Chapter Forty-Two: Riptide

The next morning the trio set out with their motley collection of familiars.

Smitten performed her usual sweeps, jogging just a little ahead, pausing, sniffing the wind, and carrying on. Leta disappeared into the bare undergrowth as soon as they set out, her brown fur blending perfectly with the background. Sesame trundled alongside Tom, easily keeping pace, and happy not to overly exert himself. Scorn sat in his usual perch, of course, affecting his normal air of disdain.

They made good time, and would be at the gathering in another day or so. As they walked, Tom made a study of the differences between Val and Jace. Val was an expert in woodscraft. She moved near silently, and seemed to have an instinct for where to step and which paths to take through difficult terrain. Tom finally put his finger on something that had been bothering him for a while, though.

Jace flowed through the woods like water, like his first steps had been across moss-slicked rock and through deceptive, leaf-filled ruts. He was truly at home in the Deep. Both Hunters were superlative in their craft, near-silent ghosts, and yet Jace was simply more …natural.

Given the amount of time Val had spent honing her craft, living in the Deep, the difference between the two was more ephemeral as opposed to substantive, but the difference was there all the same.

As Tom pondered the difference more, he realised he himself fit more into Val’s camp than Jace’s. He was becoming confident with woodscraft, and getting better every day, but he would never be a natural like Jace, flowing through the forest as naturally as a river through its banks.

The realisation didn’t dishearten him, though. In fact, it did the opposite. He was cheered to know that even if he lacked the natural born talent, the fluidity, for living as a Hunter, he could still achieve fluency as Val had. It was simply a matter of effort and experience.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the ambush. He chastised himself, even as he took no small amount of relief in the fact that neither Val nor Jace, nor any of their familiars, noticed either.

They were moving through a sparser patch of forest, with much heavier undergrowth. Hip-high bushes laded with prickly thorns to snag loose cloth or skin lay thick on the ground. Tom had to subsume Sesame. The thorns wouldn’t do him any real damage, given his dense coat, but Tom definitely didn’t feel like spending hours picking them out of it that night.

They forged a careful path through them, wending back and forth, Tom’s gaze occupied by searching out a path, and his mind occupied with musings on woodscraft. He swept his vision past a figure standing in the bushes, and it was a moment before his brain caught up to him.

He snapped to attention, bringing up his spear. The shadowy figure twitched, and Tom immediately cast Agony at it. It screeched, and its form seemed to collapse, like a sheet of black fabric held up by a stick.

Val and Jace immediately went on the alert at the noise. Both swept their blades from sheaths, holding them steady, their eyes searching.

“What was it, Tom?” Val asked.

He opened his mouth to reply, when a shrill laugh sounded from off to their right.

“Typeless damage!” came the cackle. “That’ll teach me!”

Val and Jace pivoted smoothly to face the figure, standing now under a wide tree. Tom was an instant behind them.

It was lumpy, its outline obscured, as if it were cloaked in shadow itself. Small, hunched, though that could also have been some sort of obfuscation. Tom could just barely make out small flickers of pink from within its voluminous robes.

“Now, now, children. That babe doesn’t know me, but I expected a warmer welcome from two old friends!” The cloaked figure shifted, its outline swimming slightly. Its voice was decidedly female.

“What are you about, Hag?” Jace called to it. “Skulking about like a rat.”

Raucous laughter pealed through the silent woods.

“You warm an old woman’s heart. To think I could sneak up on such accomplished Hunters as yourselves. Come now, how about a nice sit down and a drink?” she offered, her voice false and cheery.

“No, thank you,” said Val, tension obvious in every line of her body.

“We’ve a meeting to keep,” said Jace, his face stony. “And you, as well.”

The Hag laughed again.

“No, we wouldn’t want that, not at all, not one bit. Wouldn’t dream of keeping The Lord waiting, would we?”

She stood watching them for another tense minute. Val and Jace said nothing further, merely watching her, waiting and ready.

Suddenly, the Hag disappeared. It seemed as though the nearby shadows reached out to her, and dragged her apart into a million tiny pieces. One second she was there, the next, gone.

A chill breeze chased by them, stirring the thorn bushes, admitting a weak shower of freezing droplets from the canopy. Tom shivered.

Val and Jace shared a long look, but ultimately, they continued on.

As they walked, Tom swore he could hear faint cackling through the trees. Every so often, movement would draw his eyes to a shadow, and he would jump, twisting about to level his spear. Invariably, whenever he did, there was nothing to see.

The vague laughter was mocking.

Tom remained tense for the next two days. His only consolation was that, for all their outward stoicness, he didn’t think Val and Jace were faring much better.

