by Pedro Urvi
“You’re right. We’ll come back to it,” Sigrid said, and her smile made it obvious that she was not going to give up her ambition.
“It’s time to go,” Ivar said. “We’ve been here for too long.”
They set off toward the entrance.
Chapter 34
They went back to the Lair at a gallop. Nobody spoke either during the journey or when they arrived.
“Go and join your friends,” Sigrid said. “We need to take some time to think about the incredible event we’ve just been witnesses to. We’ll talk about your ‘condition’ another time.”
Lasgol nodded. He was dying to see his friends, so he went directly to them. They were dining, and he went over and gave each of them a hug.
“What’s this bug that’s just stung you?” Viggo said in surprise.
“Are you all right?” Astrid asked him, and touched his cheek.
He sat down, exhausted despite the potion Annika had given him. Astrid sat down at his side, and Ingrid, Molak, Viggo, Luca and Erika joined them to find out what was happening.
“Well...” he began.
“You’re in trouble again,” Viggo said immediately.
“Why would it have to be that?” Ingrid asked.
“Have you seen that look of terror on his face?”
Erika waved a hand at his eyes. “And he’s dead tired.”
“What happened with the Elders?” Astrid asked him. She was looking more and more concerned.
Lasgol sighed and wondered whether to tell them. But after what he had been through, he decided that he would. His friends needed to know, even if they regarded him as an oddity after that. Well, they regarded him as one in any case.
“I’ll tell you about the experiment...”
Astrid’s eyes flashed fire. “What experiment?”
“Everything went well... but I think it’ll be better if you know about it, just in case it’s your turn next.”
“Go ahead, we’re listening,” Ingrid said. She sounded intrigued.
Lasgol then told them what had happened in the experiment. When he had finished, they were all thoughtful for a long moment.
“You got all the elite specialties?” Viggo asked.
He nodded.
“Man, you’re weird, really weird. This could only happen to you.”
“Don’t bug him,” said Ingrid. “He’s had a rough time.”
“So be careful. It looks as though the experiment has left other people in a pretty bad state...”
“Dead?” Luca asked.
“They didn’t exactly say.”
“There are rumors about this experiment,” Molak said.
“Are there?” Ingrid’s expression said why on earth haven’t you told me?
“There’s talk among the Rangers. I’d heard something here and there. Nobody knows what happened, but it wasn’t anything good.”
“Thank goodness nothing happened to you,” Astrid said to Lasgol, and he smiled at her when he saw the worry in her eyes.
“That means they’re wanting to create Superior Specialists,” said Viggo. “It makes sense. I’d want to do it too.”
“Putting other people’s lives at risk?” Erika asked.
He shrugged. “Without risk, there’s no progress.”
“It would be good if the kingdom had some well-prepared Rangers like that,” Molak said, “with three or four elite specialties. They’d be very useful, and also very hard to stop.”
Ingrid nodded in agreement. “That’s right. I’d like to have all the Archery ones myself.”
“I’d like all the Wildlife ones,” said Luca.
“Weren’t you listening?” Erika interrupted. “It’s very dangerous. You could go out of your mind, or even die!”
“Imagine me with all the Expertise ones,” Viggo said with a sarcastic smile.
“You’d be unbearable,” Ingrid said.
“Just like you are now,” Molak put in.
“How charming Captain Fantastic is. He even has a sense of humor.”
Molak shrugged. “You shouldn’t have handed it to me on a tray.”
“I just wanted to warn you all... in case they do more experiments... so that you think about it before you accept.”
“Not like you, then?” said Viggo.
“I... I had my own reasons...”
“We all have them,” said Molak.
Ingrid looked aside at Viggo. “Some more valid than others,” she said, and he smiled.
“Don’t get into any more trouble,” he said to Lasgol. “It’s always the same. If something strange happens, if there’s magic involved, if there’s a mystery and somehow Lasgol’s involved, it always affects him, and if it affects him it affects all of us. And we always end up in deep trouble.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Ingrid said.
“I’m not exaggerating. You know perfectly well what an odd fish he is, and he’s always amid some sort of arcane, mysterious tangle. And in my humble opinion, it’s no coincidence.”
“Why is it then?” Astrid asked him.
“Because he’s weird.”
“You mean special,” she corrected him.
“Call it what you like, weird or special, it comes to the same thing.”
There was silence while all of them considered what Viggo had said.
“We’d better go and have something to eat,” Ingrid said suddenly.
“Good idea,” Molak agreed.
“I’m going to take my medicine,” Erika said, and went away holding her side.
Luca gave him a wink before he left. “I don’t think you’re weird, but you must be special.”
Astrid and Lasgol were left alone.
“I didn’t want to tell you in front of everyone else,” she said, “but I think Viggo’s right.”
He had not expected this. “You really think so?”
She nodded and took his hand. “You’re always getting involved in situations that are really strange and complicated.”
