A chill wind blew up from the storm, but the girl barely felt it. Her fur kept her plenty warm. Ahead of her on the trail, the snow thrown up by the hooves of the fleeing horses and men created a cloud that was quickly approaching Astrid. She threw herself off the road as the party came flying around a bend just above her. 

Hiding herself under a bush, Astrid counted six horses fly past her. Only two of which held any men. The rest only carried blood-stained saddles, torn reins, and panic in their eyes. If those men kept that speed, they’d escape the mountain, she realized. She had to act quickly. Her first thought was to set up a trap. She’d become a very proficient trapper in these woods, and her knife gave her an edge that she’d never had before.

Another howl and the men and horses turned tail and fled back up the trail. But one of the horses was missing. She wasn’t sure if it had managed to sprint past the wolves, or whether the wolves had won the fight. Another few minutes passed and the wolves howled again, only for the riders to ride by once again. Another horse missing. 

Were the wolves corralling the bandits? What was happening? What if the wolves were waiting for her. Was that why the wolf had returned her knife? Did they know that she was on the hunt as well?

She scurried out from under the brush, to look at the trees around her. A deer trail ran through the woods just across from the girl, and that would do perfectly. Wide enough for a horse to ride with a rider, but with enough branches that a trap would be impossible to spot. She dodged across the road once the riders were again out of sight. A short way down the path, she saw the perfect spot. A young tree sat just beside the footpath, with one of its branches sticking across. It was supple still, despite the cold, easily bent, and quick to return to its original position. 

She grabbed the branch and pulled it to the position she wanted. But it was only then that she realized she had no thread to hold it back. The girl was tempted to unweave her clothes, and use that, but she didn’t have the time. 

Seconds dragged on as she scrambled for solutions, until a passing glint of moonlight illuminated the hair she’d wrapped around her hand. Hair was by no means perfect, but it’d work in a pinch. Brushing her own out of the way, she got to work. 

Man was deadlier than rabbits, and far more sturdy, so it would take more than simply a branch to unseat one of the bandits from his horse. Astrid’s eyes drifted to the dagger she still gripped in one hand. The branch had one fork halfway through it, which the knife could be easily lodged into. 

Would that be cruel? Would killing a man who couldn’t even see her be cruel? She was already a killer, but this was different. She was a hunter now, rather than a scared little girl fighting for her life. If the old gods, her gods, were real, at what point did all of the blood on her hands stain her soul? 

She’d have that question answered once a god came to collect her soul. Until then…. there were men to hunt. 

Using one hand, Astrid tested the tensile strength of the hair. It was tougher than she expected, which gave her hope. For a moment, the girl sympathized for all of the hairbrushes that the old woman must have broken on her hair, but she quickly brushed that thought away as she began to lash the dagger to the fork in the branch. 

Round and round she wove the hair around the hilt, until it was firmly anchored to the branch. And as she pulled her hand away, she found she still held quite a length of hair. Even more than the length she had originally been given by the spirit. 

New possibilities began to emerge in her head. She’d been planning on having to hold the branch and release it once she had gotten the riders down this trail, but perhaps there were more options than she’d originally realized.

Back on the road, she could hear the constant howling and galloping. What must the riders be thinking at that point? Did they feel like animals being chased to their slaughter? Had their minds been entirely consumed by terror like hers was at the start of the night? 

Astrid let the hair have a little slack as she wound it once around the tree trunk. Every step she took extended the hair further. Meter by meter, inch by inch, it kept getting longer, never once breaking or snapping. Finally, the girl carefully crossed the deer-trail and fastened the other end of the hair to a tree on the other side. 

It held firm. A silver thread that wove across the path, so taut that she could run her finger across it and strum it like a harp. The thread wrapped around the tree opposite her, and held the young  branch. It was a simple trap. One she’d used before to incapacitate hares, foxes, and other small vermin. The branch, once released, would fly forward, neatly striking whatever broke the hair. 

The added edge of the blade she’d lashed to branch made it far more deadly than the traps she typically made. But men were the most dangerous creature in this world. She could not afford to be kind. 

She inspected her trap once more to ensure everything was perfect. Despite the magical nature of the hair, she could tell it was near its breaking point. She had to move fast. If she wanted this trap to work. 

Giving speed to her legs, she dashed back to the trail. Just below her, she heard the panicked hoofbeats of the riders in their seemingly endless back and forth ride. The moonlight filled her vision as she broke out of the trees, perfectly in time to meet the eyes of the two remaining bandits. 

All of the other men were gone, as were their horses, and as were any belongings they had stolen from her family. 

“Through here!” she shouted, motioning at the trapped trail. 

The rider in the lead, terror painted deeply into his face, barely slowed at all as he turned his horse down the opening. Astrid barely had time to dodge as a sword swept by her face when the man shouted, “Out of my way, whelp!” 

