Page 1 of Black Dog

PROLOGUE

The story of Helm’s birth (from A Summoner’s Tale) serves as prologue to this story. It begins in the New Forest of the Irish kingdom of elves, with a very pregnant Elora Laiken and Blackie both wounded in a battle fending off attackers from Elora’s dimension of origin. Elora and Blackie had spent time observing the wolf pack that lived in the New Forest under an ancient dolmen.

The story, originally told in pieces matching the timeline of other simultaneous events, is presented here as one continuous narrative.

There was no way to tell which hurt worse, the fire in her shoulder or the sting in her thigh. Elora told herself it was irrelevant because either way she was going to have to get up. The temperature in the New Forest of northeast Ireland was dropping fast and the only alternative was to sit there and freeze to death.

Sleet had started coming down as hard as rain. By the time she made it to her feet, the ground had iced over. When she tried a step, her boots first crunched on the ice and then slipped out from under her. She came down as hard as you would expect of an alien with her weight differential; at this stage of her pregnancy that was two hundred sixty-six pounds.

When she felt herself falling, she twisted at the last second before she hit the ground so that she landed on her back and not on the baby. That was the good news. The bad news was that the shock of the fall along with the jolt to the wounds in her shoulder and thigh sent temporarily paralyzing waves of pain through her body. The fact that the impact had also robbed her of breath for a full minute of panic seemed so minor in comparison that it was hardly worth mentioning.

She lay on the icy ground waiting for the pain to subside, thinking that the fall was going to leave one of those bruises that would start out black then go from that to dark blue to purple to green to yellow. It was going to be around a while. She knew all about bruises like that.

Doing a quick introspective assessment, she went over the list. She had two bullet wounds, an injured dog, no sat phone, record-breaking sleet, and the temperature was plummeting. At least she had a base line to work with.

Can't get any worse.

As she sat up, she confirmed that one should never tempt fate by saying things can’t get worse. Theyalwayscan. The motion of sitting up had brought with it a sudden gush of liquid followed by the shocking feel of warm fluids running, spreading down her pants leg. Her first reaction was to suppose she had involuntarily wet herself as a sort of post-stress release.

Her second reaction, which was horrifying, was the stray thought that it might be her water breaking. She asked herself how she would know the difference. She'd never had a baby before. Still, on some level she did know the difference and knew that she’d better get her thoughts together because the checklist had just been revised.

Now she had two bullet wounds, an injured dog, no sat phone, wet pants in freezing rain, temperature plummeting... um, oh, yes, and a baby coming.

Ram's quiver, the one he'd had since he was a boy, had been crushed in the fall and would probably leave a fine outline of its own in the form of a bruise imprinted on her back. She hated to leave his bow behind, but sentimentality over inanimate objects was a luxury she just couldn't afford at the moment.

After pulling herself over the icy ground to where Blackie lay, she put her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, my friend. Here's the deal. We've both had better days. I can't carry you and you can't stay out here. We're going to have to drag ourselves the rest of the way to the wolf den and we're going to do it together."

While she was explaining the situation to her dog, she conjured an oddball image of herself in a comic strip about one of those crazy old women who talks to dogs or cats like they can understand language. Elora knew that Blackie didn't understand words, but she'd heard experts say that mammals high up on the phylogenetic scale receive telepathic images. So she tried to form pictures of what she meant in her mind as she talked to him.

She got to her knees and started forward stifling a curse when she put weight on the knee that was attached to the damaged thigh. The same thing happened when she put the slightest weight on the hand that was attached to the wounded shoulder. If she hadn’t been pregnant, she would have just crawled on her belly, but why think about that when it was, obviously, out of the question?

For Blackie's sake, she did her best to sound encouraging. "It's only thirty feet. Piece of cake. Let's race."

Blackie stared at her for a few seconds with amber brown eyes that seemed to say, "Please don't make me". It broke her heart to see him like that. Those eyes usually communicated a bright energy that said, "I'll do anything for you. Name it".

"Come on," she repeated, putting a little more firmness into her tone and a little more urgency into her eyes.

He heaved a big sigh then valiantly pulled himself up on three legs with a long low groan that broke her heart.

They started forward together, him hobbling with one back paw up off the ground, her stifling a scream every time she put down a right hand or a left knee. She kept her mind off of it by concentrating on getting the dog out of the weather, talking to him the whole way.

In that position their heads were about the same height. She stayed shoulder to shoulder with him. Even though the weather had grown unbearably cold, he was panting. She had known the first time she laid eyes on him that he was extraordinary, a far cry from your garden variety dog.

"Aren't we a pair? Remember the soccer field at Jefferson Unit? Remember how glad you were to be out of that cage? And we played frisbee and ran and ran and it wassogood. Wasn't it? We're going to do that again. When we get out of this, we'll get you fixed up good as new. It's just twenty more feet now. Twenty more feet. Look how much closer we are.

"Have I ever told you how glad I am that you're my dog?"

At that Blackie reached over and gave her a lick on the cheek.

When she realized that he was, in his own way, also trying to encourage her, a tear escaped without permission. It fell on the icy ground in between her hands. She reached up and swiped her cheek with the back of her right hand, chastising herself. "Wuss."

Blackie glanced at her.

"No. Not you. Me.You'remy hero.

"Remember the time you saved me from the bad vampire? I'm absolutely positive you're the most magnificent dog who ever lived. Look here, we've only got ten feet to go. Nothing for a Black Swan mascot. Right? Made in the shade."

With ice falling on their backs then melting from the heat of their bodies, they were both made even colder by the wet. She coaxed the dog the rest of the way to the lair hoping with all her might that the wolves would let them in when they got there. When they were just six feet from the entrance, snow started to fall and laid a blanket of solemn quiet on the forest.

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