They were no more than fifty strides from the treeline when the pony’s foot found a rabbit hole and the creature tumbled forward, its front leg breaking with a sickening snap. Thrown from the saddle, Lann hit the ground hard, the air knocked out of him. The pony had been given to him as a gift on his tenth birthday, and his heart sank to hear her stricken cries. Fighting the impulse to go to her aid and forcing himself to his feet, he turned his back on the poor injured beast and took off at a sprint in the direction of the murky gloom created by the forest’s canopy.

He was close enough to smell the damp, musty rot of the forest floor when he glanced over his shoulder.

The wolf-thing was level with the stricken pony. But it paid no attention to the injured animal. Its eyes, black as the woods ahead, were fixed on Lann.

Plunging into the thicket, he ran, stumbling over rotting wood and living roots that grabbed as his feet and ankles. A sob of fear escaped him, the noise echoing back at him from the trees all around, as he imagined death at the jaws of the beast.

No more than twenty strides into the forest and the darkness was complete for Lann. The wolf would not think so. Its eyes were perfectly adapted to hunting in the dark. He could hear it, crashing through the undergrowth behind him.

In choosing this desolate place to hide, he had chosen death.

He was running with his arms out in front of him, a long wailing moan coming from his mouth as terror took complete control of him. He would die here, alone in the darkness. And he would not be found. What was left of his body would remain here among the mud and mildew of the forest floor until even his bones were swallowed up. Without a Volken funeral where his physical body would be burned, his soul would be trapped here on earth as a rordnuk – a shade cursed to forever roam the shadow worlds. He offered up desperate prayers to the old gods, asking each and any of them for their help.

In his mind he could almost feel the wolf’s teeth sink into his flesh from behind. He would fall and …

The caw of a crow made him turn his head. There, ahead of him, was an oasis of silvery light. A hole in the canopy of leaves allowed the moonlight through, illuminating the one thing that might save him: a tree much smaller than the giants surrounding it, with branches low enough to climb – if only he could reach it in time. He sprinted, forcing his legs forward as he gasped for breath. The wolf was almost upon him; he leaped up towards the lowest branch just as the creature’s teeth raked the flesh of his foot, wrenching the shoe from it.