Running Red

Chapter 17 - I Bind You

And so an even stranger thing happened between the wolf called Syntrian and the man called Hlagol. They became friends.

And then they became legendary. Their story filled the ears of people sea to sea, while families sat at their dinner tables and bards spun their magic music and children scared one another from going into the woods. Stories like The Capture of the Northern Peninsula, Hlagol’s Discovery of the Lost Box, The River People’s Wolf, and, of course, the tale of Syntrian and the Running Girl became as used and worn as old shoes. Tales of Hlagol’s lost love, Syntrian’s children, and king’s betrayed by the lot of them were as common as dirt. The names Hlagol Halftongue and Syntrian Quicktheif because synonymous with words like murder, glory, disloyalty, and bravery. Indeed, these two unlikely friends became almost god-like in their fame.

So it happened one day that their story ended, and, in ending, became a new story; and all of the old stories were forgotten.

Hlagol and Syntrian were travelling by the Trail of the Broken Bear and, as was common for them in those days, having been hired to track a well-known criminal. As fate would have it, the pair had struck a vein of bad luck during their pursuit and had not eaten in many days. Hlagol had tried to eat the wild grasses that grew across the Byre Plains; but most had proven tough and dry, and Syntrian had refused to even try them saying, “The day I eat grass is the day I become a horse.”

 The sun beat on them, the wind rushed through the grass, and the air was dry. It was hot and miserable.

And it happened that as they were walking, the two friends came across a dead body which had been lying in the trail. The body belonged to that of a young man, though it was not the same man as the criminal who Hlagol and Syntrian been pursuing. He was just a lonely traveler who had passed alone on the road. What he died of, none were ever able to say for certain, though it was fair to guess that his death was a result of lack of water and nutrition. And so, upon seeing the body, the wolf had a very wolf-like idea.

“Come, Hlagol,” Syntrian said, a mad shine in his eye. “It is the logical thing to do.”

“I cannot!” Hlagol rasped through cracked lips. “I-I am not able!”

“You are able! Stranger things you have done before this!” Syntrian argued, circling around the dead man, sniffing his clothing, his packs, his walking stick. “Do not be ludicrous. He has not been dead for long.”

“Syntrian. . .it is. . .it is madness!” Hlagol cried.

“Madness preludes survival. So it has always been.”

And with those words, Syntrian opened his jaws and greedily began devouring the dead man. Eventually, inevitably, Hlagol joined him and together they became like animals; and it was bloody and horrible, and in the end, the two took up the man’s belongings and salvaged what they could and left.

That night the moon drifted into the sky above the grassy plain and turned the golden stalks grey, and the blood on the mouths of the man and wolf gleamed.

The next day, making much haste after their renewal of strength, Hlagol and Syntrian continued their pursuit of the criminal and left the Byre Plains, finding their way into a forest.

Misfortune, curse, or angry gods that befell them, so it was that a storm came while they were in the forest; and it was as if the clouds and wind were waging war on the trees and the earth, and Hlagol and Syntrian lost the only lead left to them.

And so they wandered the forest, knowing only that they walked in the direction of the Sliding Mountains.

Who knows what led them to the two caves? Fate? Luck? Magic perhaps? Whatever the cause, Hlagol and Syntrian found themselves in the very place where first they met.