I began the fire.
Red. Hungry. Eating log after log, the blaze was unrepentant - like my rage. How many more bloods would it need to sate? Certainly not enough... not until Dakor.
My clash with him had done but one thing: it had reopened wounds and summoned memories that would never return whole, while warning the maniac that I hunted him - though he had always known it. I could not tell which hurt more: that he had slipped from my grasp, or that I might never find him again.

To Dakor I was a wild storm on his trail. Having driven him close to extinction, the crafty dog would now keep to shadow; there was no knowing when I might set eyes on him next.

Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months, yet I held my solemn objective like a priest at his altar and kept searching. Whenever I thought I neared him, his trail would vanish into the wind and I would be forced to begin again.

The one small comfort in my miserable pursuit was the nature of men like him: they could not long keep silence. In the end such men thunder trouble across the realm.
So it came to pass. For months Dakor roamed free - he and his growing gang - looting, plundering, press-ganging youths from villages about Kedrone until the name "Dakor" became a whisper of terror.
Kedrone still sought him for Keiya's death and his many other atrocities. I wanted him first. I would bind him, pour my wrath into him, and sate the conscience that drove me.

Then at last a lead: Dakor camped in a place called Gooldon, beyond the Majeeter Trails, in a wilderness of rock and timber. A strategic hold - hard to penetrate, easy to fortify and ambush. This was the closest I had come to the serpent in months. I could not squander it.
So, like every man consumed by vengeance, I trailed him to Gooldon.
The wilderness was cold and severe - no ground for a man hopeful of comfort. But I was no longer a man of ordinary hope; I was a thing driven by rage and longing.

Rage - my father once told me - was my weapon. Keiya's presence had changed that. Beside her, the hard brood had softened; I loved her for who she had made me become. But Dakor had stolen that peace, condemned my love to the foulest death, and rekindled the old fire. Now it would not be satisfied with one man's blood.

I prowled the mountains with care until I made out a camp to the north. This could be Dakor.
My resolve hardened. By sunset I made a small camp.
Night was worse than the day; the woods bred cruel things then. But what were mere beasts to the task that waited? I set down my pack - a saddlebag of few worldly goods: changes of clothing, flint and steel, tack, a cooking pot, a hide blanket, rope, a waterskin, another filled with ale, a loaf of bread, roasted meat for two days. Sparse provisions. No need to hunt when the hunt was for a man.

I unsaddled, took inventory: a bow, a quiver with a few arrows, and Dakor's fallen rifle - a grim keepsake. I gathered kindling, struck flint, and coaxed a fire that would burn through the night - warmth against the cold and a light to keep the darker prowlers at bay.
I warmed a pound of meat and tried to feed body and not mind. The latter refused to be sated. Since Keiya's demise my brain had been a torment - every night worse than the last. Her eyes as she left this world haunted me: calm and afraid, unaware of what waited beyond. Was there an afterlife, as children are told? What if nothing followed, only emptiness? She would be afraid. She would need a hand - and I was not there.

Questions gnawed until I could not breathe them down. I should have been at her side. Even had I been there, though, Dakor's will was set to tear us apart. That man was a walking curse. His name rent sleep from me. His smug escape - it stung.
"Dakor must die," I heard myself say, and the words were a growl from my chest. I hurled the chunk of bread aside, sprang up, knocked the meat off the spit. Hands on my head, I wept.
Why must the innocent suffer? Why Keiya? Why our unborn? I was no righteous man; why had fate not taken me instead? Why did the wicked always prosper?

I sank to my knees and let the tears fall. I clawed at the earth with my fingers until the brown-black dirt filled my nails. My hair fell like a veil across my shoulders. Tears ran down my beard.
"Breath. Relax. Calm," the rational voice urged, but could not drown the storm.

I rose to my feet and, in a fit, seized a long stick. It was a poor companion to rage, but it answered. I struck the ground and the air until blood hammered in my ribs. The stick snapped. The crash eased the knot in my chest a fraction. I hurled the pieces as far as my arm could throw. The sound of breaking gave a little relief, but not much. I wanted to kill - no; I wanted to be heard.
My screams petered out into heaving sobs. The wilderness was vast and I thought I was alone - until the crack of a twig told me otherwise. A shiver of fear passed through me. Someone - or something - had heard.

If it were a man and ill-intentioned, it would be his doom to mistake me for weakness. I forced myself cautious. What if a fool or a band of them crept upon me? Dorack, son of Dun, champion of the Plains - felled in the woods by a coward's hand? The thought was a bitter jest.

I raised my head. The visitor did not boast the gait of man.
A rich-brown grizzly moved from the scrub, eyes rimmed with red, strides heavy and domineering. It made its presence known with a simple, terrifying confidence.
Not the foe I had expected.