Read Hammer & Air for Free Online Page B

keeping west and choosing our camp based on things we needed, like water and shelter and firewood. Some nights we found all three, and those nights, if Hammer were lucky with a snare, we’d stay and dig some tubers and store up on our food. I’d worked with our tough wool blankets, a tarpaulin, and some cord in the bottom of my pack and could set up a passable tent over the fire Hammer built in the evening. If we let the fire burn to embers, we could sleep in relative warmth, although the ground weren’t comfortable in the least.
    We got proficient at things, and when we lived through a week of tramping through snow, I started having hopes we might see spring and a time when we arrived at a town that didn’t have fliers posted with Hammer’s crime written on them.
    One day, Hammer ran down a deer, bashing it on the skull in one mighty swing of his arm, the smith’s hammer at the end. The thing twitched for a bit—were still twitching, in fact—when I caught up with them, panting and blowing because I hadn’t been expecting the impromptu hunt. I settled down with the knife Hammer had given me, and that I’d learned to keep sharp, and I went about dressing the thing.
    It were another one of those things I’d read about and guessed about. There were some parts you’d want to eat and some parts you wouldn’t, so I stripped the parts I wouldn’t want to taste out of the middle of the deer and threw them into the brush, thinking that scavengers would come and do their part of the clean up. I started stripping off the skin and thinking of asking Hammer to make a fire right there, so we could roast the carcass and strip the meat from the bones, and just when I opened my mouth to say that, there were a scream from the rock behind me that almost made me wet myself.
    I were crouched in front of the deer, and Hammer were leaning against the tree next to me, waiting for the moment he could help. Suddenly, Hammer were behind me, screaming fiercely at whatever were making that screeching noise.
    My first thought were the knife. How were Hammer supposed to defend himself when I had the knife! But as I scrambled around and saw Hammer, engaged in a life and death struggle with a giant mountain cat, I realized that a knife would have been clumsy and useless in Hammer’s massive fist. He were doing just fine with the weapon he’d used so well just an hour ago on the deer.
    The creature screamed and ducked as Hammer swung the smith’s hammer like a mace at its head. A bitter claw lashed out, catching Hammer on the arm, but Hammer swung again and caught the thing with its long teeth and ice-curdling scream. It screamed again, this time in pain, and its jaw cracked and swung open. It whimpered then and retreated—I’d say, to lick its wounds—but it were clear to see that the creature would die eventually. At the moment, it were still strong and healthy, and still armed with claws, but its jaw were hanging by a bit of skin and naught else. It could still kill us now, but Hammer had ended its future right quick.
    But Hammer’s sleeve were soaked in blood, and he stood there, shaking, as the thing slunk off, probably to glare at us from the underbrush until we left the offal for it to lick. I came up next to Hammer, trying not to panic. The smith’s tool fell from his weakened hand, and I almost failed, even in that.
    It took a minute of shaking so bad I couldn’t raise my hand to tend him, but finally I stopped concentrating on what I’d do if Hammer died, and started concentrating on how to make him live. First, I pulled the flask of melted snow I kept at my waist and rinsed off my hands before I went anywhere near his wound. Then I took the knife, even as he stood there shaking, and sliced the tunic off his body. He looked at me when the first blast of snow-scented wind hit him, and I mumbled “Bandages” before slicing off the clean fabric from the undamaged arm off and wrapping the wound immediately.
    I ran to my pack