by Ryan Cahill
“Calen, I’ve never ended a life before without there being a real reason. I hunt deer, rabbits, fish… so that we can eat. To survive. That bear was hungry. It came back and found us in its home. We – I killed it. I know it would have killed us if I didn’t kill it first, but… it’s not the same.”
“I get it, Dann,” Calen said. I get it.
Calen tossed another log onto the fire. A soft sigh escaped him as he sat back down onto the spongy trunk of the fallen tree he had been perched on.
They sat in silence as the evening drifted away and the night settled around them. The sounds of the forest provided a soothing chorus as the day’s birdsong was replaced by the soft burbling of the stream as it meandered through the forest, the crackling and snapping of the fire as it consumed the flesh of the wood, and the ever-present buzzing of insects as they went about their nocturnal business. Every so often, the howl of a wolfpine broke the tranquil blanket of familiar sounds, drawing sudden jerks from Calen, Dann, or Rist as they spun around to make sure that the bear hadn’t risen from the dead.
“Guys… I think we may have a visitor,” Rist squeaked.
Calen opened his eyes. A large kat, about the same size as Faenir, skulked around the rim of the fire. Its spotted brown and silvery-black fur caused it to blend in and out of sight with the forest backdrop. Its tapered ears pointed straight up towards the sky, giving the impression that it was always paying attention, always listening. He had never seen a kat up close before. The dazzling yellowish glow in its eyes was hypnotising. The two tufts of fur that draped down past its shoulders on either side of its head gave it a wizened look.
Calen reached for his bow, careful not to make any sudden moves, stretching out his fingertips to wrap around the grip.
“No,” Dann hushed. He was already standing up by the fire, his hand pointing at Calen but his eyes fixed on the kat.
Without a sound loud enough to be heard above the leaves rustling in the wind, Dann made his way over towards the leftover fish they had caught and cooked that morning. It was splayed out on a smooth flat stone by the fire. He stayed low to the ground, with his knees bent and his arms raised slightly in the air, spread out to either side. His eyes never left the kat.
The kat’s gleaming yellow eyes returned Dann’s fixed gaze. An unintelligible purring emanated from its muscular throat.
The kat took two steps around the fire, towards Dann, slow and deliberate. Its head lowered as its back arched. The muscles rippled on its hind legs. The purring deepened, dropping into its chest.
Dann’s eyes narrowed. He turned to face the kat. The light from the fire flickered shadows across his face. He opened his palm and tossed the fish up into the air, to the other side of the fire.
The kat flexed its muscular legs momentarily, then launched itself into the air. The patterns on its fur shimmered in the mixture of moon and fire light as it twisted and turned its torso mid-flight. It seemed to hang in the air for an eternity, as if weightless. It snatched the fish out of the air with its mouth in one smooth motion before landing, without any discernible sound, on the other side of the fire.
The kat bit the fish clean in half, letting the other half fall to the ground. Once it had finished eating what it had bitten off, the kat bent its head down to the ground and picked the second half of the fish up with surprising care. Its eyes locked on Dann again.
The kat padded over towards Dann. Stopping in front of him, it lowered its head and, in almost a tender manner, placed the second piece of fish down on the ground at Dann’s feet.
A soft purring noise reverberated from its throat.
“What in the….” Rist whispered.
Dann reached down for the fish, careful not to move with too much haste. The kat’s head turned, staring with intense focus into the darkness obscured forest. It didn’t move, but the hackles on the back of its neck, all the way down its spine, stood upright. The soft purring changed into a deep, chesty rumble. Calen listened intently, trying to hear whatever the kat had heard.
Snap.
The sound of a thick branch splitting under the weight of something heavy. An arrow flew out from amidst the trees, slicing through the fire and planting in the ground where the kat’s leg had been.
Calen had not even seen the kat leap. Its reflexes were quicker than his eyes could follow. In one bound, it propelled itself clear of the camp and was gone, back into the forest.
“Who’s there?” Dann yelled. His bow was already drawn, aimed in the direction the arrow had come from.
Rist grasped the shaft of his spear with both hands, surveying the surrounding forest. His head jittered from place to place as he searched for any other would-be attackers.
