I lifted the carcass of the enyarv and held it over the rock, letting the rest of its blood soak the rock. It vanished as well, and once the blood stopped flowing, I dropped the carcass into the snow, pulled out a borrowed copper knife, and dressed the kill as best as I could. I didn’t know how good its meat was, but I had a feeling its fur was probably valuable.
While I worked, I checked my notifications, which I was happy to see.
Your Tracking Skill has gained a level
New Rank: Adept 1
Adept Benefits: You can judge how old a trail is. Accuracy varies by the age of the trail and your Perception stat.
Profession: Undkrager has gained a level
New Level: 3
With each level of Undkrager, you gain:
Intuition +1, Prowess +2, Vigor +1, 2 Skill Points
Profession: Letharvis has gained a level
New Level: 2
With each level of Letharvis, you gain:
Intuition +1, Charm +1, 1 Skill Point
The gains were great, and while the new tracking ability wasn’t much to write home about—assuming I had a way to do that or a home to write to—I could see how it could be useful. It would be nice to know that a track was days old, so I knew not to bother following it. However, I could see what Sara meant about having to choose between leveling up professions. I’d had no choice with the letharvis XP—I’d gotten it from my ritual calling the rock spirit—but I’d had to choose for the XP I got from the enyarv. I could have put it into isyagarl, bringing it to level 2, but I thought advancing undkrager was a better idea in the long run. Isyagarl was a little more specialized than undkrager, and if I left the High Reaches, it probably wouldn’t be much use. In the long run, I was certain that this world’s version of a magic knight would be more useful.
Once I’d removed its internal organs, I tied a rope from the corpse around my chest, then trudged off, dragging it along the snow. Heading back to the camp was much faster than hunting the animal had been, and it only took me a couple hours to reach it by following my earlier trail. As I drew close, two of the hunters rose from the snow to either side of me, their spears ready. I tensed and gripped my own—was this some sort of betrayal?—but when they saw me, they lifted their weapons and stepped back, allowing me to pass.
The camp the hunters built was more or less the same each night. They’d cleared the snow down to the rock, then piled it up around the edges, packing it into a shin-high wall that I now knew was a ritual circle surrounding the camp. The wall stood only ankle high in two places, allowing us to enter and exit without worrying about tripping. Trampled furs covered the ground of the camp except in the center, where a ring of stones held the half-burned log the group used for their fire. Four of the hunters were absent, guarding the camp while buried in snow. The rest lay about the camp, cleaning and scrubbing hides, cutting meat off the animals they’d caught, and otherwise keeping busy. Bregg was one of those, and he eyed me cautiously as I entered the camp. Aeld, of course, crouched in the center of it all, and as I stepped past the snowy boundaries, he rose to his feet.
“So, Freyd, you return—and with your quarry, no less.” He glanced over at Bregg, who grunted and looked down at the hide he was skinning. “Do you with to walk our path with us again?”
“That’s what I was hoping,” I grinned at the shaman. I gestured at the enyarv corpse. “What do you want me to do with this?”
“It’s yours, young one,” Bregg grunted. “Do what you wish with it.”
“You don’t want the hide or meat from it?” I asked in surprise.
“It’s not ours to take. You killed it; we have no claim to it.” The big hunter didn’t look at me, and when I glanced at Aeld, the shaman sighed.
“He’s right. The enyarv is your prize, Freyd. The meat and hide are both yours, and we’re too far in your debt already to accept it as a gift. Take it and do with it as you’d like.”
I frowned, thinking furiously. I really didn’t want to clean, skin, and prepare the whole thing myself, but I was sure that there was no way the hunters would do it for me if I was getting all the benefits. Besides, there were things that I needed a lot more than its fur—well, probably. Its fur did look warm, and it would probably make okay armor.
“What about a trade?” I asked slowly, looking back at Aeld.
