by Spoor, Garry
Hunter’s Bounty
Garry T. Spoor
Copyright 2013 Garry T. Spoor
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1
Kile Veller sat alone, on the top of the hill, under the shade of an old oak tree as she watched the people go about their seemingly busy lives. A young girl of seventeen, long red hair that she keeps tied in a pony tail. An average girl with an average face, though some would say attractive, although she never liked her nose. It was her father’s nose and she had issues with her father. She was small, compared with most, slender, almost frail looking, but then why had she chosen to become a Hunter. The life of a Hunter was not something to be taken lightly. It was a life of solitude, a life of danger. She could handle the solitude, she liked the solitude… it was the danger that she had a problem with.
She casually stroked the purring cat that sat on her lap as she looked over the town that stretched out before her. She had found the spot on top of the hill, under the old oak tree about a month after arriving in Coopervill. It was quiet, it gave her a great view of the town, and nobody ever came up here. That was probably the most important aspect of the old tree, that nobody ever came to visit it. She had been living in Coopervill for eight months now and she still couldn’t really call it home. The people hadn’t really accepted her. They greeted her, they were kind to her, but she still didn’t feel a part of the town, and so, whenever she could, she would come to the hill, sit under the oak tree and watch the town as it played out before her like a spectator watching a show.
Unfortunately this was the same show she had seen yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. Each day blending into the next and if it wasn’t for the fact that the sun set at night, she wouldn’t know when one day ended and the next began. It had been that way for the last couple of weeks, ever since the Guild put a freeze of class E deliveries.
“I suppose we should be getting you back to your mistress.” Kile told the old sleepy cat.
-Home?-
The cat asked.
To anyone else the cat’s replied would have been a simple purr, but to Kile it was a single word, and a word that held images and feelings that the cat had attached to it, because that was Kile’s edge. A unique ability unlike any other hunter that had every passed through the Academy. Kile could communicate with that natural world, or simply put, she could speak with animals.
“Yes, home.” She said as she set the reluctant cat aside. She was sure that the feline would have stayed on her lap the entire afternoon if she had let it. “I don’t suppose you know where your home is?”
-No.-
The cat had been lost, the notice was posted on the Guild House board of jobs that weren’t important enough to be assigned, but since deliveries were put on hold until the Guild could investigate the loss of seventeen Hunters, Kile had to do something.
Now that she was no longer on probation and was a certified level five Hunter, it meant she was responsible for paying her own way. The guild would no longer cover the expenses of her room, board or stable fees, and those added up pretty quickly. The small jobs did provide a bit of coin which she dearly needed since most of the bounty, from the capture of the Minotaur, was sent to her brother back in Riverport.
“Well, I don’t want to drop you off at the Guild House. I don’t think old Kane would appreciate it much. Do you remember anything about your home?”
-Home.-
The cat replied, and the word carried with it a place of comfort, a soft rug by the fireplace, a bowl of cream in a kitchen, a basket in the corner of a bedroom, the kind face of a caring mistress, all surrounded by a small stone house with a thatched roof and a garden in the yard. She would hate to tell the cat that it had just described over half the houses in Coopervill.
“Maybe Alisa will know.” She said with a smile to reassure the cat.
She came down from the hill and walked through the center of town with the cat cradled in her arms as she headed for the Apple Blossom Livery. People stopped and stared, a few greeted her with half-hearted enthusiasm, but most whispered behind her back as she passed. There were words like “odd” or “unusual”, “Strange” was another common word but Kile had become at ease with it all. She could no more become a part of their world and their lives as they could become a part of hers. When Guild Master Latherby told them that the Hunter lives apart from the people, she was not sure that this was what he meant.
Coopervill was just another place on a long list of places that she felt isolated from, but she was getting used to that feeling, to not fitting in, not being wanted. Her father never wanted her, she was not welcome at the Academy, and the Hunter’s guild was just looking for a way to get rid of her.
She was sure that they would have seized their opportunity with the whole Minotaur incident last year, but so far they let it slide and Kile had managed to keep her head down since then, but keeping a low profile in a small town in the middle of nowhere wasn’t very difficult to do. It wasn’t as if anything ever happened in Coopervill that warranted the attention of the Hunter’s Guild and for that she was grateful. There were members of the Guild that never want her to become a hunter, it was nothing personal, and they didn’t even know her. It was simply due to the fact that she was a farmer’s daughter or, it could be due to the fact that she had Orceen blood.
She had never known what an Orceen was, until Master Adams at the academy had explained it to her, and now she understood why some people would shun her for it, but only if it was true. The Orceen were a nomadic people and in some way, kin to the Ogres. She had grown up in Riverport, a small farming community far off to the east, an entire kingdom away if truth be told. Her father was born and raised there. Her mother was born in the neighboring village of Littletree and neither one had ever mentioned anything about the Orceen, and she doubted if they even knew what they were. Although if her father had known, he would have done his very best to keep it secret, and if he did know, he took it to his grave.
