Hunted

by Paul Eslinger

  Trey hooked his thumbs under the straps of his pack and spoke without looking at me. “It’s been a long day and I’m tired. Do we go on to town or do you want to go out to the farm?”

  “I’m tired, too,” I admitted. I had pulled in a short boost of magical energy twice during the afternoon, but even that help had worn off. I gestured at the little knoll not far from us. “As I mentioned before, there’s a small cave on the back side of that knoll. Let’s sleep there tonight and put off deciding until tomorrow.”

  The cave was deserted, and as far as I could tell, no one, not even an animal, had been in the cave since Zephyr and I slept there about a week ago. A lot had happened in the week.

  Trey sat on the ground, took off his moccasins, flexed his feet, and leaned against his pack. His voice indicated satisfaction and an element of surprise. “That was a long walk today. You made it just fine. I wasn’t sure we’d make it half this distance.”

  “We did,” I said, immensely pleased.

  He picked up a small pebble between his finger and thumb and held it up so he could study it.

  “Well, what?” I demanded when he held the pose without saying anything.

  “Are you too tired to practice the technique for stopping arrows?”

  “I am tired,” I admitted. The last half hour had been more taxing than I had expected. Now that I was sitting, I wasn’t sure I had enough strength to stand and walk.

  “Too tired to practice?” Trey asked again.

  “Yeah,” I grunted.

  Trey held the little pebble higher and moved it over on his fingernail so he was ready to flick it in my direction. “I don’t think an opponent is going to wait for you to stop and rest before attacking. You will need to be able to do this when you’re tired.”

  “Oh, okay,” I grumbled.

  He flicked the pebble in my direction.

  Warned by the discussion and the movement of his hand, I instinctively reached for the magic in the way that had worked two days ago. To my delight, the pebble dropped beside my leg rather than hitting me. “Satisfied?” I asked.

  “You reacted faster than before,” Trey said. “That is one of the two things you need to do. Well, actually three.”

  I leaned back, enjoying the discussion, but I was so tired I didn’t want to work hard or do serious thinking. “Keep talking, famous teacher.”

  “As I said, you reacted faster than before, but you knew the stone was coming. I doubt that the dragon knew the arrow was coming.”

  My arm was tired and seemed heavy as I waved one hand. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”

  Trey picked up a rock the size of a pheasant egg and held it up. He talked to the rock rather than me. “An arrow carries a lot of power—enough to kill a man or a big animal, and you may not know it is coming. Starting tomorrow, I’m going to throw at least six rocks at you every day but I’m not going to give you any advance notice.”

  “That’s not fair,” I protested.

  “It’s about staying alive, not about being fair,” Trey said seriously. He sounded like my parents. “Besides, you healed your arm this morning. You can heal any bruises I give you until you learn to react in time.”

  “Ugh,” I groaned, knowing he was right, but not wanting to say it.

  Trey continued, “Those are two of the three things. I think you can learn to do them within a few days, but I’m not so sure about the third one.”

  I barely had enough energy to pull the sleeping fur from the top of my pack, but that didn’t keep me from asking another question. “What third thing?”

  “You have to stop an arrow or knife coming towards someone else standing close to you. It might be me, or Ara, or someone else. You can do it with hard air, you can move something else between us and the weapon, or… I don’t care, you can even burn it up with that magical fire you used against the Effigia. The point is—”

  “I get the point,” I blurted loudly, tired and frustrated that Trey was using a long explanation to remind me of something I should have already thought about, and started working on. I wasn’t used to thinking of the needs of others and that had to change. I continued less forcibly, “I need to think of more than myself when someone attacks…meaning you.”

  Trey’s face flushed bright red before he nodded. “Well… yeah.”

  I wrapped the sleeping fur around my shoulders and leaned back against my pack. My voice was so quiet I barely heard myself. “We can talk about this more tomorrow.” I strengthened the trickle of magic dedicated to hiding us and posted my two magical guards before I fell asleep.

  Light from the early morning sun filtered into the cave and woke me. Even though I had slept soundly, I didn’t feel fully rested. My thighs and calves ached, my back was sore, and a crust filled my eyes. The last conversation with Trey immediately came to mind and then a wave of shame washed over me. We had come back to Glendale so I could make sure Ara was safe and I hadn’t even checked on her before going to sleep.

  I did a quick magical scan and quickly located Ara. Her suppressed level of emotions indicated she was still asleep, but they were placid enough to tell me the Hunter hadn’t found her yet.

  “Are you awake?” Trey whispered.

  I shifted so I could look at him and replied, “Yes, even though I wanted to sleep longer.”

  He was holding one arm up with his hand cocked back as if he were going to throw something, Instinctively, I engaged the new shield, and watched, dumbfounded, as his arm slashed forward and a rock as big as a duck egg hit the shield and dropped to the ground between us.

  “What was that all about?” I shouted.

  “That was the first rock for the day,” Trey said with a sly smile. “You’re doing good. It didn’t even hit you.”

  “I don’t need a friend like that,” I grumped.

  Trey stood and began to fold his sleeping fur. He looked at me, and his face was totally serious. “You do if you want to stay alive. I’m hungry. Let’s get breakfast.”

