by Spoor, Garry
When she was finished she had a new tinder box, a healer’s bag even if she didn’t know what half the stuff in the bag was used for, a set of lock picks although she had never picked a lock in her life and wouldn’t know where to start, a water skin, and some hardtack which she wasn’t planning on eating any time soon. There was also a new cloak, thicker and more durable than the Guild issued one, but the item that she found to be the most useful was what was inside the narrow leather tube.
She pulled off the water tight cap and pulled out five sheets of travel sized maps that she laid out on the table. These were more detailed and more complete than the one the Guild provided that it had to be a joke.
The five maps were all done on the same quality of thick paper, in the same level of detail and probably took the cartographer an entire lifetime to complete. The first map was of the Kingdom of Aru and marked out the borders along the eastern Kingdom of Baala and the western wastelands. The remaining four maps were highly detailed section of Aru, divided into quarters. The map she wanted was of the northwestern section which was easy to identify. It showed everything from the city of Azintar and the Hunter’s academy to Grover’s Den on the western board, a very chilling reminder of just how close she was, but not only that, it also had Coopervill marked out as well as the surrounding cities of Noxton and Shrop. Down south a ways and slightly west was the town of Tobery.
She looked over the rest of the maps, and although she knew where the City of Littenbeck was, she also found Glovgon where Carter was assigned, the port town of Luth, where Murphy had gone and even Baxter’s Bay, and much to her surprised, she even found the town of Riverport. She was starting to wonder if it even existed, no one seemed to have heard about it. It was just another reminder of how far away she was from the place she grew up.
-Tobery?-
Vesper asked as he walked across the map, looking at a small island in the black water seas.
“Actually we are right here.” She said, pointing out Coopervill. “And we have to go here.” She said as she drew a line with her finger to the small circle that marked Tobery.
-Not far.-
“No, about three inches I’d estimate.” She replied. “It should take us about two days to get there, two days to get back, a simple assignment for our first one.”
Simple enough, but a little boring to be telling Mr. Wollory, of course she could always spice it up with a few bandits and maybe a renegade Ogre, but she was never very good at telling tales, that was Alex’s area, and it would kind of be like putting a hex on the whole trip.
“I’ll see if I can’t get our breakfast to go and we can be out of here before noon.” She told the yarrow who was still exploring the maps.
Getting breakfast to go was easier than she thought as Beth provided her with what she had referred to as the traveler’s breakfast. It was a simple combination of fruit, bread and cheese tied up in a white cloth for the road. It was enough to get her all the way to Tobery and back again, that was assuming that she was reading the map correctly. She collected what supplies she thought she would need, and what she could identify, then stored the rest in the trunk at the foot of the bed, making sure it was locked before leaving her room, which she also locked behind her. Now the only thing she needed to do was get Grim and she could be on her way. It was her first assignment as a hunter and she was eager to get started.
She walked the distance to the Apple Blossom Livery, crossing through the yard and was heading up toward the small farm house when Alisa spotted her from the stable doors.
“Oh no, no, no.”
Kile heard the young woman called out as she approached. She was dressed in a pair of heavy cotton breeches with knee high boots and a powder blue chainse with white lace. It was a far cry from the flowing dress that Alisa had been wearing the first time Kile had met her, but then she couldn’t really work the stables in a dress, not that what she was wearing was all that practical either.
“You don’t really go out looking like that, do you?” Alisa asked as she started to circle her.
“What… what’s wrong with the way I look?”
“Oh Kile please, you look as if you just fell out of a hamper, and not even your hamper. It’s all wrong, all wrong.” Alisa commented, still circling. She felt like a yarrow being stalked by a cat.
“But it’s comfortable.” She said, trying to defend her outfit.
“You look like a vagabond.”
Do you ever wonder why hunters look like vagabonds?
It was the question that Guild Master Latherby had asked her that evening in the burnt out ruins of the Great Hall.
“You keep dressing like that and you will never land yourself a man.” Alisa said as she finally stopped circling and stood in front of her with her hands on her hips, shaking her head.
“Oh, well, in that case.” She replied, “I’ll keep wearing it.”
“You’ll end up like an old spinster.”
“Yeah, well that suits me just fine, and besides, I haven’t been paid yet, so it’s not like I have a full wardrobe to choose from.”
“I can lend you one of my outfits.” Alisa offered.
Somehow the idea of riding through the wild wearing lace and frills was not something she had in mind. Of course there were some advantages; the enemy would fall over laughing.
“I’ll stick to what I have on thank-you.”
“When you get back, I’m taking you shopping.” Alisa threatened and then motioned to Carl who was working in the field. “Carl, get Grim ready, Kile’s heading out this morning.”
“Yes Miss Reaba.” Carl replied. There was reluctance in his voice as he looked toward the stables. He took a deep breath before heading in. Kile only hoped it wasn’t because of Grim, but she already knew it was.
“Come on inside while Carl gets your horse, it may take a while.” Alisa said with a hint of a malicious smile as she led Kile up to the house. She knew exactly what poor Carl was in for.