“A trade?” the shaman echoed. “I invited you to join our path, Freyd. That means that we’ll share our food and supplies with you; we’d be poor hosts otherwise.”
“No, I mean a trade for something I really need: training.”
Aeld’s face took on a wary expression. “Freyd, I’ve already agreed to give you all the training I can, I’m sorry. Anything else will have to wait for the rashi’s approval…”
“No, not you. Him.” I pointed at Bregg, who stared at me in mingled annoyance and surprise. “I give you this, both meat and fur, and in return, he teaches me how to use my weapon—and how to be a better hunter. That way, when our paths go in different directions, as I’m sure they’ll do, I’ll be able to walk my own a lot further.”
“Ha!” Bregg’s bark of laughter startled me, and I looked over to see him rise to his feet with a look of mingled approval and amusement in his eyes. “Make the deal, Letharvis—but only for the meat, not the fur. That’s too much for a little training.”
“Gladly,” the shaman sighed, his body relaxing at once. “You have a bargain, Freyd—and thank you for making it.”
“Why?” I asked curiously. “Is something wrong?”
“This saves us from losing another day to hunt and replace what the enyarv took,” Bregg said with a growl. “Tell me, young hunter; do you know how to clean and skin that thing?” His body language had changed completely, seeming much more open and less frustrated than it had just a while ago, and that made me a little nervous.
“I know how to clean and skin some things. I’ve never done either with one of these, though, so if there’s a trick to it, I don’t know it.”
“No trick; just care, patience, and a good knife.” He glanced down at the borrowed knife on my hip. “Better than that one, at least. Go ahead, bring the corpse, and you’ll see.”
I reached down and hefted the body easily, then followed Bregg to the edge of the camp. He stopped and turned to face me, holding out his hands.
“Go ahead and give it to me.” I handed the body over, and he took it with a grunt. “You’re stronger than you look. Good. I was worried that the enyarv was half-starved, and there wouldn’t be any good meat on it.” As he spoke, I realized that I had no clue how my stats compared to those of this world, and unlike in Puraschim, I couldn’t use an Analyze card to figure it out.
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“I can still analyze them for you, though,” Sara reminded me. “All you have to do is focus on them, and I can give you an estimate of their physical stats at least.”
“Oh, right. I’d forgotten that was something you did, not just the card.” I forced myself not to sigh; I had a tendency to forget about my abilities if I didn’t use them frequently, and while I’d analyzed a lot of things on Puraschim, I’d gotten used to thinking that it was a magic thing, not a Sara thing. I focused on the big hunter, and instantly, numbers appeared in my vision.
Bregg
Hunter, Level 15+
Estimated Physical Stats
Prowess: 32 Vigor: 34 Celerity: 32 Skill: 40
I looked around, scanning the other hunters in sight, and realized that most of them had stats in the 25-30 range. Only Aeld’s were close to Bregg’s, meaning the big hunter was by far the strongest and most skilled of the group. I didn’t know if the hunters were normal for their species, but I suspected they weren’t; Bregg seemed too skilled, too knowledgeable for them to just be on a regular hunt. These hunters had been selected for whatever they were doing in the mountains.
He laid the carcass down on a hide that had all its fur scraped free and gleamed like wax in the sunlight. “You say you’ve done some skinning before?”
“A bit.” That was even the truth; thanks to Renica back on Soluminos, I actually had.
“Then show me.” He pulled out a copper knife that was much slimmer and sharper than the one in my belt. “Use this. That common knife will make a mess of it.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do it?” I chuckled.
“I would, and I’ll harvest the meat, but the hide’s yours, not mine.” He grinned at me. “If you botch it, it’s no one’s problem but your own.”