“I’ve been unlucky...”
“I think it’s more than that.”
“What d’you mean?”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why these things happen to you and not to other people?”
He looked at her in puzzlement. “No, not really in that way. Yeah, I have felt I’ve been unlucky, that bad things happened to me more than to others, but I always thought it was just chance. Or bad luck, really.”
“And suppose it wasn’t just luck, either good or bad?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Suppose you really are special and these things are happening for some reason, because of who you are... a chosen one?”
“No, I’ve never seen myself that way, and I don’t think it’s that at all. I’m not someone special.”
“You’re very special, Lasgol. The point is that you don’t realize it.”
“I’m just like everyone else, like Viggo or Luca, I’m no different from them.”
“You are, very much so.”
He smiled. “You’re saying that because you love me and you see me with different eyes.” But he did not want to go on with the conversation. It was making him nervous.
“Yes, I love you, and I look at you in a different way, but what I see is someone special, and I’m not the only one.”
“Viggo – well, you know what he’s like...”
“Ingrid realizes it too, even if she pretends not to. Probably to avoid making you feel bad, or strange. And you heard Luca.”
“And you do want to make me feel bad and strange?”
“I want you to realize that you really are special, and that the things that happen to you are not just chance, there’s something behind them, they’re not coincidences and odd separate incidents with no connection between them.”
“Aren’t you making too much out of nothing?”
“It really is something, blockhead,” Astrid said. She gave him a couple of taps on the forehead with her palm. “And you’d b
etter see it yourself before it’s too late.”
“What is it, then?”
“Call it fate, or whatever you like, but you’ve been chosen for great things, and I know it.”
Lasgol shook his head. “I’m a simple Norghanian who’s had bad luck in life and who’s finding that now things are beginning to get better. I have great friends, I have you by my side, I have a purpose: to be a Ranger Specialist, nothing more than that. That’s all. I’m not special.”
“For me you are, very special,” she said, and holding his cheeks she kissed him so intensely that he was left breathless.
“Think about everything I’ve told you,” she said, and then left.
Lasgol was flabbergasted. He had always thought he was nothing special, far from it. He did not even feel worthy of the Gift the Ice Gods had blessed him with. He breathed out noisily in frustration, feeling he did not want to spend any more time puzzling over it all. He lay down on his bunk and tried to rest for a moment, but could not manage to. He began to think about fate, about his life, and began to feel too nervous to relax.
Chapter 35
That afternoon Lasgol was practicing setting traps in one of the low woods, where there was little undergrowth and it was harder to hide them. He was doing it the way he had been taught at the Camp. He wanted to get better, to perfect his technique so that they would be practically impossible for humans or animals to see them. Only then would success be assured.
He loved being a trapper. When he was younger, in his village, he had earned his living through his traps in the forests around Skad. By then he could already boast of being reasonably good. Later, at the Camp, he had learned to make different traps, even elemental ones, and to camouflage them well, as the Rangers did when they needed to capture bandits or wild animals. Unfortunately, not as well as he would have liked, which was why he went on practicing.
Not far away, Ingrid was practicing with her bow. As his friends had promised him, one of them would be going with him wherever he went to guarantee his protection. Autumn was upon them, and the weather had already turned cold. The wind was blowing harder and beginning to turn icy. He heard Ingrid curse because it had blown her shot off course. Lasgol knew that she preferred to practice somewhere more sheltered than this. This made him even more grateful for the gesture his friends had made. He always felt safer when one of them was close at hand, even if they were doing different things. He knew that a whistle or a shout would bring Ingrid to his side in the blink of an eye.
“We’re going to set a trap here,” he told Camu, who was with him that particular day. The little creature had climbed a tree and was chasing a squirrel.
Trap?
The mental message reached him clear and strong. They were now communicating better and better. It must have been because Camu was still growing, and this must be affecting his skills, which were growing at the same time.
Lasgol showed him one of the traps he had made. Yes, like this one.
Traps bad, Camu protested.
Lasgol remembered that he had fallen into one of Gisli’s traps.
Traps are good too. They help me.
Camu stared at him from the branch he had climbed up to, as if he were some medium-sized predator stalking a quarry.
Traps bad, he repeated, shaking his head.
This surprised Lasgol. Had he really shaken his head, or had it simply been a spontaneous movement? He had never seen the little creature shake his head or nod before. If he could really do it, and understood what it meant for humans, it would be a ‘fantastic’ advance, as Egil would say. He went on looking at him for a moment, but Camu decided that chasing the squirrel was more interesting than chatting with Lasgol.
“Go on playing, I have a lot to do,” he said with a smile.
