Path of the Specialist

by Pedro Urvi

  “Leave it to me,” Luca replied.

  The Archery Specialists’ practice might have seemed incredible, but those of Nature, which they were able to watch a few days later, left them speechless. They went to watch them more out of curiosity than anything else. Lasgol was genuinely interested in them, Luca less so and Erika not at all, as she had admitted. But even so, they went along to see them.

  “Isn’t that...?” Erika said in surprise when they arrived at the training site.

  “Sugesen,” Luca murmured. He was almost unable to recognize him, because he was covered in mud and weeds.

  Lasgol was staring at him in utter surprise “He’s back at last.”

  Sugesen had been missing from the Lair for a whole week, and all sorts of rumors were circulating about him. His partners in the specialty had not explained what was going on to anyone, which encouraged the whispering and the rumors. Apparently, Annika had asked them not to reveal anything, which of course made everyone even more curious. Some said that he had been in an accident and was being kept in the Cavern of Winter. As this was forbidden to anybody except the Elders, nobody could either confirm or deny the rumor. Others said he had left the Shelter because he was unable to cope with the specialty of Forest Survivor.

  “He hasn’t quit,” Erika said.

  “Apparently not,” Lasgol said. “I honestly didn’t think he had. Sugesen is intelligent and pretty tough.”

  “True,” Luca agreed, “except that he tends to go around with Isgord occasionally, and that takes some of his credibility away. It looks as though he’s been taking part in some kind of endurance exercise.”

  Annika went up to Sugesen and smiled at him. “You did it,” she congratulated him.

  “It was pretty tough, but I did it,” Sugesen replied happily. He was barely recognizable under the layers of mud that covered his face and hair.

  “A week without water, food, clothes or weapons in the high forests. Not many would be able to do it. In your case I knew you’d succeed. How are your feet?”

  Sugesen looked down at them. “I had some trouble the first couple of days, but now they’ve gotten used to it. I did some emergency cures with medicinal plants.”

  “That’s usually where most problems arise. Going barefoot in the forest isn’t easy.”

  “I got used to it slowly, as you told me, Ma’am.”

  Annika nodded. “Any wounds?”

  “None that I couldn’t heal with the knowledge you’ve given me, Ma’am.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. How long have you gone without eating?”

  “I’ve eaten every day, Ma’am. The forest offers its fruits to anyone who knows what to look for.”

  “Well done.”

  “But I’ve been hungry, I won’t deny it.”

  “Hunger sharpens ingenuity.”

  “That’s certainly true. I’ve been surprised by the traps I’ve created with my own hands.”

  “You still have many more surprises ahead of you,” Annika assured him.

  Sugesen smiled. “The most difficult thing wasn’t surviving – it was avoiding the bloodhound.”

  “The Forest Survivor has to survive his environment, and the enemy. A soldier or an outlaw will have difficulty finding you, and it won’t be difficult for you to survive them. That’s certain. On the other hand, the enemy has trackers and dogs too, which you always need to remember.”

  “I will. He gave me a few difficult moments hiding from him.”

  “That’s necessary, because the goal of the exercise requires it. Now go and clean yourself up, have something hot to eat and get your strength back. Your body and mind will thank you for that.”

  “I’m dying for a good meal.”

  Annika smiled. “I’m sure you are. Off you go, enjoy yourself and rest. You’ve earned it.”

  When Sugesen went past Erika, Lasgol and Luca, he waved at them.

  Erika was shaking her head. “What incredibly tough training...”

  “That’s for those who say that the specialty of Nature is for the weak,” Lasgol said.

  “You’ll never hear me say that,” Luca assured him.

  At another end Lasgol noticed Gonars setting traps with the utmost care among a group of nearby trees. Traps being one of his own favorites, he could not resist going over to watch. He pointed it out to Erika and Luca, and they all moved closer to look, always keeping well away so as not to interfere with the training.

