“If you take me, you must also take Cat Rider,” Motley Owl told the fifth adventuring group to approach him. Like the others, they turned him down. No one wanted a crippled human in their group despite Cat Rider’s acknowledged prowess as a mage. Motley Owl and Cat Rider assumed they would have a party of just three, with Fuzzy as the third person.
For those who aspired to be a soldier, merchant, or staff to the King or a chief, custom dictated an elf should gain two years of experience working outside of elven lands. Elves between 16 and 20 wandered in the surrounding kingdoms alone or in groups. Most banded together and served as caravan guards on the human-organized trade routes to the east or south. Others became traveling peddlers or found employment as hunters or wilderness guides.
Adventuring parties came together a half-year to a year before leaving the forest. The teams took trips together to make sure personalities got along. They would also train together to find an effective fighting or hunting style as a group.
“This is discouraging,” Cat Rider drooped. “Two mages and one fighter.” He moved a soldier piece on the Dweer board. “We can wait a year.”
“Don’t want to wait, but we are unbalanced right now,” Motley Owl conceded.
*I can fight too,* I protested.
“You can’t shoot a bow or use a spear, Fuzzy,” Motley Owl scratched my head. “Weapons matter.”
“It doesn’t need to be that way,” Roaming Wren walked up to the table where the two boys were playing Dweer.
“I’d say,” Cloud Eye joined her. “The proposition we made to the three of you last year is still open.” Cloud Eye always remembered to include me. I liked that about him. “The five of us should form a team and specialize in hunting. That means we join the hunters’ guild, not the mercenaries’ guild.”
“Wren’s a fighter,” Motley Owl frowned, “and Cloud’s an all-rounder.”
“Right. Archer, mage, and maintenance,” Cloud Eye persisted. “You’ll need maintenance for all of Cat Rider’s custom-built weapons, plus the upkeep of the false leg and the walking sticks. Did you ever consider that?”
“Did Storm Eagle put you up to this?” Cat Rider was suspicious. “We already turned you down once, yet here you are again. And Wren doesn’t even need to go adventuring, given she’s already part of the King’s agents.”
“Cloud Eye shrugged, “Wren has done just short message missions, and neither Wren nor I have been able to do our two years yet. This is a good deal for all of us.”
“Hunting instead of adventuring also Storm Eagle’s idea?” Cat Rider prodded.
“No, that was my idea,” Roaming Wren interjected. “We’ve got Fuzzy. Fuzzy is a hunting machine like no other, and you, Cat, can take out wyverns all by yourself. Do you know how much the bounty is on wolves in Osterius right now? Forty silver.”
“Huh. It’s gone up,” Cat Rider said to himself.
“How bad is the wolf problem in Osterius?” Motley Owl asked.
“Bad,” Cloud Eye pulled a stool up and sat at the Dweer table. “The Osterians undertook a huge project to drain the Gan Swamp that took over ten years. Now they are settling and clearing that land and planting wheat. They are also grazing cattle and sheep in the uplands to the north. But the Osterians hunted out the other animals who compete with wolves, namely the mountain cats, snow bears, skunk bears, and kieyotays. Then, they added easy prey for wolves in the form of livestock. As a result, their wolf problem has exploded on them.”
“And once we eradicate all the wolves?” Cat Rider asked.
“The wolf problem is so bad, it has spread into the northern parts of Nordvek and Gorgurak,” Roaming Wren pulled out two pieces of vellum. “I took these from public announcement boards in both Nordvek and Gorgurak.”
“Huh,” Cat Rider picked them up, “so that’s where your father sent you snooping this time.” He read one flier and then gaped at the second. “Seriously? Gorgurak will welcome hunters for wolves and wyverns? One gold per wolf? Fifty gold for one wyvern? Hey, what?” I nudged Cat’s hand because I wanted to see the fliers.
“Oh, here, Fuzzy,” my boy held them at my eye level. I didn’t have my reading glasses with me, so I had to step back a pace to read since all felines are farsighted.
