Ravinor
Page 19
“Are you willing to see if you can get us some fresh meat?” Trevan asked. “I’ll get this place straightened out. There’s an old garden out back, so I’ll go gather what I can while you’re out.”
“Do you have a bow?” Ifo did not want to get out his crossbow for hunting. It was an unusual weapon for the average traveler to have, especially for a merchant’s agent, and he wanted to keep it hidden.
“There’s one here somewhere…” Trevan said as he searched in a closet. “Ah. Found it. And some bowstring that has been nicely preserved.” Arin handed him the bow and string, along with a full quiver of arrows.
“There’s a stream to the north,” Trevan advised. “Less than a half-league. There’s usually good game over that way.”
“All right,” Ifo agreed. “I will get something that goes with Merovian.”
Trevan laughed. “Ha. You jest. Everything goes with a Merovian lager!” The two chuckled, and each man went about his appointed task.
Ifo was happy to get out and go hunting. The bow looked to be of decent quality. Arin had been right about the bowstring, as well; it had been well-waxed and seemed as strong as ever. A few hundred yards away from the cabin, Ifo took the opportunity to practice his stalking. He began to move silently. His travel boots were not ideal for complete stealth, but Ifo could make do. He sighted a buck scraping its antlers in a thicket of shrubs. That was more meat than they needed. He knew neither of them wanted to take the time to prepare the meat to last, and it would be a waste to kill the creature for only one meal.
Since he wasn’t going to kill it, Ifo decided to have a little sport. Sneaking ever so quietly, he sidled his way under branches and around rocks, careful to place his feet just so as to avoid giving away his position. He was downwind from the buck or he wouldn’t have had a chance at getting this close. Grinning, Ifo was only a few arm’s lengths away from the large stag. He gathered himself and lunged at the buck with his bow.
Slap!
The buck nearly jumped out of its hide as the hard yew bow spanked its haunch. It crashed through the brush, eyes wide with surprise. Ifo roared with laughter. His old master had often taken him out to the woods to stalk wildlife as a safe way to hone his skills. Still smiling, Ifo continued toward the stream that Arin had mentioned. The trees grew thicker near the water. Moss grew more readily along the tree trunks as the canopy blocked out most of the light. He saw a small game trail coursing through the thickets and weaving around large tree trunks. Ifo knew that following it should lead him right to the stream. He was no woodsman, but a game trail was one thing he could find and follow.
Walking more quietly now, he nocked an arrow on the bowstring but didn’t draw. If he was going to find something here, it would likely be in the next candle. He heard the stream gurgling away, maybe twenty paces in front of him, but because of the dense trees, he was unable to make it out.
A large gray hare came bounding along the trail from the north, then it suddenly darted off the path after it saw danger lurking ahead. Ifo snapped his arm back and released in one smooth motion. The hare twitched once and lay still. Before he could fetch it, another hare came down the trail. It fared no better than the first one had. Ifo retrieved both arrows and wiped them clean on the undergrowth, returning them to the quiver when the blood was gone. He made quick work skinning and gutting the two hares and left a pile of fur and guts for the birds and other scavengers to finish off.
Ifo’s mouth was watering already. It was fast approaching dark now. He made a quick visit to the stream and washed his face and hands and took a long drink. The water was cold and clear and running fast; it was invigorating. Making his way back to the cabin, Ifo spotted a pheasant. Not wanting to be too greedy, he let the unsuspecting bird go about its business. Besides, it appeared like game was abundant here, and if they decided they needed something more than cheese and bread to break their fast, he knew that he could have something in short order.
Ifo arrived at the cabin just as the sun set. It was quite the sight, he had to admit. He had always lived in cities, but this was the first time he had ever considered the possibility of disappearing into a cabin well away from people. No excitement. Just enjoying the beauty of the land and providing for himself. No killing, other than hunting, and no danger, other than ravinors. He let this idea go as suddenly as it had found him. He still had a job to do.
Trevan had a stew boiling in a large kettle on the stove. It smelled delicious.
“Just what we needed!” Arin said as he took the two prepared hares from Ifo and chopped them down to size to be added to the kettle.
“They practically ran into me,” Ifo explained.
“A few years without hunters in this area certainly does wonders,” Arin said as he continued preparing the rabbit for the stew.
“A man could get accustomed to this,” Ifo said, making a sweeping gesture around them.
“Indeed. I don’t get to stay at these camps any more to work. I mainly oversee the operations, but I still visit each camp or scout out new areas for timber. At least I get to be out in the bush from time to time. I definitely miss it when I’m back home.”
Trevan had the hares cut into small chunks in no time and added them to the stew. Traveling certainly works up one’s appetite, Ifo thought, wishing the stew was already done. Not much to do now other than wait. The two men settled down at the small table. Ifo glanced around the cabin. It was small but had everything they needed. Plenty of firewood outside. Two beds. A stove. One small window gave a view to the west. A few cupboards, a pantry, and a closet filled the remainder of the cabin’s interior.
Arin grabbed the two jugs of Merovian and some dice. “Give and Take?” he asked Ifo if he wanted to play the popular dice game. A game that some eschewed for being sacrilegious.
