Lord Duran Berichore travelled under a red banner marked with purple berries. With him came his family, his wife the Lady Berichore and their children, three daughters and one son. They travelled with a significant train of servants, knights and retainers. All trekking across the Grey Road through the dark lands of Xith. It had been a long and gruelling journey for many of the travellers for Xith was a harsh and dangerous land and while the lords and ladies had all manner of servants to wait on them and all manner of guards to usher them to safety, those on the fringes of the company were in far more danger.
Among them was Mund, the houndmaster. He was old and grizzled and had grumbled about travelling all this way so that the Lady Berichore could see her old family again. He hadn’t wanted to go at all, what was there for him in the Greenlands? But the Lord had insisted that they would need his dogs if they were to go hunting in the great forests on the other side of Xith. So he walked along at the back, his dogs scouting the land around him for interesting smells and sights. They found very few.
It had been cold and windy, and he’d grown hungry and thirsty in the barren land. He’d also gotten sick and spent a lot of the trip cleaning up the various bodily fluids his body decided it didn’t want. Some of his dogs had gotten sick too, he hated when that happened. They’d all survived though, and while some of them were a bit slower and less energetic than before they were all healthy now. Now as they finally reached the Greenlands on the other side of Xith.
The lands stretched out before them like a painting. Terraced verdant hills with water flowing lazily down them. Trees in bloom in all shades of red and pink and green, there was so much green. Here and there was a house built in the Greenlands style with upward curving corners and pointed rooves. Each one surrounded by its own little garden of rocks and rivers.
Mund was not impressed, it was all very beautiful, but all he could think about was the long and harrowing journey they’d have to take to get back.
They walked through the lands and he called his dogs closer to him even though now there were all manner of interesting smells for them to follow. He would have let them roam but now there were people and lands and his Lord preferred it if his dogs didn’t enter lands owned by other people. So he kept them close to him.
After three days of travelling through the beautiful countryside they reached Langhold, the great terraced castle of the Umar family. It towered over them, rising up out of the craggy hill and issuing waterfalls down from carvings in the shape of dog’s mouths. That at least, Mund could appreciate.
They were welcomed by a great chorus of lords and ladies, dressed in the local style. There was all a lot of bowing and hugging and chattering. Mund stood to the side, he much preferred the cheering and raucousness of the peasants he grew up with. These highborn and their many pleasantries confused him.
“Ah houndmaster,” an important looking lord said to him.
He looked at the lord.
“We have our own houndmaster Yetta, come I’ll introduce you to him.”
Mund followed into their kennels which smelled strongly of dog, just like home. There were plenty of spare kennels which he put his own dogs in and then waited for the other houndmaster to be found. Soon Yetta emerged, he was short but strong and had a calm smile permanently fixed onto his face.
“Greetings fellow houndmaster,” Yetta said. “Welcome to my kennels, I see you’ve made yourself at home which is excellent, a home is what you’ll be wanting after your long journey.”
Mund nodded grimly. He didn’t like this smiling man. He seemed far too calm. Being calm was necessary for working with animals of course but this wasn’t the sort of calm Mund liked. It felt like Yetta knew something, more than he should.
“Well my name is Yetta I hope you’ve been introduced, but I’m afraid no one has told me your name. Would you do the honours?”
“Mund.”
Yetta smiled his calm smile. “I look forward to hunting with you.”
“What will we be hunting?” Mund asked.
“I do not know yet. There are many things in the great Langwood, birds, boar, bears.”
“You hunt bears?” Mund asked, surprised.
Yetta smiled his calm smile. “You don’t?”
Mund scowled.
“Alas, only the bravest among us are permitted to hunt bears. It is very dangerous. Our lord would never let such an esteemed guest as your lord try it.”
“I could try it,” Mund said bluntly, crossing his arms.
Yetta smiled some more. “That hardly seems proper but few things are, out in the wilderness. You’d have to do everything I said though, it is very dangerous to-”
“What makes you think I’d be hunting with you?”
Yetta’s smile disappeared and Mund smirked. “You don’t have the right dogs, or the right experience. You can’t-”
“Are you afraid I’d show you up houndmaster? Are you afraid some foreigner can hunt bears better than you?”
Yetta narrowed his eyes. “Fool is the man who makes boasts before learning what he is boasting about.”
“I make no boasts, I merely ask questions.”