“So, going after your first bounty already.”
“Hardly a bounty.” Kile replied. “Just a delivery.”
“A delivery, that’s not very exciting.”
“Well, I am only a Probation level five. I have a long way to go before I’ll be assigned any bounties.” She said as she followed Alisa into the kitchen.
The young woman directed her to the same chair she had yesterday, and then put a pot of tea on the fire. She was taking out the cups when Kile remembered the form that Kane had given her.
She quickly pulled it out of the courier bag and handed it to Alisa. “I’m supposed to give this to you.” She told her.
“What’s this?”
“Paperwork from the Guild.”
“Oh yes, this will make things much easier on the books. Wait right there.” Alisa said as she took the paper and left the room.
Kile sat waiting for Alisa to return, as she kept glancing out the window in the hopes of seeing Grim ready to go, but she knew it would take the stable hands a few minutes to get everything in order, and that was only if Grim cooperated. She pulled out her brother’s letter and opened it. She read it through once and was in the processes of reading it again when Alisa returned.
“Kile, what’s wrong? You look miserable, I hope it wasn’t something I said earlier. I can get a little carried away sometimes.”
“What? Oh no it’s wasn’t you. It’s just this.” She replied, holding up the letter. “It’s from my brother, I got this morning.”
“Is everything alright? Is there a problem?” Alisa asked as she took the seat opposite Kile. What surprised her was that this young woman, whom she had only known for a day, seemed genuinely concerned.
“It's nothing.” She replied.
“It doesn’t’ look like it’s nothing, but if you don’t want to talk about it, I understand.”
Great, now she was making her feel guilty for leaving her out of her personal life.
“It’s just everything back in Riverport.”
&nb
sp; “Is it serious?”
“I don’t know.” Kile said shaking her head as she reread sections of the letter.
“You don’t know if it’s serious?”
“It’s my brother. The entire farm could be burning down around his ears and he would just comment on how warm the weather is.”
“How warm is it?”
“Very.” She replied. “This is the first letter I’ve received from my brother since my father’s passing. By the sounds of it, the farm isn’t doing very well, well… that’s not exactly true. I don’t think it was doing very well even when he was alive, not that he would ever tell me about it.”
“He probably didn’t want to worry you.”
“Yeah, something like that.” She replied. “My father had these… ideas about how to expand the farm but… they never really worked out. In a way I guess I’m responsible for that, he died about two years ago, and my mother’s hasn’t been herself since then. She wasn’t in the best of health most days but, by the sounds of it, it’s getting worse. My brother works the farm alone now.” She said as she handed the letter to Alisa. The young woman was hesitant to accept it but eventually did. She read over it slowly as Kile continued.
“The farm doesn’t seem to be doing as well as they had hoped. It appears that the crops weren’t as abundant as he had expected and the market prices have dropped, and now my mother is talking about taking on odd jobs to keep herself busy, so it’s worse than he’s telling me. It looks as if they’re in for a bad winter, which mean the money lenders will be coming to visit and I’m half way across the country and can’t do anything to help them.”
“What could you do if you were there?” Alisa asked.
“I don’t know.” Kile replied as she leaned back in her chair. “I just feel it’s my fault that the farm is failing. If I had done as my father wanted me to do in the first place, then maybe they wouldn’t be as bad off as they are now.”
Alisa handed the letter back to Kile, who absently stuffed it back into the courier bag, much to the protest of Vesper. If Alisa had heard the yarrow cursing, she said nothing about it; she just got up and started to pour the tea.
“My father was a good man.” The young woman said. “He was a hard working man, put his sweat and blood into the stables to keep it afloat, but he… just wasn’t a businessman. He had idea, ideas that ended up costing us more money than what they brought in and one that nearly lost us everything we owned, but we held on. When he died I took over, and it wasn’t until then that I realized that, for all the good things he did, he wasn’t always right. I took the stables in a completely different direction and look at it now.”
“I’m not sure I’m following you.”
“Two things.” Alisa said, handing Kile a cup of tea. “The First thing is that, problems do have a way of working themselves out, you have to have faith. I don’t think your brother or your mother wants you to go home, if that’s what you’re thinking and I don’t think it’s as bad as you’re making it out to be, at least it doesn’t sound as bad in his words. He doesn’t sound worried, maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. I don’t know your brother so I can’t really say. I can say that the fact that he doesn’t tell you everything means he doesn’t want you to worry, and I’m sure he doesn’t want you to feel responsible for the problems back home.”
“And the second thing?”
“Father’s aren’t always right. How do you know for certain that if you did everything your father wanted you to do, that the farm would be better off than it is now?”
“Well… I don’t, not really.”
“That’s just it.” Alisa replied. “My grandfather told my father before he passed that he had no regrets, my father never understood what he meant. My father always told me if you never have regrets, then you’ve never had to make a decision in your life, which means you never really lived.”
“My father told me a few things too, but nothing that applies here.”
