This story is one of eighteen from my collection The Dragon Within. You can also read Keltin’s first adventure in The Beast Hunter. Happy Reading!
Riksville was like any other Riltvinian lumber town. Little more than an outpost for homesteaders and the local woodcutters’ camp, every business and home was constructed of peeled logs and thatched with the thick branches of Riltvin pines. Keltin had seen dozens of communities just like it throughout his time as a beast hunter in his native country. It seemed a humble, pleasant place to live, but walking through the small town, he could see the telltale signs of fear. Windows were boarded up. Livestock pens were reinforced. The snow-splattered path between the buildings was silent and empty.
“Looks like the rumors of beast attacks were true after all,” he said.
“Reminds me a little of Lost Trap,” said Jaylocke. “Only cleaner. And smaller. With less dancehalls.”
“You sound like you miss it.”
Jaylocke shrugged. “I’m perfectly happy to be someplace where I don’t have to bundle up to my nose every day. There were plenty of other things I won’t miss either, not the least of which were the beasts. Of course, we’ll have to deal with them here too.”
“Only one this time.”
“That should make it much easier.”
“Easier to kill, but harder to find. So, are you ready?”
Jaylocke’s grin sank into a small grimace. “I had almost hoped that you had forgotten.”
Keltin shook his head. “We agreed that you would take the lead on our next hunt. If you ever want your people to consider you a man, you’ll have to end your apprenticeship one day.”
“I know… I just didn’t want that day to be today.”
“I didn’t say you would be entirely on your own. I’ll be with you, but as an advisor. I’ll give advice when you ask for it, but I want you to do this on your own. All right?”
Jaylocke sighed. “I think I liked you better when you didn’t know how to handle having an apprentice.”
“I’ve heard that some masters beat unruly apprentices. Maybe I should try that.”
Jaylocke shot Keltin a suspicious glance, but Keltin managed to keep a straight face.
“Fine. I suppose we should start by trying to find the mayor and see if a bounty’s been officially posted yet.”
“That sounds like a good start.”
“Good. Er… how do we find him?”
Keltin lifted an eyebrow. Jaylocke sighed.
“I suppose we could ask someone.”
Jaylocke turned and approached the nearest home along the beaten-earth street. He gave a strong rap on the hastily reinforced door and they waited. After a moment’s pause and the rattling of what sounded like a board braced against the entrance, the door was opened to reveal a haggard looking woman as a cacophony of screams of small children assaulted their ears.
“Good morning, Ma’am,” said Jaylocke, trying to make himself heard over the din.
“Who are you?” demanded the woman. “What do you want? I’m busy.”
“Oh, of course. We just… we needed to find the mayor.”
The woman gave him a sour expression.
“Try his house,” she said before slamming the door shut.
Jaylocke looked at Keltin, who gave his apprentice a shrug.
“Let’s try somewhere else,” he said.
Jaylocke nodded and led them away from the sounds of chaos still drifting through the boarded-up house.
“Sounds like those little ones have been cooped up long enough,” said Jaylocke.
“I think that their mother would agree with you.”
“Well, let’s go see about making it safe for them to play outside again.”
It took several more tries, but eventually they found the town’s appointed leader. There was little difference between the mayor’s home and the other log houses around it except perhaps that the windows seemed to have even more boards covering them. They knocked on the door and waited as the rattling of chains and the shifting of deadbolts came to them from behind the sturdy, solid wood. The door was pulled open so quickly that Keltin barely had time to take in the lean, balding man’s appearance before he was hurrying them inside.
“Come in, whoever you are! Don’t stay out in the open!”
They were quickly ushered into the front room as the mayor replaced every bolt and chain back in place before turning to them.
“I don’t recognize you two. Can I help you? What business do you have in Riksville?”
Keltin looked at Jaylocke expectantly. The Weycliff wayfarer turned to the mayor with an encouraging smile.
“Good to meet you. My name is Jaylocke, and this is Keltin Moore. We’re beast hunters.”
The mayor’s eyes flew open as he eagerly snatched Jaylocke’s hand in both of his own and shook it firmly.
“I’m so glad that you’re here! Thank you for coming! To be honest, I wouldn’t have expected my letter to have reached the Gillentown Chronicle already, let alone have someone answer my advertisement so quickly.”
Keltin smiled to himself. So, there was a bounty, and what’s more, they had managed to beat any other prospective hunters to the potential prize.
“We actually started making our way here before the bounty had been posted,” said Jaylocke. “We’re always on the lookout for potential bestial activity, and the reports of attacks in the paper sparked our interest.”
