The Scholars: The Hidden Heritage II

by Derek Palmer

  I soon figured out that I would be too late to prevent him - or her - from killing that deer. I almost guessed that the other group didn't want to prevent that from happening, either. Once the deer was killed, they probably felt that they were justified to hunt down the hunter. Maybe I shouldn't do this. The hunter must have known the risks, and there seemed to be four dogs and six riders. I started running even faster. I was almost certain that the hunting party wanted the single hunter to do all the work. They would then pick up a cleaned deer and hunt down the hunter.

  I entered the scene just as the hunting party had started their descent from the small hill. They seemed to have had a single observer there while the others had been waiting on the other side of the hill. The deer had been killed in small clearing where it had been eating some grass. The second hunt was just getting started and now the hunter was supposed to be the prey.

  The guy was young, younger than me, maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. It was hard to say, because he was so skinny, and the clothes he wore were so loose on him. The next thing that I noticed, was that he seemed to be a natural Mage.

  "Leave that deer! There are four dogs and six riders coming after you!"

  I didn't shout, but I added as much command to my voice as I could. Yet, he hesitated. He didn't question me but he hesitated. "I can't... they will die without food."

  "And if you die first, they will still die without food. Come on, I'll help you get food for them, but now we need to run. Look, is there any river or stream nearby? I don't fancy the idea of dogs running behind me."

  It probably was a faint bark from a dog that finally convinced him. He put the knife into a pouch he had been carrying on his shoulder. His home-made bow was already on the other shoulder. Then, as he rose, he quickly looked towards the forest from which they should come. Then we started running, first uphill for a moment and then downwards, hopefully towards some stream.

  Even though the young guy was all skin and bones, he almost outran me. Okay, I had been running already for a while, but even though I had been training with Frode and Geir it was totally different than running in a forest. Luckily this forest wasn't anything like those thick, almost impenetrable spruce forests that had been common on the west coast. Of course the trees would have stopped the riders, but not the dogs. The idea of facing four hunting dogs didn't feel very alluring to me.

  Then, almost without any warning, the guy in front of me stopped on the bank of a stream. The stream was between ten to twenty steps wide and the bottom was rocky which was a good thing for us. Except that the stream was running straight and you could see way too far in both directions. I was able to tell that the group coming after us was so close that they could probably see us if we tried to escape along the stream. A diversion would be needed.

  "Maybe we should split here," he suggested.

  The boy wasn't a dummy. He guessed that the following group would most likely follow just one of us. That might give him at least some possibility to escape. I shook my head.

  "No, I promised you some food - and I intend to keep that promise. We need a diversion and I might be able to help with it. Let's move upstream first. Once you find a place where you can get away from the stream on this same side, safely, do it."

  I knew that my shoes would most likely be ruined after this, but the choice between ruined shoes or dying was an easy one. Besides, there would be no time to waste for undressing and dressing. I had been able to do some thinking while running and I knew that our best chance would be to distract the animals - dogs and horses. Even if the stream wasn't that deep or wide, it was deep and wide enough to make things difficult for the dogs but not for the horses. Dogs were related to wolves, so they were carnivores, hunters - but the horses were prey. I also remembered that the animals were able to sense some magic.

  So, the play started - partly out of necessity, since I was not in shape to outrun dogs. When the guy in front of me found a place where we could get back to the forest on the same side we had come from with as little trace as possible, he did that. Before entering the forest I brushed the bank with my hand, leaving some magic droplets behind - and enough trace to be noticed from horseback. I assumed that the hunting group would use riders to check the bank since the horses would have no issues with the stream. In the forest, we quickly and carefully moved a short direction upstream and - once I had told the younger guy that it was safe to do so - we crossed the stream to the other side. This time, I did my best to hide our tracks on the bank. Then with a detour in the forest we moved downstream again.

  Of course, we could have kept on running and hoped that the dogs would lose our trail at some point, but I didn't count on it. I regretted not ever getting to know dogs and how they behaved, since now I had to rely on the things I had learned from other people. However, that was one of the reasons I didn't want to try to outrun them or make them lose the scent. I had heard that the best hunting dogs were quite single-minded and persistent. I was quite certain that the Royals had the best hunting dogs available.

  During our hide-and-seek game we crossed the stream multiple times, but only when I was sure that nobody was there to see us. I knew that at least two times a rider had fallen from a horse because the horse got scared by the magic droplets I had left behind us. If they had let the dogs loose immediately, we might have been in serious trouble, but by the time they did that, the whole area was full of our scent, misleading tracks and tiny magic droplets (that, luckily, seemed to affect those dogs as well). When a horse really took fright for the third time, the group decided to give up. I followed their departure for some time before I declared it safe for us to leave the area.

