A nasty growl suddenly ripped the air, and the laughter had immediately died as soon as it had erupted earlier. Everybody froze. Oliver stopped dead in his tracks, planted himself against a nearby tree, and immediately drew an arrow from the leather-made quiver strapped across his back. This is it! He told himself as he poised for the kill. His sharp ears listened for any more sound, hoping to pinpoint the location of the beast. Was that how the cockatrice sounded? He hadn’t seen nor heard one before, though in his many readings, it does make quite a piercing shrill.
One heartbeat. Two. Three. And then nothing. It was suddenly silent all over the forest once again. The prince gestured his men to stay still, stay quiet.
“What was that about?” his servant Lot expressed as he emerged from a low bush a couple of minutes later when he saw Oliver drop his bow.
Oliver didn’t answer as he started walking ahead again, hoping to hear thumps or thuds, anything, from whatever that was that made that bellowing growl. Now that he knew that one was close by, there was every reason to be careful now. “Stay here,” he told them as he moved ahead. He could feel his heart pounding, adrenaline pumping, not out of fear but out of sheer excitement. A hungry sneer was plastered on his face as he moved his feet forward one after the other, noiseless as a jungle cat, his eyes darting left and right trying to catch even the slightest movement around him.
Another growl. And Oliver was suddenly on his feet, darting through the shrubs and trees fast as lightning, expertly ducking low lying branches as he ran eagerly after the sound. He could faintly hear someone calling his name from behind as well as curses flying about, but he ignored them all. This was it! He was not going to let it get away so fast. Not when it was already so close.
* * *
The noises and the laughter was still loud enough for Yassia to hear, but it didn’t drown out another noise that came from some place to her left. A growl. Low, menacing. And totally too close for comfort! Yassia stopped dead and listened with a frantically beating heart. The men to her right a little more in the distance must have heard it to, because their laughter ceased immediately. Oh sweet stars what to do?! Was she really once again running into her doom? Why couldn’t she have listened to the many advices? She should have considered that coming later to Camelot was all the while better than not getting there at all because she was being eaten up by a nasty saurian beast. Congrats Yassia… and welcome to the next tight spot. Sit down and make yourself comfortable, you already know the deal after all… you’re stubborn and it gets you in trouble, now look how you manoeuver yourself out of this one!
The growl might still be some distance off, but when it next came it was definitely closer, moving towards her. In the end, she decided, there was only one option. She could not stand around and wait for it to come, she needed to run! And she best got herself some company now, human, fighting fit company – of course she couldn’t tell if they were, but only lunatics would wander around in such an area unarmed. Lunatics… or stubborn Princesses that was.
So when Yassia set out to run again, this time really trying not to make such a big noise, but by now means knowing how well she was faring with that, she chose the direction she had formerly tried to avoid: towards that group of men and away from the beast, whatever it was. It seemed like the only reasonable thing to do at that moment.
But Yassia had not wasted a single thought about the danger she might be in not from the beast side of this approaching nasty encounter, but from the human side. She didn’t think that she might be an excellent target as well, running as she was: full speed and yet not giving any noise to identify herself as human, to not startle the thing that might be coming towards her in her back. No, Yassia was definitely not at her best today concerning reasonable decisions. But then again, that was her, and it would not be the first time to get her in trouble. And hopefully also not the last.