  “I wonder what type of traps they are,” Luca said.

  “No idea,” said Erika. “From here they all look the same to me.”

  Lasgol was watching with his eyes half-closed. “If you look carefully, you’ll see they’re not the same.”

  “Yes, they are different,” said Luca.

  Erika shut her eyes tightly, trying to see better. “I don’t see the difference.”

  “They’re marked, each one a different color. The one he’s setting now has a white mark. The one he’s just set had a red mark.”

  “Curious,” Luca said thoughtfully.

  “Ah, now I see,” said Erika. “The one he’s going to set now has a blue mark.”

  “That’s right.”

  Gonars was taking his time with each trap. He searched for a good spot, placed his trap carefully and then covered it until it was invisible. When he picked the last trap, which was marked brown, he covered it with leaves and earth, taking extreme care not to set it off.

  “Every time I see someone setting a trap, I’m afraid they’re going to trigger it without meaning to and lose an arm,” said Erika.

  “Yeah, that might very well happen,” said Lasgol.

  “And it could be more than an arm,” Luca added.

  “I prefer bow, axe and knife,” said Erika.

  “I like traps,” said Lasgol. “If you handle them carefully there ought to be no problem.”

  “Ought to be...” said Luca.

  Annika checked the area where Gonars had set the traps and examined it carefully. She was frowning, not fully convinced.

  “The setting and hiding are less than excellent. You need to go on working on those aspects of it.”

  “I will, Ma’am,” Gonars said. He sounded ashamed at not being up to what was expected of him.

  “Let’s see whether you’ve constructed the traps properly. Did you follow my instructions?”

  “Without straying in the least.”

  “I hope so. Let’s see. Set off the first one.”

  Gonars picked up several small rocks, went to stand at a safe distance and threw the first rock at where he had set one of the traps. Suddenly there was a metallic click and the trap was sprung. There was an explosion of fire, starting at the base of the trap with a high burst of flame.

  “Wow!” Erika exclaimed.

  Luca’s eyes were wide. “That trap would have incinerated anyone who’d stepped on it.”

  “I told you, traps are great,” Lasgol said with a smile.

  “Yeah, really great,” said Erika, shaking her hands and looking horrified.

  Annika watched the flame go out, revealing the burnt remains of the trap. “Good piece of work. A good charge, and well-made.”

  “Thanks Ma’am,” Gonars said. He sounded much more cheerful.

  “Next trap.”

  Gonars threw another stone at the second trap he had set. There came another metallic click, followed by a powerful discharge, as if a bolt of lightning had struck the trap.

  “I know what type of traps those are,” said Lasgol. “They’re elemental traps. That’s air, and the one before was fire.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” said Luca.

  “I don’t like regular traps,” Erika said, “and I like these even less. I’m not going anywhere near one of them.”

  “Not even to make them?” Lasgol asked her.

  “In your dreams.”

  Annika congratulated Gonars. The trap was to her liking. Gonars activated the other two: one of water, which created an
explosion that froze everything up to a distance of a pace around, and one of earth, which when it exploded created a blinding, numbing cloud of earth.

  Erika was shaking her head. “There’s absolutely no way I’m getting caught anywhere near one of those traps.”

  Lasgol smiled. “I thought they were fantastic.”

  “They weren’t bad at all,” Luca agreed.

  Annika now went to where Frida and Elina were working. Frida was bent over a campfire, preparing a potion – or something like it – in an old pot. She was stirring it with a stick. A greenish smoke, which looked ominous, was rising from it. Elina was consulting a huge tome on Nature, reading the instructions aloud for Frida to follow. They looked like a pair of apprentice witches.

  “How’s the preparation coming along?” Annika asked.

  “Quite well... I think...” Frida said, not sounding very convinced.

  “Sure?”

  “Quite honestly, preparing it out here is rather complicated. Couldn’t we do it in the Cave of Summer?”