“Gee, thanks,” I muttered. Kneeling beside the body, I set carefully to work, making a long, shallow cut along the thing’s belly and up its throat. I gently slipped the knife into the cut, laid it flat, and ran it in short strokes beneath the skin. The trick, Renica had told me, was not to use pressure but to let the sharpness of the blade do the work. If I pushed too hard, my knife would cut the hide; if I went too gently, it would take days to get it all off. I immediately saw what the hunter meant about the pelt being hard to remove, though; the connective tissue beneath the skin was stronger and tougher than normal, tempting me to push harder. Instead, I just kept at it with short, clean strokes, each one lifting only a fraction of an inch of fur away from the meat but keeping the hide intact.
“Decent technique,” the hunter rumbled from beside me. “You really have done this before, haven’t you?”
“I said I had,” I replied, resisting the urge to nod. “You didn’t believe me?”
“A lot of young hunters manage to get the fur off a single snaerbig and suddenly think they know how to remove a pelt,” he snorted. “I could take one of those off without a knife. The things are so cowardly you can practically scare the hides off them!” The other hunters nearby rumbled in quiet laughter, and I forced myself to grin despite not understanding the joke. I supposed it might be a play on words; maybe the young hunters were the easily frightened ones. Of course, it could also be a trait of the snaerbigs that everyone but me knew about.
“You’ve done this enough to know what you’re doing, though,” he went on. “Not perfectly—you need to apply a bit more pressure than that, or you’ll be at this all day, and your knife isn’t quite flat enough—but enough that I can tell you’ve had actual practice.”
I continued my work, taking my time but heeding his advice and adding a little pressure. Renica had been using a steel knife, not copper, which I assumed held a better edge. As I worked, he crouched down beside me.
“So, how did you find this thing?” he asked in a casual voice.
“It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t bothering to hide its trail. I followed it to a valley about an hour away without any trouble—which was when I realized what it was doing.”
“Leading you into an ambush, sounds like.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”
“How did you figure it out?”
I glanced up at him. “Why?”
“Because if you want me to help you be a better hunter, I need to what you think you know—and what fool ideas I need to beat out of you. So, how?”
I looked at him for another few seconds, then turned back to the corpse at my knees. “First, I don’t recommend you try beating anything out of me unless you’re prepared to get beaten in return,” I said in a calm tone. “As for how, that’s simple. No hunter would leave such an obvious trail—not unless it wanted to be followed. The wind was at my back, and the valley looked like a prime ambush site. It wasn’t hard to put together that it was hunting me just as I was hunting it.”
“Every hunter must take care to avoid becoming the hunted,” he said solemnly. “The creed of the High Reaches.”
“I thought the same thing.” I frowned. “In fact, I thought almost exactly the same thing.”
“Considering that spirit you bound, I’m not surprised. So, you realized it was an ambush. What did you do?”
“I considered retreating and circling around the peak to come at it from above.” I hesitated, unsure what to tell them, then decided on the truth. “Before I could, though, I sensed a rock spirit in a boulder close to me, so I called it and had it find the creature for me.”
“You called a spirit?” Aeld stepped over to us, his eyes both curious and irritated. “I told you what could happen, Freyd!”
“It wasn’t that powerful of a spirit,” I said placatingly. “And I didn’t fight it. I just woke it up and asked it to help using what you showed me this morning.”
“And what did you offer it in return?” he demanded.
“Well, I didn’t have anything to offer except my blood—which I used to awaken it, and I didn’t want to give it more of that since you suggested it wasn’t the best thing to do. It was about to go back to sleep, but I pulled it out of the rock and told it that if it wanted to go back to sleep, it had to help me first.” The hunters nearby began muttering quietly, but Aeld silenced them with a sharp look.
“You compelled it?” he asked, his voice suddenly wary. “Did you bind it, as well?”
“No. It agreed to help me, and I let it go. It found the enyarv and distracted it by trying to grab it with bits of rock so I could run over and attack it. We fought a bit, and I stabbed it in the throat.” I gestured toward the gash in its neck.
“And what of the spirit?” Aeld pressed.