  The supply of cheese and dried meat in my pack was getting low but I still had a small bag of oats. I held it up. “We need to start cooking a pan of oats in the evening.”

  “We’ll do that the first night we stay in a place where making a fire doesn’t draw unwanted attention,” Trey said with a helping of sarcasm.

  “Right.” I swallowed any response and stuffed the bag back in my pack.

  Trey held up his hand. “Don’t do that. Give me your bowl and your water bottle.”

  I put both hands on my hips and asked, “What are you going to do? It takes all night to cook oats.”

  He beckoned with his fingers. “Come on, give me the water bottle. You can make a fire, can’t you?”

  “Yes, but we don’t want someone checking out the smoke,” I said without making any move to hand over the bottle or bowl.

  “Okay, okay, we’re not going to make a fire.” Trey reached in his pack and brought out his bowl and another bag of oats. “I’m going to put some oats in my bowl, pour on water, and then you’re going to cook the oats.”

  “I am?” I asked, feeling dumbfounded.

  “Yes, you are. Boiling water isn’t nearly as hot as a fire.” He broke out in laughter when he looked at my face. “You ought to see yourself! You should be able to heat a little water. It’s not like I’m asking you to call down a snowstorm in July or a heat wave in the middle of winter. I just want a bowl of hot water.”

  My confused feelings slowly receded as Trey set out the bowls, poured in a handful of oats, and added water. He pointed at the two bowls. “You don’t have to burn wood, but be careful you don’t melt the bowls. Also, you want the warm water to soak through the oats while it is heating.”

  “You don’t want much, do you?” I demanded, but my smile took the sting out of the words.

  He held up his spoon and waved it back and f
orth. “Just breakfast without smelling smoke or carrying out the ashes.”

  I sat cross-legged in front of the bowls and tried to think. Trey’s description had been vivid enough I knew what I wanted to do, and what shouldn’t happen. Plenty of magical power ran through the hills close to us, and I could even see the glow of the Guldur Stone in Glendale when I funneled some of the nearby magical power into my bowl.

  The water exploded in a puff of steam and oats sprayed out in every direction. “Oops,” I yelped and scooted back, swatting at the hot oats that had landed on my bare shins.

  Trey laughed. “That was interesting.”

  “You think so?” I responded with a disgusted snort. “I’ll try your bowl next.” I concentrated and reached for a much smaller amount of magical power. Moments later, steam rose from the water in Trey’s bowl. I held the level of power and thought about how oats felt after they cooked all night. The water level in the bowl dropped as the oat groats swelled.

  “You did it,” Trey said with a smile and clapped his hands together.

  “With your bowl,” I said with a big grin and then looked at my nearly empty bowl in disgust. “I have to try mine again.” After pouring more oats into my bowl and adding the last of the water from the bottle, I heated the contents.

  “They’re good,” Trey mumbled around a large mouthful of oats. “We should have thought about doing this earlier and maybe saved a few blackberries.”

  “I’m not a cook,” I shot back.

  “That’s not the issue,” he said. “I think you can use magic to do almost anything we would do otherwise.”

  “That’s what Father said,” I agreed.

  After finishing the delicious oats, we tied the packs shut and took them outside the cave. I casually scanned the nearby region before swinging the pack up on my back. There was plenty of game close by and people at the nearest three farms were out doing chores. A thunderstorm of angry emotions appeared when I reached out to Glendale. Most of the townspeople seemed involved and the entire traveling group we had been following were there as well. I grimaced and looked at Trey. “There’s trouble ahead.”

  Chapter 19 – Kidnappers

  Trey shuddered, shifted his pack into a more comfortable position, and jammed his hands into his pockets. “Is Ara in trouble? Is she in town?”

  I didn’t know what was happening in Glendale, but I knew the answer to this question. “No. She’s out on the farm.”

  “What about the Hunter?” Trey continued. He stepped away from me and looked both ways along the game trail leading around the knoll.

  The single word, “Uh,” slipped from my lips before I reached out magically to Glendale again. It didn’t take long to find the Hunter. His was the only adult mind—I couldn’t explain how I could tell an adult from a child, or a man from a woman—that expressed pleasure and satisfaction. A few minds held greed and determination and the rest held anger, horror, or outrage. For a couple of moments, I sensed the faint mind of a woman near the Hunter. She was cold and hard and had an incredibly strong will. The mind faded as I passed across it.

  I turned towards Trey and started to explain, “There’s a—” I quit talking when he threw another stone at me. My anger blazed as I instinctively erected the protective screen. To my surprise, the rock exploded into a ball of dust rather than falling to the ground. I shook my clenched fist at Trey and shouted, “Stop throwing rocks at me!”

  “You’re getting better,” he said with a dismissive shrug, “but you still need practice. You didn’t just stop that rock, you destroyed it. That’s good. Maybe. You might want to push something away instead of smashing it at times.”

  I flung my hands out wide, still irritated. Besides, my heart was still thumping in my chest. “I was trying to answer your question and you throw a rock at me.”