“The Goblin Queen sent my father a message saying Gorgurak would welcome elven hunting teams,” Roaming Wren added. “None of the human kingdoms were invited. No offense, Cat Rider.”
“None taken since I’m just an elf with funny ears. Done yet, Fuzzy? My arms are getting tired.”
“So, do we have a team or not?” Cloud Eye tried not to look too eager. “With a hunting team, we could get our credentials here instead of needing to travel to Hempdal.”
“I note a pattern here,” Cat Rider remarked, handing the fliers back to Roaming Wren. “All these potential hunting bounties are for areas well north of central Nordvek, where I want to go.”
Cloud Eye and Roaming Wren gave each other a look.
“It’s hard for me to believe that your father didn’t have some hand in this, Wren,” Cat Rider made a sour face. “If Storm Eagle had his way, I wouldn’t go on two years of adventuring. Now, all these northern hunting bounties are sure to keep me from Tammerhof, but I’ll be 16 next year and legally an adult. I will go to Tammerhof. I have to see for myself what it’s like there now that Griselda runs the place.”
“You’ll stand out too much,” Roaming Wren argued.
“No one will look at me,” Cat Rider sighed. “Everyone will be looking at Fuzzy. Besides, I have both a left foot and a left eye. And I no longer have a Nordvek accent. With my hood up, I look like a short elf.”
“There’s no such thing as a short elf,” Roaming Wren rebutted.
“And your skin is pink, not brown, and no elf has red hair,” Cloud Eye added.
“I need to go,” Cat Rider would not be swayed. “You can come with me, or you can join some other team. I’ll come home if Willam looks like he will make a good king.”
“And if Willam looks like he will be a bad king?” Roaming Wren had to ask.
“I’ll ford the river when I come to it.”
“You are being unreasonable,” Roaming Wren snapped. “You are going to get yourself killed.”
“I will have Fuzzy with me,” he calmly countered. “A divine beast by my side is a great advantage. You can’t argue with a blessing like Fuzzy, sent directly by the gods. I do have some tremendous strategic advantages Griselda has no clue about. Besides, my existence is one of the worst-kept secrets in all the neighboring kingdoms by now. There just aren’t that many one-legged red-haired human youths in the world with scars down the left side. Sharp Turtle’s sentries have already caught three round ears climbing the escarpment this year, and Fuzzy’s caught two. I no longer can depend on my existence remaining a secret.”
“If Griselda knows you’re alive, she will try to kill you again,” Cloud Eye argued.
“She already knows by now. Given all the round ears trying to break in, she’s already trying. We’ve had this discussion many times before, and my answer is still the same,” Cat Rider replied in a level and calm voice, reasonable and resolute. “I didn’t have any allies before. I was just a helpless boy. Now I have three good and stout friends and a divine beast by my side. I am a practicing mage who can invent new spells and kill wyverns. The enemy has no knowledge of my advantages. What-ifs will not deter me.”
“This is foolishness, Cat,” Roaming Wren was vexed with his stubbornness.
“I have no great ambition to be a king, Wren,” Cat Rider sighed. “I’d be happy to hang out a shingle and earn my keep as a mage or a healer. But I want justice for my sister’s death if I can get it, and I need to be sure that Willam will rule well and not abuse the kingdom my father loved so well. I will go to Tammerhof. The real crux is whether you come with me or not. I admit it is dangerous, and that danger will extend to everyone with me. The choice is yours.”
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*You’re packed. I’m packed. Everyone else is packed.* I rubbed my nose against Cat’s white wyvern-skin coat. *It’s a bit late to have doubts now.*
“I don’t know if I can do this, Fuzz. All my grandiose plans sounded so good when it was just talk. Now, it’s happening. I should have taken Father Garshom’s advice and become a scholar. I can’t even run on my own foot from danger.”
