Lost and Forgotten

His limbs burned. His head ached. He wanted to sleep, to embrace death if only to feel peace.
Instead, Theo forced himself to push on, to fight through so that his hunters couldn’t make him regret his wish to die.
“Hurry hunter, we are nearly there!”
Ahead of him, the jotun ran, tearing the way through the trees. An unlikely ally and one Theo despised to be forced to take. Even now, he considered tripping the brute and giving him his due.
A howl behind them reminded him why he needed the jotun alive. He saw farther and was a bigger target in case they got cornered.
Several times already he had proved his worth, thwarting many wolves in their attempt to kill them. He prayed they had lost their leader.
They had made a simple plan. Reach the edge of the valley they were now in and climb. Wasn’t the best and they would probably die, but worth a shot.
The jotun stopped suddenly, forcing Theo to as well.
“What..what is it?”
Raising a massive hand, their heaving breaths were the only sound for a few moments.
“Move slowly, they mean to trap us.”
“Oh, you mean to say they haven’t had us trapped this whole time? Bloody brilliant.”
His sarcasm was not lost to the jotun, a scoff escaping him before they began slowly making their way onwards. Theo could hear something in the distance, it seemed the ice jotun had not been outright slaughtered as he had thought, some fought on. Fools.
The moonlight gave them enough vision to not hit each other or the trees, but kept the wolves hidden in the shadows, though now distant footsteps could be heard.
“They mean to get ahead of us, we need to move!”
At first he assumed the jotun didn’t hear him, though from what he had seen of him, he had more intelligence than the average savage giant. He was ignoring him now.
“Do you not hear me? They will surround us!”
Raising his voice above a whisper got a response, the jotun turning quickly to show his clear irritation.
“Silence! If they meant to surround us, they would have already. If you would hold your tongue, it would allow me to know where they are going and how to avoid them!”
Even his whispers had the hint of buried rage and Theo was chipping away at his patience.
The logic the jotun was using astounded Theo, clearly the giants spirits or whatever they revered had blessed this one. It was something that he could be thankful for, though he would never say it to the jotun.
A few more minutes went by in silence, the jotun making sudden turns here and there. Theo could truly hear it now, small changes in the howls that he couldn’t decipher as anything but a change in distance, but his ex-captor seemed to know what they meant.
Concentrating on the howls, he tripped and hit a sheer cliff face, the edge of the valley.
“You must get on my back.”
Theo almost yelled out in surprise at the suggestion.
“And trust you not to just flick me off halfway up? No. I’ll climb.”
———-
Erik looked at the hunter with a look of annoyance. If it had been the group, he would have fought and argued.
Erik breathed deep to get himself ready, then began to climb without a second glance to Theo.