In a day or so. I want to be able to wield a sword the next time.
I don’t blame you. Cow’s teeth are not much of a weapon. But don’t wait too long.
Why is that?
Because I saw some today. Senseless ones. They had found a winter-killed buck on a stream bank and were eating it. Fouled, stinking meat, and they were eating it. But it won’t hold them for long. Tomorrow, they’ll be coming closer.
Then we hunt tomorrow. Show me where you saw them. I closed my eyes, and recognized the bit of creek bank that he recalled for me. l did not know you ranged that far! Did you go all that way today, with an injured shoulder?
It was not so far. I sensed a bit of bravado in that answer. And I knew we would be seeking them. I can travel much faster alone. Easier for me to find them out alone, and then take you to them for the hunting.
It is scarcely hunting, Nighteyes.
No. But it is a thing we do for our pack.
I sat with him for a while in companionable silence, watching him gnaw on the bones I had brought him. He had grown well this winter. Given a good diet and freed from the confines of a cage, he had put on weight and muscle. Snow might fall on his coat, but the thicker black guard hairs interspersed throughout his gray coat shed the snowflakes and kept any moisture from reaching his skin. He smelled healthy, too, not the rank dogginess of an overfed canine kept inside and unexercised, but a wild, clean scent. You saved my life, yesterday.
You saved me from a death in a cage.
I think that I had been alone so long, I had forgotten what it meant to have a friend.