“I am only selectively pious,” Ifo answered with a grin.
“Good man.”
The two special dice for the game were eight-sided. Each face represented one of the four acknowledged aspects of the Giver and the Taker. The Giver aspects included: Life, Love, Wisdom, and Order. While the Taker, of course, was the antithesis of each of the Giver’s aspects: Death, Hate, Folly, and Chaos.
The players would first decide upon how much coin would be placed on the table. After each roll, money would be added or taken from the pot depending on which faces were shown after the toss. A matching roll would force a player to roll again while still giving, or taking, based on which deity was shown. When pairings were rolled, Love and Death, for example, more coin was given to the pot. This time, though, the player who rolled the pairing took out some coins while all the other players had to add to the pot.
Different regions had different nuances of the game. Some played with four dice, others eight. In some areas, players took out money when a pair of Giver faces were shown; others took out money when Taker faces were shown. There were also different combinations that paid out to the player or ones that forced players to add into the pot. For their purposes, they were going to play with only one pair of dice and would start out with ten silver bits in the pot. Each give or take roll was one silver bit added or removed, respectively. Rolling the Giver pairs paid out to the player.
The two octahedrons rattled on the table with each throw. Arin’s first two tosses came up as two pairs of Chaos in a row, so he had to pay four silver bits into the pot. The lumberman swore under his breath at his bad luck.
Ifo studied the dice briefly before his roll. The dice for Give and Take varied as much as the rules did. Some depicted scenes from popular stories that were well-known to each aspect. Usually, the scenes for the Giver’s aspects had a white background, while that of the Taker would be black. The weathered and wizened visage of Thesilismus, the old sage, was the face of wisdom. Chaos was usually depicted by a scene of upheaval, usually a natural disaster of some sort. Love was generally a tiny portrait of the Damsel, a common figure that many love poems and stories borrowed from.
A player could alway
s tell which face belonged to which aspect, regardless of region. Life was sometimes a pictogram of a mother holding her babe; other times, a bird nest full of eggs, and so on. Order would show a scene of neat rows of a cornfield seen from high above. Order could also be depicted by the precise stacking of most any item; firewood, coins, and crates being the most common.
Folly was generally a humorous scene; a side profile of a donkey’s hindquarters, or a drawing of the Wayward Wastrel, from the widely popular tale about the bumbling children’s character. Hate was often a closed fist, but sometimes it would be depicted by any infamous figure of a given region. In Styr it could be the taxman. In other areas, it was often a ravinor. Ifo was the most familiar with the Death aspect. The die face for Death could be a tombstone, the hangman’s noose, or an executioner’s block, among many others.
Of all the faces, Death was the most varied, yet also the easiest aspect to recognize. People of his profession would often have a die marked with nothing but Death on all sides; it was something of a sacred talisman to his ilk. They did not play with such a die, of course. If they did, at best, they would be run out of whatever dicing establishment they were playing at; more likely, the local authorities would be called in to deal with such unsavory types who dared to do such a thing.
It was a foolish affectation that assassins chose that served no purpose other than adding yet another possibility of danger to the man or woman carrying it. Buried deep in his travel bag, in a secret pouch, Ifo’s own assassin’s die was hidden. His die had different depictions for Death on each face; half of them had a white background and the other half had a black one. An assassin was both a giver of death and a taker of life, after all.
The dice that Arin had found in the cabin were simple, as befitted a woodcutters’ camp. Symbols were carved into the faces of each die. It was really quite a nice piece of crafting that had been tediously and lovingly carved out from a single block of wood. All that work, and whoever had carved it had to do the task twice—one for each die.
The game went on for a candle while the stew was simmering on the stove. Ifo was up at first, but as the game progressed, his good fortune dried up. Arin threw three Giver pairs in a row at one point, nearly emptying the pot. Then Ifo had another unlucky streak and rolled a Death pair, a Hate pair, and a Folly pair, so the pot filled back up at his expense.
“Bad luck, friend,” Arin said, getting up to the check the stew and give it a stir—hopefully for the last time before it was served.
“I started out pretty well…” Ifo shrugged as Arin returned to gather up his winnings.
“At least the stew is done, and thanks to you, there is some meat in there. I will take that kind of luck over luck at Give and Take any day,” Arin consoled as he brought over two wooden bowls filled nearly to the brim with the rabbit stew.
Ifo forgot about his losses and ate. The first bite nearly scalded his mouth, but he only conceded enough time to blow on it once or twice before taking his next spoonful. The stew was beyond reproach. The camp must have had a decent garden at one point. He tasted some celery, carrots, potatoes, and some savory herbs that perfectly complimented the hares’ flesh.
Each man soon went back for seconds, and then thirds, scraping the kettle clean to get every last bit.
Once again, after eating, Arin lit up his pipe. Ifo declined. He was content to just be in the presence of the aromatic smoke.
“Any chance for a camp such as this tomorrow night?” Ifo asked hopefully.
Arin laughed. “There are two more between us and Styr, but the nearest one is well off the road, and at the other site, the cabin burned down last year. No, we’ll have to rough it the rest of the way.” Arin’s good-natured attitude seemed undaunted by the prospect.
