by Matthew Berg
The twitch in his eye was the tell Kestrel needed, or he’d likely have been more frightened than he was. But it was enough to give him the confidence to stand still as the half-elf approached and remain motionless while he tilted his head back. But he had to admit he became concerned when the half-elf drew close enough that Kestrel could feel his breath, which smelled, he noted absently, of heather, against his face. Kestrel must have shown some movement of discomfort in his face then, because Aelric responded with a rare bark of laughter before withdrawing and snapping his knife back into its sheath in a quick, fluid motion.
“Enough games!” And just like that, the hunt master had returned them all to their purpose. “These boys do not know quick mud from quick bread. And they cannot string a bow, track a rabbit across fresh snow, or start a fire without a tinderbox. They would be as helpless in the eye of Woods Heart as a suckling baby taken from its mother’s arms.
“The day’s lessons, and tonight’s as well, will try to start them on the road to learning what the rest of you already know. If God is merciful, one of these unlikely boys might even surpass you three and become a true woodsman, to match perhaps the meanest elf of Aoilfhionn in ability.
“But while it is unlikely any of you shall ever reach even that mark, you should know that I not only believe it to be possible, but I know it to be so. For there are trackers among the human legends, and even those who walk the green today, who were and are the match for many elves in the skills of which I hope to teach you but a mere fraction.
“Your first lesson is this: time spent in the woods, awareness of one’s surroundings, and common sense are the three components necessary to become a master of woodcraft. Lack any of these three elements, and you will never be more than one who travels through the woods at the will of the forest and its inhabitants.
“Let us be off, then. Load up your steed for a few hours’ journey. We will take no pack horses, and when we break for our midday meal, we will be tethering the horses and continuing the rest of the trip on foot.”
The boys fell to. Each was guided to a horse by Tavish and began to load them as instructed. Kestrel’s single pack, bedroll, and bow were secured quickly, and he was done and mounted within moments. He had been closest to Tavish when Aelric gave the order to mount, and he had selected a roan stallion with a rangy look in his eye. He had never ridden this horse before, and he took some time now to get comfortable with him. The horse had been a good choice. He was fiery but well trained, and responded to the slightest pressure from Kestrel’s knees. He turned him this way and that, and walked him slowly around the others, weaving between them at close quarters and trying to judge his behavior around other horses.
Finally satisfied, Kestrel took another look at the boys who would be accompanying them on their hunting trip. His initial impressions were good. They were quieter and more subdued than many of their peers, who put on brave fronts to try to impress the older and more experienced squires. He wondered how much of that was being intimidated by Aelric and his words to start the trip. And he wondered whether they would become bolder and brasher as they became comfortable with their surroundings and their traveling companions. Kestrel had witnessed such behavior before. He hated it. He much preferred someone like Tavish, who was quiet and confident without feeling the need to be a bully or brag about his accomplishments.
The last of the three boys had mounted. Aelric, still on foot, began to jog away from them at a steady, league-eating pace, bending southward and then straight west, and keeping the boys on horseback at a trot.
As promised, and nearly four uneventful hours later, Aelric slowed to a walk at the verge of a wall of trees that extended as far as the eye could see to the north and south. They had reached the edge of the great central forest of Hyrde. Kestrel was excited. He had always skirted this forest by traveling north by northwest from Ridderzaal, toward his homeland.
It was an appealing forest to his senses, comprised of old-growth hardwood as far to the north as the forest extended—about halfway to the border of the plains of Namur. To the south, he knew it transitioned to softer, water-loving trees and pines. But that was many, many leagues from here and in an area where the gnomes would still dispute trespassers, and so he had always given it a wide berth.
As the boys came closer to him, Aelric addressed them. “Dismount here. We will lead the horses into the forest a short way, where there will be ample fodder and drink for them. The stallion Kestrel rides will see that they remain where we leave them.”