As they journeyed, the ground began to rise. More and more, it was broken by huge slabs of rust-brown stone, jutting from the forest floor at strange angles. The undergrowth grew less oppressive, and through gaps in the canopy Tom began to see the enormous, marching line of the Nails.

The mountain range was only visible from Wayrest on perfectly clear days, when the near-ubiquitous fog rising from the treetops was absent. Even then, only the faintest red smudge was apparent beyond the never-ending sea of green. Tom had never seen them before. Day by day the scale of them became more obvious as he drew ever nearer and gained more perspective.

As a natural feature, they were every bit as impressive as the Deep Green. Tall opposed to sprawling, sharp compared to soft, red-brown instead of brown-green. The Nails, counterintuitively lifeless, mostly, and yet life giving; the Deep Green, verdant, and yet paradoxically deadly.

They had almost stepped into the shadow of the great mountain range itself, when they finally reached their appointed meeting.

Between one minute and the next, a prickling feeling suddenly overcame Tom. He felt like he had been marked, like he was being watched. Sure enough, he picked up faint bird call, repeated ahead of them, a sound he had never heard in his time in the Deep. Val had taught him every common bird in the Deep, and more besides, and he would bet his life this new call was not natural.

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Less than a minute later, Hunter-Gather alerted him to someone shadowing them through the forest ahead, placing themselves on a bearing to intercept them. He felt a small surge of satisfaction at proving himself right.

“Someone up ahead,” he said in a low voice, for the benefit of Jace and Val. They might have already been warned by their respective familiars, but after the incident with the Hag he felt it better to be safe than sorry.

A stocky woman slipped from the trees, dressed in heavier armour than Tom would have thought practical for a journey through a forest. Two paired axes sat at her belt.

“Val. Jace,” she said in greeting, with a nod for each. “You must be Tom. Welcome.”

“Dewer,” was Val’s simple reply. Jace opted for a nod in return. Tom offered her a nod of his own.

“Come,” the woman said. “You’ve folk eager to talk.”

She led them out of the forest and into a brief clearing formed around a rugged looking, enormous boulder of rust-brown stone. It breached the sod and the undergrowth, and rose through and above it like some golem had tried desperately to free itself from the earth and eventually collapsed into it.

All around the massive rock, camps had been set up, in the way of the Hunters. Tom could feel enchantments buzzing on his skin from all around. Every camp had wardpoles, and many had even more esoteric looking enchanted objects about. He could only guess at their function.

Tom was staggered by the size of the gathering. He figured there must have been at least a few hundred people there - and there was still a day or so until the actual Gathering.

They were generally camped in twos and threes, sometimes more, all huddled together. The clearing was filled with a low murmur of noise, occasionally punctuated by the kind of posturing threats used by those in love with violence and cruelty to establish a kind of pecking order.

Tom knew the sound all too well. It made him tense, made him alert. These were no schoolyard bullies, though.

There was laughter, every so often too. Tom figured that the better folk among the Hunters were probably just more circumspect with their volume. Consideration and kindness often went hand in hand.

Dewer had melted back into the forest, leaving Val and Jace to slowly wander through the gathered Hunters.

They nodded greetings here and there, exchanging a few words, and weathered withering stares from others with nonchalance. Eventually, they spotted a familiar face.

Scriber sat with two others, a tall, incredibly thin woman with scars all the way up her arms, and a chubby man, who clearly had heaped muscles below his soft exterior. The woman was going grey, and had fine wrinkles about her eyes and mouth, speaking of great age for an Idealist. She still looked as though she could run up the Nails without stopping. The chubby man seemed young, almost the same age as Tom, if he had to guess.

Scriber greeted them warmly, even shaking Tom’s hand, and they swiftly rearranged the wardpoles around their small circle to include the three newcomers.

They settled in, and Tom was introduced to the two other Hunters. The scarred woman went by Moth, as she had been exiled for burning down her mother-in-laws house after years of abuse and slights. The thick young man went by Cub, and was apparently something of an apprentice to the well-liked Bear.

Bear, they explained to him, filled a similar role to Scriber, though he was a Hunter in truth. A noble had raped his daughter, so he had beaten the man to death with a hammer. After his exile, he had set up a forge, not far from the True Hall apparently, and had supplied the Hunters with weapons and armour, as well as repairing them.

Cub was apparently newly apprenticed to Bear, at the time of the murder, and had been made a pariah by association with his former master. With nowhere else to go, he had followed after him, after a few months, into the Deep.

Bear was so popular not only for his trade, but because of his close friendship with Scriber. Between the two, they had produced enchanted gear easily the match of any in Wayrest. He also provided an open sanctuary to all who needed it, his forge being one of the safest places in the Deep. Cub had taken it over, after his tragic death.

