Chapter 35: Price of Survival
"Right on time," the thin prisoner broke the silence, his voice low, as if he had been waiting for the crunching to stop to make his speech more dramatic. He didn’t look at either of them at first. He stared at the forest, at the trail they had left in the snow.
The grey-haired man turned toward him slowly, his eyes cold, tired. The hand holding his rusted sword was shaking slightly, not from cold alone.
"So what do you think we should do, hunter? What’s your great plan now?"
The man didn’t answer immediately. He let the question hang in the frozen air, let the wind carry it. It was a trick he used — silence to make himself seem like he was thinking harder than everyone else.
His eyes remained on the forest behind them, on that spot between the pines where the snow hadn’t settled properly, where the shadows were too thick, where something was standing just out of sight, watching.
The crunching sound had stopped. The forest was holding its breath again, that unnatural stillness that Danny had come to recognize. No birds, no wind in the branches, just the heavy quiet of a predator that knows its prey has stopped running.
But they all knew the wolf was still somewhere out there, close, maybe ten meters away, watching, listening to them argue like it was entertainment, like it was waiting for them to make the decision for it.
The grey-haired man finally looked away from the forest and straight at the thin prisoner, his disappointment clear, his face etched deeper with lines.
"How can you even think of doing such a thing? How can you stand there and say it with a straight face after what we’ve been through?"
The thin prisoner frowned, acting confused, acting like he was being misunderstood, putting on that hurt expression he had perfected in the prison yard.
"Doing what? I’m trying to keep us alive. I’m the only one here thinking clearly."
"You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb with me, not now."
The grey-haired man pointed toward Danny with his chin, not wanting to take his eyes off the thin prisoner. Danny stood a few steps away from both of them, shaking, not just from cold but from something deeper, his coat too thin, his hands shoved deep into his sleeves.
"You want us to leave him behind. You want to offer him up like meat to a dog. Like he’s not a person."
The thin prisoner sighed, a long, theatrical sigh, as if he was the one burdened by this heavy moral choice, as if he was Atlas carrying the sky.
"I know how it sounds. I know it sounds cruel. It sounds terrible, I admit that."
"Then why say it? Why even open your mouth and say it? Why let that thought into the world?"
"Because we don’t have many choices left!" His voice rose suddenly, cracking in the cold air, losing its dramatic control. "Because I’m not going to pretend we’re heroes in a story! We’re three escaped prisoners in a blizzard with a monster behind us that is not human! Look at us!"
He gestured wildly at their state — their torn prison clothes, their bleeding feet wrapped in rags, the grey-haired man’s swollen knee, Danny’s blue lips.
The thin prisoner looked at the snowy path behind them, at the path ahead that was still so long, still winding toward the imperial road that might not even have patrols, and his fear made him honest, brutally honest.
"That monster is following us, we all hear it. Every night. Every day. That crunching. If it really has marked him, as I think it has, then it won’t stop. You know the old stories. Marked prey means it hunts until death. It will follow us to the imperial road, into the villages, into our beds. It doesn’t get tired."
He paused, swallowing hard, his throat dry.
"If we keep running together, all tied together by his scent, by whatever curse is on him, it might catch all three of us. We are slow. We are injured. We can’t fight it. You saw what it did to the others. It tore them apart."
The grey-haired man’s expression hardened, his old face looking even older in the pale, weak light filtering through the clouds.
"Isn’t three better than two? Isn’t fighting together better than throwing away a sword, even a small one? Isn’t that what you said on the mountain? That we need every hand?"
The thin prisoner looked at him, almost pleading now, using logic like a weapon, trying to make his cowardice sound like wisdom.
"I know. I know it is. In a fair fight, yes, three is better. I agree with you."
His voice became quieter, fake soft, the voice he used when he wanted something.
"And it pains me to say this, it really does, kid, you know I don’t hate you. I like you. But if we don’t do something hard right now, something that hurts, we all lose our lives. All three. No one will even find our bodies. We’ll just be three more red stains in the snow that get covered up by tomorrow."
Danny’s fists tightened inside his coat until his nails drew blood again, a habit he had when he was scared. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.
The thin prisoner continued, not looking at Danny anymore, looking only at the grey-haired man as if asking for permission, as if asking an older brother to make a hard call.
"But if we give the boy to the monster... if we leave him here, with some noise, maybe a fire, the monster stops. It gets what it was marked to get. It stops hunting. It is satisfied. The curse is fulfilled. Then you and I, we can make it to the road. We can live."
He hesitated, then said the most terrible thing, trying to make it sound noble, trying to wrap poison in pretty paper.
"At least his life will be put to good use. He will have saved two lives. That’s more than most people do in their whole lives. That’s a hero’s death. He can be proud of that."