“In return for its help, I gave it most of the enyarv’s blood. It was grateful. And that’s pretty much it. I cleaned the kill and left; I assume it went back to its stone to sleep.”
Aeld sighed. “Good. You rewarded it for its service.”
“What if I hadn’t? What would it have done? I’d already shown it that I was stronger.”
“It’s always best to avoid angering spirits of the land—especially earth or ice spirits—here in the High Reaches, Freyd. They can be spiteful and petty, and while they aren’t very powerful, they can still be dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?”
“Earth spirits can control the rocks themselves, as you saw. Imagine if that one decided to follow you, and started a rockslide as you passed, or crumbled a ledge you walked on.”
“Or waited until you slept, then filled your mouth and nose with liquid rock.” Bregg rumbled.
“They can do that?” I asked, startled.
“Not unless it was extremely powerful,” Aeld said in a chiding tone. “And if it were, you couldn’t have compelled it. Even a weak spirit can be petty and vengeful, though, so it’s best to leave them at least somewhat satisfied when dealing with one.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I frowned as my knife flowed beneath the creature’s hide. “Wait, isn’t that spirit bound to that rock? How could it follow me?”
“Normally, it couldn’t, but that one partook of your blood,” Aeld sighed. “That gave it a link to you, and it could have followed you using that link. That’s why some letharvis champion using blood to call a spirit—that link makes it much easier to communicate with them and harder for them to simply ignore you—but it also leaves you more vulnerable to them afterward. At the very least, I suggest that you don’t use blood if you’re going to compel a spirit.”
“I wasn’t planning on compelling it, and I didn’t have anything else to offer,” I pointed out.
“You could have promised it the enyarv’s blood. Or offered to clean the ice out of the boulder’s cracks, or...” He fell silent and grimaced. “Or I could have given you this information when I showed you how to begin the ritual. I thought that I hadn’t given you enough information to actually do so, but it seems I was wrong. I certainly didn’t think you could compel one.”
“Is compelling a spirit a bad thing?”
“No, not bad. In fact, if you can do it, it’s preferable since spirits can be very demanding when you bargain with them and will usually accept less as appeasement than they might have wanted in an exchange. However, if you try to compel a spirit that’s too strong for you or don’t appease one that you have compelled, it will probably try to get revenge on you.”
“And you go to sleep and wake up breathing stone,” Bregg muttered. “Or worse.”
I glanced around nervously, activating See Spirits as I did. Aeld glowed with his typical multiple hues. A couple different shades of purple stained Bregg’s fur, as well as a mottled red-and-green pattern that reminded me of the Hunt Spirit I’d faced. The others each seemed to have one or two spirits bound to them, but more importantly, no angry, vengeful gray blobs hung around the edges of the camp, waiting for me to fall asleep.
Not that I intended to sleep that night. Or ever again, possibly. The image of waking up choking on liquid stone was a nasty one. I shuddered.
“Thanks, Bregg,” I muttered. “I hope you can sing me to sleep tonight.”
“Never happen,” he chuckled, while the nearby hunters laughed quietly. “Besides, you’ll be too busy.”
“Too busy?” I echoed.
“Yes.” He took the knife the knife from me and wiped it in the snow, and I blinked in surprise as he lifted away the wolverine’s hide, head and all, fully intact. I hadn’t even realized I’d finished; I certainly hadn’t expected it to turn out that well. My attempts never had back in Soluminos.
“Your Skill stat was also a lot lower then,” Sara reminded me.
“Not bad,” the hunter said, turning the hide around and looking at it. “Not the best, but not bad.”
“What did you mean, too busy?” I repeated, feeling a growing sense of suspicion that I wasn’t going to like the answer.
“You want to learn to be a hunter?” he asked. “Then tonight, and every night, you stand a watch. Nothing will teach you about hunting more than knowing that somewhere, out there in the dark, something’s hunting you instead.”
Yeah, I definitely wasn’t going to sleep ever again.