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The North Ride, 1372 DR. 20th day of The Fading.

The ruins of the wagon train hadn't changed. The smell of death was heavy in the air, and he wrinkled his nose. Aiden looked over at Scruff, who was standing on the side of the road. Scruff turned and looked down the road where Aiden had been looking, then looked up at Aiden and tilted his head. A shadow slowly moved over them and Aiden looked up. Storm clouds were moving across the horizon headed south in there direction. Chances were pretty good that they'd get wet.

Aiden sighed and loosened the belt that he had taken from the dead man. Thankfully the belt had enough slack at the end that he was able to use it as a bandoleer of sorts. It would definitely need some adjustment to get the sword off his back more easily. He didn't have time though.

It was getting late and the girl wouldn't be safe by herself on the road. Between orcs, hobgoblins, human bandits, and the various other monsters and animals that lived in Cormanthor wood and the Thunder Peaks, she wouldn't last the night.

From what the guards had said last night, he was no more than a day's travel from the pass itself, then two more days to Tilverton where he was sure they'd find help. The girl would need someone to escort her.

Aiden was about to take off down the road when he saw the other guard whose leg he had bandaged. He wasn't sure if the guard would be alright by himself, and walked around the wagon to where he had left the man sitting.

The guard was standing, but hobbling with one leg. The guard looked up nervously as Aiden came around the side of the wagon. Aiden cleared his throat and tried to ask the man if he was okay, but the first word out of his mouth sounded like a growl. He stopped and coughed as the man began to lean away nervously. This could be awkward, he thought. He stopped and thought for a moment, then crouched down. He was going to run his fingers through the dirt when he remembered his claws. Convenient, he thought.

He wrote "You okay? Need find girl." in the dirt. It didn't take long, and he stood up and then beckoned the guard with a wave of his hand. The guard hobbled over to see what Aiden had scratched in the dirt.

The guard tilted his head and then spoke. "Yeah, I'm okay. What girl....Oh, you must mean the merchant's daughter, Silvia. I'm surprised she's still alive. You'll not....You won't hurt her, will you? What in the nine hells are you anyway? A rakshasa?" The guard looked down at Aiden, who was still crouching, straining the seams of his already badly torn pants.

Aiden continued scratching in the dirt: "No hurt. Take to Tilverton. I'm Aiden." When he finished, the guard sighed. "Oh...the kid we took on at Shadowdale. Never suspected you'd be...well...whatever it is you are. I need to get to Tilverton too. I don't want to walk on this bum leg though. Have the girl send a few people out here for cleanup when she gets to town, or tell any caravans you meet heading this direction. Ugh, what a mess. I'll stay here. I'll be fine for at least a tenday. We've got rations and nearly a ton of grain in the wagons. There are caravans that come up and down this road every week at least. I'll just sit out of sight on the side of the road till help comes. The bodies will stink to high heaven by the time they get out here though." The guard looked up at the grey sky and added, "The rain won't hurt me, neither."

Aiden looked up at the man and nodded, then stood up again. He towered over the guard. It was no wonder that his clothing and armor had broken when he transformed. He was surprised that his pants had stayed on at all. That made him remember his boots. He walked over to the side of the rearmost caravan and picked his boots up out of the dust. He'd need them in the mountains, for sure, if he turned human again. He picked his pack and bedroll up from out of the back of the wagon where he had stored them. The straps were far too tight, so he simply put his arm through one of the straps, leaving it hanging over one shoulder. Then he began jogging down the road headed south toward the pass.

§

Scruff walked next to him, easily keeping up. It seemed that his canine companion had fared nearly as well as he had, or at least showed no sign of injury despite the patches of blood staining the wolfdog's fur, as it trotted alongside. The bouncing of the bastard sword sword and the half-secured pack was annoying, but there wasn't much he could do about it. Thankfully, he was fairly sure that he would be able to catch up with the girl, Silvia. It was rapidly approaching sundown, and he was betting that she probably wouldn't run very long along the road before she went into the forest to hide. There would probably be a camp site somewhere nearby as well. As the road began to get steeper heading up into the mountains, he found himself beginning to pant with effort, his tongue hanging out. The wind on his tongue felt good.

A coppery taste filled his mouth, and he jerked his arm away from his mouth, realizing that as he'd been thinking, he had been licking the fur on his hands that were stained with the guard's blood as he walked along. His gagged with disgust and tried to spit the taste out, but all he could manage was a hacking cough. He tried to put the thought out of his head and focused on the task at hand. What disturbed him most was how good it tasted.

Trying to find a girl trying to hide in the forest wasn't that difficult, but he had no idea how far she had gone along the road, which was nigh impossible to track someone on. As he was wondering how he would find her, he caught a faint scent of light jasmine perfume. Some nagging thought in the back of his mine told him that he'd smelled it before at the wagon camps. It was probably Silvia. Perfect, he thought. Hopefully he'd find her before the rain began and washed the scent away.