Half an hour later, they were on the move. Each wore on their backs all the gear the horses had been carrying, and they were eating such cold meals as cheese, hard bread, and satje as they went. The boys had been tasked with bringing their own food, and most had chosen well. Kestrel was partial to the dried, leatherlike beef and, before swallowing it, would chew on a single piece for long minutes until all hint of salt had been extracted. But one of the two new boys had brought a loaf of fresh bread, pears, and soft cheese. And the other had brought a fresh-salted fish wrapped in oilcloth! Their struggle to eat as they hiked through the woods provided Kestrel with a good deal of entertainment. And even Tavish shook his head at the boy trying to take a bite of fish while using his other hand to scramble up a low rise.
Each boy also carried at least one skin of water, and all had taken Tavish’s lead when he refilled his at the brook where they left the horses.
When they had walked deeper into the woods for the better part of an hour, Aelric stopped them once again. “For two or three furlongs now, we have pushed ahead of us a doe in heat. Have any of you seen it?”
Kestrel’s cheeks turned red. He had not, and he guessed that none of the other boys had either. Always careful to be the first to admit to a failure, as his father had taught him, Kestrel responded out loud. “I did not, though now you’ve told me, I can find it if you’ll let me.”
Aelric shook his head. “No. There’s no gain in finding her, since we’ve no intention of bringing her down.”
Kestrel was mortified at the comment. He hadn’t meant he would shoot the doe! He had only meant as he said: He would find it. He would track it. He scowled at the thoughts he imagined running through the minds of his peers: that he had made a mistake and the hunt master had corrected him before the group.
After a moment longer, Aelric continued. “But . . . I didn’t say anything about the hart that noticed her passing and now follows her.” The hunt master smiled, clearly enjoying himself.
Kestrel’s ears perked up. Hart! He removed the bow from over his shoulder and unwound the string wrapped about its length, stringing the bow with his foot in a fluid, practiced motion. He would not draw an arrow, however. Stalking with a nocked arrow made it harder to clear branches and move stealthily, as Kestrel had learned many years earlier. It had been a lesson he’d learned himself, and it had stayed with him.
He checked the direction of the wind by turning in a slow circle and judging when he felt its gentle pressure against both ears at once. The wind was from just north of east. And the deer would want to remain downwind of any animal that might be following them. So if they were pushing the doe as Aelric had said, the doe would be trying to stay slightly south of where they were headed. He started moving westward, hoping to work his way around the deer, glancing once at Aelric to make sure the half-elf was looking for the boys to make their own decisions, and it was therefore okay to proceed.
Kestrel quickened his pace and began to stalk, stepping carefully as he walked on the balls of his feet. He moved ahead, farther and farther from the rest of the group. He glanced back briefly. Derek, ever the opportunist, was moving around the deer as Kestrel did, but to the south. Tavish, Kestrel was pleased to see, faced in the direction of the deer and was speaking to the new boys gathered before him. He was giving Kestrel and Derek time to get into position before he continued the push. Kestrel knew that Tavish would have the boys line up on either side of him and then walk a broad line straight in
the direction the deer would be heading. He looked up once and nodded to Kestrel, confirming his intentions. Kestrel smiled and waved back in a quick thank you. Then he was off.
Kestrel moved even more quickly now, assured that he would be getting more cooperation than competition from his fellow squires. Even Derek, whose motives would be more strictly personal than the others’, would be effectively helping the group by his approach and by the fact that Kestrel knew he was apt to act as another “pusher” whether he intended to or not. His stalking skills were not his greatest strength in the area of woodcraft.
Kestrel hunched over as he ran so he could carry his bow parallel to the ground and low enough that he could avoid snagging it on the thickening underbrush into which the deer had moved. Thinking again that Derek would give him an unwilling assist, he cut farther to the right to ensure the deer weren’t pushed in his direction too soon—before he’d had a chance to get downwind. He ran farther west for a few more minutes, and then, on some instinctual sense that he’d gone far enough, he bent his way southward and slowed down his pace to ensure he would spot the deer before they spotted him. Even without his scent to aid them, the animals weren’t blind.
