “Clearly, definitely, absolutely out of your mind.”

The wolf gulped down the roast sausages with gusto, its bushy tail wagging like crazy. It paid no attention to the still very much armed and alert woman. It only had eyes for Hunter–or, more accurately, the sausages.

This thing wasn’t a wolf, Hunter caught himself thinking. It couldn’t be. A hungry, two-hundred-pound pupper that reached up to his waist at shoulder height, that’s what it was.

“How did you know it would be friendly?” Fawkes asked, still equal parts suspicious and flabbergasted.

“I didn’t. It was just a hunch.”

Well, that wasn’t exactly true.

It was certainly not just a hunch–Hunter didn’t feel suicidal enough to casually offer treats to hungry wild animals and expect them to eat from his hand. It was metagaming, an educated guess.

This was a special encounter, as the well-timed notification had informed him. It consumed one point of his Serendipity quality, and last time he’d checked, serendipity was just a fancy word for unexpected good luck. It was only logical that this wouldn’t be a hostile situation–wasn’t it? For the umpteenth time, Hunter wondered whether this was something that happened to everyone from time to time, or it was another perk of being a transient.

Seeing how suspiciously Fawkes eyed the animal, still on edge and ready to pounce, he gravitated towards the latter.

“Count your lucky stars it didn’t go straight for your throat”, she said. “It may not look like it, but this is a goddamn dire wolf. I didn’t even know they lived in these parts.”

“Dire wolf?”

She nodded.

“Epicyon, as the loremasters call it. Like a wolf, but much bigger, much smarter, and much deadlier. This one, though, not so much. Must have been the runt of the litter.”

“The runt of the litter?” Hunter gaped, slightly startling the wolf, who proceeded to give him the stinkeye and attack another sausage. “How big is the rest of the litter, then?”

“Dire wolfs can grow to be the size of a horse,” said Fawkes. “A big horse. This one’s probably been kicked out of the pack for being too scrawny, or for having too silly a color, then wandered all the way out here on its own.”

“Can we keep him?” he joked. “Please, please, pretty please?”

Fawkes shook her head in disbelief.

“What, as a pet? Are you out of your mind, lad? We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t try to eat us, now that you’ve fed them all the sausages. My sausages.”

Indeed, the dire wolf was far less trusting of Hunter now that he wasn’t waving food at it. Slowly but surely, it started to back away from their campfire.

“That’s right, you big oaf, shoo!” Fawkes shouted, waving her blade at it. “Shoo before I make you into a new winter coat!”

“I don’t think russet’s your color,” Hunter made a half-hearted attempt to quip. “You look better in black. It brings out the warmth in your eyes.”

“Didn’t you have urgent business to attend on your world?” Fawkes grunted without taking her eyes off the retreating wolf, and she was right. At some point, he did have to hit the bathroom–and eat, and drink some water, and sleep, too.

With a final sniff the wolf turned tail and disappeared in the bushes. To his surprise, Hunter felt quite a bit disappointed. He’d always wanted a dog.

“Promise me you’ll be nice to it if it comes back, yes?”

“If it gets anywhere near the rest of my food,” Fawkes said, and her eyes shone with that very ice-cold look Hunter had just teased her about, “the only thing it’s getting it’s a mouthful of steel. That’s what I promise you.”

Hunter didn’t find that hard to believe. Not hard at all.