“Those are not as dissimilar as you claim. Yet I will not deny you, if you wish to hunt bear on your own then good hunting my friend. Know though, that if you should not come back it is on my head the blame will fall.”
Mund smirked again, that seemed like a win win to him.
He set out at dawn the next day into the Langwood, his dogs at his heels. They hunted and tracked for days before finding any trace of a bear. Mund relished it though, he had been hunting in the woods back home since he was ten years old. Sleeping on cold hard earth wrapped up in his thick cloak was normal to him. Away from civilisation, away from people, with nothing but his dogs and the forest for company. Just how he liked it.
But he soon began to realise he wasn’t liking it. Here the night wasn’t cold and the ground was wet as was the air. His thick cloak grew damp with moisture and sweat and stuck to him uncomfortably. Within the canopy the air felt foul and sickly, not like the fresh outdoor air back home.
His dogs felt it too, they’d pant and pant and lacked all of their usual energy and alertness. When night came they’d drape themselves out across the ground rather than huddling together for warmth. He used his cloak as a pillow and felt exposed, sleeping without it, without his dogs huddled around him.
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He also knew none of the plants in the forest. Normally he knew which mushrooms and berries to eat, how to tell safe plants from poisoned ones, which cured which diseases and which tasted right with which foods. But here everything was strange and unfamiliar. He had to eat the jerky he’d bought for his dogs. He had plenty but it was tough and cold, all the wood too wet to make a fire.
But he pressed on anyway, and he found a trail, and he found a bear. It was a small bear, only slightly bigger than a large dog, and it was asleep on a tree branch. He shot it and his dogs fell on it before it could react. Hardly dangerous at all.
He carried it all the way back which took another few days. By the time he returned he was sick of the forest and sick of the jerky he’d been eating for the last week. But he’d made it, he’d done it and he’d proven that hunting bears was easy and no more dangerous than boar, probably less. He dragged his catch back to the kennels to show Yetta, smirking beneath it all.
Yetta was whittling an arrow and looked up with his calm smile which grew slightly wider when he saw Mund. “You returned,” he said happily.
Mund dumped the bear at Yetta’s feet and smirked. “It went down easily, hardly dangerous at all.”
Yetta’s smile faded. He didn’t seem impressed though, Mund was confused. “That’s a sun bear,” he said. “They’re mostly harmless, we don’t hunt those.”
Mund’s heart sank.
“Come with me,” Yetta said and led him out of the kennels. He took him into the great castle and up many stairs. They came across a guard standing at a locked door and after Yetta spoke briefly with him he let them in.
The room inside was magnificent, decked out in lavish curtains and jeweled ornaments. And across the floor was a huge bearskin, from a creature easily twice the size of the one Mund had slain. He tried not to look surprised, he failed.
Yetta pointed out the window and Mund looked up from the bearskin. “Those mountains are where these bears live, that’s where we hunt them. I forgot to mention it, you left so fast.”
Mund grew angry, he felt cheated after all those days in the forest. He wasn’t sure what to do though, what could he say? It had been his own fault really.
“If you want an exciting hunt you could hunt for the Golden Hind,” the guard said from behind them.
Yetta looked surprised, Mund did as well.
“What?”
“Well if you want to show up Yetta, which you obviously do, why don’t you catch the Golden Hind, he’s never been able to catch that.”
“The Golden Hind does not exist,” Yetta said.
“I saw it, and there’s a bunch of people who’ve seen it.”
“There are many deer in the forest, it is easy to see one in the light of the sun and mistake it for the Golden Hind.”
“No it was glowing, and it wasn’t because of the sun.”
“I’ll catch it,” Mund said impulsively, his anger still burning. “Is it in the lower forest or the mountains?”
“The mountains,” the guard replied.
“Excellent,” he said and began to leave the room.
“Wait,” Yetta said and he turned and looked. “I cannot simply allow you to capture the one creature that has so long eluded me while I do nothing.”
“You’ll be joining me?” Mund scoffed. “I’m not working with you to catch a deer.”
“No I won’t be joining you. I’ll be hunting it myself, separately. Whoever catches it first is clearly the best hunter.”
Mund grinned, this was going somewhere he liked, this was something he could understand. “What’s the prize?”
“You were just willing to do this without a prize,” the guard said, confused.
“The prize is one hundred golden rayals, or the equivalent in your currency. I suspect my lord will be willing to pay that much for the Golden Hind,” Yetta said.