He moved slowly, turning his head as little as possible and doing most of his scanning with his eyes. He tried not to focus on any one tree or other feature of the terrain, knowing from experience that he’d be better able to catch motion at the edges of his vision if he weren’t distracted by wondering for too long whether that storm-overturned root ball was a massive cave bear and that broken branch was a set of antlers.
He had moved another twenty or thirty yards when he caught sight of something slightly to the left of the direction he was heading, and about thirty yards away. He relaxed. It was Derek. But then something else caught his eye, to the right of Derek and moving up behind him quickly. It was a . . . gnome? No, he didn’t think so. What was it? He couldn’t be sure, but the creature closing in on Derek was no human or other creature he’d ever seen before.
It was humanlike, with a sallow cast to its features, almost yellow in the sunlight that filtered through the canopy of trees. Its mouth jutted forward into something like a flattened snout, and it had pointed ears like a wildcat’s. Disconcerting Kestrel was the fact that it wore a leather vest and leather pants, which came down to just past its knees. But it was the way the creature moved that made Kestrel’s spine squirm. It ran with a low, loping stride, its arms almost hanging to the ground. And as it closed in on Derek, it pushed off the ground, the saplings, and any other obstacles in its path as smoothly as a wolf or dog might while running down prey.
Kestrel froze as his mind tried to grasp what he was witnessing. Was it a gnome? He didn’t know. It didn’t look like the painting he had seen in one of the libraries where Cedric held their lessons. But then, some of those paintings weren’t nearly as good as Cedric seemed to think they were. His gut told him it wasn’t a gnome, but he just didn’t know what it was. And he hesitated.
As it came closer to Derek, Kestrel could see that Derek had finally heard it approach and had turned to engage the creature. But his bow and arrow were not at the ready, and somehow Kestrel knew that the creature racing toward Derek would kill him as quickly and efficiently as a wildcat or a bear would. He wasted no more time, pulled an arrow from the quiver at his hip, and nocked and drew the arrow back to his eye. He tracked the creature for a split second and then let fly his arrow, continuing the swing of his bow to the left as he did, to ensure the arrow followed the path the creature was taking.
Kestrel kept his eye on the creature and tried to watch for the arrow, but it moved too quickly for him to track its path through the air. Sometimes he could see them in flight, and other times he could not. He wasn’t sure why. While he watched the scene before him, he knew he should draw another arrow from his quiver in case the first one missed. But some part of him knew that if he missed with the first, he would be too late to save Derek. And the logical part of his mind knew that if that were to happen, he would have plenty of time to draw as many more arrows as it took to kill the creature before it could reach him. Then the creature lunged. Or so it looked initially, until Kestrel realized that he had struck it with the arrow after all. The creature fell short of Derek by no more than two or three yards, dead before it hit the ground.
Instinctively Kestrel realized there might be more than one creature about, and he forgot Derek for a moment and spun about in a circle to be sure that none were closing in on him. He saw nothing, shook free the shiver of fear that had taken hold of his body, and then turned about more slowly to be sure he hadn’t missed anything. He hadn’t. Apparently, there had been just the one.
He looked back to Derek and saw the boy staring at the creature at his feet, seemingly unable to comprehend what had just happened. He had dropped his bow and drawn his sword. But were it not for Kestrel’s arrow, he could see that Derek would not have been prepared in time to defend himself. And it would have been Derek who lay dead on the floor of the Hyrden forest.
Kestrel became suddenly conscious of what had occurred, and oddly, he realized that he felt embarrassed. It was as though he’d borne witness to something he never should have seen. That Derek’s helplessness was not something he was prepared to acknowledge. That he should let his fellow squire know he was there. That he should tell him he had witnessed the whole thing. But he didn’t have the heart to do so. Instead, he stood silent, bow in his left hand, hanging limp at his side, his right hand resting on the lip of the quiver at his hip.
The moments passed, and Kestrel couldn’t understand why no one had come running to see what had happened. Then he considered that the creature had made no sound and had been stealthy enough to sneak up on a boy whom Kestrel knew to be an able soldier and an excellent woodsman. And the arrow that had brought the creature down had been silent as well.