Drawing his eyes away from where the kat had leapt into the abyss of trees, Calen snatched up his makeshift spear in one hand and bounded over towards Dann.
“Guys, I think—” Rist was cut short as a second arrow shot through the trees. Though it was impossible to follow the flight of the arrow in the darkness, a howl from Rist let both Calen and Dann know where it had landed. Calen’s heart dropped into his stomach. He turned to see Rist standing by the fire, his spear rolling along the ground and the shaft of an arrow protruding from his left leg.
“Rist!” Calen and Dann leapt to Rist’s side, stabilising him as he stumbled.
“What the fuck are you doing, Fritz? You could have killed him!” came a familiar voice. Fritz Netly?
“Shut up, Dennet. I would have gotten it if they hadn’t scared it off.”
Three figures emerged from the copse of trees. Calen could only make out their silhouettes in the pale moonlight. One was larger, with thick, broad shoulders. He was flanked on either side by two smaller figures. “Calen, we didn’t mean for Rist to get hurt, I swear it,” the taller figure said. The voice was deep, familiar. Something clicked in Calen’s head.
“Kurtis? What the hell do you think you’re doing? You shot Rist!” Calen lunged towards Kurtis, raising his spear as he did so, his shoulders and arms tensing.
“Whoa! Don’t take another step, Bryer, or I’ll put an arrow in you too.” One of the smaller figures drew his bow and aimed it straight at Calen’s chest.
“Fritz…” Calen muttered, a scowl spreading across his face.
He turned his head, just for a second, to check on Rist and Dann. They were on the ground, Dann cradling Rist’s head on his knee. It looked like he had managed to remove the arrow, but Rist’s breathing was heavy. Calen’s muscles tensed as the rage burned through him. He wanted so badly to rip the smirk off Fritz’s smug face.
“Careful now… He’ll be fine, but I can’t say the same for you if you even think about coming near me,” Fritz said. He drew his bowstring back a little farther to make his point clear.
“Fritz.” Just one word from Kurtis. The meaning was clear: You’re going too far. Fritz just glared back at him. That absent glare always unsettled Calen; the way Fritz’s eyes never seemed to be looking at you, but through you. As if everyone was simply an obstacle to what he wanted. A grin spread across Fritz’s face as he looked past Calen. Something had caught his eye. The bear pelt.
“What do we have here?” Fritz said, the firelight flickering across his face. “That looks like the perfect payment for costing us that kat. Dennet, take it down.”
“That’s ours!” Rist coughed. The pain was evident in his voice.
“No, it’s ours,” Fritz said.
Dennet cut the ropes that kept the pelt strung up between the trees. Then he made his way over to join Kurtis and Fritz, struggling as he heaved it over his shoulder. The clouds overhead had moved on and released more moonlight. Calen could see their faces more clearly now. Kurtis bit his bottom lip as he watched Fritz, who examined the pelt in the firelight, running his hand over the rough fur and the part-dry skin. “Not a bad job at all. This beast must have been huge. A good kill. You idiots must have gotten lucky,” Fritz said. “Thank you very much. There is no doubt we will be declared victor
s of The Hunt when we bring this back.”
“Burn you all! What is wrong with you?” The venom in Dann’s words burned like a hot knife through his voice.
“It’s simply being smart, Dann. You scared off our kill, so we take yours. Fair is fair,” Fritz said. He had that same cold, calculating look in his eyes. “Now get out of here.”
“You think we’re leaving?” Dann roared, still cradling Rist’s head in his lap.
“Yes, I do. I’ll be nice. Take a minute to gather your supplies. Then start walking towards the mountains. If you’re not gone in five minutes, I will show you how serious I am. I will follow you for a while, to make sure you keep walking.”
Kurtis looked like he wanted to protest, but a sharp look from Fritz stopped him in his tracks.
“Okay, we’ll go,” Calen said through gritted teeth. A wicked grin curled at the corner of Fritz’s mouth.
Dann stared at him, his mouth agape. “What are you doing?”
