Gerd walked carefully on the snow, trying his best not to trip over some root buried in the snow. In his hand, a stick he had grabbed from the ground to help himself traverse the snow, falling in a place like that could mean bad news. He followed the marked trees of the forest, the ones he had marked during summer.
He approached the first of his traps, the one where he had found a red ferret the previous day, the one he had lost when he rescued the little Bal from the snow, at least he had been able to set the trap the previous day
Gerd grabbed onto the string that tied the trap to the tree an pulled, revealing yet another prey had been trapped and covered in the snow after the overnight blizzard, instinctively, the old blacksmith took a hold of the hunting knife tied to his waist, the blade shone as the sun met its silvery surface he felt it move when he pulled the rope, revealing the creature, it was a small mammal, white fur and long tail, a fox, red eyes a fire fox. Gerd let his arm fall down on the creature, blood splattered on the snow and the blacksmith deposited the vermin on the sledge
Then it was walking again, following the marked trees, pulling the sledge, tapping the ground with the stick he had picked up. The next of his traps had been set under a broken down trunk, he had hoped some small prey would take the bait, sadly, when he pulled the rope he only found the leftover foot of something, Gerd sighed as he prepped the trap and left it on the same place, looking for the rests of the animal he had trapped, maybe there was still some pelt to salvage from the corpse. Sadly he had to move to the next of his traps without pelt nor food, and the fox would only be able to feed him and the child for a day, two at most, that left his current food supplies to… two weeks and two days. He had had a bit over a month worth of food, but that had been cut off to half when the child had appeared during the blizzard. And he was not letting the kid go through famine if he could help it.
His boots sank into the fresh snow with a quiet crunch. The surface was untouched, pristine — the kind of stillness that swallows sound. Without the marked bark on the trees, finding the path again would've been impossible.
The trap he was headed for lay in a clearing below, accessible enough if you were nimble, but hardly easy with a sledge in tow. Between his path and the trap was a steep, treacherous slope. Luckily, after three winters and summers of checking this trap three or four times a week, Gerd could descend it with practiced ease. He knew just where to plant his feet, when to let gravity help, and how to use the rope he kept staked at the top to haul up anything too heavy to carry.
Today, though, the clearing looked wrong. The snow wasn't untouched, far from it.
Tracks.
Dozens of them.
Pawprints, deep and scattered, circled the area in wide loops and erratic spirals, trampling the white into a gray slush. Some led away, others doubled back. Here and there, the snow was singed, melted unevenly, revealing dark soil underneath. Trees at the clearing's edge bore scorched bark, and the scent — a metallic heat, like smoldering iron — hung in the air.
In the center of it all, where the ground was bare and steaming, lay the wolf.
It was massive, easily the size of a yearling moose, its obsidian fur slick with melted frost. Red eyes glared up at him, bright but fading, chest rising in slow, uneven rhythm. Its breath came in short, harsh bursts — and with each exhale, a pulse of warmth radiated outward, keeping the ground around it snowless in a perfect circle three meters wide.
Trapped. Weak. Alone.
Gerd's brow furrowed as the pieces clicked into place. This wasn't just a lucky catch. No lone obsidian wolf would have been caught so easily.
And the tracks — so many of them, so recently pressed.
They had been here. Watching. Trying, perhaps, to free their kin. Or waiting for the trapper who had dared to take one of their own.
Gerd's hand instinctively tightened on the handle of the sword he had tied to his belt, he lowered his body and slowly unsheathed it with a constant sheen that accompanied the action. His breath became a cloud of white in front of him as he let out a sigh and widened his field of vision, this was going to be such a good day if he made it out of the clearing alive.
