Helpless: Day 6

Word Count: 36,216

Summary of Events:

Mikolaj was woken in the night by the bellowing of a near — and very angry — bull, whom he found, to his surprise, had fallen into the small cellar that had been dug for his brother and sister-in-law's house. Since the bull was angry and agitated, Mikolaj knew he couldn't go in the cellar, and even if he got help from his neighbours, they wouldn't be able to get the bull out safely, meaning his only option was to kill it, and after some puzzling about how to do that, he got an idea . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

He drew his hunting knife from its sheath on his leg and held its handle and the handle of the fork together, with the fork tines curving up and away from the knife. It would work.

Quickly taking some of the coarse cord that was used to bind the sheaves at harvest, Mikolaj secured the handle of his knife to the handle of the fork as tightly as he could, until he was sure nothing would cause the two to come apart if he were to fail to hit his mark.

Hurrying back to the cellar, Mikolaj positioned himself in such a way along the edge of the cellar that he was confident nothing the bull could possibly do would make him fall in before the bull was dead.

The bull, however, seemed to be getting increasingly restless, as he was pacing quite a bit. Mikolaj hoped the bull didn’t sense him as a threat and fear his death to be nigh — even though it was.

After some time, the bull finally stopped pacing and backed up against one of the narrow walls. Before Mikolaj could make his strike, the bull bounded forward, slamming his head into the other narrow wall, which looked particularly damaged.

This seemed to daze the bull, whom Mikolaj supposed had either been suspecting the earthen wall to be something he could bash through with his mighty skull, or had been meaning to leap out of the cellar despite the fact that bulls were not known for their ability to leap — an ability that sheep, goats, horses, and deer possessed and, for the most part, looked reasonably graceful in executing; especially the latter two.

Taking the opportunity afforded him, Mikolaj plunged his improvised spear at the bull, the tines of the fork passing neatly between the horns and sliding along the top of the head while the knife went deep into the flesh.

He pulled the knife out as the bull’s legs buckled beneath him before watching the bull collapse and lay completely still.

Using the sharp head of one of his arrows, Mikolaj cut his hunting knife free of the fork before setting the fork aside and watching to be sure the bull was fully dead before he hopped down into the cellar.

It took a few moments for him to screw up the courage to reach out a hand and touch the powerful shoulder of the unmoving creature, but when Mikolaj did so and there was no twitch of the powerful muscles between the sleek coat his hand touched, Mikolaj was able to calm himself and set about the butchering process, at least, to a basic fashion.

He didn’t cut the meat into all the cuts, but carefully divided it into groups that were small enough for him to heft out of the cellar until he’d finally succeeded in getting the bull out of the cellar, albeit in pieces.

Piece by piece, Mikolaj then hauled the bull into the house and down to the cellar within, where it could stay until the meat was trimmed into all the cuts and cured from there in the morning.