*You don’t need to. I’ll run for both of us,* I reminded him. *Besides, who needs running when you can kill wyverns?*
“I’m such an idiot. I’m going to get all of us killed,” his head drooped.
*Now that sounds like the old Andray, who sat around reading all day, convinced he could never achieve anything. Please give it a rest. You are a powerful and competent mage. You can do this, and you know you can. So quit moping, and let’s meet up with the others.*
I grabbed his coat with my teeth and dragged him off the chair. Then I dragged him across the floor. I opened the door with magic and dragged him down the hall.
“Wait! Wait!” Bright Stream chased us, skirts flying. She caught up. “You forgot this,” the old elf handed Cat Rider his walking stick. “You almost forgot that.” She smiled innocently at Cat Rider and then winked at me. “Going to the benediction? I am too. In fact, I’m the one giving the benediction, so it can’t start without me.” She bent down and picked up Cat Rider, putting him on his feet. She then took his left arm in hers, and the two walked out together. She made it look like he was escorting her and not the other way around.
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Roaming Wren was quietly fuming by the time we joined the rest of our band. “What? Were you suffering the lead feet of reluctance again? You’re the one who was all hot to go adventuring. Now look at you, mister jelly quivering in your boot!”
“Hey, watch the personal slurs, your lofty highness. Air a little too thin up there?” Cat snapped back.
I swear, they bickered like they were married. I hope they don’t do this for two whole years.
The goodbyes were endless and soppy. I thought Father Garshom was going to cry. Such a determined and strong man, he looked like a weeping mother at a wedding. The sooner we got away from these so-called grown-ups, the better.
Then finally, we were on the road. Cat Rider was on my back, sitting on a padded saddle that Cloud Eye designed, made of stretchy elkskin and bison leather. The seat had a loop of leather laced through it that turned into soft stirrups, plus two hardened waterproof leather pockets for my hunting guild membership document and my reading glasses. Cat had his white wyvern-skin coat on. The three elves were wearing white wyvern-skin cloaks, which Cat insisted they accept after he had them made.
Our hunting party camped at the hot springs that first night on the way to the territory of Chief Stoic Sturgeon. We indulged ourselves, or maybe I should say, the two-footed ones indulged themselves, while I hunted some still-walking venison for dinner. We spent our fourth night with Stoic Sturgeon and his family. Then we walked three more days to the last elven settlement, where the escarpment gave way to the western scablands. When we left the Green Forest, Wren, Owl, and Cloud put on black leather half-masks that covered both sides of their faces. Then Cloud Eye handed Cat Rider a mask that matched theirs.
Thus four black masks and a cougar walked south along the east bank of the Green River, looking for a place to cross during springtime high water. We then spotted a family of river trolls.
*They haven’t seen us. We can certainly get around them without being seen,* I advised.
The three elves turned and looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.
“Whatever for, Fuzzy?” Wren tilted her head in question. “We can barter for river passage, and if we spend the evening with them, to entertain them with news and stories and new songs, we will get a splendid feast of fish for our efforts.”
*What?* The knowledge in my head informed me that all trolls were unfriendly and best avoided.
“This is the family of Gork, Trumble, Elga, and Yak,” Wren explained. “I’ve made a river passage with Gork and her family twice before. They’re very friendly and barter honestly. Why the strange reaction, pussy cat?”
*Every reflex I have is telling me to go around them.*
“Wren, growing up, I learned the same,” Cat Rider added. “Human lore teaches us to avoid trolls, and the best thing to do is run away.”
“Huh?” Cloud Eye pondered our reaction. Motley Owl looked confused by it.
“That’s interesting,” Wren was thoughtful. “I wonder why. Trolls are helpful, friendly, and usually good-natured. Elves consider running into a troll to be a lucky event. I grant you, trolls are not exactly appealing to look at, but never make the mistake of thinking they are stupid. They talk slowly, but that doesn’t mean they lack intelligence. They use mind speech with each other, a mind speech that other sapient races can’t hear.”
