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CHAPTER ONE
Rardek
After many sunsets of eating meal bars as we travelled here to the Mercenia hut, I am much looking forward to eating something freshly cooked. Meal bars might provide the sustenance a male full grown needs, but they hardly thrill the tongue. A useful tool for travelling, no question. Just one that tastes deeply unsatisfying.
Since Hannah took over the cooking duties from Namson, I confess to have grown accustomed to a finer sort of eating.
While none of us out here are possessed of Hannah’s skill, we would have to be abysmal to produce something worse than a meal bar if given fresh meat to work with. I consider myself a decent distance from abysmal and I am not even the best cook amongst our group. Shemza’s patience and knowledge of the forest’s herbs serve him almost as well at the broth pot as they do in his healer’s duties. If Jaskry and I can provide him with a few juicy frenelles, we will all eat well this night.
So it is a disappointment to find the first of the traps we set two sunsets ago lies empty.
“The downside of not knowing the hunting territory,” I say with a dramatic sigh. “We cannot know for certain that our traps are set in the places trod by little feet.”
Jaskry huffs. “It’s by the stream. What other location is more likely to be frequented by forest creatures?”
His tone suggests his disappointment, and his longing for something other than meal bars to eat, is as deep as my own.
I clap a hand on his shoulder. “We have many traps to check. There is hope for a decent evening meal yet.”
“I should hope so.” He huffs again, but rallies himself, shoots me a small grin. “I don’t think it will aid Larzon’s temperament to go without fresh meat for another sunset.”
I snort. “We could prepare him the grandest of feasts this night and he would still find some other thing to aggrieve him.”
Jaskry laughs, and I am reminded of how reserved he used to be when he first joined the tribe. Always so wary of endangering his place - and therefore his family’s place - amongst us. He does not hold those fears so close to his heartspace now, and he is lighter for it.
“Well, let’s hope that we aren’t the cause of his aggravation this night,” he says, grinning broadly.
“If only because it would mean our bellies were full of fresh meat also.”
Jaskry checks the trap is still correctly set, then we take off running together toward the next one. Normally, my hunter’s spirit would lift to be beneath Lina’s trees with a tribe brother. With a friend. But much as I enjoy Jaskry’s quiet company, there is something about the forest around the Mercenia hut - as if it has absorbed the ill feeling the hut inspires.
“I think I need a hot meal more to chase out the chill in my spirit than the hunger in my belly,” I say.
Jaskry nods. “It’s an ill feeling that lingers under these trees. I’ve felt on edge since a day or so before we arrived at the hut.”
“I think every male who has come out here has said much the same.”
“It can’t bother your brother overmuch. He’s spent more time out here than anyone.”
I grimace. “I think my brother was so far lost in his own headspace, he did not notice much of anything.”
“Not anything beyond his linasha, certainly.”
We run in silence for a while, saving our breath. As we arrive in the area we left the second trap, Jaskry moves to check it, brushing back the bush that he anchored it to. I am opening my pack to carry whatever we have caught when Jaskry turns to me, brows dipping into a deep frown.
“Also empty,” he says.
Unease tickles at the back of my neck, but I shrug. “We still have many to check. We will not be off on our assessment of good trap placement every time.”
The unease only grows when the third trap is also empty, but I try to suppress it, to remind myself that traps are not always successful. It is not abnormal to have several traps empty on one hunting round. It just feels worse because they have been empty one after another, making it feel certain that the next will be empty also.
But then the next trap is empty, and the next, and the next, until it is no longer something that can be explained by bad luck. It is either poor skill, or something is amiss with the creature populations here.
I do not question my skill. I certainly do not question Jaskry’s, when he alone kept his family fed for ten long seasons.
“Any sign that the trap was triggered?” I ask, crouching next to Jaskry. “Has it snagged some fur, at least?”
“Nothing,” Jaskry says. “And nothing in any of the others, either. They have all been set, primed, ready. Not falsely triggered, not near misses.” His expression tightens. “We should have caught something.”