Kestrel heard a deep grunt to his left. He drew and nocked another arrow and held his bow ready, not immediately recognizing the sound for what it was: the snort of a hart on sentry, of a male deer asking of the woods before it that any other deer in the area step forward and reveal itself. He turned and saw the hart faintly, among the fallen leaves that made up the forest floor, and against the gathering twilight. Its back was to the east. Kestrel glanced to his right and noticed that Derek had seen the deer as well and was watching it as silently as he was.
Neither boy made a move as the deer took its time, two or three tenuous steps at a time, to walk the twenty yards it took to bring it directly between them. It was then Derek noticed Kestrel for the first time. And as the deer passed on in silence and at its own pace, Kestrel could see that Derek finally understood what had happened. The twilight deepened. The deer moved beyond their range.
And Derek nodded in thanks to Kestrel. He had saved the boy’s life.
When Aelric and the others arrived in response to Kestrel’s whistle, Kestrel and Derek were bent over the creature Kestrel had killed. Kestrel noticed that his arrow had passed straight through the creature, right under its armpit. He had given the thing a clean death. The observation made him feel good—regardless of the creature’s intent.
Derek flipped the creature over, and Kestrel noticed for the first time that it bore a long dagger, still in a sheath, on its belt. It had not drawn its weapon as it had closed on Derek. A kernel of doubt crept into his mind. He couldn’t have mistaken the creature’s intent, could he? No. It had been running toward Derek so quickly and in such a predatory way that it had to have intended him harm. But the doubt remained, and Aelric seemed to read it in his eyes as Kestrel allowed the still-sheathed dagger to fall back against the creature’s hip.
“Kobolds don’t need a dagger to kill, Starkad. Look at its claws.”
Ah, a kobold! Kestrel thought. That makes more sense than a gnome.
But Kestrel did as he was instructed and looked at the creature more closely. He was shocked to see claws like a cat’s sprouting from stubby and almost humanlike hands.
He lifted one briefly and turned it over. The skin of the palm was a chalky yellow. And the back of the hand was covered in a sparse tuft of fine dirty-blond hair. Aelric was right: the long claws, like those of a wildcat, were clearly lethal.
Aelric offered more. “Put it out of your head, Starkad. Derek knows, and I know, that you had no choice. Kobolds are not redeemable. Even elves shoot them on sight in the west. And we won’t even shoot gnomes until we’ve established their purpose.”
Kestrel nodded. The creature had been intent on harming Derek. He knew that. He guessed he was just having a hard time dealing with the fact that he’d never even seen a kobold before, and now he had killed one. It felt wrong somehow. Maybe it was the tales of kobold merchants and the kobold bartender from his childhood. And from the stories, he’d always thought they were more like dogs and less like humans than this creature had been. It even wore a shirt and pants, and carried a blade with it. The image was a disturbing one, and Kestrel had to fight off another shiver down his spine.
Aelric seemed to understand the thoughts that coursed through Kestrel’s mind. “You did well, Starkad. A fine killing shot of a mindless creature that sought Robinet’s blood.”
At mention of his name, Derek spoke up as well. “Thanks, Kestrel. I really owe you one. I didn’t even know you were there, and I never saw him coming after me until it was too late. He’d have had me for sure.”
Kestrel couldn’t think of an appropriate response, but for some reason, it occurred to him to tell Aelric about the deer. “I had a clear shot at the hart, Hunt Master. And he was a beauty. But I’d just shot the kobold, and I, well, it just didn’t feel right to kill the deer. At the time, anyway.”
Aelric nodded in approval. “Just as well, Starkad. You’d have had to dress it near this thing.” His face showed clear disgust.
Then Aelric, in a rare display of his more human nature, placed his hand on Kestrel’s shoulder. “You’ve shown a clear head and a true eye today. And while a kobold is no man or gnome, it is near enough when you see one lying on the forest floor, is it not?”