He followed the scent of jasmine along the road for nearly a half mile, going slowly so as not to miss it if she went into the forest. Twice he'd had to stop and double back, getting down on his hands and knees in the dirt of the road to pick up the faint scent again. The third time he lost it, it was because she had definitely gone off the road. When he realized that he lost the scent and turned around, seeing that Scruff had stopped and was standing at the edge of the road. Scruff looked at him, then looked into the underbrush. Aiden walked over and patted scruff on the head.

He followed her scent into the underbrush, almost subconsciously moving as quietly as possible. Now off the road, he was easily spotting the signs of her passage with crushed plants and torn leaves. He even found a strand her hair hanging from a twig at head height. She was no more than fifty feet into the forest when he found her, huddled under a fir tree. The five or so feet at the base of the tree were bare from lack of sunlight, and sparse up to about ten feet. It looked like a convenient place to hole up in case of rain.

He stopped, wondering if it would be better to go back to the road and try to turn back to human. He didn't want to frighten her any more than she already was. As he started to turn back around, he brushed against a dry leaf in the underbrush, the faint crackle causing the girl to immediately turn in his direction. She saw him and began to scream again, and began scrambling to get further into the forest.

Aiden sighed, he didn't want to go chasing this girl through the forest, and the screams would alert other forest denizens. Gods only knew what else was lurking in the area.

He bounded across the few remaining feet just as the girl and caught her around the stomach with his left arm, then immediately put a paw over her mouth, cupping her chin to prevent her from biting him. She was surprisingly small in his arms. She struggled against him, trying to get free, making noises that probably would have been screams if she had been able to talk. The acrid, bitter scent of her fear filled his nose, and his heart began to pound as she struggled against him.

It was no trouble at all holding on to her, being so much bigger than she was. He didn't even realize at first that he had lifted her clear off the ground without realizing it. He didn't even try to move, just holding her still. After what felt like minutes of struggle, she stopped, probably realizing that it was pointless, and possibly wondering why he hadn't done anything else. He felt slightly shaky as his pulse begin to slow. He'd been hungry before, but now he was starving.

She smelled so good, practically dripping with the sharp tang of raw terror. He suddenly suddenly had the urge to sink his jaws into the soft, white, vulnerable skin of her neck and rip out her throat, and find out if she tasted as good as she smelled. The strength of the vision shocked him. Bile rose in his throat, as he tried not to puke. He nearly let her go, so appalled at the thought.

Silvia whimpered faintly as he took his paw off her mouth. He wrapped right his paw around her arm and then loosened his grip around her stomach. letting her step back a bit. She turned around to look up at him, and he held up his left index finger to his mouth in the nearly universal shushing motion, then looked around the forest before looking back at her. Now that he'd gotten a good look, he realized that she was probably close to his own age, maybe a year or two younger. She was actually quite pretty. Fair skinned, long dark hair, dark eyes. She was also very small, only a head above his waist, and quite thin as well.

It looked like she got the idea and nodded her head up and down, clearly still frightened. With that, he let go of her other arm and she stepped back several feet before bumping into a tree. Silvia squeaked and spun around, then turned back when she realized what she had bumped in to.

His mother Leda had definitely been right in her recommendation. It was probably better to not let anyone know that he had become a were-animal, since all of them reacted with almost instinctive fear, though that may have just been his size. He sighed again and crouched down, pants straining at the seams, trying to make himself look smaller in the hopes it would make her less afraid of him.

It worked, somewhat. Silvia stopped pressing herself against the tree, and the look of fear turned somewhat into wary curiosity. Aiden brushed a hand down across the forest floor, hoping that he would find flat dirt in which to write a message in, but there were too many layers of loam. He looked around and found a nearby tree with relatively smooth bark, and walked over to it.

He bent down and, using a claw, scratched a message into the bark of the tree at about her head height. He kept his message short, as the tree wasn't all that big: "I'm Aiden. Take you to Tilverton." He heard scuffling in the loam behind him and glanced around. Silvia had apparently walked over to him, wondering what he was doing. He was kind of impressed at how quickly she had overcome her fear of him. The guard he'd bandaged had been afraid of him despite the fact that he had been wrapping the man's leg at the time.

Silvia looked at the message he had scratched into the bark and then looked at him with a somewhat dubious expression on her face. She started a bit when Scruff walked out of the forest, backing up a bit. She relaxed again when the wolfdog stopped and sat down next to Aiden.

Silvia walked up to the tree and stared hard at what he'd scratched, at which point he realized that it was probably very hard for her to see, between the clouds gathering overhead, the late evening, and the dense tree cover. He hadn't realized just how much better he had been able to see as an animal than as a human, though as he realized why she was having trouble seeing, he was quite glad that he could. His stomach was beginning to clench, and he knew he needed to go hunting.

§

Aiden knelt down while he waited for Silvia to finish reading the message he'd scratched into the wood and began petting scruff, gently running his claws through the wolf-dog's fur. Scruff seemed to enjoy it, wagging his tail and panting.

Silvia turned back to him, and paused, seeing the wolf-dog wagging it's tail in the darkness. Scruff jumped up onto Aiden's leg and licked him the face. Aiden pulled back and coughed, not having yet figured out how to spit with a muzzle. He wiped his mouth on what was left of his sleeve. Silvia giggled a bit at that, then turned serious.