“I’m glad it did, though I wish you could have arrived two days ago. That monster nearly made it into the Lefson home just the night before last.”
Jaylocke grinned and put an arm around the man.
“Well, never fear. We’re here to handle it. With my friend Keltin and I on the job, that beast is as good as dead.”
“Uh, yes. Good.” The mayor seemed a little uncertain how to proceed at Jaylocke’s sudden friendly gesture. He looked to Keltin.
“Well, I wish you luck. I hope you bring it in soon.”
“Never fear!” said Jaylocke with a flourish before turning to the door. “Well, we’re off. We’ll return once the beast is slain.”
Keltin cleared his throat.
“Before we go, do you happen to know what sort of beast we’re dealing with?”
“That’s right,” said Jaylocke, turning with another flourish and a private expression of embarrassment towards Keltin before presenting the mayor with a mask of competence. “Any information that you could provide would be of immeasurable aid in the beast’s capture.”
“Capture? I thought you said you would kill the thing.”
“Of course, that’s what I meant,” said Jaylocke, his grin starting to look a little forced as he strained to keep his pleasant demeanor. “Whatever you could tell us about the beast, please.”
“Well, no one’s seen it out in the open, but it’s a savage one and no doubt. It ripped Hal Jackson’s henhouse to pieces. Nothing but splintered lumber and loose feathers left. And it’s not afraid to attack homes either. It came in through a window at the Breeson home nearly a week ago.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“Only the family dog. There was little of the poor thing left the next morning.” The mayor gave an involuntary shudder. “I certainly hope you can do something about this beast quickly. I’ve already tried going to old Ezra Thornton.”
“I wondered if he still lived in this area,” said Keltin.
“Oh yes. He was our resident beast hunter for the longest time. But he’s refused to help. Ever since he lost his eye, he’s barely left his cabin except to come into town for supplies. I worry about him, alone out there with this beast roaming free.”
“I wouldn’t worry about Mr. Thornton. My father used to compete with him for bounties. He was a steady hunter in his day, and it takes a very good beast hunter to live long enough to retire, even if it is from an injury.”
“I’ve just thought of something else we need to know,” said Jaylocke. “What is the offered bounty for this beast?”
“The town has taken up a collection,” said the mayor. “We have eighteen jeva and seven pence altogether to pay you for proof that the thing is dead. I hope that will be enough.”
Jaylocke gave Keltin a questioning look. Keltin returned the look without expression. The wayfarer turned back to the mayor.
“That will be fine.”
The mayor visibly relaxed. “Good. Of course, we’ll help you however we can. How do you plan to begin?”
Jaylocke hesitated and Keltin suppressed a groan. Jaylocke had been accompanying him for the better part of a year now, and yet he was acting like he’d never gone on a hunt before. He resolved to have a stern word with his apprentice when they had the time and opportunity. After what seemed to Keltin to be an incredibly long pause, Jaylocke finally spoke again.
“Where did you say the most recent beast attack was?”
“The Lefson home. That monster attacked the boards over one of their windows but didn’t make it inside.”
“I suppose we should investigate the scene. Would you take us there?”
The mayor swallowed, his eyes darting to his boarded-up windows.
“It’s easy enough to find…”
“Then perhaps you could just direct us there.”
The mayor gratefully gave them directions in excruciating detail, clearly trying to be as helpful as possible without actually leaving the safety of his home. Convinced that he could now find the Lefson home blindfolded, Keltin bid the mayor farewell and they were courteously rushed out of the house, barely standing a heart’s beat outside before they could hear the sound of chains and bolts being put back into place. Jaylocke gave Keltin a smirk as they walked away.
“A brave leader of men, that one.”
Keltin shrugged. “Clearly, dealing with monsters isn’t the sort of thing he’s used to.”
“Perhaps he isn’t meant for a life in the country then.”
“Not everyone needs to be a fighter in this world. Besides, if everyone could kill beasts, they wouldn’t be hiring us, would they?”
Jaylocke didn’t reply and they continued on in silence until they reached the Lefson home. The signs of the beast’s recent visit were immediately apparent. Deep grooves had been ripped into the wall’s solid logs, and several boards had been partially torn down from the recently broken window. Keltin resisted the urge to immediately kneel next to the trodden-down snow in front of the window, and turned to Jaylocke instead.
“Take a good look. What do you see here?”
Jaylocke crouched in the snow and studied the ground for a moment.