Ifo was not averse to sleeping under the stars either, but this evening had to be one of the best accommodations he had ever had out in the wilds. A full stomach and a nearly empty jug of Merovian lager helped to strengthen that sentiment.
“We’ve had two good nights out here,” Ifo said. “We’re making good time, too. Another four days at this rate, wouldn’t you say?”
“Probably five. The terrain gets a little rocky now—slower going. Then we have the Nyad to cross. If it’s flowing full and fast, we might lose another day or two to go to another crossing I know. Or if it’s flooded, we’ll have to slog our way through it, which will add a few more days.” It was clear that Arin knew this route better than Ifo did. He had never approached Styr from the northwest like this, so he was glad to have someone with him who knew the area well.
Ifo checked on the horses before going to bed. The four were happily grazing, and there was no sign of danger that he could see. The night was becoming chilly, but nothing to worry him or their mounts. He went back to the cabin, where, because of the orange coals still glowing through the stove’s vents, it was pleasantly warm.
The two men took their last drinks from their respective jugs, emptying both.
“Five days without, eh?” Arin said.
Ifo moaned in mock agony. “I guess before I made it to Wesin it had been months since having some. Now I have to try to forget about it all over again.”
The two men bid each a good night and settled down in their bunks.
Chapter Fourteen
LERIUS WAS PULLED INTO wakefulness by an urgent tugging at his arm; his heart pounding, he gasped for air.
“Shhh. It’s me,” Hossen reassured in a quiet tone. “You have to see something.”
He felt anxious as to whatever new development had caused his companion to wake him. He still ached and did not feel completely recovered from his fever, but he was able to walk over to their small viewpoint with no trouble. At first, he felt hope surge within him as he saw figures down in the street below. Then he realized what he was actually seeing.
There were ravinors walking the abandoned streets of Deepbrooke. Ravinors out in full daylight, and they seemed unperturbed by the bright sunlight that shone down upon them under the late-morning sky.
Lerius knew that they had to seek out Mon Lyzink with this information in conjunction with his suspicions of the fever dream.
“I know,” Hossen whispered from beside him. “I’ve never seen that before. I thought they never went out in daylight.” The innkeeper, like the rest of the citizens of the empire, had always taken for granted that there was safety from ravinors during the day. Apparently that was no longer true.
“We have to get out of here and find Mon Lyzink,” Lerius suggested adamantly.
“The ravinor scholar? Surely he knows about this by now. He’s probably already written about it,” Hossen said, guessing. “We can worry about finding the scholar later. Right now, we need to find a way out of Deepbrooke.”
Lerius agreed while he watched the ravinors walk idly through the streets below. It appeared that three groups had formed overnight. Lerius wondered what criteria the creatures used to join, or be selected by, one group over another. He wondered even more intently how they were to escape now.
He had assumed that they could finish off their stores for a small breakfast and simply walk—if cautiously—right out of Deepbrooke. At the moment, there were upwards of seventy ravinors that they had to contend with. The only potential point in their favor was that if there were seventy ravinors outside, that meant there—probably— weren’t any in the buildings. Probably. He said as much to Hossen.
“If they’re only outside, we can try going from house to house until we make it to the edge of town. Or we could try the roofs, but I’m not sure we can make those jumps. This isn’t a city with all the houses crowded tightly together.”
“I don’t think I can make those jumps. I feel better, but I’m still not fully recovered,” Lerius said. Whichever course of action they decided on, they needed to do it soon. Without food and water, they would only weaken. But they also needed to consider that the ravinors wouldn’t stay in an empty village for long. Or would they?
Honestly, he
was surprised they were still here. Maybe they knew that he and Hossen were up here, or maybe they detected other survivors hiding out while attempting to wait out the ravinor occupation. Ravinors were not intelligent, but they could be dogged in their pursuit of an intended meal. At least, that was what he had read.
“We need a distraction,” Lerius said while his mind sifted through several possibilities.
“We’re nearly out of everything else, but I do have a lot of lamp oil.” Hossen pointed to the three large earthenware vessels sitting in the far corner of the attic.
Lerius could see the intact seals from where they stood by the vent. “Perfect!” A plan was forming in his mind now. There were buildings on either side of them, and if they could get down and set fire to one of the neighboring buildings, they might be able to draw the ravinors toward the fire. While the ravinors were distracted, he and Hossen could sneak to the edge of town, keeping back behind the buildings and the street. He had read from one of Mon Lyzink’s publications that ravinors were attracted to fire, but they also feared it. But can we count on that now that we have seen ravinors out in the middle of the day? Lerius was torn.
“I think we have to risk it, lad,” Hossen said as if reading his mind. “Here. Let’s think this through over our last bit of food. A few candles won’t matter, either way.” The innkeeper began to set out the last of their victuals.
Lerius agreed, and his stomach rumbled at the prospect of food. He knew that if they made it out of Deepbrooke they would have trouble finding sustenance, and this might be their last meager meal for some time—no matter the result of their impending escape. The remaining bread, cheese, and olives were gone quickly and did not seem to satisfy like their last meal had the night before, but Lerius did feel somewhat renewed.