The second man quickly followed. “Distract the wolves for us, boy!” he said, laughing madly. 

Astrid simply followed them, trying not to let a smug smile onto her lips. Behind her, she heard wolves howl. Not just one or two of them. But a dozen individual voices rising up to the heavens in a spiritual sensation that only a wolf can know. Astrid heard it. And Astrid recognized it. It was a victorious howl. The wolves knew they had won. She had won. These men would not survive. 

She kept up with the horses, until just ahead of them, she saw the tree she recognized. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as events unfolded. 

The first horse broke through the thread with an audible twang. From her angle, the girl was unable to see the look of shock that graced the bandit’s face as a branch swung towards him. He tried to stop his horse, but all he succeeded in doing was lean into the blade that swung at him. The blackened edge dug through his shoulder, splitting sinew, bone, and muscle as though it weren’t even there. 

The impact of the branch tore him off his steed, who continued charging down the path without him. The blade also continued. As the branch recoiled from the impact, the dagger came loose and fell towards the second rider. 

The sudden fall of the man before, his scream of agony, and the searing pain as the dagger sliced a deep gash in the second horse's thigh, made the poor beast rear up with a terrified whinny. Its own rider was unable to hold the reins and tumbled after, landing badly on one of his legs with a sickening crunch. Now riderless, the second horse bolted into the forest and quickly out of view. 

The girl was stunned. She had hoped her trap would work, but it had worked far better than she’d expected. Both men lay injured on the ground, moaning in their almost delirious suffering. The first bandit’s arm was barely attached by a scrap of skin, and the second man’s leg was bent in an angle it shouldn’t be. 

She looked at them, almost with pity. After minutes of groaning in pure pain, one of the bandits finally gained enough consciousness to see her. But he didn’t see just her. From behind every tree, dozens of yellow eyes glowed in the darkness. The wolves had caught up. They slowly advanced forward, surrounding the half-dead men. 

The bandit looked at her, pure fear filling his eyes and the terrified tears that poured out of them. “This was your doing!” He was not accusing her. He was stating it as a fact. “Please! Call them off! We’ll leave. We’ll forget about everything, and never come back. Just please! Call off your wolves.” 

Astrid bent down to retrieve her dagger, which had fallen nearly at her feet. One of the wolves stalked beside her as she stood up, and she let her hand stroke its fur. The beast’s fur was thick, dense, warm, and unbelievably soft. 

Finally, letting her words work their way through her lips, she offered a simple retort. “No.” 

Panic filled the man’s eyes as he pleaded for his very life. He offered money, jewels, food, himself as a slave, anything to call off the wolves. With every word that poured from his bloody mouth, the wolves took a step forward. A low rumbling growl slowly rose from every member of the pack, and Astrid was tempted to join. Their ears were flat back, their fangs bared as they moved toward their prey. She felt her humanity shrink within her as she unconsciously began to join the pack. The hunt was at its end. 

“Please, boy! Anything! Just call them off!” 

That word tickled her ears. What had he called her? That term, what did it mean? Humanity slowly trickled back into the girl’s consciousness, and her hand gripped the fur of the wolf she was standing beside. That word. That accursed word. It had plagued her for every moment since her very birth. She was no boy. She would not grow up to be a man. 

Releasing the wolf she had grabbed, words once again found themselves in her mouth. “Call them off? Call them off? What do you take these wolves for? Simple hounds that can be barked at to sit? I cannot command them, as I cannot command the winds to quiet or a storm to calm. They are wild…. Men do not belong in these woods. Man does not belong in these woods. And they know that. You have sullied the very soil of these trees with blood, and these wolves will see to it that you pay the price in kind.” 

With her words said, Astrid met the horrified gaze of the bandit one last time. She deliberately turned and began walking away. As one, the pack lunged for the injured men. The girl kept walking. If the final screams of the men managed to meet her ears, she gave no indication. She simply kept walking. 

She once again felt directionless. The light was rising above the mountains; dawn was on its way. But with it came the cold winds and beginning flurries of the blizzard that had been encroaching. 

Far in the distance, past the peak of the mountain range, she heard a voice. Two voices. Both shouted her name. Her parents! They must have escaped somehow. Joy tugged at her heart and she began to run up the mountain. Toward the peaks, and toward the light. 

“Where are you, son!” she heard her father shout. And her feet slowed. 

Through a gap in the forest, Astrid could see the path that would take her over the mountain, to the parents that were shouting for their son. For the boy they had raised. And she froze. She heard them shout again, her name. No, her old name, the one they had decided for her. 

But before  she could take a step closer, a third voice joined the others. A woman’s voice, very near her. “Over here, child.” 

Astrid turned to look at the new voice, only to see the woman with white hair, a silver cloak lined with black fur, and a pale horse. The woman waved at the girl to join her by a roaring fire. 

“Over here, my child. We have much to discuss.”