Chapter Four - Time And Time Again
It had been a week. It had been a week, and silence had fallen. Well, it was a comfortable silence, and Luise could get used to it. The complains had died out, some form of brain had woken up in Saito's head, and apparently everything was turning out to be on the path of a quick resolution.
While the monastery was still far, the weather was holding up pretty decently and the snow had begun to melt. The wolves hadn't stopped howling, but they hadn't been keen on attacking them at night with a fire ongoing.
"All right," Luise said. "We're making progress."
Saito blinked. "We're nearly there?"
Luise scoffed. "No, but there's a village in that direction. I can see the smoke of the chimneys. And where there's smoke, there's life. Let's go. Maybe we'll be able to sleep in a barn this night."
"After chopping wood and cleaning floors?" Saito hazarded.
"That too," Luise replied. "Or maybe we'll just sneak in through a window and leave at the crack of dawn."
Saito didn't bother pointing out how that was wrong. If he thought about it as a strange form of 'life experience', then he just had to think of it as a 'camping trip in the wilderness' with a 'survival expert' who happened to be a pint-sized girl.
As long as he thought that, he could avoid feeling miserable about the entire situation.
His feet didn't hurt any longer, but if that was due to the general lack of mercy in trudging along the dirt path that had desensitized them or the fact they were too far gone to save, he didn't know.
What he did know was that the howling of the wolves was becoming a bit too loud for his tastes.
"Whatever happens, don't run," Luise said suddenly, stopping her march to stand unnaturally still. Saito halted, mostly out of fear as he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise suddenly as a bead of sweat fell down his forehead, across his cheek, and down his chin. A soft rustling of melted snow being moved reached Saito's ears, and as he turned his neck around, his eyes winced from the sun's rays reverberating on the snow.
And then he saw them.
They weren't like the pictures he had seen in his school books, or the animal documentaries. These wolves were ugly, mangy, hungry and feral. Froth spewed from their mouths, and their eyes were bloodshot yellow things that seemed to harbor a malice of their own.
"In my bag," Luise said very calmly, "There is a dagger. It's right on the top. Get it."
Saito's hand moved slowly towards the bag, the growls of the wolves as they drew near utterly nerve-wracking. His hand fumbled through the top of the bag, and past it. His fingers gripped around a leathery handle, and as he pulled it out, the jagged looking blade came into view. It was a crude dagger, something that would have normally been used to skin pelts, or cut hardened leather straps.
"I can cast a spell," Luise said in a whisper, "But they might jump on me if I turn around quickly. Just push them away-"
A wolf growled, and snarled. The beast was slightly larger than the others, and advanced very slightly past the 'line' of the other beasts. It bent its hind legs, gripped the snow with its claws, and then howled so hard that it made Saito wince and close his eyes in fear.
"Don't close your-" Luise's scream was accompanied with the wolf's charge, the fangs gleaming in the sunlight as they aimed at the neck of the boy. Luise's spell exploded as was usual, but while the cloud of smoke that came from the impact was great, the end result was mere annoyance on the part of the larger wolf, who snarled as he easily stood back up on its paws.
"Keep your eyes open!" Luise snapped as she half-closed her eyes -going against her own words- due to the smoke cloud. The wolves snarled and charged, but as Luise waved her wand around, and a subsequent rocking of explosions echoed, more and more dust lifted up in the air obscuring the pack's view of the prey.
When silence fell, she took a deep lungful of dusty air and coughed. She couldn't see further than her arm's length. "Are you still alive, Saito?!" she asked.
"I-I think so?" Saito hazarded. "I'm not a ghost, right?"
"Are you hurt?" Luise asked next, trying to pinpoint where the boy was. The dust was starting to settle, and as she heard the negative reply from her familiar, she turned to face the direction his voice came from. Saito didn't look any worse for wear, appearing only slightly dirty with the soot from the explosion, but otherwise unscathed.
She had her wand on him, mostly without thinking, but as she saw him tense, she realized a very startling fact. He did have her dagger in his hand. If he suddenly decided to point it at her, her explosions wouldn't hold him off for much longer. Maybe he hadn't noticed the fact, or maybe he wouldn't use it, but she couldn't risk it.
"Good job," Luise said with a strained smile. "Now, let's get going-"
Saito moved towards her, and Luise could only scream wordlessly as she watched him run faster than she had ever seen a horse run towards her. The filthy liar! He had said he was tired and hurt, and here he was, running towards her to gut her, or maybe disarm her, or-or do horrible, unspeakable things to her!
Saito's left arm enveloped her before she could move her arm to cast yet one more 'failed' spell, and as his right one came down, she closed her eyes expecting to be stabbed literally in the back.
There was the sound of the dagger hitting flesh, and as she screamed, she felt Saito's fingers dig into the back of her head.
She remained like that for a few moments, hearing Saito's heavy breathing in her ears. It was only when she realized she wasn't hurting from the wound that she understood she hadn't been wounded at all.
She opened her eyes and carefully turned her head to stare at where Saito's arm finished, merging with what looked like the yellow crooked fangs of a wolf's open maws. Blood dripped down the spot where the fangs met Saito's clothes, ripped by the bite of the creature's death throes. The stupid boy had plunged his arm with the dagger straight into the wolf's open jaws -how stupid could he even be!?
"Missed one," Saito said with a dry and raspy chuckle.
Luise merely nodded, half dumbfounded. As Saito removed his arm from the wolf's dead body, the runes on his hand glinted softly. "Oh," Luise blinked. "Oh!" she clapped her hands. "So you weren't a liar," she mumbled. "It's your familiar's ability!" she added.
"Uh?"
"Yes!" she excitedly cheered. "So it wasn't useless!" she cackled. "I'm not useless!" she puffed her chest up in pride. "I, Luise, am not a worthless mage! Take that, Headmaster Franz! This pathetic failure of a mage has summoned a familiar capable of defending her! I'd make you eat your silly hat if only I wanted to waste time going back! Ah ah ah!" as Luise laughed, Saito didn't understand what was going on, or half of Luise's mad ramblings.
He did understand one thing though.
The world shouldn't be spinning around him like that.
And why was it getting progressively darker now?