If it was true, and she would never admit that it was, she could now see why certain members of the Guild would hold it against her.
These members, these so called Son’s of Terrabin, were gaining in popularity, and they had a new direction for the Hunter’s Guild, one that did not tolerate the lower social classes, one that did not open itself up to female hunters, not that there were that many female hunters. Currently there were only two. What it came down to was a simple fact, if you did not measure up to what they consisted to be the perfect Hunter, then you were one step closer to the door, one step closer to being out of the Hunter’s Guild for good.
How they would manage that was anyone’s guess, but rumors were plentiful. As of the beginning of the year, five hunters have gone missing, and twelve more have turned up dead on routine missions. No one would actually say that the Son’s of Terrabin had anything to do with it but that didn’t stop them from thinking it, and Kile was one of them. She was told last year that someone may be hunting Hunters, but if it was true that Hunters were hunting Hunters, then things only became more complicated, and it was best if she remained as far away from the hostility as she could, and what better place than Coopervill.
She walked past the Bird and Bay inn, usually a central hub of activity for the small town, but it was still early in the day and the only activity that th
e Bird saw were two old men sitting outside on the bench smelling of rum. They pointed up at the sky, at the people, at the road, and talking about the good old days. On the second floor of the Inn, the north wing, she had a room that overlooked the main street and awoke each morning to the blacksmith’s hammer, whether she wanted to or not. Now that she was actually paying for her room, she had often thought to complain about its location, but she was afraid of what old Gus would give her in exchange. As it was, she had the entire second floor north wing to herself, which meant the public bathroom for that area was now a private bathroom for her alone, and she would tolerate the inconvenience of the blacksmith’s hammer for the added privacy.
Gus Prain, who owned and ran the Bird didn’t have much use for Hunters, especially young Hunters, but then Peter Prain, Gus’s only son, was a Hunter. Kile never knew Peter, he had graduated the Academy long before she ever joined, and then he lost his life in the Battle of Grover’s Den nearly two years ago, so Kile learned to watch her step around the old man.
The Battle of Grover’s Den, that’s what they were calling it now. The Hunter’s Guild took two years to decide, but they finally agreed on what to call it. Somehow it made it seem more distant, more historical and therefore less real, but it was all too real for Kile. She had lost a friend in that battle. Why didn’t they just call it what it really was? The Massacre at Grover’s Den. One thousand uhyre came over the border, the Callor armies pulled out a day earlier, leaving fourteen Hunters and a few platoons of Denal soldiers to defend the evacuation of the border towns, but it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t anywhere near enough. Over two hundred men women and children were slaughtered that day for no reason, and when it was over, the uhyre just returned to the Waste Lands leaving three burnt out towns behind them.
The western border had been quiet since then, and that was the problem, because nobody knows if it will happen again, when it will happen again, and why it happened the first time. The Provinces of Denal, Fennel and Blackmoore stand in the front line of another invasion, leaving their eastern borders virtually defenseless against the might of the Callor Province, although King Roland son of Jusen has decreed a non-hostility pact along the borders with the Callor Province, it really came down to what Lord Byron Rimes of Callor does.
The entire political atmosphere was just too much for Kile to comprehend, she only really understood about half of it, and the half that she did understand she wasn’t sure she had it right, but she knew one thing. She did not trust Lord Rimes. She had the misfortune of attending the Academy with Lord Rime’s son, Eric, and if Eric was anything like his father, it was a foregone conclusion that things were going to go from bad to worse at any moment. Lord Rimes has his eyes set on the Denal province, and although Hunters were supposed to remain politically neutral, it’s difficult to do, especially when she was assigned to a guild house in Coopervill which was sitting on the eastern border of the Denal province less than a day's ride from Callor.
Kile approached the Apple Blossom Livery where a young dark haired girl in a flowing blue and white dress was setting pies out to cool on the windowsill. She never thought anyone actually did that, it was just too story book like, but then Alisa Reaba seemed to live in her own little world, and Kile only had the opportunity to visit it once in a while, not that she would have wanted to stay there. Alisa’s world was a bit too happy for Kile, too sunny, too perfect. When she saw Kile at the edge of the road she waved, rather dramatically, before disappearing back into her kitchen. A few minutes later the door to the small farmhouse opened with a bang and out came Alisa down the front steps, wiping her hands on her apron.
She was an attractive young girl, about a year or two older than Kile and she ran the Apple Blossom Livery by herself, although she did have about five or six people working under her.
“Why aren’t you wearing that dress that we bought?” She asked as she crossed the yard.
It might not have been so much a question as it was an accusation.
“Because I’m working.” Kile replied. “I can’t very well go about the countryside in a dress.”
“And why not? You’re a lady first and a Hunter second.”
“That’s not the way I see it.”
Alisa sighed and shook her head. “You’re going to be single for the rest of your life if you keep that attitude.”
