Hunter's Bounty (Veller)

by Spoor, Garry

  Guild Master Latherby once told her that the Hunter’s Guild had, at one time, entertained the thought of using Mountain Ponies as mounts for their members due to the horse's strength and nearly endless energy, and it was true. Even after two days and two nights of walking across the countryside, over hills and through the thicker parts of the forest, Grim wasn’t even winded. If it wasn’t for the fact that Mountain Ponies had a rather bad disposition, and were nearly impossible to train, they would have made great mounts.

  She slid off Grim’s back, landing on her feet and nearly falling on the ground as she dismounted. The horse may be able to go two days without rest, but she was exhausted and she wasn’t even walking. She stretched out her legs, then her back as she walked around in circled to get her circulation started again. Her butt had fallen asleep some time during the night and it had yet to wake up.

  Vesper jumped from his place between Grim’s ears, landing on her shoulder.

  -So, this is where you came from?-

  Grim asked as he looked down over the field that was now thick with spring flowers.

  -Place nice.-

  Vesper added.

  “Let’s not get too sentimental.” She replied as she stepped up alongside her horse, but it was easier said than done. Across the field, through the narrow band of trees, over the river and on the other side of town was the Veller farm. She hadn’t seen it in over four years, and was beginning to wonder if it still looked the same now that her father was no longer alive, but it wasn’t something that she was eager to find out.

  “We are here to find William Rothershire. He used to live just outside of town.”

  -And you think he knows something about these assassinations?-

  “Well… maybe not the assassinations, but he might know something about this so called dark conspiracy since the Rothershire’s name was in the book.” She said as she reached for her pouch before she remembered that she had left the book with Erin. Whether that was the right thing to do or not, only time will tell. Erin had more connections, she’s been doing this type of work a lot longer than Kile, hopefully she can make more sense of the book, maybe find something that she missed. Of course it could just lead Erin right to where Kile was now, but she had to take that chance.

  “Come on, the sooner we find this Rothershire and learn what we can, the faster we can get out of this place.”

  -Fine by me. Hop on.-

  “No, I think I’ll walk a little ways if it’s all the same.” She said as she started down the hill toward the small town of Riverport.

  They had crossed the field and followed the tree line around the outer edge of town. It would have been faster to cut through the center, but the less she saw of the old place, the better she thought she’d be. As it was, Rothershire’s farm was where it had always been, on the very edge of the town, along the eastern side, but she knew, before it even came into view, that she wasn’t going to find any answers there.

  The Rothershire farm had been burned to the ground.

  It was now only a few charred sticks protruding from the earth, and the fields had gone wild. How long ago had this happened she wondered?

  She pushed open the gate to the fence that surrounded the small farm, and walked the dirt road between the weed covered fields up to the remains of the old man’s home. There was nothing left of it but an empty foundation and a few stone steps leading up to nowhere.

  “I think we’re too late.”

  -Doesn’t look as if anyone’s been here for quite some time.-

  She sniffed at the air, but there were no odors that she could detect, only the smell of the natural world reclaiming what had been taken from it and the distant smell of jasmine. There wasn’t even a decent section of the fireplace left she thought, as she kicked in the stones of the hearth. There was no chance of finding any lost hiding places here; there would be no secrets that had survived this fire.

  “I’m afraid that’s it.” She said as she sat down on the stone steps. “We’re at a dead end. I don’t know where to go from here.”

  -We don’t know if he’s dead.-

  There was some truth to that, although it was a thin truth. From what she had seen of Talley’s house, she was sure that Rothershire would have been found in much the same condition as the others. Of course that did mean that she was on the right track. This had to be the Rothershire that had been mentioned in the Talley book, but that didn’t help her much at this moment.

  “Garth.” She said as she got to her feet.

  -Garth? What is a Garth?-

  “Not a what. A who. Garth is the gravedigger. If anyone died here, he would know.”

  -Then you are planning on going into town.-

  “I don’t have much of a choice. If Rothershire is dead, Garth would know.”

  -You go into town you run the chance of being seen.-

  “Why Grim, that sounds almost as if you care.”

  -If you get caught, I get shipped back to the northlands, where I’ll end up on someone’s plate. That is not an outcome I’m willing to accept.-

  “Fair enough, I just won’t get caught. Anyway, I’ve been away for four years, I doubt if anyone will recognize me.” She said as she climbed up on Grim’s back. She set Vesper down between his ears.

  -You forget. Your face has been posted in every Guild House in Aru.-

  Grim reminded her.

  “Well… yeah, but Riverport doesn’t have a Guild House, we didn’t even know about Hunter’s until one came through.”

  -This does not bode well.-

  Grim mumbled his protest as he started back up the dirt path, away from the remains of the Rothershire farm and toward the small town of Riverport.

