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Dire Need

"Bloody Hell, Bloody Hell, Bloody Hell!" Kiran was not sure if he was cursing himself, the five wolves snarling at the base of the tree he perched in, or his bloody horse. "Kiran Armstrong you are ten kinds of an idiot and ten kinds of a fool." His voice seemed to cause even the leaves tremble. Fully deep with the red of autumn, more than a few leaves did take that moment to bid the tree adieu and float leisurely down to the ground. The dance of the leaves falling peacefully turned into a danse macabre as they touched earth and joined the wild frenzy of wolves too hungry to be afraid of Man. Twisting and snarling, the wolves leapt at the base of the tree trying to get some small bit of the prey that was just out of their reach. This dance had not started here, not at the base of the huge oak; it had started much deeper in the wood where smart men did not go now unless there was dire need.

Kiran, at the age of nineteen, was not quite yet what his grandsire would call a smart man. He was sure he would not soon hear the end of this once his grandsire was in the knowledge of it. "Bloody Hell" once again boomed across the darkening sky. Dire Need, Kiran believed it so when he had left Armstrong Keep with the first dull gray of dawn. The wolves had begun coming out of the wood earlier than ever this year. Some years in the full embrace of winter the wolves came and the men of Armstrong Keep had ever gone out with their hounds to drive them back. Those who would not take the subtle hint of a band of men and wolf hounds at their heels perished. Kiran, admittedly, was not part of a large hunting party with horns, spears, long bows, blades, drums and a pack of wolf hounds to accompany him. He had left this morn on his horse in the company of one wolf hound, his whip, longbow and his grandfathers Honor Blade. He winced as that thought surfaced.

How had he been such a fool as to take down Hasp Armstrong's Honor Blade from its place over the central hearth? That alone would cause a stir when the servants, what was left of them, started the First Fire that morn. Well, his longbow was somewhere back in the wood, his horse, Kiran half hoped and half dreaded, was on its way back to Armstrong Keep. He had but blade and whip, what little good they did him, treed this way as a bloody raccoon.. The hound lay dead, what remained of it, at the base of the tree. Pict had given Kiran those few last moments of its life holding off the

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