  "Okay, they are leaving. I guess that their horses are too skittish for their taste, now."

  "What did you do to them? What were those... things?"

  I turned to look at the younger guy who now stared at me. "I think you know at least some of it."

  "Did you... did you come to look for us?"

  Suddenly his voice was so full of emotion that I was sure that he would burst out crying. It was clear that there was some story behind all this and most obviously it wasn't a happy one. I put my hand on his shoulder.

  "No, I have to admit that I didn't - but I'm very happy that I found you, very happy. Now, I think that I promised you some food. We caused so much disturbance here that there isn't a single deer close to this area - but if we start moving towards the place where you want to take the food and if we are able to stop for a while at some point, I'm quite certain that I can help you to catch a few rabbits."

  Some hours - and three cleaned rabbits - later, it was close to dawn and the younger guy - or boy - turned to look at me. "Are you going to follow me... I mean, do you want me to take to take you to..."

  Now that the immediate danger was over and he had something to bring back, he suddenly started to hesitate. In a way, I was able to understand the boy. Even if I had shared my lunch with him, it probably wasn't enough to make him really trust me. It was painfully clear that he was taking care of some people, and he was afraid of what would happen if anyone found out about them. I put a smile on my face that was supposed to be a reassuring one. I had no idea how that really worked, but I did remember that my Elven friends usually started laughing at that point.

  "First of all, my name is Stian and I'd like very much to become your friend. Second, would you believe me if I told you that I could follow you all the way to your home even if I couldn’t see you. Think about how I knew to come help you."

  He just looked at me for a moment, nodded and started walking.

  He hadn't even told me his name. I guess I would have to work on my smile a bit more - or perhaps I needed to start using my magical pushing a bit more, since saving his life and helping him to get a few rabbits wasn’t quite enough. At the moment, I just was a bit too tired to really care, and I just followed him.

  It is possible that I would have never found the place if I hadn't followed him, not even with my s
kills, since I would have needed to approach the cave from a specific direction. Yes, the place was a cave. It was between two solid rock formations, and the amount of solid rock seemed to affect my sensing skills. All of that was behind some rocky terrain which was impassable for both dogs and horses. No wonder they had been able to stay unnoticed. However, carrying food and firewood there must have been difficult.

  Even though I knew that there were several people inside, I was somewhat shocked to find six people inside that little, only partly protected, cave. The four boys were all younger than my new friend here, and two girls. One girl was quite young and one was in her teens, and obviously pregnant. The dynamics became clear when my guide took a protective position next to the pregnant girl. All obviously starving, some at least a little sick, and all natural Mages!

  I swallowed a bit and forced a smile to my face. "Hi, my name is Stian, and I came here to help you. The pot I'm carrying is a bit small, but I guess that we can make a few portions of stew with it since I'm sure that you'll need it. Once we get the stew on its way, I could check if any of you are sick."

  I wondered what I had stepped into. Luckily there really was no time to think about it, since I needed to help these people - these kids. Since the eldest of them were becoming parents, they probably couldn't be considered 'kids' anymore.

  The stew I made had more rabbit than it had carrots and it was a bit short of salt, but nobody complained. I felt a bit guilty when I noticed that my new friend had saved most of his bread and given it to his mate - or fiancée. They had been talking with a quiet voice, while I had made sure that all the younger kids got some stew.

  At the same time, I used my meager healing abilities on the sick ones.

  The girl spoke up. "If you aren't one of us, then why have you come to help us? I heard that you said that you weren't looking for us."

  It was clear that he had told her at least something about what had happened. Still, there hadn't been even a single 'thank you'. Not that it would change anything, but it would have been nice. I turned to look at the girl. Maybe I was getting old, since she felt like a girl to me, pregnant or not.

  "If it's not too much to ask, I would like to know your names. As I said, my name is Stian. When it comes to helping, how could I not help? I've been a hunter myself and I don't think that anybody can own those wild deer. Even more, nobody should ever be punished for hunting to survive. Ever."

  She had the decency to blush, at least. However, I hadn't come here to mock them, so I smiled and shook my head. If the clothes of these kids were any indicator, they had been through a much rougher time than I ever had. Since she seemed to have some problems organizing her thoughts I continued.

  "Please, Miss, don't take this wrong. I didn't come here to mock you, but to help you. The winter is coming and there's no way that you can survive the winter in a place like this. This may be a good temporary hideaway, but not a place where those younger ones can survive much longer. Getting food or dry wood here is a chore and then there's the question about waste and clean water. Luckily there's a place where people like you and me can be safe, but unfortunately it's far from here and it will take me some time to arrange your trip there. But I'll try to get you all safe, I promise."