  For long moments, Trey looked at me, blinking rapidly, and then he pressed his elbows close to his sides and hunched his shoulders. His voice was low and strident, “Getting killed without any advance notice is also very inconvenient.”

  “Oh, right,” I said as my anger drained away. I wanted to stay alive and Father had said the Hunters struck from the shadows without warning. After a deep breath, I continued, “The Hunter is in Glendale and he is happy.”

  “Not good,” Trey muttered and swallowed several times before he continued, “Do we go to Glendale or out to the farm?”

  “Glendale,” I hedged, hoping he had an opinion. We had walked all the way out to the farm before the four wolves showed up looking for Zephyr and then left without talking to Ara. I didn’t want to do that again without something to say, and I knew very little more than when I had originally left her there.

  “We may find answers in Glendale,” Trey agreed as we headed around the knoll towards the road, being careful not to leave footprints on the trail. “You need to grow your magical beard again and do something so the Hunter doesn’t recognize me.”

  “I can make your hair look blond instead of brown,” I offered.

  “Look blond or be blond?” he asked.

  “I was thinking look.”

  Trey ran his fingers through his hair. “You can heal people using magic. Wouldn’t changing hair color be easier than healing a big cut?”

  I started to bristle and then decided that wasn’t appropriate. Trey asked a lot more questions about the use of magic than I had asked, and most of them were quite reasonable, but it would be nice if he could use the strong magic and experiment on his own. I let out a long breath and replied, “You keep thinking up new magical things for me to do.”

  “Well? Is it easier or not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Trey’s eyebrows bunched together as he swung around to look at me. “Can you use magic to grow a beard?”

  “I don’t know,” I repeated, feeling both foolish and irritated.

  He stopped and waved both hands back and forth. “Whoa, whoa, let’s start over. Will you try to make my hair blond? Please? And longer?”

  We were already close to Jude’s Road. I looked in both directions to ensure no one was in sight before nodding in agreement. “I’ll try.”

  The sun had noticeably shifted positions in the sky before we moved on. Trey’s brown hair was now blond, but I was still beardless. Apparently, it took a lot more skill to grow a beard when I didn’t normally have one than to return damaged flesh to the original state. However, I was sporting a fake beard that matched my normal hair color.

  People watched when we passed several farms but no one called out in greeting. We continued to walk without stopping to rest and approached Glendale without seeing anyone else on the road. Trey grabbed my arm when we saw the first house at the edge of town. “Check for problems again,” he said.

  Practice makes many things easier and it only took the time of a few heartbeats to run the magical scan. I looked down at Trey. “People here are still upset and several of them are incensed. The big group of travelers is well outside of town heading toward the mine. Several people in the group are very angry or afraid.”

  Trey nodded and began walking again. “We need to be careful.”

  Two men stepped out from behind a clump of bushes and faced us when we reached the edge of town. The weather-beaten face of the tall grey-haired man looked old, but he clutched a bow and arrow in rock-steady hands. He had the arrow seated on the string but kept it pointed at the ground. The other man was younger, short, and thin with a wizened beard, but the long knife he held looked sharp. “Where are you going?” the older man barked.

  I was still trying to collect my startled wits, especially since I hadn’t previously noticed the presence of these two men, when Trey spoke up. “We’re going to market.”

  “Get what?” the old man asked in a reedy voice.

  Trey shook his head and gave a long sigh. “My sister forgot to save back some of the starter w
hen she made bread yesterday, so we have to get yeast.”

  The old man was shaking his head before Trey finished his story. “She have a name?”

  “She?” Trey asked and then continued without a pause. “Oh, my sister is Helen and my mother is Julia.”

  “It doesn’t take two people to carry a bag of yeast,” said the younger man. His deep voice sounded strange coming from such a thin body.

  “No,” Trey agreed with a nod. “However, there have been rumors of trouble and Raymond came along with me.”

  The old man squinted and seemed to relax, but he kept the bow in the same position and didn’t put the arrow away. “Where you from?” he asked.

  Trey gave a vague gesture of his arm. “From down the other side of Jude’s Road.”

  “Don’t you have neighbors with yeast starter?” the thin man asked with a pucker between his eyebrows.

  “Of course,” Trey agreed. “But Mother also wants two sewing needles and more thread. Also…”

  “Oh, all right,” the old man said, finally releasing the arrow from the bowstring. “We had some trouble here this morning with a gang of people going up to the mine.”

  Trey had done such a smooth job of lying that I hadn’t even thought of interrupting, but I was interested in the new topic. “What kind of trouble?” I asked. “We heard that a group of about eighty people went by yesterday.”

  “Another big group went through about a week ago.” The younger man’s voice grew louder. “They were a bunch of thieves. This group was worse. They kidnapped four people and took them up the mines to work. They shot Martin, knifed Bart, and beat up several other people.”

  “Who did they take?” I asked.

  “Ned, Clint, and Kate.” The younger man looked at his fellow guard. “Help me. Who was the other fellow?”

  “Tzadok.”

  The last name caused my stomach to lurch. I spoke before thinking, “Tzadok? Nathania’s husband?”

  “That’s right,” the old man affirmed. “You know them.”