The boom that suddenly cracked hard against her eardrums froze Jasnah's whole body in place.
Had she been a seasoned Muggle hunter herself, she might have recognised the sound instantly for what it was: a shotgun blast.
But Jasnah, a witch through and through, had genuinely no such instinctive recognition, not until the sharp, pungent reek of gunpowder flooded her own nostrils a moment later.
Only then did she accurately picture the shotgun that always hung on the wall of that pine cabin, the one Enno had never once fired in all her time there.
'Something had happened!'
Jasnah's heart lurched violently at the realisation. In one nimble motion she yanked her walking stick free from the sled's storage compartment and leapt down into the snow.
What she found waiting outside made her go briefly, entirely stiff with genuine shock.
She and the sled that had saved her life were sitting together at the bottom of a snow pit some ten full feet deep, the walls were rising steep on every side.
At some point—she hadn't noticed precisely when—Enno had already turned the sled around and dug a slope carefully up out of the hollow to free it, working while she'd slept.
Neither Enno nor the sled dogs were down in the pit with her anymore. They stood together at the rim above.
"Get back in the sled."
Enno, standing at the top of the slope, didn't even glance back at her once as he spoke. He held the shotgun level and steady, his face was totally expressionless as he scanned the surrounding treeline carefully, while the sled dogs crouched low around him, their hackles faintly raised, teeth bared in warning.
"What's surrounded us?"
A few ragged, sharp breaths were all Jasnah genuinely needed to work out the answer for herself.
Bang!
The gunshot rolled out through the snow-hushed pine forest once more, and the shockwave knocked loose the accumulated drifts piled heavily on the nearby boughs, sending small white cascades falling.
A whine then two whines in quick sequence!
The cries of pain didn't so much as ruffle Enno's composure. He was already working the bolt action, reloading with speed.
Jasnah gritted her teeth hard and hauled herself properly up the slope, leaning heavily on her stick, limping badly on her still-healing leg.
Wolves!
She'd expected as much, given the circumstances. What she genuinely hadn't expected was the sheer number confronting them.
Close to forty of them.
An enormous pack, by any measure.
Grey-furred wolves circled them steadily on every side, their ice-blue eyes fixed unwaveringly on the small group with raw, apparent hunger.
Directly ahead of Enno's position, two wolves already lay sprawled together in a spreading patch of blood but it hadn't so much as dented the pack's overall resolve.
The wolves circling the pit's rim paced in low, restless arcs around them, throats rumbling with soft, continuous growls, each individual animal patiently hunting for some exploitable opening in their defences.
The wind still cut like a blade, raw and biting against Jasnah's exposed cheeks until her skin ached fiercely from the cold.
But she had no attention left to spare for that particular discomfort. Murder simmered behind her own eyes as she fixed her stare on an old, scarred wolf standing some fifty feet out from their position.
Whoosh!
An invisible blade split the surrounding air with a shrill, unnatural shriek—a sound so unnatural that the old wolf she'd marked flinched back hard on pure instinct, crouching low against the snow. That single reflexive movement was the only thing that kept it from dying outright on the spot.
The blade raked across its back instead of striking clean, tearing loose a fresh spray of blood into the white snow.
The old wolf went down at once, thrashing its legs wildly, whimpering now in pain rather than growling.
It wasn't dead yet. But its fate was already thoroughly sealed.
The sight—something totally beyond the pack's capacity to understand—clearly shook the surrounding wolves to their core. The animals pacing the perimeter fell back in near-unison at the display, retreating a dozen-odd feet in a ragged wave, eyeing Jasnah now with fresh wariness.
Still, notably, they showed no sign of giving up the siege.
"Damn it—"
Jasnah ground her teeth hard together, a hot flash of frustration was rising in her chest at the limitation.
At this particular range, she genuinely couldn't trust her aim with the Severing Charm reliably, and the distance itself gave these creatures keenly attuned by nature to sensing danger—more than enough room to dodge her strikes.
If her leg weren't injured, if she still had her wand in hand—forget this single pack, even twice their number wouldn't pose any threat to her.
But there was, in the end, no "if" available to her in this moment.
The plain reality was simply this: these ordinary, natural predators genuinely threatened both her life and Enno's tonight.
Watching the pack show no sign of retreating, a bitter absurdity welled up in Jasnah's chest.