"Can you understand me?"

Aiden nodded, continuing to pet Scruff, while making sure to keep his head out of reach of the wolfdog's long tongue.

"Can you talk?"

Aiden rolled his eyes at that, he'd have thought she'd figured that out by now. He shook his head slowly from side to side anyway.

"Aiden. There was a traveler with us...Is that you?"

Aiden nodded yet again.

"We need to get back to the caravan. Papa will need my help."

Aiden paused for a moment. Silvia must not have seen the merchant when she fled the caravan. He hated being the bearer of bad news. He'd had enough of bad news to last a lifetime. He sighed, and shook his head, then pointed back at the tree.

"No? What do you mean, no? Papa will need my help after that attack. There's bound to be people injured!"

Aiden stood up and walked back over to the tree. He thought for a moment about how to get the message to her in as few words as possible, then began scratching into the tree again. She walked over to the tree as he was scratching words into it, trying to see what he was writing.

"Only one left," he carefully scratched. "Guard."

When Silvia figured out what he had said, she covered her mouth with her hands. "But Papa..."

He looked up at her and slowly shook his head again. She stared straight ahead, and he knew she must have been thinking of what she saw as she ran from the caravan: Only a handful of guards still alive, fighting for their lives against overwhelming odds.

Her legs gave way and she fell to her knees in the soft loam of the forest floor. He reached out to keep her from falling forward, and she sat back on her feet, staring at him. Then she began to cry, a high keening noise that rent his heart. He knew exactly what that felt like. He reached out and pulled her toward him, wrapping his arms around her as tears made their way down her cheeks. He gently patted her back, trying to comfort her as best he could, lost as she was in a world of grief.

As he held her, rain began to fall about them, making soft pattering noises in the canopy above them. Eventually droplets began to make their way through the canopy, landing with soft splats on the fur atop his head. He did his best to ignore it and simply held the girl, hoping she would cry herself out before they got too wet. Eventually her sobbing stopped, and she pushed away from him. He let her go and looked down at her. It was full dark now, and even he could barely make out her face in the darkness. The rain had turned her hair slick, but she was still mostly dry. He put his hands around her waist and lifted her, standing her up. She didn't protest, and he took one hand and pushed her toward the pine tree that she had taken shelter under initially. It would serve well enough to keep them both dry for the night.

Aiden took off his pack and pulled the woolen bedroll out of it's thin leather cover and set the pack and leather slip down, then unrolled the bedroll for her. Silvia needed sleep for now. Aiden, on the other hand, was ravenously hungry. Once he had the bedroll laid, he simply picked her up by the waist and moved her over. She squeaked a bit when he picked her up, but quickly realized that he'd set her on something soft. She felt around for the edges of it. Meanwhile, he pulled a blanket out from his pack and draped it around her shoulders. She probably couldn't see anything in this darkness. She simply huddled there.

He beckoned at Scruff, hoping the dog would be able to see him in the darkness. Apparently the wolfdog could see well enough, and he patted the bedroll next to the girl. Scruff whined and sat down next to her. Aiden nodded at Scruff, and hoped the wolf-dog would stay put. Silvia needed someone else there to keep her company.

§

By the time Aiden made it back to the tiny glade it was pouring rain. Water was dropping down his muzzle, and his shirt and pants were wet. The fur on the top of his head was thoroughly soaked at this point and his ears were getting cold. Feeling drops of water drip off the whiskers of his muzzle was a decidedly strange experience, causing his face to twitch any time a drop fell. Thankfully, his fur seemed to be keeping him more than warm enough.

Aiden had been lucky to spot game of any kind in this rain, much less a boar rooting around in the dirt. At least it hadn't been a sounder. The animal was huge, for a pig, probably weighing nearly seven stone before he'd butchered it. The smell of blood and raw meat after he'd skinned and gutted the beast was making him salivate. It was all he could do to keep from eating it raw.

Silvia didn't stir at all as he walked into the glade, and he looked over to her. She was asleep with her head resting on Scruff's side. Good, Aiden thought. He threw the boar down, and began looking for dry wood, a difficult task while it was raining and nearly pitch black.

It took him nearly a candlemark to gather sufficient wood and stones for a decent sized fire, and another half mark to lash together a spit to roast the boar on and light the fire. Rain drops landing in the fire caused it to hiss and sizzle. The clenching in his stomach was becoming painful, and he was tempted to simply eat the pig raw. He'd been warned against it though, as eating raw meat could result in sickness and severe muscle pain ten-days or even months after, followed eventually by death.

As the meat cooked above the small fire, he occasionally reached in to hack off pieces with his knife that were well enough done. He had to keep feeding the fire for nearly a candlemark before the entire thing had cooked. He wasn't starving by any means, but he had a feeling he could have eaten another two pigs the same size before feeling full. He'd have to go hunting deer the next day, he thought to himself. He let the fire go out, saving two legs for breakfast, and lay down on the dry needles under the pine tree that Silvia was sleeping under. It was a long, cold night.