Hildesman was three days outside of the city walls. He tracked his progress on a tracing he had made of the Order’s map, keeping the original safely in a waterproof box at his house in case he ever needed to make a second trip. Today was the day he would enter the circle. The flyovers had, to his disappointment, not marked the locations of the Ilver’s ash groves spotted from the air, so he would have to take this methodically.
He followed the rough trail left by an old riverbed that had dried out years ago. Probably a mudslide had diverted the river at some point and it had never corrected course. This far from town, he was grateful just to avoid the bulk of the forest’s tangle. The sounds of insects, once annoying, were reassuring, and passing birds fled from his footsteps. Despite everything, trappers like Hildesman eventually learned to find the wilderness comforting.
It took four days for Hildesman to bisect the rough circle twice, breaking it into quadrants. The area was too large for him to see everything from the center, even having climbed one of the taller trees, but he had also added notes to his map of the rough locations and density of two separate Ilver’s ash groves. He suspected from the size of them that they would have small but usable deposits of Tessenium underneath.
He was breaking camp the morning before he planned to investigate the larger of the two groves when he noticed something odd. Footprints, bare human feet, around the edge of his campsite last night. He had kept a watch until full night, and not heard nor seen any sign of the person, which meant that whoever it was must have brought a light of their own. Hildesman pulled out his personal journal and began to trace the path of the prints, taking notes as he went. Whoever had left these tracks, they were unburdened as well as unshod. At several points he found a leap of several feet between one footprint and the next, with scarcely a difference in the impact or the gait. Like children playing at skipping games.
There wasn’t much else Hildesman could tell, as the tracks came from and left along rockier terrain, leaving little left to see after the morning dew had washed away the dust. He stopped and considered, taking a long swig from his canteen as he looked around, landmarks popping up like beacons in his mind. The direction of the tracks led west where he lost them, so whoever it was likely hadn’t been heading to or from the city, which was south. Bare feet were a terrible idea in the wilds (and in the city, for that matter), but he had noticed no signs of blood or limp in their tread. Someone who spent a lot of time that way, most likely.
The oddest thing, Hildesman thought, screwing the cap back onto his canteen and looking around at the imagined beacons of the landmarks and notable places he knew in the area, is that there isn’t anyone living around here. The Order had provided him with the latest information about heretic sanctuaries, and none were within 50 miles of this region. Nor were there any farming strongholds nearby. So how had one barefoot person happened upon the only other human within dozens of miles, in the dark, circled him, and left without being noticed? More importantly, why would that person not greet him and ask to share his camp, or more likely, try to rob him? Bandits were uncommon, given the dangers of the forest, but there were always those desperate enough to put a crew together and skim a little from underprepared trackers or strongholds making deliveries. Hildesman should have seemed like a prime target (he wasn’t, but he knew he looked like one).
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Turning one last circle and adding the campsite and the estimated path of the strange nighttime visitor to his mental map of the area, he stopped when he pointed southwest, away from the center of the circle he had divided and into the quadrant where he had noted the most Ilver’s ash. As a precaution, he loaded his steambow and black powder rifle, clipping each to a frame on his pack where he could reach them easily. On top of that, he primed his bolter and moved it from his hip holster to a chest holster, where he could more easily reach it with his off-hand if something were to require his main hand. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t need any of them, but few trappers put much stock in luck. The ones who did, as his teacher had explained all those years ago, tended to not last very long.
Hildesman had gone around to the other trappers while his supplies were being procured and found anyone who knew the area he was heading into. A few of them did their business in the general direction, and they had given him warnings. Hildesman’s preferred targets were the direwolves, solitary beasts known for their size and cunning, but relatively unarmored by direbeast standards. They preferred lower terrain, which meant further south. This region was populated instead mostly by normal wolves, who were not solitary but also usually were not aggressive, the odd bear, which Hildesman was prepared to avoid or kill as needed, and direhawks. The last was why he kept his weapons loose. Direhawks were targeted by very few trappers, and with good reason. The creatures almost always flew in mated pairs, and their tremendous size and durability made them a force to be reckoned with. Hildesman’s best hope was not to encounter one, or if he did to hide where it couldn’t reach him until it left him alone.
Camp that night was more cautious. Though he had allowed himself a fire for comfort previously, Hildesman made do that night with only his small oil stove, the flames completely covered while operating so as not to emit any light. In addition, to protect against direhawks, he chose a small hollow, formed where some oil rainfall had washed the soil out from under a root system and never washed it back in. He could still see and hear out, but from a distance it would be nearly impossible to detect him under the tree.
He also stayed awake much later than he normally would. He would be tired tomorrow, but he had brought a few ounces of the latest stimulant chew, a strong enough formula that he could skip sleep for a couple nights in a row in a pinch. At what he judged to be about an hour or two after midnight, he heard a noise like a sheet flapping in the wind, followed by a distant whump. He was glad for his lack of fire. Direbeasts were not, as a rule, attracted to fire, but neither did they fear it, and he sometimes suspected that they were clever enough to understand the concept of humans camping in hidden places like his, regardless of their breed. The sound repeated once more, closer, and then there was a crack as several branches broke. Straining to hear past the drone of night insects, Hildesman recognized the sounds of something descending a tree, followed by the quiet whap of flesh against stone.
He remained still as a post under his tree, even his experienced night eyes not up to the task of piercing the forest at night, but his ears well attuned to the sounds of danger. A few more quiet whaps followed the first, and then before he had to take his first real breath, there was once again a rustle and thump and a flurry of motion from somewhere nearby stirred several rodents, who complained loudly as they fled. The sound of direhawk wings retreated from his camp.
In his fatigue, and trying to avoid the stimulant chew as long as possible, the question didn’t occur to Hildesman until morning. If what he had heard was a direhawk, then where was its mate?