From the Side

You wait, controlling the urge to attack as you watch them come alongside you, you can make out that the male has some strangely shaped object sitting across his lap. Luckily the wind is with you tonight and the horses don’t smell you.

When they are alongside you you make your move, bursting from the tree line you grab the side of the cart and flip it with ease. It spins over, you hear someone shout as it lands flat. The canopy collapsing in on itself as the horses fall over on each other. Both trying to stand up but being too tangled in ropes.

You ignore them, instead you walk around to the back of the cart and lift it up onto its side. The canvas has torn away and you see three people in the back. Two of them, a female who is too old and another who is too young, look up at you with eyes wide with terror. You ignore both for the third one, the one you had smelt.

She is half covered by the torn canvas and when you pick her up you realise with dismay that she is dead. Her head rolls unnaturally on her shoulders, shards of bone moving under the skin. Frustrated you drop her to the ground just as you feel a sharp pain in your shoulder. You reach up and feel the outline of a arrow shaft protruding from you.

You look around and see the source, the male used that strange thing he was holding and now he was trying to reload it.

The red mist descended on you as you crossed the gap between you both.

When first light comes the villagers will find the remains of the cart, they will never be able to figure out how many people had been in it or even what was human and what was horse. Stories will begin to spread about a horror living in the woods.

For you however you return to your cave in defeat, the shoulder wound only adding to the pain of failure.