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Blood and rainwater mixed with the earth to create a viscous muck in which the body of the ox had sank. The rain had broken an hour ago, but the wind still shrieked about them cart, carrying the distant lupine howls. The attack had been fast, not an hour after the sun had sank, and none had seen it coming. Sheep-face now knelt by the cooling corpse of his dead companion, torn open by the vicious hunters, mourning the passing of his old friend. The driver's own blood trickled down his arm from the wound left by sharp teeth, painting a steel dagger in his hand, as his tears mingled with the mud below. The traveler clutched a woodsman axe he had found in the cart, likewise stained a dark red, the bodies of three wolves cast about him.

"We need to go..." He urged; he wanted to give the driver time to grieve for his ox, but if he did then who would grieve for them? "They'll be back. We scared them off for now, but they'll be back, and we can't win."

If the driver heard him, he gave no sign, merely sitting in the red mud as if he, himself, had died as well.

"Our only hope is to go on, leave the body for... for them." The wind whipped his cloak around him, and the traveler wondered if it had carried his words away, but a stirring proved otherwise.

"Leave her? Leave her for them to eat?!" The driver cast a momentary glance over his shoulder, dark eyes glinting with stilled fury, and for once the traveler was very aware of how intimidating he was. Gone was the laughter in those eyes, gone was the smile lost in that bushy beard, and gone was the large, comfortable, jovial man he had seen before. Muscles bulged beneath his shirt as he gripped his blade tightly, and beyond the kind nature was a core of iron. Had he the horns, the traveler might have mistaken him for one of the oxen.

No-longer-gray man walked forward, setting the axe upon the seat of the cart, still within arm's length, and alighted a hand on the driver's shoulder. "Garreth..." Another glance from the large man, but at close range what had seemed to be a dangerous look was now only a pained one. "Garreth, I know you loved her. I know she was like family. But we do her no favors by dying with her. Let her death mean something. Let her save our lives with her own. ... Else, we won't survive to grieve her."

Garreth shuddered beneath the traveler's hand, a sob was torn away from his lips by the wind, but he rose to his feet and nodded simply. "Right... We'll need to... to unhook her and move her off the road. Then unload some weight from the back; we'll need speed, because they'll... they'll want more before long."

It was the traveler's turn to merely nod, and they began their work. The slender man undid the harness and the two managed to pull the corpse to the side, where the congealing blood was dark against green grass. Garreth then adjusted the tether to the remaining ox, as no-longer-gray moved some of the heavier cargo off the cart, with the occasional direction of the driver. "Not that one, it's too valuable. That other one... ... Drop those smaller boxes, they won't be as missed..."

Their work was quick but it seemed to take forever, as the threat of the hunting beasts loomed over them. Soon, caution would give way to hunger, and they would return. Finally they were done and seated on the cart, and as the driver whipped his remaining ox, who strained against the load by itself, another close howl pierced the night. Pulling away from the grisly scene, Garreth and no-longer-gray exchanged a look, then fell silent, each knowing how close they had come to death.

***

"I'm sorry, Garreth." The traveler muttered from behind his clay mug, filled with cheap mead, to the man seated across the small table who nursed his own.

"... They weren't even supposed to _be_here." Asserted the driver, lightly pounding his heavy fist onto the table to punctuate his words, angry but filled with more sorrow than fury. "It's summer, they're supposed to be up in the mountains. What the in the void were they doing down here?!"

"I don't know..." No-longer-gray found less surprise and more disappointment within him at this revelation. Things were increasingly wrong with the world in the past months, and he doubted they would get better soon. It was as if all his efforts were for naught, and once again he felt a hopelessness for his duty pass over him. What was the point of it all if the realm was falling despite everything he did? Why did he push himself if all he was doing was prolonging the inevitable? There was no room for these thoughts though, as Garreth continued.

"I'd had her for years, sur..." The large man confessed between long draughts of his mead, gulped down so quickly the traveler wondered if he even tasted it. "She _was_family." Those dark eyes met no-longer-gray's, searching for comfort even in this stranger. "I don't know if you know what it's like, being on the road for so long. I knew her better than my own sister, who I hardly see anymore. We've traveled more land than most people see in their entire lives... and now she's gone."

At a loss, the traveler didn't know what to say, but he knew the pain of losing someone, and he knew how healing the salve of company can be. "... I can't buy you another ox, not that it would replace her. But, I can buy us plenty of drinks, and not this swill."

Upending the mug, the traveler gulped down the mead, grimacing at the sour taste, Garreth following suit, and gestured for the barmaid. "Madam, we'll take your darkest beer, and keep them coming until we're sleeping like babes!" She smiled a charming smile, the kind of a woman knowing she'd be well-paid, and quickly returned with tall, iron steins teeming with frothy drink the color of rich, loamy soil. No-longer-gray raised his, gave a gentle smile, and spoke as jovially as he could. "We'll drink to her memory, to her saving our lives, and to the ill fate of those blasted wolves! We'll drink until we can drink no more, and then we'll drink some more! Life is for the living, so let us live! Haroo!"

"Haroo!" Garreth echoed, managing a smile of his own, as they both drank down their beers in a single go. "Another!" He cried, and again soon after, as the drink and the hours disappeared in a warm, fuzzy haze.