Night came while Ares was still in the tree.
He closed his eyes, but sleep did not come.
The first howl came from a long way off.
Movement followed heavy bodies pushing through the undergrowth.
The first wolf stepped into the open ground beneath him.
It was the size of a horse, its shoulders level with a man’s chest.
Its pale eyes caught what little light remained.
It lifted its muzzle and tested the air.
More arrived.
Five.
Seven.
Nine.
They circled the trunk in a tight ring, silent except for the soft crush of leaves under their weight.
One brushed the tree hard enough to send a tremor up into Ares’s spine.
Another rose on its hind legs, front paws scraping the bark higher than a man’s head, claws digging shallow grooves before it dropped again.
Ares did not move.
His breathing stayed slow.
His hand rested against the rough wood and stayed there.
The largest wolf stopped directly under him.
It raised its head higher than the others and sniffed longer.
A low sound started in its chest.
Its ears flattened as it lifted its nose toward the branches.
It took one step closer to the trunk.
Then another.
Its nose almost touched the bark.
That was when the new sound reached them.
A deep, heavy breath.
Slow.
Heavy enough that Ares felt it through the wood under his back.
The wolves froze.
Nine heads turned the same way.
For several seconds nothing moved.
Then the largest wolf gave a short, clipped howl and the pack broke.
They slipped into the undergrowth without looking back, bodies low, vanishing between the trunks.
Ares stayed still.
The breathing grew louder.
Branches cracked under real weight.
Something pushed through the dark, forcing aside branches and undergrowth the wolves had barely disturbed.
The bear stepped into the open.
It was larger than any horse.
Its shoulders rose above the lowest branches.
Its head was massive, the snout long, the eyes small and black in the dark.
Each breath left a thick cloud that drifted up toward the tree.
The ground seemed to sink a little under its front paws.
A low branch cracked under its shoulder as it passed, and the tremor ran up through the trunk into the fork where Ares sat.
It stopped beneath him, lowered its head, and worked the ground where the wolves had passed, taking slow, deliberate breaths.
A low sound rolled out of its chest, deeper than anything the wolves had made.
Then it turned and followed the trail the wolves had left behind.
Ares watched until the last of the heavy footsteps faded.
He did not climb down.
He shifted his weight and looked down.
In the bark of the trunk, just below the fork where he sat, three deep claw marks cut through the wood.
Each groove was wider than his hand.
Pale wood showed beneath the bark.
Ares stayed in the tree a little longer.
Then he pulled the pack closer to his chest.
He was not going down tonight.
He drifted in and out for the rest of the night, never sleeping for long.
Each time his eyes opened, he checked the ground below.
The sky lightened slowly.
Grey first, then a thin band of pale color low behind the trees.
Birds started somewhere far off.
Ares listened for a moment, then waited until the light was strong enough to see the ground clearly.
He climbed down one branch at a time, testing his weight before committing to it.
His legs were stiff.
His hands ached from the cold and from gripping the bark through the night.
He dropped the last meter and landed in a crouch, the rebar already in his hands, and stayed there, listening.
Nothing moved.
He crossed to the trunk and studied the marks from the ground.
They were deeper than they had looked from above.
He did not touch them.
At the base of the tree, he finished the last of his rations.
There was nothing left to save for later.
The forest floor near the tree was churned where the wolves had circle leaves pressed flat, the earth scored with claw drags.
Further out, the bear’s tracks sank deep into the softer ground, each print wide enough to fit both his boots inside it.
He followed them with his eyes only, in the direction the pack had gone, then turned away from that line and started west.
He kept the sun at his back where the canopy allowed it.
The orchard appeared through the trees by midmorning, the broken trees standing the way he remembered them, vines thick on the trunks.
He moved through it slower than he had the day before, rebar low, eyes on the ground for tracks that were not his own.
Twice he found ant trails crossing his path, thin lines of them moving through the grass with something dark held between their jaws.
Both times he stopped and let them pass.
The deer carcass was gone.
Only a dark stain remained where it had been, and a scattering of white bone picked clean.
By early afternoon the trees thinned and the open ground began.
Ares stopped at the tree line and studied the field ahead before crossing it the same field he had crossed the morning before.
Heat shimmered low over the grass.
Nothing moved.
He checked the bag one more time.
The two boxes of rounds sat heavy against his back.
The water skin was nearly flat.
Ares stepped out of the trees and started across the open ground, toward the low dark line on the horizon that was the wall.
He did not run.
He kept his pace even and the rebar loose in one hand, and did not look back at the tree line until he was halfway across.
The wall grew from a line to a shape, then to something with a gate in it.
A figure moved along the top someone on watch, still too far to call out to.
Ares kept walking.
His legs ached with every step.
He kept his pace anyway.
The east gate was still closed when he reached it.
He stood in front of the steel and waited, the way he had waited the morning before on the other side, and did not knock.
After a moment, the watch above called down.
Then the gate began to open, just wide enough for one person.
Ares stepped through, into the camp, into the sound of people who had not expected him back.