Wren thought for a moment and then turned to walk down the slope to the riverbank, “Come on, I’ll introduce you. We’ll have to make some kind of trade or barter to cross the river, but Gork has made reasonable requests before. We should be able to come up with something.”
Despite feeling apprehensive, we turned off the trail and followed Wren to where the trolls sat on the river bank. The closer we got, the bigger they looked, like living piles of stone with eyes. Two smaller ones were about three yards high and about the same around. I couldn’t see anything that distinguished gender. The two bigger ones were about five yards high and about the same around. They were huge.
“I greet you, Roaming Wren,” I heard a voice that sounded like dragging boulders on cobblestones. “Are you in danger from the human? I can squash it for you.” A giant gray limb lifted and came down on the ground next to me. I turned and leapt for the trail.
“Gork, I’m traveling with him. He’s part of my hunting party. Please don’t squash him.” Wren looked panicked. I don’t think she expected this reaction.
“Why are you traveling with a human? They are treacherous and violent and dangerous. I can get rid of it for you. You’ll be better off. It might kill you in your sleep. The puma might attack you too.”
Roaming Wren was speechless, jaw hanging open.
“Now, you are Gork, yes?” Cloud Eye asked. Gork nodded. Well, I think it was a nod.
“He’s not really a human, you know,” Cloud remarked.
“What?”
“He’s the adopted son of the Elf King. He even has an elven name. He’s Cat Rider. He’s lived at the King’s house for almost four years. And what did you call the mountain cat? A puka? Well, whatever. Her name is Fuzzy, and she’s a divine beast.”
All four heads turned and looked at me.
*Are you a divine beast?* a voice asked me inside my head.
*Well, that’s what everyone who knows about these things tells me, like all the elves I live with,* I mind talked at the living rocks.
*Don’t move. I want to look,* Gork came thumping up the hill.
I hoped I wasn’t about to get squashed or stepped on. Every muscle in me was tensed to jump. The huge thing leaned over, which I would have thought was impossible, but I found two pretty indigo eyes studying my face. Then, Gork lifted her face to look at Cat Rider.
“How is one of your eyes glass?” the river troll asked my boy.
“I lost my real eye in a fire,” my boy said calmly. I could feel that he was trembling, but he spoke in a normal voice. I had no idea he had such control.
“Your leg is wood,” Gork, the river troll, stated. It wasn’t a question. “And you talk like an elf but smell like a human.”
“Both my real parents were human. That’s probably why.”
“Were? They are dead?”
“My mother died when I was a baby. I hear my father is still alive, but that may be a lie. He is said to be very ill and unable to get out of bed. No one has seen him for three years.”
“That would explain much, Crown Prince Andray Nordvek, missing for three and a half years but not proclaimed legally dead because that takes six years according to Nordvek law,” Gork straightened up and stepped back. “You are welcome at my hearth, young prince who lives with elves and rides a spirit beast tied to your soul.”
That last statement left my head spinning. Am I tied to my boy? Maybe that’s why I feel like my place in the world is next to him. But why? I know what I am, but I don’t know why I am. When I have time to sit and think, I wonder why I exist and why I feel tied to this boy on the verge of becoming a man. Do I have any desires in this life that are just my own and not shared with him?
“Fuzzy?” Cat Rider’s voice broke through my thoughts. “Everyone is waiting for us.”
I looked up and saw everyone standing and looking at us. I bounded down the slope to join them.
*You eat fish?* Gork asked me.
*I can, but it is not a preferred meal.*
*Oh! I can feel your disdain for fish from here.* I felt amusement in Gork’s answer.
*A small herd of deer is just over the northern ridge on the other side of the river. Trumble can take you there if you would like. We can eat what you do not use, so the meat is used up.*
*That would be most kind of you and Trumble,* I replied. Then I waited for Cat Rider to dismount. He was taking his time. While Cat undid the stirrup strap, Trumble thumped over, linked his thick stubby fingers, and lowered his hands in front of me.