“Something large definitely moved around here,” he said after a moment. “But there’s been too much traffic since then. I can’t make out any individual footprints.”
Keltin lowered himself beside him. “You’re right, there aren’t any clear, singled-out marks. But look here. See that indentation? Those two little holes? Those were made by claws pressed into the ground.”
“So, we know that the creature has just two claws on its feet.”
“No, we know that it has at least two claws on one of its feet. Beasts come in too many varieties and bizarre combinations to make any assumptions. See here, this mark that’s about six inches long? Looks a little like a rope was pressed into the ground? What do you think that might be?”
“Tail?”
“Or a tentacle.”
Jaylocke made a face. “Just once, I’d like to encounter something that resembled a rabbit or a squirrel more than the fever dreams of a drunkard.”
Keltin shrugged and turned back to the scene before them. Jaylocke continued to search on the ground as Keltin shifted his attention to the broken boards and fragmented glass lying in the trampled snow. He spied something subtle, and for a moment considered whether it was correct to wait for Jaylocke to either find it or not. Eventually, he decided to give his apprentice a hint. After all, they weren’t dealing with setting a wagon wheel or throwing a clay pot. They were hunting beasts, and if they wanted to keep their clients and themselves safe, they needed to know as much about their quarry as possible.
“Huh,” he said, drawing Jaylocke’s attention from the scattered tracks in the snow.
“What is it?”
“These grooves in one of the boards. What do you make of them?”
Jaylocke looked at the jagged gashes in the wood under the windowsill. There was a single, deep puncture down the center, flanked on either side by several smaller, shallower grooves cut into the wood.
“Claw marks?” he said.
Keltin shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’re not deep or ragged enough. I think they might have been caused by the creature’s teeth. What’s interesting about them is the way the teeth seemed to be shaped. It looks like there’s a single, overlarge fang in the center of its mouth, with a row of much smaller teeth beside and below it.”
“Does that sound like any sort of beast you’ve dealt with before?”
Keltin stood up, brushing snow from his knees and hands.
“No. I don’t know anything that has a bite quite like that. Blind burrowers have a large tooth in the top of their mouth, but they also have a second, slightly smaller pair of oversized teeth in the lower jaw as well.”
“Could it be a blind burrower that lost its lower teeth?”
“Not very likely. Those boils live on the strength of their digging teeth, so they’re awfully strong and stuck fast in their skulls. Besides, there’s no sign of tunneling around here, which is usually the first sign of a burrower. Last of all, it’s too cold for a burrower to be foraging. No, I think we’re dealing with something I’ve never encountered before.”
Jaylocke grimaced.
“Well, we picked a fine first hunt for me. My own teacher doesn’t know what we’re up against.”
“It just means that you’ll have to do your own work when it comes to investigating it. Speaking of which, we should definitely talk with the people that live here. They may not have seen it, but they might have heard something that would give us some clues.”
“Good thinking. Let’s go.”
They went to the front door and had barely knocked before someone called out to them.
“Is that someone there?”
“Yes!” called Jaylocke through the door. “We’re beast hunters, sent by the mayor.”
The door was opened and they were quickly ushered inside by a man who quickly introduced himself as Daniel Lefson. He led them to the home’s large common room where Mrs. Lefson held a little boy close to her as a slightly older daughter stood as close as she could to her father. They were all clearly still shaken by their close encounter with the beast, and Keltin tried his best to appear equal parts friendly and capable as Jaylocke asked Daniel Lefson what he could remember of the attack.
“My wife and I were sleeping heavy that night. It was Marta that came and woke us.”
Jaylocke dropped to his knees and spoke gently to the little girl.
“Are you Marta?” he asked.
The girl nodded, keeping her father’s knee firmly between them. Jaylocke gave her a warm smile and placed a hand on his chest.
“My name is Jaylocke, this is my friend Keltin. We’re here to help your daddy keep you and your family safe. I bet he’s doing a good job so far, isn’t he?”
The girl nodded, wrapping her little hands around her father’s legs. Jaylocke nodded back to her.
“I thought so. He seems like a very good daddy. So, can you tell me a little about the thing that came to your home the other night? I promise, I’ll listen to anything you tell me.”
Cautiously, the girl stepped around her father. After looking up to him for reassurance, she gave Jaylocke a shy smile. Keltin was a little surprised to feel a slight pang of jealousy as Jaylocke gave the girl a friendly grin. He’d never been very good with children, though to be fair it was likely due to a simple lack of experience rather than any real insecurity. Still, it seemed that the Weycliff wayfarer was in his element as he encouraged the girl with an earnest expression as she spoke to him.
