Hilde’s muscle burned from their paniced flight. Small cuts and scrapes crisscrossed her arms from breaking falls and brushing through the dense vegetation. The trees seemed to stretch to the sky blocking the few feeble rays that made it through the mist. How the sergeant kept any kind of direction was beyond her, perhaps he was as lost as she was.

When the bays can howls became evident behind them she felt her heart sink with dispair. Intellectually she knew that their was practically no chance of outrunning the beastmen, fleet of hoof and born to the forest, but the confirmation of that fact still struck her like a blow. The soldier grabbed her and pulled her against the bole of one of the great trees. For a moment she worried that he had seen a pursuer or ambush but she realised that he judged further flight to be useless. It was the first quiet or rest they had enjoyed since the ambush on the forest road.

[b]“Back at the wagons,”[/b] she gasped, cursing that her waterskin had been lost with her horse, [b]“That old man the Captain was talking to gave me something. Said it was vital it get to the Countess in Nuln.”[/b]

She fished the strange silvery flask from her pouch, mildly surprised that she hadn’t lost it crashing through thickets and down the narrow gullys of the Riekwald.

[b]“Do you think we should destroy it before…”[/b] she trailed off unwilling to finish the thought. She looked down at her pistol, wondering if it might be wiser to save one of the remaining shots for herself rather than be hacked to pieces by their animalistic pursuers. She dragged her mind away from that bleak thought.

[b]“I am Hilde, and thank you for saving me back there,” [/b]she declared with the formality of a funeral dirge.