Peter & Max - Bill Willingham [65]
Max’s long dormant rage ignited and grew into a strong and steady fire all in a single moment. Max the deadly forest predator was suddenly alive again and spoiling for the hunt. Without pausing for any further consideration, he set out at a run, following in Gerwulf’s tracks.
Despite the snow’s impediment, he made good time. Small, fat Gerwulf didn’t have Max’s long and lanky strides, and he’d had to cut a new trail through the fresh snow, which had accumulated belly-high in the relatively cleared area of the forest pathway. Max only had to follow in the trail the fat old man had already cut deep for him. He ran and then rested and then ran again, surprised to discover that he was enjoying himself. In fact, he was having fun. Now that he’d adjusted to being outdoors for the first time in months, he was perfectly warm in his long pied coat.
Max ran and ran, as the weary sun dropped closer and closer to the horizon.
Even in the dead of winter, the sun’s setting was gradual enough that Max was surprised when he realized it had actually turned dark. He’d chased Gerwulf for hours, but now it was time to turn back. He’d learned his lesson months ago that attempting to navigate the woods at night was a fool’s endeavor.
Then again, this was an odd sort of dark, for though the woods were black indeed, as was the sky overhead, the trail through the woods was still plain to see, draped as it was with a vast blanket of pure white snow. Even at night, the white snow stood out brightly, in stark contrast to the woods. He could continue on and still find his way back home without fear of losing his way.
And then, while Max was still dithering, trying to decide which way to go, he spotted a faint flicker of yellow light in the distance, like a single candle flame as seen from across a large hall.
“That’s a fire,” he said aloud.
So Max trudged onward. And in little time at all he came up on a humble campsite, pitched just off the side of the trail. Gerwulf was seated alone in the camp, close to the fire he’d built, but still shivering in his winter coat. He saw Max walk up on him, but made no attempt to flee, or grab for his ax, which was set into the same fallen log he was using for his seat.
“I thought you’d never try to follow me,” he said.
“I almost didn’t,” Max said. Frost Taker rose slithering from its sheath, thirsty and eager, hardly helped at all by Max’s guiding hand.
“Four more miles and I would’ve made it,” Gerwulf said. “But I got too tired to continue tonight.”
“Bad luck then,” Max said.
Frost Taker struck. Then it reared back and struck again, and again. It was all Max could do to hold onto it.
CLAUDIA DIDN’T LAST LONG after that night. She didn’t need to be told a thing when Max returned to the cottage, early in the following morning. His grim face told the story entire. She tried to carry on and keep working, hoping that her daughter would arrive some day, with a company of hard men, to put things right. But the life had simply drained out of her with Gerwulf’s loss. It was as if she had been stricken with the same thrusts of Frost Taker’s blade that had killed her husband. Within two weeks she passed away in the night, leaving Max entirely on his own once again.
Max deeply resented the betrayal.
“I protected them and cared for them,” he grumbled to the walls, “and they paid me back by abandoning me, just like Father and Mother did. And so did filthy Peter and all of the Peeps. They all ran