  ***

  The town looked very much as it always had, which shouldn’t have surprised her, since nothing ever changed in Riverport. It was a small town, nestled in the far northeastern part of Aru with the mountains closing in on three sides. It was as typical a town as one would see anywhere in the kingdom, the only novelty that Riverport possessed was its name. That was the one thing about the town that she could never understand. The closest river was the Shai, which marked the border between the Shai Province and that of Fennel, and that was nearly a hundred leagues south of Riverport. The closest thing to a river in Riverport would have to be the small ice streams that ran down from the mountains, providing the water for the farmlands. Not only were there no ports on the so called rivers, but they weren’t even deep enough to float a boat on.

  The cemetery was located on the western part of town, away from the center, which only made sense since nobody wanted to live beside it, and most of the towns people never even thought about it unless they had need of it.

  She dismounted and led Grim up past the stone walls that marked the outer edge of the cemetery, although a few tombstones were on the wrong side of the wall since the wall had been built long after the cemetery had been started. The lone tombstones bore no markings or dates and nobody knew if anyone was actually buried beneath them, but no one was willing to risk the ire of the dead by moving them to the other side of the wall.

  She had never been to the cemetery, although she had seen it from a distance on those rare occasions when they went into town, and she remembered looking upon it with a mixture of sadness and fear. Sadness for the loss that all the stones marked, and fear because her brother told her that if she squealed on him again, the dead would come and drag her back to the cemetery. Needless to say she had nightmares about it until she was ten. Now that she walked among those stones, the only thing she felt was lonely.

  -Are you sure this is wise?-

  Grim asked as he followed silently behind her with Vesper sitting on his head.

  “I’m telling you, nobody is going to recognize me.”

  “Kile… Kile Veller.”

  “Except possibly Keith Wints.” She said, gritting her teeth and turning around with a forced smile.

  He stood beside one of the graves, a shovel in his hands
and a goofy smile on his face. “By the Gods it is you.” He said as he came forward.

  Keith Wints was Leon Veller’s best friends. The two did everything together, including making Kile’s life miserable when she was younger. Even though the young boy had teased her relentlessly, she had a secret crush on him back then, now… not so much. He was still good looking in that farm boy fashion, with his pale blond hair that was almost white and icy blue eyes, but he had that goofy smile that often made him look simple. The connection just wasn’t there anymore. It could be due to the fact that, at the moment, she was a wanted felon and had more things on her mind than finding him attractive, or it could simply be that she was no longer the naive farm girl that didn’t have anything to compare him to.

  “It is you? Isn’t it?” He said as he stuck the shovel in the ground.

  “How are you doing Keith?” She asked, although she didn’t really care one way or the other.

  “I knew it was you. I would recognize that red pony tail anywhere.”

  Of course he would, he yanked on it enough times.

  “What are you doing here?” She asked.

  “I work here.”

  “You’re the new gravedigger?”

  “Well, not exactly, Garth still holds that title, I guess I’m more like his assistant.”

  Assistant to the gravedigger, now there was something to aspire to.

  “So… is Garth around, I kind of needed to ask him something?”

  “I can show you where they’re resting if you want, it's just up the hill a ways.”

  “What? Where who are resting?”

  “Why… your parents, that was who you came to see… wasn’t it?”

  “My parents?”

  “Oh no… you didn’t know about your mother… did you?”

  “When did it happen?”

  “It was only a couple of months ago, she passed quietly in her sleep. Leon and Jenny were with her.” Keith said, appearing a little uncomfortable as he started up the hill.

  She reluctantly followed.

  She knew her mother was ill, she had always been ill although some days were better than others, but the last letter she had received from Leon told her that their mother was doing better, and that she was getting stronger. Kile always thought that once their father was gone, their mother's health would improve. It wasn’t that he was an abusive man, just a very demanding one, and she was just too frail to handle his demands.

  “Here they are.” He said as he waved his arm over three stones that stood in a silent row. “I’ll… go find Garth for you. He’s probably in the caretaker’s shack.” He added as he made an awkward, if not gracious, departure.

  She said nothing as she stared at the headstones reading the names off silently to herself over and over again in a vain attempt to make it real, but no matter how many times she read them, they were just words on a stone. Was this what the old guard dog meant by the cycle of life, to live and die and live again?

  The first stone, the smaller and by far the oldest, bore the name of Andrew Veller, the brother she had never met. He died before she was born, he was only four. In many ways it was because of him that she was even born, although it wasn’t what their father had in mind when her parents tried for another child. The second stone belonged to her father, Harold Veller.

  She could remember the day her father died, that was about three years ago. She was still at the Academy when she received the letter from her brother Leon. Headmaster Oblum had given her permission to go home for the funeral, but she really didn’t have any desire to see her father or to say goodbye to him. Their relationship was less this hospitable. He had no use for a daughter and had often reminded her of that fact. He didn’t want her to become a hunter and had arranged to have her marry Oric Talon’s son Pordist in exchange for some bottomland to expand the farm. When she went away to become a Hunter, he told her that she was no longer welcome and to never come back, of course not in those exact words.