“There was a big monster,” she said. “It came when it was dark. It wanted to eat us, but it didn’t, because the door was too strong, so it went away.”
“I’m glad. Do you remember what it sounded like?”
“It was scratching really loud, like a big dog. But we don’t have a dog. The Breesons do.”
Jaylocke looked up at the girl’s parents. “Do you remember the creature making any other sounds?”
Daniel exchanged an uncertain look with his wife.
“What sort of other sounds?”
“Anything. Growling, hissing, singing.”
“Singing?”
“You can never really tell with beasts. Did it make any vocal sounds at all?”
Daniel thought for a moment. “Just a sort of snuffling, grunting noise. Sort of like a pig, but not exactly.”
“That might help us. Is there anything else that you can tell us that might help us track it down?”
“Just one more thing. It smelled terrible.”
“Really? I didn’t notice any lingering smells outside by the window.”
“You would have on the morning after it came. It didn’t last very long, but the stench was definitely there. Something like stale cider and an open sewer.”
Jaylocke made a face. “Well, that’s something to look forward to, once we find the thing.” He rose to his feet. “Thank you all for your help, especially you, Marta. We’ll go find that monster now.”
“What will you do when you find it?” asked Marta.
“They’ll kill it,” said Mrs. Lefson. “Won’t you?”
“That’s what we came to do.”
* * *
It only took a few minutes’ walking to leave the last remnants of Riksville and enter the deep forest beyond. The snow had not fallen in several days, leaving a crunchy, scattered blanket of dirty whiteness spreading between the wide tree trunks. Despite the cold, Keltin was grateful for the snow covering the ground, as it made tracking much easier. Taking a moment away from searching the ground, he glanced up at the sky to study the thick cloud cover. High and white, the clouds were dense but not heavy with snow. Their luck was holding.
“So,” said Jaylocke after a few minutes walking. “No clear tracks leading away from town. Too many people trampled down all the surrounding snow.”
“True. We’ll just have to start searching for tracks, tells, or any unusual scat and hope that we get lucky.”
Several minutes of silent searching followed as the two of them carefully scanned their surroundings in.
“What would constitute ‘unusual’ scat?” Jaylocke asked after they’d been searching for some time.
“Is that a joke?”
“Maybe, but I’d like an answer all the same.”
Keltin shrugged as he studied a broken branch. “A particular odor, an uncommon size or shape, just about anything really.”
“What about this?”
Keltin went to examine the area that Jaylocke was pointing to. The remains were hard and cold but still retained a sharp pungency that made Keltin’s eyes water. He examined them for a moment before rising and nodding.
“It could be beast scat. There’s certainly enough of it. Look around for anything like tracks or broken foliage.”
A few moments later Keltin found a single mark in the crunchy snow that resembled the same rope-like print he had found by the Lefson home. This time, he waited for Jaylocke to find it. His apprentice searched without success and started to move on, but Keltin didn’t follow. The Weycliff gave him a curious look, but went back to search. Eventually he found the mark, and another minute’s searching produced a second track. Soon they had a trail, and Keltin fell into the familiar routine of search, study, and follow. They continued tracking until the light began to fade. Keltin waited for Jaylocke to call a halt, but the wayfarer continued on as if he didn’t notice the thinning light. With some frustration, Keltin made an exaggerated show of straightening up and stretching his back. Jaylocke caught the gesture and looked up as if noticing the quickly approaching evening for the first time.
“I suppose we should make camp?” he said, his tone suggesting more of a question than a statement. It annoyed Keltin further.
“I suppose so,” he answered, “unless we want to make camp in the dark.”
“No, let’s do it now.” Jaylocke hesitated a moment before speaking again. “Do we risk a fire?” he asked.
Keltin gritted his teeth.
“What do you think?”
“I’m not sure…”
Jaylocke gave Keltin a questioning look. Keltin pointedly turned away and began setting up his tent. After a moment, he heard Jaylocke doing the same. A little later, and he smelled the telltale scent of wood smoke and turned to see Jaylocke lighting a small cooking fire. Keltin watched his apprentice as he cleared a space for their cooking pot and poured in some water from a canteen before going to a nearby stream to refill it.
Keltin let out a heavy sigh as he considered his apprentice. He missed Jaylocke’s quips and jokes. The Weycliff wayfarer had always been a source of light-hearted optimism, even in the darkest of circumstances. There was a part of Keltin that wanted to drop his insistence on Jaylocke taking charge of the hunt. It would be so much easier to just tell the wayfarer what to do, which was clearly what Jaylocke wanted.