In fact he loved to see Camu happy, free, playing in the natural world. He remembered how he had suffered all the time his little friend had been missing. Now every day, one way or another, he made sure that he was all right. He still had nightmares in which Camu disappeared and he could not find him, no matter how hard he searched for him. Anxiety about losing him again made the nightmares particularly dreadful, so that he would wake up drenched in sweat and deeply anxious. The worst thing of all was that the horrible feeling did not go away even when he had woken up and realized it was a nightmare. He felt he had to make sure that Camu was all right, and to do that, he had to wait until he saw him. The anxiety would stay with him the whole day until he saw him at last and was sure that nothing had happened to him.
He focused on the trap he was holding. It was quite a large and solid one, so that hiding it was not going to be easy, particularly with such sparse undergrowth in the area. He had seen fox tracks and wanted to test his trap with one, because the fox was one of the cleverest animals, and one of the most difficult to catch because of its wariness and its reflexes. He did not want to harm the fox or its skin, he just wanted to test his skill with an animal that was very hard to catch. If he managed to trap it, he would let the fox go without a scratch. Although the poor thing would surely have the fright of its life. But perhaps that would teach it not to fall into a real trap in the future.
He put the trap beside a tree and set it, then began to hide it very carefully in the way he had been taught. He had to make it look as if instead of a trap, there were only bushes there, which was not at all an easy thing to do. What he was attempting was something from the Specialization of Nature, and of course there was no need for him to excel at that. But he was attracted by the elite specialty of Forest Trapper and wanted to emulate it. Unfortunately, he could not train with them, so he had decided to do so on his own. Viggo had told him he was crazy, because surely two elite Wildlife specializations were enough for anybody. In fact, Viggo was right, but Lasgol wanted to get better at it. It was something he always tried to do, whichever discipline might be involved. With some of them he was luckier than with others.
“But not with Archery,” he said, and chuckled to himself.
He became aware that Camu was watching him from another tree. Go on playing.
Squirrel fast.
I’m not surprised. You’re not going to catch it.
I catch.
I don’t think so, it’s faster than you are.
I bigger.
Being bigger doesn’t give you any advantage up in the trees.
Camu stared at him for a moment and leaned his head to one side and then the other, as he did when he was thinking or deciding something.
I hold better.
That’s true, with those palms of yours that stick to everything, but I’ve never seen a squirrel fall off a tree...
Camu looked at the squirrel, which looked back at him. Then he looked at Lasgol.
I catch.
Lasgol smiled. When something got into Camu’s head, he was as stubborn as a mule. However much he himself might explain that he was never going to catch a squirrel in the trees, Camu would pay no attention. He was like that. He would have to wait until his friend learned by himself and gave up.
He went on hiding his trap. He did it calmly, using all the knowledge he had to make sure it was well hidden. He placed the bait, which was essential to attract the quarry, very carefully, so that it would be concealed in the center of the trap. When he was satisfied, he took two steps back and looked at it from different positions and viewpoints.
It’s perfect, he thought with satisfaction. Or as perfect as I can make it.
Carefully he erased all his tracks with a branch so that it would look as though nobody had been there, least of all a trapper or a hunter. When he was satisfied that the trap was ready, he moved back and climbed a tree. He loved this part. From that height he turned to the second and more complicated part of the experiment, which required infinite patience: that of waiting for the quarry to come. Luckily Camu was playing with two squirrels now and would not interfere with his experiment. He waited for a long while.
And the fox appeared.
He smiled. He had known it was close by. It looked to him like a vixen. Her den must not be very far away. She approached very slowly, sniffing and looking in several directions. She suspected something, but she could not see Lasgol in the crown of the tree, hidden behind the trunk and the leaves. He was still as a statue, and absolutely silent.
The vixen took two steps toward the trap and sniffed the air again, all around. She could smell the bait, but she was making sure there was no other scent, such as that of a predator or a human. Lasgol felt the breeze on his face; it was coming from the east, so he was safe. The vixen would not catch his scent unless the wind changed, and even so, as he was high up, his scent would float above the animal without its noticing.
Come on, he thought. The bait’s right there, delicious.
But the vixen, distrustful, came a little closer and looked all around. She began to track the ground, searching for a trail.
Very smart.
Lasgol had already foreseen this. The vixen went up to the trap until all that was left was for her to take the final step. She sniffed again and stared at the bait, moved one paw, and then stopped.
Would she take that step or go away?
She thought.
She moved away.
Ohhh, Lasgol thought sadly. She’s detected the trap. I have to get better at this
He climbed down the tree very fast, as he liked to do. In this way he kept his body fit and in shape. He had done it like this ever since he was small and it had helped him a lot, not just in Skad, but with the Rangers. He went over to the trap and got ready to take it apart. He had failed, and it was pointless to go on trying in that same spot.
He whistled to Ingrid, a short whistle of warning.
She looked back at him, and he gestured to tell her that he was going to set the trap somewhere else.
Ingrid nodded and picked up her quiver, ready to follow him. Lasgol gathered up his trap and set off west to another spot where he had seen fox tracks.
We’re off, Camu.
I play with squirrels.
Fine, I’ll be a hundred paces west.
I find.