At her full strength, killing a few werewolves outright would have cost her no effort at all. But stripped now of most of her magic, to these common, ordinary wolves she was no different from Enno standing there with his old shotgun—just another huntable thing, nothing more.
"Any good ideas, Enno?"
Guilt and helplessness were useless feelings to indulge right now. Jasnah pushed them both down hard and turned her head slightly to ask the practical question.
"Wolves are patient."
Enno's own voice came out low and entirely flat without embellishment.
Jasnah nodded to show she understood.
She caught his meaning clearly enough: don't count on scaring them off, and don't count on the pack losing its own patience before they did first.
A sweep of her peripheral vision took in the wolves circling them steadily—many crouched low now, half-seated directly in the snow, settling in as if for a long standoff.
Still. They remained, in the end, beasts. Their cunning had its own limits, whatever their patience.
The pack had them properly boxed in on every side, true enough but precisely because the wolves were spread so thin around the whole perimeter, a determined breakout in any single direction wasn't really seriously in question, not with her wandless Severing Charm and Enno's shotgun working together between them.
"So, we—"
Jasnah weighed the tactical situation for a considering moment.
"Get the sled up out of the pit first?"
Enno let out a short, sharp whistle in response.
At the signal, the dogs guarding their backs bolted as one down the slope directly into the pit, each animal finding its place and snatching up the traces firmly in its teeth without further direction needed.
"Go and unload what's currently on the sled—"
Enno said, his attention still fixed on the treeline.
Jasnah's lips moved without sound at that instruction. After a few seconds of considering silence, she nodded her agreement.
"Be careful, Enno—"
she said, and backed down into the pit, step by step, leaving him alone at the rim.
With her and the working dogs no longer holding the perimeter line, the wolves began pressing steadily forward again toward Enno's isolated position.
These creatures, born hunters through countless generations, were far too cunning to simply ignore the persistent threat Enno's shotgun still posed.
They closed the distance carefully then stopped short, circling in place, feigning casual distraction while their true, unwavering attention never left the weapon. The instant they found any opening in his guard, they wouldn't hesitate for a moment. They would tear him apart.
Whoo—whoo—whoo—
The bitter wind never let up, carving spiralling flurries steadily through the dense surrounding trees.
Bang!
A crisp report rang out again sharply across the pale grey pine forest. Down in the pit, Jasnah working desperately alongside the sled dogs to unload firewood and food from the sled—flinched violently at the sudden sound.
Her first thought was that Enno had simply fired again at the pack. But when she turned to check, the black shotgun resting in his hands sat entirely silent, no smoke was rising from its barrel at all.
"What happened, Enno? Was that you?"
Jasnah asked, alarm was entering her voice at the discrepancy.
Enno didn't answer right away. His gaze had drifted past the wolves who seemed, curiously, to sense some fresh danger themselves, no longer watching him directly but turning instead toward the deeper, darker reaches of the forest beyond.
"It's nothing—"
The clouded film that had always covered Enno's eyes had thinned considerably in that moment, and in its place, at the very centre of his pupils, a silvery light showed briefly—reflecting a figure the surrounding wolves couldn't see at all.
After a moment, he spoke again.
"Hurry. We're running out of time."
The moment he stepped out of the void and into full being, the sudden cold rushing in from every direction made Bryan shiver faintly.
Dozens of wild, feral gazes bearing down on him at once from ahead made his own brow twitch subtly at the sight and an instant later, his entire body dissolved smoothly into a swirl of white.
A shotgun-wielding wizard, disguised as a Muggle, and a prisoner.
A wanted criminal of the wizarding world.
A sled, and eight sled dogs.
A pack of wolves closing in on every side.
After a long, considering silence, Bryan turned his own head toward one particular direction. Far off, well past the reach of ordinary sight, he could sense a scattering of Muggle presences.
So that's it.
Bryan withdrew his thoughtful gaze, settling it instead on the Muggle standing his ground steadily against the entire wolf pack, shotgun still raised and ready.
So, it hadn't been his letter of invitation that had done the trick after all—it was something he'd left behind even earlier, a contingency that had proven its worth at just the right moment.
From the brief flash of silver that had crossed the man's clouded eyes, Bryan read a certain amount into the unfolding situation, piecing it together rapidly.
After a moment's further thought, Bryan allowed himself a faint, private smile at what he'd deduced, then nodded once to himself, and settled back into quiet, watchful stillness, his own presence withdrawn from the perception, observing.
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