Something occurred to Keltin as he thought about the problem. He wondered how many times Jaylocke had done something similar in his life. Maintaining his cheerful demeanor, yet refusing to commit to anything or take any responsibility, waiting until someone else took care of the problem, or at least took responsibility for it. Keltin considered how this had caused Jaylocke’s fall from grace with his people and kept him locked in the social status of a child, regardless of his actual age.
Jaylocke returned from the stream with his filled canteen. Keltin handed him a small canvass bag of beans and set some salted pork into the pot. For a while, they sat and listened to the silence of the forest mingling with the gentle bubbling of their supper. Keltin continued to consider the problem of his apprentice, trying to look at it the same way he would look at any other obstacle to a successful hunt. He was still trying to think of the right thing to say when Jaylocke suddenly spoke up.
“I’m sorry, Keltin.”
Keltin blinked and looked at his apprentice staring moodily into their fire.
“What? What for?”
Jaylocke sighed as he placed a pair of stale travel biscuits into the popping salt pork grease.
“I know I’ve been doing a poor job of taking the lead of this hunt. I’m sorry.”
Keltin was silent as he considered his next words carefully.
“It’s for your own good.”
“I know.”
“No, listen. I’m not much of a master. I know that. I learned from my father and uncles, and they taught primarily by example. I try to do the same, but there are lessons I wanted you to learn from me, rather than from a beast somewhere. Some of those lessons were hard ones for me, and I wanted to spare you from that.”
Their fire settled with a crackle, and Keltin fed it another pair of sticks before continuing.
“I’ve struggled knowing when I should step in and help you and when I should let you try on your own. It makes it harder that we’re not making wagon wheels or stitching dresses. If we fail this hunt, someone could get hurt or killed, including us. That’s why I need you to take this seriously, and… and it’s why I’m nervous about what’s going to happen.”
Jaylocke was silent a moment before answering.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that you are nervous before,” he said.
Keltin shrugged as he stirred the beans.
“All hunters get nervous. If you’re not afraid of beasts, you don’t respect them, and that’s a quick way to end up dead. But I can study beasts, understand beasts, anticipate them. I can’t do that with people.”
“Well, you could, but it’d take an awfully long time, and even then, you’d likely just meet someone that throws out everything that you thought you knew.”
“I suppose.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” said Jaylocke. “You didn’t ask for me to come along with you. The truth is, I’m used to turning to someone else to make decisions for me. My father, Mama Bellin, even Ameldi. Do you know, I think that deciding to join you and your company of hunters in Krendaria was the first choice I made for myself?”
“I didn’t realize that.”
Jaylocke was silent. Keltin looked into the fire for a moment before speaking again.
“I’m glad you made that choice Jaylocke, just like I’m glad that you asked to be my apprentice.”
“Thank you. And I promise to do better about making decisions, though I would still appreciate a word of advice if I happen to be cheerfully leading us to certain doom.”
“I can do that.” Keltin stirred the beans and poured the lot in with the biscuits and salt pork. “Incidentally, I would have had a campfire even if I’d been hunting on my own. Sometimes I get lucky and the beast shows up to investigate it.”
Jaylocke made a face. “I’m not sure I’d call that lucky, but all right.”
He poured half the crumbled biscuits, beans, and salt pork into their other pot and handed it over. Keltin breathed in the sizzling smoke and smiled.
“There are other advantages to having a campfire too, though I don’t think I need to explain that.”
Jaylocke grinned and dug into the other pot with a will.
“This is one lesson that I can learn easily. It’ll take more than a stalking monster in the dead of night to curb my appetite.”
* * *
Keltin crouched down to study the ground, his joints protesting from cold and lack of sleep. He checked a small leaf to see if it had fallen naturally or been knocked loose by the passing of a beast. After a moment, he discarded it and stood with a stretch. A gust of wind whispered through the trees and brought with it the bitter bite of a lingering chill of spring.
“I think I might have found something,” called Jaylocke.
“What is it?”
“Tracks in the snow. Might be our beast. Would you take a look at them?”
Keltin moved next to his apprentice and examined the unusual marks in the snow. There were a variety of marks, and it took a moment for him to piece together just what he was looking at. There was a pair of padded feet with two claw marks in front of each, and three trails that looked like three tentacles or tails dragging to the sides and straight behind. Nearly all of the marks were smeared and pressed into the ground, as if the creature dragged its backend along behind it. Keltin pointed out each feature to Jaylocke before rising and looking off in the direction that the trail led.