“We all have choices that we have to make, and we all wonder about the path in life that we didn’t take. I’m assuming that the choice you made was to become a Hunter, am I correct.”
“You can say that.”
“And your father wasn’t very supportive.”
“You can definitely say that.”
“What would happen if you had chosen not to become a hunter, where would your life be right now?”
“I don’t know, but I can hazard a guess.”
“A lot of that has to do with your frame of mind. If you're happy about the life you're living, then the choices you made are always the right ones, and the paths you didn’t choose were the dark and scary ones, but when you're going through some hard times, when you have your doubts, then those same paths, the ones that you didn’t choose, they always appear to be sunnier. It’s like my father said, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”
“Your father had a lot of things to say didn’t he?” Kile replied.
Alisa smiled. “Oh, you don’t know the half of it.” She said. “But it looks as if Carl has finally gotten Grim ready, so I won’t bore you with my father’s words of wisdoms, at least not right now.”
She led Kile to the kitchen door and down into the yard.
“You are coming back here aren’t you?” Alisa asked.
It wasn’t so much a question as it was a demand.
“Yes ma’am, otherwise I don’t get paid.” Kile replied.
She stopped and reached into her pocket, pulling out a set of two keys tied with a leather strap.
“I was wondering if you could hold onto these for me until I return.” She said, handing them to Alisa. “I don’t really know anyone in town, and if I lose them out in the wild, I can’t get back into my room, and I’m a little reluctant to let the proprietor of the Bird and Bay hold onto them.”
“What, you mean old Gus?”
“He doesn’t seem to like me very well.”
“It’s not you personally, it’s your Guild. It’s the Hunter.”
“The Hunters? Why should he dislike the Hunters?”
“Don’t you know? It’s because his son was one.”
“Prain, I don’t remember any Prain.” Kile replied, but she did. It took her a while to remember but she did know of a hunter by the name of Peter Prain, it was the name just above Tree’s on the list they posted on the board. Fourteen names were on that list, Tree’s was number three. Peter Prain was number two. If Rick was right, then it shouldn’t be the Hunter Guild that Gus was mad at, but Lord Rimes, who withdrew support from the western outposts and let fourteen hunters die, and who knows how many men, women and children.
“We don’t know what happen.” Alisa was saying. “Gus received news of his son’s death about two years ago, but the details were rather vague.”
“I can imagine.’ Kile replied.
The guild was a nonpolitical organization, which simply meant they didn’t get involved with province disputes, even if they paid the cost, they would never openly accuse Lord Rimes, not the king's cousin, not if the sons of Terrabin had anything to say about it.
Carl led Grim across the yard toward them, and it looked as if the Mountain Pony was behaving himself. He looked to be in pretty good spirits, which wasn’t always a good sign.
“Ready to go Grim?” She asked, patting the Mountain Pony’s side.
-Not really, but if I must.-
“A short, uneventful trip to Tobery and back.”
-We shall see.-
“Thanks for everything Alisa. I’ll see you when I get back.” Kile said as she pulled herself up onto Grim’s back.
“His stall will be waiting for him.” Alisa replied with a wave goodbye as Kile rode out of town on her first assignment.
***~~~***
25
The morning sun was forcing its way into Kile’s eyes as she tried to block it out, she wanted nothing more than to close the curtains and get a few more minutes of sleep, the only problem was that there we
re no curtains to close, actually there were no windows either. A foul smell was the last straw that forced her to open her eyes and found herself staring up the nostrils of a very large, very agitated, mountain pony.
“Wow Grim you have bad breath, what do they feed you at those stables?” She grumbled as she rolled over, pulling her blanket over her head.
Grim was not in the mood. He grabbed the blanket with his teeth and in one fluid motion, spun the girl out of bed and half way down the hill. Vesper managed to jump clear and protested verbally as Kile sat, staring up at the horse, pulling grass out of her hair.
“What was that for?”
-Get up.-
Grim demanded.
“What is the matter with you Grim? In case you haven’t noticed we’re not in a big rush to get to Tobery, we can take our time.” She told the horse as she got to her feet and snatched the blanket from the ground.
They had traveled all day yesterday, stopping only once to eat the meal that Beth had put together for her. By the time they reached the river Kile was too tired to go on, even if Grim wasn’t. If she wasn’t afraid of falling off the back of the horse, she would have let him continue, although, with her luck, she would have probably woken up in the middle of town sitting on a mountain pony with half the population gathered around her.
-Something’s wrong-
Grim said.
It was the first time since she had the misfortune of knowing him that he appeared nervous. It wasn’t in the words that he used, but the feeling that he placed with them. Grim was scared.
“What’s wrong?” She asked as she quickly looked around, she couldn’t see anything that would have frightened the pony, but then Grim was not easily frightened.
The only time she had ever known Grim to be scared was before she ever met him. It was on the afternoon she lost her identity to him through the Maligar, and she relived the day he was captured, the day his herd was driven off the edge of the cliff by the mountain folk, but then he had a reason to be scared, or a reason that he could see.