He was not like the others. Where his siblings were cautious, Tag was curious. Where they saw the hounds of the Belstone Hunt as a distant, terrifying thunder, Tag saw them as a puzzle to be solved. He grew lean and powerful, his coat the color of a dying ember, and his mind sharper than the flint stones of the moor.
The rivalry began on a crisp October morning. The air hummed with the baying of the pack and the sharp, brassy notes of the hunting horn. Leading the chase was Asher, the Huntsman, a man whose soul was etched with the lines of a thousand miles of pursuit. Beside him ran Merlin, the lead hound, a creature of pure instinct and iron lungs.
For years, the dance continued. Tag became the "Belstone Fox," a phantom that haunted the dreams of the hunters. He didn't just escape; he toyed with them. He would run along the tops of stone walls to break his scent, double back through freezing streams, and once, famously, leaped onto the back of a moving sheep to carry his trail away from the searching noses of the pack.