“I think we’ve found our beast, and it’s a fairly clear trail too.”
Jaylocke nodded and glanced up at the gray sky. “We’d better get a move on, before the weather fills it all in and we’re back where we started. I didn’t notice any strong scents. Did you?”
“No, but according to Daniel Lefson that fades away within a day. This trail is at least that old. Still, we do have one thing in our favor. The beast has to drag its backend around, so it shouldn’t be able to move all that quickly.”
“Right. Let’s hope we can catch up with it soon.”
Jaylocke made an effort to push them to move as quickly as they could without losing the trail as Keltin kept a weather-eye on the heavy sky. Jaylocke cursed out loud as the first heavy flakes began to fall.
“Cursing the snow doesn’t do any good,” said Keltin. “We just need to cover as much ground as we can.”
They quickened their steps as they followed the tracks weaving through the snow-laden trees. Soon the snow was falling in earnest, filling the air with an eerie stillness that muffled their heavy breaths and crunching footfalls. Jaylocke seemed about to give up following the nearly invisible trail when he suddenly pointed into the forest.
“Look, there’s something over that way.”
Keltin looked up with his rifle at the ready, but saw no movement among the falling flakes and silent trees.
“What do you see?”
“There. It looks like a cabin.”
Keltin peered in the direction that his apprentice pointed and immediately saw the snow-covered roof and crooked smokestack of a lonely building.
“Who would be living out here in the middle of nowhere?” Jaylocke asked.
“Could be a trapper, or a homesteader just getting their start.”
“Well, I don’t think we’re going to find that beast before this snow wipes away all its tracks. I think we should take a break and check in on whoever’s in the cabin. Maybe they’ve seen our wayward monster.”
“That sounds like a fair idea. Lead the way.”
The snow was falling in small clumps by the time they had drawn close to the cabin. Despite the cold and the heavy snow, Keltin’s nose picked up a whiff of a unique stench. He turned to Jaylocke, and the wayfarer nodded.
“I smell it too,” he whispered. “Like a rotten apple pie in an outhouse.”
“It seems like the beast has been here recently.”
“If we have any luck, this fellow might be able to point us in the right direction.”
Having approached the cabin from the back, they had to circle around the structure to find its door. Keltin trudged around the corner and stopped suddenly, yanking his rifle from off his shoulder and crouching low. The door was wide open and even in the falling snow the evidence of multiple tracks was still apparent at the threshold. He edged closer, to inspect the marks in the snow. Beast tracks.
Keltin looked at Jaylocke. The wayfarer returned his look anxiously. He seemed to hesitate for a split-second before signaling for Keltin to follow him as they both silently crept forward. Pausing at the edge of the entrance, Keltin strained to listen for any sign of movement inside. After a minute of silence, he slowly inched forward to peer around the corner. The reek of the beast assaulted his nose, forcing him to fight to keep from gagging. His eyes watered, blurring the scene of destruction inside the cabin. He waited until his eyes had adjusted to the gloom and made a thorough search for any sign of a creature. There was none. He glanced to Jaylocke, who nodded. Straightening, they entered the cabin and surveyed the somber scene.
The sparse furniture lay in tatters and broken bits. The bed had been torn apart, the blankets and single pillow ripped and crumpled together in a corner for the beast’s nest. In the far corner, a mutilated body lay cold and stiff on the dirt floor. Keltin approached it and fought again to keep the bile from rising in his throat as he examined the corpse. There were no features left to identify it, but the tattered remains of a simple eye patch lay nearby. Keltin picked it up and sighed.
“I think this was Ezra Thornton,” he said.
Jaylocke nodded. “Seems like the beast hunter finally became the prey.”
Keltin barely heard his apprentice as the memory of another beast hunter suddenly came to him. A beast hunter that had been successful for decades, only to fall under the claws of his own prey. Keltin felt his heart twist as he heard his mother’s screams echoing in his memories. In his mind he was back at his family home, holding his quietly sobbing sister as his mother railed against all beast hunters everywhere. He saw his Uncle Byron try to endure her hate, but she soon cast him out of their home. Her stinging words then turned on her son. Keltin still felt each of their marks.
“Keltin, are you all right?”
Keltin looked up to see his apprentice watching him with concern.
“I’m sorry,” said the wayfarer. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“I know. I was remembering something else.”
“What?”