“Rist is hurt, Dann. We need to get him away from these assholes and make sure he’s okay. That’s more important than fighting with these three. Can you get him to his feet? I’ll carry the bags.”
Dann replied with a resigned nod.
Calen gathered their supplies, and Dann got Rist to his feet with a few bouts of protest. They made their way towards the edge of the clearing, in the direction of Wolfpine Ridge. Calen noticed what he thought was an apologetic look in Kurtis’s eyes.
“Keep walking until the sun starts to rise,” Fritz called after them. “I’ll know if you don’t.”
They trudged through the dense forest in silence, exhaustion in their bones. Calen carried the bags while Rist used a combination of Dann and his spear as walking sticks. Every once in a while, Calen checked behind them for any signs of Fritz following them. He thought he saw something a few times, but he couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t worth finding out.
As the sun crested over the top of the mountain, a small rivulet came into view about thirty or so feet ahead. Calen hadn’t heard it as they approached. With fatigue causing a slight throbbing in his ears, he was finding it hard to focus.
“This is ridiculous,” Dann said, his voice a mixture of tiredness and irritation.
Calen sighed. “We need to stop at the water. We need to drink and take a look at the wound. We can’t leave it too long, or it might become infected.”
Dann nodded. Rist grunted.
After they sat for a while in silence and filled their bellies with water, Calen rolled up Rist’s trouser leg to inspect the wound.
“The arrow went clean through,” Dann said. “I broke the head off on the other side and pulled the shaft out. He was lucky.” Dann dunked his waterskin into the rivulet as he spoke, sighing with exhaustion.
“Lucky?” Rist said, coughing. “How, by the gods, do you consider this lucky?
“Well, you didn’t bleed much, which means the arrow didn’t hit anything important. The arrow came through, which meant I could pull it out. Otherwise, it would still be in your leg. And it hurt just enough to shut you up for the last few hours,” Dann said, grinning to himself.
“I swear, I’ll put one in you if you don’t wipe that grin off your face,” Rist snapped.
“Should have left the bloody thing in,” Dann said, shrugging.
“Will you two shut up?”
Both Dann and Rist jumped a little, taken aback by Calen’s abrupt and irritated tone.
“Rist, Dann just pulled an arrow from your leg, hauled you to your feet, and dragged you here.” Rist hung his head, ashamed. “Dann—”
“Yes?” His tired face gave its best impression at a cheeky grin. Calen wasn’t in the mood for it.
“Stop being an asshole.”
Dann opened his mouth but didn’t argue. Calen reached into his bag and pulled out some of the herbs and plants he had gathered the other day, while he was looking for firewood. He mulled over the different options, trying to remember exactly which ones his mother had said were good at stopping infection.
Two, he knew immediately. Cretia’s Breath and Bluebottle drops. He pulled them out and set them down on the rock to his left. He muttered to himself as he sifted through the rest, “Mullder, docleaf…” None of them were as good as brimlock sap. But they would do.
When he had picked out all the ones he needed, he used a rock to grind them into a paste. He added some water from the rivulet to get the consistency he wanted.
“These herbs will act as a poultice. It should keep infection at bay while the wound heals,” Calen said, still grinding away at the plant mixture. He noticed a hesitant look on Rist’s face. “It’s that or we cauterise it with fire. Dann, could you get a fire going?”
The colour drained from Rist’s face. “Let’s go with the plant thing.”
“Good choice!” Dann choked, coughing up some water in between bouts of strained laughter.
Despite the multiple protests and gasps of pain, it didn’t take long for Calen to apply the poultice to Rist’s leg. He tore a strip off Rist’s shirt to act as a bandage once it was dried in.
“We should get going.” Dann dragged himself to a seated position. “We’re going to have to walk through the night and all tomorrow morning just to make it back in time.”
Calen’s stomach rumbled. “Can we eat something first?”
“I second that,” Rist said.
Dann sighed. With a grunt of exhaustion, he got to his feet. “If you can get a fire going. I’ll go and see if I can find something to eat. Some food and rest might not be a bad idea before we get moving.”
Calen had just managed to get the fire going by the time Dann re-emerged from the trees, the limp body of a beaver slung over his shoulder. There wasn’t going to be much food to go around.