“That’s fine with me.” Kile replied. “I don’t exactly see men laying siege to this place.”
“I’m not without my suitors.” Alisa said with that familiar smile and Kile knew that she was getting into territory that she knew as much about as politics.
“I need your help.” Kile said, changing the subject.
“What about? Men? Clothes? Men without clothes?”
Maybe she didn’t change the subject far enough.
“Nothing of the sort, It’s about her.” Kile said as she brought the cat up for Alisa to see. If anyone knew anything about anything around town, it was Alisa Reaba. There wasn’t a rumor that could be started without Alisa knowing all the details, whether they were true or not.
“Oh, who’s your new friend.” She asked as she reached out and scratched the cat behind the ear. It purred in contentment.
“I think her name is Moppin, if you can believe that.”
“Moppin? Didn’t Mrs. Miller lose a cat by the name of Moppin?”
“I don’t know that’s why I came here. The notice on the board was a bit vague, only a description of the cat and it was posted by a Rebecca.”
“That would be Rebecca Miller. Oh. She will be delighted that you found her cat. She’s really the only family Rebecca has left in Coopervill.”
“I can drop her off if you tell me where she lives.”
“Oh, it’s not far from here, just up the road really. I’ll come with you. I need a break from the baking.” Alisa said as she untied her apron and slung it over the clothes line beside the fence.
“So, where’s Vesper? I didn’t think you went anywhere without him.”
“Under the circumstances…” Kile said holding the cat up again. “I thought it would be best if I left him back in my room. I wouldn’t want… Moppin… to get the wrong idea.”
“Smart thinking… so, still no assignments from your Guild?”
“Not a one.”
“I haven’t seen any other Hunters around, what about Marcus Taylor and that… Copper guy.”
“Steele, his name is James Steele.”
“Oh, Steel, Copper, it’s all the same.”
Kile couldn’t help but notices that Alisa remembered Marcus’s name, but then most of the women in Coopervill could.
“Steele’s on an escort assignment to Azintar and as for Marcus, well, the last I heard he went up north in search of the Beast of Spine Mountain.”
“The beast of Spine mountain?”
“Yeah, one of the last two Class A open scripts.”
“Oh he is so brave isn’t he? You don’t think he’ll have any problems… do you?”
“Hard to say, since no ones seen the Beast in the last century, he’s not even sure what he’s looking for, so I don’t know how he’ll know when if finds it.”
“Oh, of course he’ll find it.” Alisa replied with a dismissive wave of her hand, and Kile noticed the star struck look in the young girl’s eyes. It was not uncommon when people spoke about the Great Marcus Taylor that they had that look. The Hunter could bring back a half-starved mountain cats and convince the civilians that it was a ferocious beast, because that was Marcus’s edge.
“Here we are.” Alisa said as she stopped in front of a small farm house that looked surprisingly familiar. It was just as Moppin had vision it, but then so was the house beside it and the one across the road. That was one of the things that Kile hadn’t gotten used to, the different ways that animals see their surroundings and how they interpret them.
Alisa was already knocking on the front door by the time Kile caught up to her. The door opened and a short elderly woman with sil
ver white hair peered out from within. If she was as old as she looked, Kile would have guessed somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred, but she knew that wasn’t possible.
“Can I help you?” The woman asked in a rather raspy thin voice.
“Hello Mrs. Miller, it’s me, Alisa from down the road.”
The old woman smiled as she pulled the door open wider. “Alisa my dear, it’s been ages… and who is this with you?”
“This is a friend of mine, Kile Veller. She’s one of the new Hunter’s in town.”
By now the cat knew it was home, she either recognized the smell, or the voice of the old woman as she struggled to get free of Kile, who was doing all she could to keep from loosing the cat again.
“I think this is yours ma’am.” Kile said finally released the cat, almost throwing it at the old woman. She was surprisingly fast for her age as she caught the cat that leapt into her arms.
“Moppin, my Moppin.” The old woman cried as she hugged the cat that purred in return. “Thank you my dear… thank you. Please come in.”
Kile was happy enough to make her delivery and run, the Hunter that disappeared after a completed mission, it added to the whole mystery of the Guild, but Alisa wasn’t going to let Kile get away so fast. She grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the house.
The room was dimly lit, but then most of the places in Coopervill seemed to be dimly lit. It was either the small windows in the buildings or there was a shortage of candles or lamp oil. Maybe the fact that Coopervill was a mining community, they all got used to the dark Kile thought as she looked around the small room. It was just as Moppin had described it, better than the outside, with the rug by the fireplace and a basket in the corner of the bedroom. For a cat, Kile was sure you couldn’t do any better. There were an awful lot of knitted things lying around the small room, everything from hats and scarves to huge bedspreads and blankets. It would appear that Mrs. Miller liked to knit.
Alisa poked Kile sharply in the ribs. She turned to see Mrs. Miller setting out a bowl of something for Moppin.