  “We could, but that’s not the aim of this exercise. You need to learn to create the potions and preparations in the middle of the forest, because that’s where you’ll need them, not somewhere safe with all the materials and utensils at hand. That particular situation will be the least usual.”

  “I understand, Ma’am.”

  “You won’t even have that tome available,” she said to Elina, who was so absorbed that she did not even raise her gaze from the book.

  “No?” she asked suddenly, looking displeased.

  Annika shook her head.

  “In that case –”

  “The Expert Herbalist doesn’t need tomes. Her knowledge goes with her wherever she goes.”

  Elina looked puzzled.

  Annika tapped her temple twice with her finger.

  “Oh...” Elina murmured. “All the knowledge?”

  “All of it.”

  Elina sighed, sounding half-despairing.

  “Nobody said it would be easy.”

  “There are so many tomes... big ones...”

  “And you have a good head and a good memory.”

  Elina sighed.

  “It’s turning blue!” Frida said suddenly as she stirred the preparation over the fire.

  “Blue, at last!” Elina cried.

  “Is that the color we want?” Frida asked.

  “According to the tome, yes.”

  The two of them looked at Annika. But the Elder did not say anything. She put her hands behind her back and watched the preparation.

  “Well then, all we have to do is wait for it to cool.”

  “The tome doesn’t say anything further.”

  “You didn’t leave out any of the ingredients, did you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Elina said, and put her head back in the tome.

  Erika, Lasgol, and Luca were watching all this with great interest from some way away. The situation was a strange one, and they had realized this.

  “What do you think they’re preparing?” Erika asked.

  “I’ve no idea,” Luca said, “but they don’t look very sure of what they’re doing.”

  “Annika isn’t helping them either,” Lasgol said in surprise.

  “She must be making it difficult for them,” Erika concluded.

  They waited until the preparation had cooled. Frida and Elina exchanged nervous glances.

  “It’s time to try it,” Annika said.

  There was a moment of tense silence. It did not look as though Elina and Frida were going to say anything.

  “You have to trust your knowledge and skills,” Annika said to them.

  “I’ll try it,” Frida said. “I’m the Healer Guard, and I’m the one who prepared the potion.”

  Annika shook her head.

  “No?”

  “No. It’s precisely because you’re the Healer Guard that you should never be the first to taste any potion that might be dangerous.”

  “I don’t understand...”

  “If anything happens to you, who’ll heal the others?”

  “But it’s my responsibility...”

  “Your responsibility is to stay alive to help the others. Not to die first and leave them without help.”

  “The Elder’s right,” Elina said. “You can’t try it first. It has to be me. If anything happens to you, we lose the Healer.”

  “That’s right,” Annika agreed.

  “All right…”

  Elina picked up the pot. She looked at the bluish beverage, sighed and took a long draft.

  “D’you feel all right?” Frida asked her at once.

  “I think so...”

  Annika said nothing.

  Suddenly Elina clapped her hands to her stomach and cried out in pain. She doubled up and fell to the ground.

  “Elina!” Frida cried, and knelt beside her partner.

  “The potion is incorrect,” said Annika.

  Elina gave a muffled cry of pain

  “What do I do now, Ma’am?” Frida asked. There was fear in her eyes.

  “Prepare an antidote,” Annika replied calmly.

  “What kind of antidote?”

  “Which would be appropriate in this case?”

  Frida thought for a moment. “The stomach cleanser.”

  Annika nodded. “Good choice.”

  Frida leapt to her feet and ran off to look for the ingredients.

  Annika looked down at Elina, who was groaning with pain. “You’ll be fine. It’s not deadly, just very painful. Hold on until Frida prepares the antidote.”

  Elina nodded, still clutching her stomach.

  The Elder turned and moved away, and Erika, Lasgol and Luca exchanged looks of total surprise.

  “We’ve got to help her,” Erika said.