“My father.” Keltin turned away to avoid seeing Jaylocke’s reaction. “It’s obvious that the beast has been using this place as its den. We’ll set up here and wait for its return.”
Without waiting for an answer, he set about creating a low barrier to give them a place to hide and wait. Too late, he realized that he should have left the decision to Jaylocke, but he didn’t care. His mind was far away.
After a moment of watching him, Jaylocke silently bent down to lend a hand. They turned over a rough table and propped it up with barrels of meal and flour that the beast had left undisturbed. A few small crates that had served as chairs and a large box of tools were added to the structure, and soon they had finished a makeshift blind in the corner of the cabin farthest from the body of Ezra Thornton under a makeshift shroud until they could afford the man a proper burial.
“I wish we could do something for him,” said Jaylocke nodding towards the covered figure as took their positions behind their barricade.
“We will after we kill the beast,” said Keltin quietly. “If we take the body outside now, it might draw away the attention of the creature, and we don’t want to give any more sign that we’re here than we already have.”
Time passed slowly. The falling snow blew in through the open door, and Keltin set his rifle down for a moment to rub his numbed hands together.
“It’s too bad that we can’t light a fire in the stove,” said Jaylocke.
Keltin nodded but didn’t answer. He tried not to notice the way his apprentice watched him as he braced himself for yet another attempt at conversation. Finally, he turned on Jaylocke.
“Well, was there something you wanted to ask me?”
If Jaylocke was surprised, he hid it well with only a slight shrug. “I was just wondering about you, Keltin. You’ve never spoken much about your family. I know you have your sister and mother and that the men of your family have been beast hunters for generations, but nothing more than that.”
“What more do you need to know?”
“Nothing, but it might pass the time. We’ll likely be waiting here for quite a while.”
Keltin turned and looked through the cabin’s open door. The light was beginning to fade outside, casting the blanketing snow in a muted, grayish blue. Jaylocke spoke again.
“I think perhaps we should light a fire in the stove after all. It won’t put out much light, but it will give us enough to see the beast if it comes in the night.”
“Are you afraid of the smell of smoke driving it away?”
“It didn’t keep it away from Thornton.”
Keltin’s jaw clenched, but he nodded. “All right. Let’s hurry.”
They found the wood box half-full of old, dry sticks and quickly got a fire going, always keeping a careful watch out the door for any sign of movement. Keltin had to admit that the stove’s warmth was a welcome addition to the otherwise disturbing setting. He settled back behind the barrier with Jaylocke and waited. Time slid by. The crackling fire painted shadows in the corners of the cabin, calling up half-memories and faces to Keltin’s mind. He took a deep breath and spoke in the barest of whispers.
“It’s only the Moore side of the family that are hunters.”
He turned to see if Jaylocke had heard him and was met with the eyes of his apprentice and friend, his gaze full of somber understanding. Keltin turned away and continued.
“The Milners never seemed to understand us, and that included my mother. But she loved my father, and tried to accept his choices.”
“She must not have been happy when you chose to learn the family business,” said Jaylocke.
“I think she always suspected that I would. My uncles taught me to shoot as soon as I was strong enough to hold a rifle. They took me out hunting for stewpot game as a boy, and my father started bringing me along on beast hunts when I was twelve. I think my mother knew that she couldn’t stop me from following in his footsteps, but she tried to give my sister and I as much education as she could. She stopped teaching when she married my father, but she schooled us in our home and took us to Maplewood to visit her family as often as possible.”
“I imagine you preferred the company of your father’s beast hunting family to life in the city.”
Keltin shrugged. “My father doted on my mother, and tolerated no disrespect of her. I tried to be a faithful student whenever she was teaching me, but I was happiest with my father and uncles. The day I brought down my first bounty on my own marked a celebration that lasted for days.” Keltin smiled for a brief moment at the memory before letting out a long sigh. “My father went missing just three months later.”
Keltin fell silent. Jaylocke shifted slightly before speaking again.
“That was the hunt that took his life?”
Keltin nodded. “My mother never forgave his family. She cut off all contact with them and took my sister to Maplewood to start teaching again. She never wanted anything to do with beast hunters ever again. Any beast hunter.”
He went silent again. He’d shared more than he had meant to. Focusing on the open door, Keltin tried to put it all from his mind, burying it deep inside, where it belonged.
“Your father would be proud of you,” said Jaylocke.
Keltin said nothing, and time stretched on once again. He allowed all thoughts of his family to fade into a semi-consciousness that was somewhere between dozing and daydreaming. His senses remained alert as his mind wandered through random bits of memory and musing. He registered Jaylocke getting up to stoke the fire in the stove but kept his focus on the open door. It would come. The beast would return.