Bear had made a trip up to the Nails, to find some special metal or other for an order. He had never come back. Cub, who had been left to watch the forge, went to look for him, and had eventually turned up some pieces of his gear and a lot of dried blood.

It was a sobering reminder to every Hunter, that no matter how powerful, experienced, or well equipped you were, there was always a more powerful, stronger and tougher monster out there.

The Hunters were still reeling from the loss, though Cub was doing his best to fill the gap. They were large shoes to fill, though, for such a young man.

“We come bearing gifts,” Val said to Scriber, after they had arranged themselves.

It took Tom a moment to catch up, but he then produced several drake bones from his inventory and laid them in the middle of their circle. Scriber gave them only a cursory glance before turning to him.

“Which Ideal did that manifest under? What skill was that? I need details,” he said, his gaze almost rabid.

Tom explained Hunter-Gatherer to him, and Scriber’s eyes grew ever more intense.

“This will need more research,” he said. “Much more. I may have to ask that you stay here after the Gathering for a few days.”

Val gave Tom an amused grin. “Shouldn’t be a problem, I don’t think.”

“Much obliged. I might even cut my route short, swing back the other way towards you. This could be crucial. We haven’t had any spatial skills in the Hunters in over a decade. Hmmm…” Scriber was talking mostly to himself, clearly lost in thought.

“We ran into the Hag, on our way in. Couple of days back. She shown up yet?” Jace asked the others.

Scriber was still distracted, but Cub piped up in a clear, youthful tenor.

“Not yet, and thank Goddess. Enough of the bloodthirsty types here as it is.”

“We can do without her stirring the pot,” said Moth.

“Thinking I’d prefer her where I can see her,” Jace replied.

“Honeyfield’s here. Good enough for you?” Moth gave a fractional nod of her head towards the man.

Jace and Val both turned briefly for a glance, and by the direction of their looks, Tom picked out the right group.

Two men sat opposite each other, more removed from any other camp than anyone else. One of the men looked …normal. Like he wouldn’t have been out of place working in any shop in Wayrest. He didn’t look rugged, not in the slightest, just wearing a simple white shirt and brown woollen breeches. Tom could feel intense amounts of mana concentrated in him nonetheless. The other man was a different story.

He felt evil. No supernatural sense spoke to him of it, it was just that: a feeling. He was a shorter man, with black hair, all at odds with itself, sticking out every which way. His skin was not pale, or dark, or of any particular colouration, and yet still somehow seemed …sour. He had deep black rings under his eyes, as if he had found sleep an unfaithful partner and divorced it. A short, tatty black cloak covered him, and he sat hunched, talking with his campmate with a feverish look on his face. The concentration of mana in the man was even higher.

“Black cloak?” Tom asked quietly. Val nodded.

“Goddess, he gives me the shits. Wish he’d slink off somewhere quietly and die. Do us all a favour,” Jace said.

Tom opened his mouth to ask more about the man, but Scriber butted in, recovered from his reverie.

“The Lord won’t be far off, I reckon.”

“Still a few days ‘til the meeting starts, isn’t there?” said Moth.

“There is, but almost all the violent types are in already. The Hag’s the only important one missing, and you said you’ve seen her.”

“What difference does it make?” Moth asked him.

“He’ll want to do whatever he’s doing with as many on his side as he can. He won’t be far off. Mark me.”

“He does love his drama, I suppose,” Val said.

The next moment, a hush fell over the gathered Hunters. Their group turned, trying to see what the cause was.

From the treeline strode a man, tall and handsome. He was dark of hair and feature, impressively broad, clothed all in deep, sanguine red, with a long black cloak overtop. The hilt of a fine sword jutted above one of his shoulders.

The Hag was at his side, her shadowy figure moving after him in a smooth glide one moment, and fractured lurching the next. The Lord, for that was who he must be, strode through the camp without so much as glancing at anyone. His gaze was fixed ahead.

The Lord strode forth, imperious, until he came to a smaller brown boulder at the edge of the forest.

He tapped a faint rune on the top of the boulder. The massive thing emitted a deep grinding sound, and slowly began to split. He entered in silence, and the Hag filed down after him.

The older Hunters with Tom shared a significant look. Everyone grabbed any necessities, leaving their wardpoles and the rest, and made their way to the rock as well.

Tom’s hand felt clammy as they walked down the exposed earthen stairs, roots branching through the ceiling, rough packed dirt to either side.

So began the gathering of Wayrest’s unluckiest Idealists, and its most infamous criminals.