Solis Invicti
He ran, and the wolves ran alongside him. He leapt, and they leapt, keeping pace with him… or him keeping pace with them. Panting, he threw himself over a toppled tree lying rotten in the path, clutching the fire axe in his hand. The spikes on his left shoulder glittered in the light of the stars, so much brighter here, where the cities held no sway.
His breath crystallized in his red and grey beard and plumed in the frigid anger of the air. He saw the occasional flash of green in the woods around him, heard the paws tattoo a beat on the ice-hardened ground, and kept running. At least I’m not the target. Yet.
Running, the zippers and chains of his black leather rustling and clinking against metal and hide, he felt the borrowed speed slowly leeching away from him, leaking into the icy air. The wolves began to take the lead. Having no time to do more than feel the cold biting into his chest with every breath, he lowered his head and forced his legs to move, ignoring the pain around the knees, climbing up his thighs and down his calves. Run, you stupid bastard. Run. The sound of his boots crushing frost and twigs beneath them, the roar of his own breathing in his lungs, the clawing of fatigue in his swinging arms, his fist clenched around the length of wood, the weight of the axe… he narrowed his eyes to slits, focusing on what was directly in front of him.
He came out of the woods without slowing. He didn’t see the wolves nor could hear their mocking stride. But he could see the trampled frozen grass where it lay, and took that as enough of a sign to hurdle over the rock wall and onto what appeared to be a battered old farm on the very edge of a tiny town. The grass was grazed down here, leaving no sign of the wolves. For a bare moment, he stopped short, his boots scraping the hard soil and tough grass. He scanned the place, looking from fading red barn to pale blue house, seeing a few tough cows out about their business of chewing, hearing the slight wheeze as he breathed. Where the hell did they go?
The magic gone, graced by Hermod no longer, he felt himself beginning to panic. His fear felt in the trembling of his limbs, the flittering of his eyes.
Then he heard it. A pounding of hooves, a massive body tearing holes in the earth with every stride. Turning his head to the left he saw it come over a rise in the earth, a great black beast with horns like boar spears.
Shit, we’re all out this year, aren’t we?
Knowing it was dangerous, he still took the second to admire the beast. No bull like this belonged in so ordinary a pen… this was the kind of bull that queens went on cattle raids for, the kind of bull that kings refused to sacrifice to the sea. Enormous, sleek despite its bulk, its hide like the velvet backdrop of night, it snorted and its breath formed clouds in the cold.
For a moment they stared at each other. The man without a name tossed back emerald and azure hair as the beast lowered its head, the light of the stars reflected off of those glossy deep brown horns. There was little sound save for wind in trees and the gentle lowing of far off cows. Their eyes locked, and held.
The beast moved first, muscles contracting underneath that night-dark skin, launching it forward. The nameless man slammed the blade of the axe into the hard ground, grunting as he went down on one knee before the beast. “Lion-headed god, tauroctanator, forced from the earth, come from the earth again. Come from the earth again. From the earth again!” He barely had time to get the last syllable out and roll to the side before pounding hooves would have crushed his head and spine into the ground, coming to his feet even as the beast wheeled around to charge again. Flying clods of frozen dirt ripped from the ground as the bull pounded the ground with its feet, swinging its massive head to angle those killing horns.