  The young couple looked at me and then each other before turning back to me. The younger kids had been following our discussion, but some of my dry spare clothes and the water-proof canvas, together with the heat coming from the embers had made sure that those who weren't sleeping yet, were about to fall asleep. The elder girl cleared her throat.

  "My name is Tove and he's Frey. The two younger boys are my elder brother's twins Espen and Jerker. The other two are Frey's siblings Olav and Siri."

  That opened the gates, at least a bit. There was quite a lot to their story, but the main point was that there had been two families who had escaped Aston during a raid on the old part of the city. A group of people had tried to escape through the northern woods, but two of the older people had been hurt, and the two families had stayed behind in the forest while the others had continued further north. However, those older people hadn't recovered as soon as they had hoped, and the temporary home the families had built in the middle of the forest had turned into more permanent one. Of course, the people here didn't know where the others had gone, so they waited.

  At first nothing was wrong with their life in the middle of the forest. While waiting for the broken bones of two of the family members to heal, the older people occasionally visited Aston in secrecy and otherwise they hunted, fished and raised their own food. Once the bones were healed, they could have been on their way, but one of the younger women - Tove's mother - had gotten pregnant and they had to wait longer. Somehow that set the tune. All the time, it seemed that there was somebody hurt, or then somebody else was pregnant. So, the little community was more or less settled here, and they were able to live in peace inside the forest for quite a while.

  Only it didn't last. At some point some of the Royals had noticed that somebody was stealing their game. A hunting party was arranged, and almost all the men were hunted down in one big massacre. It was downhill from there: The house that they had managed to build was found and burned down. It had been more luck than anything else that some of them had managed to escape. At some point I forgot who was related to whom and how, but it was Tove's much older brother and his wife who had been the last ones. They had been hunted down at the beginning of this summer. I felt sick. What was wrong in this Kingdom? Or was it something in that smelly city, Aston? They had a river running through the city, but they couldn't even build a decent sewer system like they had in smaller cities.

  Somehow I needed get these kids to the Valley. The women there could take care of them, love them and teach them to be decent people despite everything they had been through.

  There had to be a way to do that.

  Somehow.

  --

  Chapter 26

  It took me two weeks to get those six children out of the forest. It also meant that I barely slept those nights. It was clear that the people who had been chasing Frey and I had not forgotten their humiliation and, a few times, we had to hide from a searching party and their dogs. Even if I could easily make the trip from Aston to their hiding place in a day, there was no way that we could move the little kids that fast. Then there was Tove who was pregnant. What made things a bit easier was that their condition became better day by day because of the food and clothes I carried there. Oh, did I say that I studied and worked at the Library all that time? Any change from the ordinary might have brought some extra attention and I was sure that both the Guardians and the Magicians had their spies among the Royals and they knew exactly how some of those high and mighty had been humiliated by the ‘poachers’.

  In a way, the longer time frame helped me, since after a moment of consideration, I was able to send a carefully handwritten letter to Birgit, who would then deliver it to my friends in the Valley. If somebody read that letter it was just a description about a student's life at Aston, unless you were able to make the magic writing visible. I trusted that, if there were more natural Mages working for the Magicians, they would have something more important to do than scan all the letters. Besides, there was enough loose cat fur on to the paper to make some people sneeze. Those two cats Mrs. Ness was hosting there probably wondered why they suddenly got all that extra attention.

  It was an easy decision not to bring the children inside the city. They would stick out like a sore thumb because they had absolutely no experience of life outside the forest. Luckily for me, Ylva and Liv knew a place - actually a very small, abandoned farm that we could use - and outside Aston. I tried to pay for it, but as soon as Elise found out about it she... well, she wasn't happy with me. She also organized a carriage and a woman who would help them. At least Elise agreed that the group would do better with Elves than anywhere else because she took my word about their abilities.

  It was Sunnudag afternoon two weeks
later when I was back in my room and for the first time in a while, there was no place where I needed to be a few hours. I decided to lie down for a moment to think about the situation.

  It was fully dark when I woke up, sweating. I had been in the middle of a nightmare. I was trying to get the kids to safety while being hunted by the dogs and getting drenched in a flooding stream. I had been carrying some people and counting my steps like it had been important. I tried to shake the dream away, even though I was sure that it was already stored so deeply that I'd never be able to forget it. I opened the window a bit, even if it was cold outside. Then I took off all my crumpled and sweaty clothes and used a washcloth and the bowl to clean myself a bit. Once finished, I noticed that I was hungry. I decided to dress in my linen robe and go downstairs to check if there was something to eat. That robe was something that Elise had given all of us, and I was ready to admit that it was a bit of luxury I would miss if I needed to give it up.