  The new stone bore her mother’s name, Elizabeth Veller, nobody had ever called her Elizabeth, she was always known as Beth. The date was nearly three months ago, about the time that the Hunter’s Guild had put a stop to all class E deliveries because of the so called accidents. That was why she never received word of her passing, if she had, would she have returned? She could lie to herself and say she would have, and she might have, but she didn’t really know. If she had received the letter and she had returned to Riverport, she wouldn’t have received the assignment that sent her to David Draw’s house, and she wouldn’t be where she was now. She ran her hand over the stone hoping to capture the warmth of her mother, but she could only feel the cold marble. To live, to die, to live again, that was the cycle of life she reminded herself as she plucked a blade of grass that grew on the grave and held it to her chest.

  “I was told you wanted to see me.”

  She turned to see an old man stooped with age dressed in a tattered brown tunic standing just outside the row of headstones.

  “Yes.” Kile said as she got up, sliding the blade of grass into her pouch and dusting the earth from her knees. She felt strangely detached from the situation as she turned to face the old man. “I need to know what you know about William Rothershire.”

  “Rothershire?” The old man said as he stared off into the heavens, reading the name on some unseen list. He nodded his head, turned and led her away from her family.

  “I had a feeling someone would be coming, looking for William” The old man said as he glanced at a few of the stones before turning into a one of the rows. He stopped before a marble marker that bore the name of William Rothershire.

  “So he is dead.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What did you mean you had a feeling someone would be coming from him?”

  The old man smiled, he never looked at her, just kept looking at the tombstone, as if he could see his old friend lying there beneath the ground.

  “I knew William when he first came to Riverport, that was about twenty years ago. He knew nothing about farming back them but damn he was a scrapper.”

  “A scrapper?”

  “Oh yeah, the number of times he cleared out Flint’s tavern after having a few, you knew that man was trained to fight, but he could drink too. That was the problem you see, he was being chased by his own demons, and no matter how far and how fast he ran from them, they always caught up with him, that was when he started hiding from them in the bottom of a bottle. It wasn’t until about eight or nine years ago he came to grips with his past and cleaned himself up, but I guess his past caught up with him in the end.”

  “So, this wasn’t an accident.”

  “Accident, not likely, although there are some in town that would like you to believe so, no, if you ask me William Rothershire was murdered, for what, I don’t know, but he probably did.”

  “Do you know where he came from?”

  “He never said exactly, but I gathered from the way he spoke and the way he held himself, he was something important. He was a proud and honorable man, so whatever he did must have been so terrible to bring him so low.”

  “He never told you.”

  Garth shook his head. “I think, in the beginning he was too ashamed to talk about his past, but later on he… just wanted to forget. I figured that past would just catch up to him eventually. In the end he faced his demons and this was his punishment.”

  Or his reward Kile thought as she looked down at the simple tombstone that only bore his name. There was no date of birth, no date of death; there wasn’t even an epitaph, only his name chiseled into the face of the stone. This was all that was left to mark a vir’s life.

  “Garth, have you seen anything like this before?” Kile asked as she showed him the ring she had found in Tally’s house.

  He had to squint to see it better, but eventually nodded. “Yes… yes I have. William had a ring just like that.”

  Somehow that was what she expected.

  �
��Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure, he used to stare at it from the bottom of a bottle almost every night.”

  “Did he say anything about it? Did he say where he got it?”

  “Not likely, but he did prize it. It was the only thing he kept from his old life.”

  That was something she thought as she touched the ring, that was another connection between Tally and Rothershire, but who was Rothershire.

  “Thank-you sir.” Kile said as she stepped away from Garth, but the old man place a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry about your mother Mrs. Veller. Beth was a good woman, a kind heart.

  “Thank-you sir.” She said again as she crossed the cemetery back to where Grim was standing.

  The huge long haired black hairy horse standing in the middle of the graveyard as the sun began to set was an unnerving sight, but place a small white yarrow on his head, and it was just an oddity.

  -What did he have to say?-

  Grim asked as she got closer.

  “A lot.” She replied as she led the pony back down the path to the stone wall. “I’ll tell you about it as soon as we’re back on the road.”

  -Where to now.-

  “I’m not sure.”

  She had hoped to get out of town and be back on the road before anybody even knew she was around, and the last person she wanted to see was the first person she ran into, standing just outside the cemetery walls.

  “Ki?”

  He was older than she had remembered, he had grown up in the last four years, but then he was forced to, with what he had to go through in that time. He was taller than she was, but then most people were, and his curly mop of red hair had been cut short, and the mustache only made him look more like their father.

  “Leon?”

  “I guess I owe Keith and apology.” He said scratching his head as he always did when he was nervous. “When did you get in? Why didn’t you write?”

  “Sorry Leon… I…”