It was the smell that he noticed first. While his nose had become accustomed to the lingering stench within the cabin, he could not miss the new, sharp pungency that wafted in with the drifting snow. He sensed Jaylocke tense beside him as the foul scent of the beast reached him. Moving slowly, Keltin lifted his rifle and propped it on the barricade, sighting along its length to the open doorway.
“This is your hunt,” he said under his breath to Jaylocke. “You take the first shot. Remember, examine it, look for an opening, then take the shot when you’re ready. I’ll take the follow-up shot.”
Jaylocke eased into position beside him, his single-shot rifle braced against the barricade. Keltin blinked rapidly, trying to make out shapes in the gloom outside. Suddenly the beast was there, coming around the left corner and crawling into the cabin. It was long and low, with two clawed feet and a trailing, sinuous body. Its head was pear-shaped and warty, its black eyes partially hidden between thick folds of fat. The stench of it was almost overpowering and Keltin was forced to breathe through his teeth as the creature cleared the threshold and padded its way inside.
Keltin was still considering where the best kill-point might be when Jaylocke’s rifle roared. The beast shuddered as its head dropped, its massive chin thumping on the floor from the impact of Jaylocke’s shot to its forehead. It rose up again and took several stuttering steps forward. Keltin waited until its head had turned and he could see its black, shining eye clearly. He sent a Reltac Spinner through the beast’s eye socket and skull, burying the round deep in the log wall behind the suddenly limp creature. He waited a moment, watching the corpse, then sat back and nodded.
“It’s over.”
Jaylocke let out an explosive breath. “Thanks to the Ancestors. It certainly gave me a start when it came around the corner like that.”
“I could tell. You took your shot awfully early.”
“I thought that a headshot would be best.”
“I agree, but you still have to decide where to place your shot on the head.” Keltin held his breath as he knelt beside the beast and examined its gaping injuries. “Still, you did cave in part of its skull with that shot. It would have died, though not immediately.”
He quickly rose and stepped away from the reeking corpse. “Let’s get this thing outside. We’ll worry about carving something off it for the bounty in the morning.”
They dragged the vile beast out into the snowy night and quickly returned to the comparable warmth in the cabin. The barricade was relocated to block as much of the entrance as possible, and they used one of their tents to seal off the opening completely. The rest of the night passed peacefully, and soon sunlight was trickling in through the cabin’s wrapping-paper windows. They dismantled their barricade and went outside to prepare a burial place for Ezra Thornton.
Using a shovel that he had found leaning against the cabin, Keltin cleared away the snow until he could begin digging into the frozen earth. Jaylocke made a rough grave marker and brought Ezra’s remains to the gravesite. They lowered the body into the deep hole and placed the remaining dirt and marker into place.
“Should we say a few words?” asked Jaylocke as they stood catching their breath.
“I wouldn’t know what to say. You can, if you’d like.”
“It just seems like we should.”
“All right.”
Jaylocke was silent for a moment.
“I had never heard of Ezra Thornton before a few weeks ago,” he said, “but it’s obvious that he was a hero to the people that knew him. He stalked and killed creatures of nightmare, allowing innocent people to sleep through their nights without fear. For years, he stood as a bulwark between civilization and the harsh realities of an unforgiving wilderness.
“I don’t know if he had family, but if he did, I’m sure that they would be proud of him. Even if they couldn’t say it to him while he lived, I’m sure that they felt it. He was worthy of respect and admiration. He will be missed by those who knew and loved him, and his legend will live on with those that he protected.”
As Jaylocke finished, Keltin turned away from the grave and swallowed. He didn’t trust himself enough to speak, and went to the dead beast lying behind the cabin. Its stench had nearly died away entirely, but he still felt his eyes watering as he knelt and cut out the beast’s large, single tooth from its oversized jaws. Taking the grisly trophy, he returned to find Jaylocke stowing the last of their gear into their packs. The wayfarer nodded to him.
“I’m ready to go, if you are.”
Keltin glanced at Ezra’s grave marker and nodded.
“Yes, I’m ready to leave this place behind me.”
They turned and began to make their way back to town. Several times, Keltin tried to summon the spirit to congratulate Jaylocke on the successful hunt, but he was unable to. Instead, his mind kept returning to the legend that they had left there in the cold ground. Soon he found himself thinking of another legend, one that he knew he would never truly leave behind him.
