Stormrider

Strongheart panted a little less heavily, expelled a forceful breath and licked his nose with a quick swirl of pink tongue. I was what I was before the pack was joined.

Tanith rolled to her knees, slowly. It wasn’t every day one tackled a bear with success and everything seemed to hurt. Tanith swept straggling hair back from her face and had a look around. "Well good. Great. Me too, but looking back I’m not sure what that was, so give me some time to get the hang of this, all right? How are the others? Any damage?"

A11 is well. The softness of Littlefoot, at about eighty pounds, the smallest of the pack. She was nursing a deep, bloody furrow across her shoulder.

I will live. This from One Eye, limping badly, but unperturbed.

Only the man needs your help now. Strongheart was on his feet, first shaking out his matted pelt with great vigor, then moving toward the man sprawled only a few feet from the dead bear. There was not so much difference between them save the fact the man breathed.

"And if he is enemy...?"

Strongheart, a little disgusted. He is not. Enemy is dead. They fought...there...in the trees...it is what awakened bear and drew his anger.

Gaining her feet in one graceful movement, catching a stitch in her shoulder where the bear had grazed her, Tanith went to the fallen man and quickly checked on his condition. It was not good. The bear had done a thorough job on him. His hide had been almost flayed from his back. And there was another bloody wound in his side that had nothing to do with the bear, not to mention a lump on his head whose origins was anybody's guess.

"We’ve got to get him away from here and back to where I can take care of him," Tanith murmured to herself. And that was going to take some doing for this was no small man.

Working swiftly she did the best she could to stem the copious flow of blood. The sight of so much of it turned her stomach and she glanced toward the wolves.

Strongheart, Littlefoot and One Eye waited patiently near her, ready to return home. Tanith had yet to become proficient in this sort of thing since her landing in Nashira, but she could manage. It just took a little more time than she liked. This so-called Non-Enemy could die while she was wasting precious time out here trying to formulate a way to transport him back to her camp. It might be more efficient to just move her camp to him. But, no, her camp was well placed. Here they would be too exposed. There were still the slave traders to worry about. They might not be too interested in the man except perhaps to shoot him, but she knew only too well she would draw their attention. And, at the moment, she was certainly not eager to join a pitched battle with herself as the prize.

She left the man long enough to throw together a make-shift traveler that came out looking something like a bough bed with a double-pole extending in front with which to drag it, similar to a type of travois.

Her task complete, Tanith flinched at the burning across her breast caused by the wound and glanced down at her patient. He was still unconscious, dead weight, and he had fallen on his belly, plainly in unconscious defense of his mangled back. Still, considering the agony being on his back would undoubtedly cause him, Tanith had planned on transporting him on his belly. She was a strong woman, but she couldn't lift him, so she would have to roll him onto the traveler.