“We eat, then we rest until the sun passes the peak of that mountain.” Dann winced as he pointed up towards a craggy peak in the distance. “Then we need to move.”
“Agreed, Rist?” Calen said.
Rist grunted, a grimace twisted on his face.
The sun had already begun to set when Calen, Dann, and Rist started the long hike back through Ölm Forest. The combination of a warm meal and exhaustion meant they had rested far longer than intended.
“Well, we’re not going to pass The Proving. But given what’s happened so far, I’m pretty happy just to be going home without an arrow wound in my leg.” Dann’s attempt at humour was met with a swift kick in the ankles from Rist.
“Too soon.” There was a no-nonsense tone in Rist’s voice, but Calen noticed a smirk just lingering on the corner of his mouth. Dann managed to catch himself before falling and thought better of complaining, but something caused him to stop in his tracks.
“Dann—” Dann’s raised hand cut Calen short. He squinted as he stared into the dense brush.
His voice was a whisper. “There’s something…”
Calen thought he could hear it. The rustling of leaves. The snapping of branches. The thumping of heavy feet. A small puddle of water in front of them rippled at regular intervals.
In a flash, a wolfpine burst out of the trees about ten feet ahead of them. Its fur was mostly a greyish-black, mottled with streaks of dark blood. The wolfpine stared straight at them. Something was wrong. It was large, less than half a foot smaller than Faenir from nose to tail. But it was not large enough to cause the ripples in that water.
“Oh, for the love of the gods! This is getting ridiculous! Can’t we just catch a bre—?” Just as Rist was about to finish his sentence, a massive axe with a half-moon blade followed the wolfpine out of the trees, swinging through the air with a ringing metallic whistle. The axe blade was massive, nearly the width of the wolfpine’s belly to the crest of its back, with a smooth translucent gemstone set into its surface. It crashed straight into the creature’s ribcage and, with a howling whimper, lifted the wolfpine off its feet. The sheer force carried it through the air and slammed it into the trunk of a nearby tree. Calen didn’t need to look to kno
w that the animal would not be getting back up. He felt his grip on the spear involuntarily growing tighter as fear made itself at home in his bones.
Dann was in the middle of nocking an arrow when two creatures emerged from the trees near the body of the wolfpine. An unintelligible noise came from Rist’s mouth.
A thousand thoughts ran amok in Calen’s head, none of them able to make sense of the other. He had to squeeze his hands around the spear even tighter to stop them from shaking. Uraks.
They were human in shape, but the larger of the two was easily over seven feet tall. Its shoulders were heavy and broad, and its dense muscles rippled with every movement. Its ashen-grey skin was thick and rough, almost like it was made of leather. Of everything, its sharp, angular face was the least human. The pale skin made it seem almost bereft of life, while its thin bluish lips curled back to reveal a yellow set of sharp, vicious teeth.
It wore no shoes of any description, but battered pieces of plate mail covered its legs, secured with thick straps of leather. Its chest bore no such protection; the exposed flesh was crisscrossed with half-healed wounds and scars of battles long past. What struck Calen the most, though, were its eyes. The irises were as red as blood, and the pupils were long and sharp, like those of a kat. He had never seen one up close before.
The smaller of the two Uraks looked similar to its companion, although it was around a foot shorter, and its skin had more of a brownish hue to it. Like the larger one, it wore no shoes but bore a ragged iron chest plate and vambraces to match.
It only took a couple of seconds for the Uraks to notice Calen, Dann, and Rist huddled together a stone’s throw away with dumbstruck looks on their faces. Wrapping a thick grey hand around the shaft of the axe buried in the crumpled heap of the wolfpine, the larger of the two shouted something at the smaller one. Its voice was harsh, like stones crashing down the side of a mountain. Calen could not understand anything it said.
Without hesitation, the smaller Urak charged towards the group at a pace that Calen would not have thought possible, given its size. It swung a jagged sword over its head, unleashing a guttural howl. The charred-black sword was nearly four foot long, with a translucent gemstone set into the blade, just above the crossguard.