Then he felt it, a muzzled tremor felt on his feet, something had stepped into the clearing, an obsidian wolf, another one, smaller than the one trapped, but far from happy. The old blacksmith faced the wolf with his sword in his right hand, his left hand looking deep into his pocket for the familiar feeling of metal against his leather gloves
"I'm sorry buddy but if you think you are taking care of the old Gerd Ironweave like this you are going to need something far more than a pup and his weak daddy" Said the man, the tip of his sword pointed towards the newly arrived wolf, but luck, as he had said previously, was a cruel mistress who liked to play around. And that day she was not playing around Gerd, for he felt six more signals approach the clearing with bad intentions, this was not a pup and his daddy, this was half a hunting party
"I really didn't want to do this" said the man "You see, I have a child to come back to myself, so if we could just talk about-" The man's phrase was cut short as the first wolf jumped forward, Gerd sighed, his body swiftly avoiding the wolf's charge by stepping to his left. The obsidian wolf could only feel the steel of the sword punch through its hide and meat, avoiding his ribs and into its heart. It was dead before it touched the ground.
Gerd smiled under his thick beard and revealed five long nails taken from his pocket.
The wolf pack charged towards him as one from every direction, but he had just created his escape route. The blacksmith dashed towards the place in the formation the first attacker had occupied, he turned back, to see the wolfs following his movements, some of them falling behind as they had changed too sharply their trajectory, one of them even crashing snout to snout against one of its brethren, Gerd was getting far too old for situations like this, or at least that's what he thought, he was 56 already, surely other younger folk could start thinking about getting themselves in this kind of ordeal
Still, following his old instincts was something he was quite proficient on doing, as he ran, the ground seemed to help him doing so, under the snow slopes of earth grew, propelling the man forward, still the wolves were able to follow him, if he wanted to go back to the cabin safely, he'd have to take care of them all. At least they'd make great food and money from their meat and hides
He decided that he was not going to be chased forever, no, the hunters were the hunted when the Ironweave was in the mix. With that thought, the old man started going up, not up some trees to try and hide from the wolves, but up from the slope he had descended carefully minutes ago and towards where he had left his sledge.
The wolves were hot on his heels, turning so sharply had costed him some of the distance he had managed to make between him and the wolves, the ground helping him move among the trees easily, then he met the trail left by his ledge, the man smiled again, there were five wolves following him, weren't? Well, not for long. The man took the speed he had been created and turned to face the wolves, sliding backwards with his hands on the ground, he slid almost ten meters, gliding over the snow and the earth until he stopped just before his heels met the sledge
Then the black furred predators felt as the ground under them disappeared. Where Gerd had slid now a deep trench stood, as if the earth itself had opened up to swallow them, the old man stood up, his right hand on his hand "I am far too old to do something like this, don't you think so guys?" The blacksmith didn't expect the obsidian wolves who tried to climb up the irregular wall to answer his question, the man sighed as he snapped his left wrist, each one of the five nails meeting the forehead of a different wolf, their tips meeting their brains cleanly, sending them to their eternal rest. Gerd sent mana again to the ground, the earth meeting his command and raising again, the pile of five big corpses now laying next to him and his sledge, This was going to take him more than one trip back to the cabin or an overuse of his mana
Well, he had already used a bit and it had been some months since he had had an opportunity to use it, so go big or go home, and he was going to go home with the big one. Gerd started the way back to the clearing, where he found everything just like he had left it. Pulling his sword from the corpse of the second obsidian wolf, the old man exchanged gazes with the big one, the one that had fell for his traps. It surrendered and left the blacksmith end his suffering with one swift thrust to its neck
Carrying not one adult obsidiant wolf, but two, with one of them being on the verge of its prime was going to be quite a difficult job to do with only a rope, luckily for himself, Gerd had decided to splurge that day, and mana was something he was not short on. And with earth itself helping him that proved to be one of the easiest jobs he could have taken.
It took the old man a total of six hours to get back to the cabin since his battle with the wolves, the sledge had not been left behind, instead, it was followed by a pile of dead corpses that seemed to be on their own sledge, as they slid over the snow and the ground without problem, Gerd smiled as he entered the clearing he himself had created by cutting down dozens of trees to make his cabin, well, he'd need to clean the corpses before going back inside the cabin, and scaring the little Bal was the last thing he wanted to do. With that thought, the man took his knife from his belt and turned towards the corpses, it was time for some butchering