  Lasgol was about to step forward, but Luca held him back. Annika was looking back at them. She wagged her finger forbiddingly and left.

  Lasgol was flabbergasted. The specialization of Nature was unusual as well as brutal. He was glad to be in Wildlife. Very glad indeed.

  Chapter 20

  Erika spent most of the day studying Elder Gisli’s Wildlife tomes. The more she studied, the more excited she was about everything she was learning. The Elder took her to the high forests and northern mountains and showed her what the books could not: the wild animals in their natural habitat and state. Sometimes they all went together, at others she and Gisli went on their own and he passed on specific points of knowledge to her, which she absorbed with great enjoyment.

  “You’re not going to believe what we were studying today,” she told Lasgol when she came back to the Lair for dinner. She had left at dawn and been away for the whole day.

  “I’ve no idea but judging by your expression I’m sure it was worth seeing.”

  “It most certainly was worth seeing!”

  Axe and Luca came over to listen.

  “Okay, tell us!” Lasgol said.

  “He took me to the mountains north of the valley. He showed me several birds of the area, and in particular one very special: the Norghanian White Eagle!”

  Luca smiled. “It’s so regal.”

  “More than that, it’s spectacular,” said Axe.

  “I’ve seen one now and then,” Lasgol agreed, “and they take your breath away.”

  “I didn’t know they were so big. Gisli told me they’re capable of lifting up an adult reindeer.”

  “And young humans as well,” Luca added.

  “That’s what the Master told me, and I was petrified. I didn’t know there were birds as powerful as that. From what he explained today, there are birds in Tremia that can seize an adult human and carry him away through the air. There’s a Green Condor in the mountains of the east that can do that, and in the southern deserts, beside the great river, there’s another kind of Firebird with feathers that make it look as if it were on fire, and it’s able to do that too. And there’s a rumor that in the Usik forests there are giant birds and t
he savages are their masters. It’s just a rumor, not proven, but the Elder accepts it as true.”

  “Well, if he accepts it as true,” Axe said, “I believe him.”

  Luca nodded.

  Lasgol was left thinking that it would be great to be able to see one of those giant birds. Perhaps someday. Although he doubted whether he would ever have the chance to do so, or to meet anyone from those distant lands who could confirm it. The unfathomable forests of the Usik were a very long way away, and to reach them you first had to cross the Masig prairies. The Norghanians kept away from both peoples, whom they considered to be savages and with whom they had been involved in countless confrontations and skirmishes.

  “There was a moment when the eagle spread its wings and we could see how big it was... I was spellbound.”

  “The biggest ones are awesome,” Lasgol agreed.

  “And it was completely white from head to tail!”

  “Yes,” Luca said, “the Norghanian eagle is totally white. The eagles in other regions have white heads, but dark brown plumage.”

  “That’s what I thought the Norghanian eagle would be like too,” Erika said.

  “A Norghanian eagle is a lot more impressive,” said Lasgol. “My father told me about them. Our eagles are bigger, and the white plumage makes them spectacular.”

  “I can believe that,” Erika agreed. “The only thing that didn’t convince me fully about this great raptor was the way it was hunting.” She was shaking her head.

  “Why?” Axe asked in surprise.

  “We saw it hunting a mountain goat.”

  “Better a wild goat than the shepherd’s sheep,” said Luca. “It hunts those too.”

  “Yeah, the Elder told me about that. It attacks everything, except the great cats. But it wasn’t that... it was the way...”

  “Very bloody?” Axe asked.

  “Worse than that. It took the goat unawares on a mountain ridge. It took it up into the air while the goat was bleating desperately. D’you know how it killed it?”

  Lasgol and Luca, who knew the answer, exchanged a glance.

  “No, how?” Axe asked.

  “It dropped the goat from the heights, so it hit the rocks. It was awful to see it fall down the side of the mountain, bumping against the rocks.”

  “Ugh...” Axe said. He was imagining it, and it showed in his face.