*When you are ready, lie down in my hands, and I will carry you safely across the river. I will let you down atop the ridge so I don’t scare your prey. We don’t get venison often, so it’s a real treat for us.*
“Trumble, what are you doing?” Roaming Wren walked over and looked confused at Trumble waiting for me to step into his hands.
“I will take Fuzzy to hunt deer,” Trumble rumbled his reply slowly.
“What?” Cat Rider blinked.
*Didn’t you at least sense that we were mind-talking, Cat?* I asked my boy. *A mage of your ability should have been able to sense I was mind-talking with the trolls.*
“I didn’t hear or feel a thing from you or them, Fuzzy,” Cat Rider stepped off me carefully since it was when he was most prone to lose his balance.
“Fuzzy,” Trumble looked at me, “only a spirit beast like yourself can mind talk with magical creatures like trolls. Elves and humans can not hear us in their minds. I would be happy to discuss where this fits with the theory of magic, but later. Now I take you hunting little deers.”
I used a little spell to get the undone stirrup strap off me and then stepped gingerly onto Trumble’s big hands, which were big enough to hold all of me. I expected his hands to be hard and cold but was surprised to find some give and warmth to the skin. Once I was down into a couchant position, he lifted his hands where I was level with his eyes. Then he turned around and walked into the river.
As the water level came up to his shoulders, I understood why he lifted me so high. It was an exciting experience. When we arrived at the other side, he continued through the trees and up the nearest ridge. He managed to shoulder the trees aside so no branches would swat me as we passed. He stopped about 10 yards from the ridge crest and lowered me down.
*Eight deer are over the ridge: one buck, five does, and two fawns. One doe will give birth soon. I will stay here.* Trumble told me.
*I will try to take the buck or one of the does who is not a mother,* I replied and slunk into the ground cover. I had to circle to get downwind of the deer. They were banded-tail deer, which I had never hunted before. They aren’t native to the forest that covers the western elven lands. They were bigger than the whitetail deer I usually hunted, so it took me longer to take one down, but I was happy because it was a clean, fast kill. The doe may have felt a brief sting when I first set my teeth, but her neck snapped in less than a breath. I liked to think that my kills were painless, but alas, I have never been able to ask any of my kills if I had sent them to the afterlife painlessly.
I grabbed the dead doe’s neck and dragged her up the slope toward Trumble. Then I felt his footsteps coming toward me.
*Stay there, Fuzzy. I will come to get you. We don’t need to worry about scaring the deer anymore.*
Trumble made two trips across the river to get me and the deer carcass across. Dinner was both fish and fresh venison. Cloud Eye took the time to bleed the deer properly. Since I don’t eat my meat cooked, bleeding doesn’t make that much of a difference in taste for me, but it’s something the two-footed deem essential.
Trolls have big appetites. The deer only lasted one meal. I told Trumble that we should take at least two and maybe three deer when we hunted tomorrow. That way, there would be some leftovers for my breakfast.
The trolls bartered passage across the river for four deer and a mended fishnet. Cloud Eye fixed the holes in the fishnet. Don’t ask me why an elf who grew up in a forest knew about mending fishing nets because it doesn’t make sense to me, either. However, I shouldn’t be one to talk, given that I’m a cougar who can read. These things only happen in books, right?
It took me a morning and a half an afternoon to hunt down six deer, two more than needed, but the deer population was abundant where the trolls were currently living. It took Cloud Eyes two days to do the mending of the net. It was a giant net, around 30 yards by about 10 yards. It’s the most efficient way for the trolls to catch enough fish for all four of them. Trumble told me they need to move every ten days so they don’t destroy the river’s fishery in any one location.
In our many conversations, none of the trolls knew why there was such animosity between humans and trolls. It appeared to be a long-standing problem, each race thinking the worst about the other. It made me curious enough that I’d like to research this when I can find the time, if ever.