I should have kept walking.
The road through northern Arathi was empty. Open sky, tall grass bending in the wind, and the ruins of old Stromgarde watching from the hilltops like a tired old king who'd given up on his children. It was the kind of morning that made you want to follow every side path, peer into every crumbling tower, see what stories the rocks remembered.
I followed one. A thin trail leading up toward a broken watchtower. Nothing important. Probably just an old patrol post from the last war, or the one before that. But the way the light hit the stones made me curious.
Loaf grunted behind me. He doesn't complain often, but he has opinions. That grunt meant "I've seen this before and it's never worth it."
I should have listened.
The arrow came from nowhere. A flat, mean sound — thwack — and Loaf screamed.
Not a scared scream. A hurt scream.
I spun around and saw him stumbling, an arrow buried in his flank, his legs folding beneath him like someone had cut the strings. Blood was already spreading through his fur, dark and wrong.
My body moved before my mind caught up. I was already running toward him, dropping my pack, tearing off my coat. The patrol that shot him was still up there — I could hear voices, shouting, someone yelling "Hit him again!" — but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered except the way Loaf was looking at me, confused and trusting, as if I could fix this.
I pressed my coat against the wound. He whimpered and tried to stand, his hooves scraping against the dirt.
"Easy," I said. "Easy, boy. Stay still."
Stay still. The two words I've spent my whole life avoiding. And now here I was, saying them to the only creature who ever chose to stay with me.
The voices faded. The patrol didn't come down. Maybe they thought they'd killed him. Maybe they just didn't care enough to check. Either way, the silence that followed was worse than the arrow.
I stayed there for a long time, one hand pressed to Loaf's side, feeling his breath come in shallow, ragged bursts. The wind moved through the grass around us. The same wind that had been blowing across these hills for a thousand years, carrying the same sounds — hoofbeats, war cries, the quiet sobbing of men who'd lost something they couldn't name.
I think I finally understood what that wind was trying to say.
Freedom has never been free. I just borrowed mine for a while, and now the bill had come due.
I don't know how long it took to stop the bleeding. Long enough for my arms to go numb. Long enough for the sun to move past noon and start its slow arc toward the mountains. Long enough for Loaf to close his eyes and stay still — the kind of still that made my chest tighten until I saw his side rise again.
When I finally got him to his feet, he leaned against me harder than he ever had. We took one step. Then another. The watchtower stayed behind us, forgotten.