Beyond the city walls, the storm had died down. Silence echoed every strained and outlandish cry that made it across the distance. The only answer was the rustle and crack of pennants flying from tent poles and the creak of wagon wheels through snow. The defeat, while not yet fully enacted, was complete. Yet winter subdued the celebrations. Nothing waited beyond the frozen fields or the far flung woods but the wary witness of animals that flinched at the foreign sounds and moved most cautiously in the other direction. The scavengers would come, in time, but they were pleased enough with the offerings already left behind. The only signs of life were trumpet signals and the plumes of breath required to create the sound, and one slowly disappearing track of shadows pressed into the snow by heavy paws and the little round blood-berries that had fallen along the trail. 	

The track vanished under a hump of snow, puffs of steam now and again rising from the surface as the heat and breath of the occupant reached through the thin crust. Sir did not feel the pressing ice on every side of him beyond its weight and ability to limit his space. The only cold he could acknowledge was the gradually diminishing warmth of the little one whenever he tried to wake her. Pushing his nose under her chin to that delicate throat that was always so sensitive, that always elicited a response, he whined when there was none. The [i]wheeen[/i] of air gasping from his lungs gave her a momentary life as her body rose with his flank, but the pale silver of her life had already dimmed so far as to match the grey of her clothes, and he felt no answering breath across his muzzle. The little one was dead. 

His head resting on her legs covered them entirely, his forehead level with her chin. He should have been worried her hands would find his ears and start pulling; instead, he simply swallowed and licked his lips, hoping for the sharp pain of pinching little fingers. An easy target changed nothing. She was dead. 

She didn’t need any more protection, or the den he’d dug for her. Sir stayed inside it anyway. Waiting. His orders had been to protect them, the human pups, the master’s future. They were dead. They were all dead. And finding his master within the human storm he could faintly hear beyond the dampening effects of the snow around him would be hard. Yet… Waiting until everything was quiet might mean waiting too long. And being too late. For what, Sir could not understand. Too late meant missing the killing bite or catching a deterring kick in the face instead of the shoulder. Too late meant losing a meal to the smaller hounds. It had never before meant losing his master. Still, while instinct prodded him to leave the dead to their dying, another part urged him up so he would not be too late. 

It was, unfortunately, that very notion that kept him curled around the girl for longer than was absolutely necessary, twisting his head to lick at a cut on his shoulder and swiping his tongue over his forelegs where the drying blood was turning into an itch. The urgency of it left him restless, but afraid to answer the pressure before he understood what he was responding to. It was only when a particularly strident shout forced his head through the den’s snowy ceiling in surprise that he gave up waiting for his worry to clear into simple purpose.

Large ears twisted forward, ragged edges sweeping the air to pick up the echoes of that call; he already knew where it came from. So, shaking his head and ruff free of the ice, he stood in a cloud of snow and steam, splay-legged and panting. The air was cold beyond the shelter, nipping at his flank where the child’s blood matted his fur together. He could smell winter tightening the air as though grasping at everything it touched, waiting to preserve it, frozen and hard, until summer. His tongue flicked nervously over his nose as his hackles rose when a whiff of smoke reached him, acrid and stinging. His head swung towards the scent, towards the dark walls rising above the misted ground, defined by even darker shadows, ignoring all else. His home was burning. His pack was scattered. But the walls still stood. 

He went back to them. Gliding forward at an easy jaunt, angled away from the gates he’d rushed through earlier. They didn’t offer the fastest route to return to his master. Partially hidden in the smokescreen pushed his way by the wind, Sir’s russet fur faded into grey, his cream legs blended well enough with the churned up snow that it seemed he floated forward. The smoke itself offered little impediment to his eyes, save for the way it scraped at them, though the ash floating with it made it appear, to him, as a light snowfall would to anyone else. Grey dustings on a backdrop of misted snow and black air. They were inconsequential. 

Sir paused only once, a paw raised hesitantly, to glance over his shoulder towards the distant lump in the snow. He could barely make it out. Nothing stirred. So, he continued on, picking up his pace in an all-out run as he gave up the strongest thread holding him back. She was dead and gone. His master was waiting. 

The Anan moved in a line that eventually intersected with that of the city walls. And there he came to a standstill, gazing upward, momentarily paused by the heavy stone structure in front of him. The top of the wall was just within reach standing on his hind legs. He scrambled at the stone as though the smooth surface might give way and licked his whiskers clean of the ice crystals growing on them. When he’d judged the height accordingly as too high to be worth more effort at just that moment, he fell back to all fours and continued to follow its course. Patiently padding parallel to the solid sheet of charcoal grey as it gradually rose and then belled out into the circle of the keep. The sounds on the other side remained distant; the fighting was past this side of the city. A smart leader should have been waiting nearby, too important to join the fray. But Sir at least knew his master better. The man was smart in his world, capable of getting what he wanted when he wanted it. But he did not always leave the work to those meant for the task. 

The man should be near his home, still fighting. 

Or dead, but Sir did not think of that option. 

Every breath carried the stink of blood and bile, voided bowels and fear. He could hear it on the wind, and the howls of the new pack were too many to fight altogether. But Sir was not interested in fighting until he had found the one he was looking for.

With that determination pushing him forward, the Anan took a heavy, huffing breath of singed fur and cold stone and everything that came with dying, and picked up his pace one more time. His muscles bunched, his back hunched and he was up, the city wall a stepping stone to the larger prize of the wall around the keep. He made it, barely, lower half dragging as he scrambled for some purchase on the battlements and finally caught his elbow against the rising edge of the parapet and heaved, muscles shaking with the exertion. The four soldiers resting there and picking off King Erasmus’ men at their leisure had not expected anything of the sort from beyond the walls, and were thankfully still processing their surprise as he found his footing, though one man recovered faster than the others, and an arrow zipped right through his left ear. 

The yelp that provoked stirred the others from their stasis and Sir bristled at the rasp of metal being unsheathed. He bulled forward into the first man, teeth catching hands and arms and crossbow together with an unpleasant crunch of splinters poking the insides of his mouth. The quarrel, at least, had already been spent. When the man’s legs threatened to trip him, Sir let him go and snapped at the next nearest. Her skull offered less resistance than the crossbow’s stock. He whipped the body from its feet and tossed it up and over the courtyard, almost playing, but ignored it thereafter as a dull streak at the edge of his vision warned him that one, at least, still remained. He felt the sudden, sharp pressure at his neck and twisted as the sword clanged against the iron collar and skittered over his back, sharp edge catching only fur until the tip scratched a thin furrow down his hind leg. But by then, he’d turned his head and ducked low, catching his attacker around the middle and shaking hard. The sword went flying, the human’s neck snapped; the last man had run. 

Sir dropped his prize, ignoring both it and the other man, still moaning over his shattered arms, in favour of giving chase. Almost directly, he slammed against a guardhouse door and gave full vent to his desire to catch the one who got away. He bayed, barks starting deep and distinct, and swiftly drawing together as the volume and pitch rose to alert anyone with thumbs that he needed a door opened to continue the chase. His claws caught in the wood and left deep grooves, and the noise he was making echoed, but though he bounced off the wood, and tried to force his muzzle through the impossibly thin crack between door and threshold, the hinges and bolt remained sturdy enough to hold him back, for the moment.