Mund’s grin grew wider. “Leave at dawn?” he asked.
Yetta smiled his calm smile. “The lord is in the banquet hall with his guests. I will speak to him of the matter then I will leave now.” He walked past Mund who was standing tired in the hallway. He’d only gotten back less than an hour ago, this was hardly fair. But then, life wasn’t fair. He sighed and marched down the stairs, he’d have to do something about the dead sun bear before he left.
It took a long time to find someone who wanted a sun bear pelt and even then they only wanted it if he skinned it for them. He also suspected they’d only wanted that because he’d been particularly menacing when asking about it. Oh well, at least he was making some profit off it. After that he went to the village and asked around about the Golden Hind. Yetta was already off by now but he wanted to be sure he could recognise this thing if he ever found it.
Information was cheap and plentiful but much of it was contradictory and useless. It had horns, it didn’t have horns, it had a flowing mane, it had eight legs, its eyes were made of solid gold, it was made of solid gold, it was pure white like the moon. That last one seemed unlikely considering the name. What all the stories agreed on was that it glowed, hopefully that would make it easier to spot.
He finally set out and the tiredness started to set in. He could go for weeks in the wilderness, he’d done it before. But that was in a wilderness he knew, a wilderness that was almost home. Here he couldn’t eat the plants and mushrooms, here he couldn’t cuddle up in his favourite hollows with his cloak and his dogs, here he was constantly trudging through the trees with sweat dripping off him and drenching his clothes. His dogs were even worse, they had to stop every few hours to pant and recover before they could walk on any further. He hadn’t minded so much the first time but something about doing it all again for probably much longer with no break in between made it all far more difficult.
So on he trudged, and there was no sign of the Golden Hind.
By the time night came on the first day he was feeling more exhausted than he’d ever felt trekking the wilderness back home. The thick humidity and the stale air just sucked the life out of him. He climbed up on a cliff peering out of the forest, hoping for a breeze from above the treeline to cool him down. But there was no such breeze.
His dogs collapsed around him as he looked out over the endless forest, watching as the sun set and the stars came out. He knew he should find a place to sleep before it became too dark to see but he was becoming too tired to care.
Then he had an idea. He smirked his little smile. Such a simple idea and the chances were high that it would work. The energy from his idea spurring him on he hunted around and found a place to sleep.
Yetta was having a far better time than Mund. He dressed in light clothes as he sped through the forests, his fresh dogs racing along beside him. He followed every trail and every track, hunting down groups of deer in all the spots he knew to look for them. Everywhere they drank, everywhere they ate, he was there, watching. But he didn’t spot the golden hind. He considered going further afield, travelling up to the mountains where it had never been seen before, or out to parts of the forest where the deer didn’t go. But he didn’t. He was nothing if not patient and he was going to stick to the places it was most likely to be. The places it had been seen before. And Yetta was nothing if not patient.
So he waited, following different deer herds around, always in the shadows, always far back from them. Sometimes he’d kill one and eat it, it was nice to have meat again, but it was hardly the prize he was after.
Then one day, in a clearing far off in the distance, he saw a deer shining with golden light.
Mund was at the tavern drinking an ale. He’d gotten a lot of his information there when he’d been gathering it and it was nice to be back. The music was good, the seats were comfortable, and more importantly, in the thick stone room it was cool, much cooler than the sticky forest.
Yetta walked in and sat across from him. He’d just returned from the forest and was covered in dirt and leaves and grime. Mund had been back for days and was clean and refreshed. Although he had spilled some ale down his shirt so he wasn’t completely clean.
“They tell me you’ve been back for days,” Yetta said as Mund chugged his ale. “They tell me you came back the day after we left in fact.”
Mund put the ale down and nodded. “How’d you go? You find anything?”
Yetta sighed and shook his head. “I found one deer that had just got out of the river and was all wet and shiny in the sunlight. But otherwise no and I don’t think the lord will count that.”
Mund shrugged. “Ah well, have an ale.”
Yetta nodded sadly and ordered an ale. “How’d you know I wouldn’t find it?”
Mund shrugged again. “I didn’t. But you hadn’t found it so far, I figured you’d have a hard time finding it again. And I decided I’d much rather spend my time here than out in that horrid jungle.”
Yetta nodded and sipped his ale. “Ales are much easier to catch. Don’t run very fast.”
Mund smiled. “Good hunting my friend.”
Yetta grinned. “Good hunting.”