The Ostyragor Prologue - The Hunter

The Hunter

Furlon smiled appreciatively at the image before him. His wife was sprawled out on their bed, the fur blanket casually draped over midsection, which only accentuated her smooth muscular curves. Akeena rolled over onto her belly, the fur blanket barely covering her backside, and smiled up at him, a mischievous grin on her lips.

“Come to bed, my husband. Make me warm.” The throaty drawl of her words were like honey to his ears, and he longed to join her. A chill wind blew through the room and made him shiver, while his wife had beads of sweat appear on her brow. He couldn't shake the cold that surrounded him.

“Don't leave me, my husband. Please, don't go.” She begged him with her eyes, her lips, and her words.

“Why is it so cold?” Akeena's image began to blur. He cried out in anger.

 “NO!” Furlon held the fur blanket to his neck and stubbornly refused to give up the dream. Her dark brown eyes still shimmered with the tears she shed when he left. He wanted to comfort his wife, and feel the warmth of her desire spread over him. The cold wind that blew through his tent denied him this one luxury, and pried him from his dream.

“Its been barely a sev'night and I miss her so much!” Furlon sat up, rubbed his eyes with his hand, before growling lightly in his throat. “Forgive me, Akeena, but I can't give up yet! I need to get something that will make this trip worthwhile.” A good sized deer would have enough meat to supply his family for a month or so, and he could tan the hide. He was a skilled armorer and could make just about anything with the leather.

His wounded pride refused to allow him to give up and go home. The more he thought about his circumstances, the angrier he became.

“Son of a Kirosi!” Furlon cursed aloud. His thoughts were anything but quiet, and his anger towards a man he considered a brother was still seething.

“Charity!” he spat. “I don't beg and I am NOT crippled!” He growled in frustration, and anger. “A few pieces, that I can understand. Even a year or two worth of extra gear!” The piles of gear told the story his friend had kept quiet about. Ta'rak had purchased gear he didn't need. It was an insult to his pride.

Furlon almost screamed in frustration.

“I will not run home, like a dog with my tail between my legs! I will not accept his charity!” Charity was for those too sick or lame to work. The thought that he had needed the help over the years was as bitter on his tongue as the tea the healer tried to feed them when they were young.

“I'll get a monster of a deer! I'll make him a muzzle with the leather from it too!” In spite of the anger he felt, Furlon had to laugh at the image of him trying to put a muzzle on his friend. It would be easier to try to put a leash on a bear.

He put a hand through his thick and wavy brown hair. He was still a young man, barely into his thirtieth cycle, but his hair was already dotted with gray, as was his beard. He sighed as his hand dropped to his side. He really missed his wife, Akeena. He felt like the Ancient had blessed him when he met her seven cycles ago. Though her life had not been one of leisure, she hadn't complained once since the formal Bonding ceremony not long after they met.

The chill in the air caused him to shiver, and to lift his eyes from the blanket. He was startled at the sight of snow within the confines of his tent. The snow focused his attention like a splash of cold water in the face.

“Snow?! But its still Heiketa! The Kalsean snows are still a couple of dark moons away!” Heiketa is the season of decline leading up to Kalsea, the season of snow. “Snow at this time of year is unheard of!” He poked his head out from his tent, unable to hide the excitement in his eyes.

The forest was white! A fresh blanket of snow covered everything from the trees and bushes, down to the ferns and flowers still in bloom. The animals of the forest would have to dig through this carpet to get to the tender shoots of the vegetation underneath.

He smiled. Good conditions for a hunter.

“Finally! The Ancient's blessing!” He emptied the snow that had found his shoes, and pulled the cold leather over his feet. The fire had died down overnight and the coals had been buried.

“Hitto!” The curse fell from his lips easily, and he slapped a hand over his mouth out of habit. His wife always had something to say about his swearing. “Have to rebuild it. Hitto!” He grimaced a bit, took his dagger and scraped the top of the snow away until he found the buried remnants of his fire. He had to blow on his fingers and warm them up a few times while he worked. He took his tinder from his pack, a very dry fungus from a tree, and with his striking and hand stone, he put several sparks into the tinder. With a little air waved in from his hand, he was able to get the tinder to smoke, and finally to burn. Using some smaller dry sticks, it wasn't long before the coals were glowing again, and he could feed the fire into a nice warm blaze.

After the fire had warmed him, he ate a simple meal of rabbit with some dried fruit, and took another opportunity to examine his surroundings. The forest was a common mix of hardwoods and evergreens, birch, maple, and pine. The leaves were already starting to change color, which made the bright reds and oranges stand out vividly.

The rockier terrain this far north made it harder for trees other then evergreens to last. Hardwoods would grow, but not to maturity. Some of the trees grew along the surface of the stone, their roots winding down into crevasses and cracks, but were easily blown over by strong storms. Where the soil had some depth, the trees grew much taller. Their massive sizes were legendary, and sought after throughout the kingdom. No one was willing to risk their lives on forestry this close to the border though.

After he finished his meal, Furlon put the quiver of arrows on his back, his dagger in his boot, and picked up his bow. He worked his way north, kept the wind on his face and stayed downwind from any potential target. It wasn’t long before he picked up the trail.

“Fresh tracks!” Furlon knelt down in the snow, and spotted the hole beneath the bushes. “Looks like it wanted the new growth.” The deer had torn and munched on the ends of the low growing bushes, but avoided the yew, which was poisonous to them.

For the better part of an hour, he stalked his prey, found other signs, such as a pile of dung that still steamed as it melted the snow. He was close.

A couple of hundred yards away, Furlon came upon a clearing. In the center of it stood the most beautiful sight he's seen in a long while; an enormous white tailed deer, almost too large to be real. Its fur had already started to thicken for Kalsea, and it sported a large rack of antlers.

“Thank you, Ancient.” He lowered his head for only a brief moment, a quick show of respect for the being he was sure guided him to the prize he wanted to claim.

Furlon took deep breaths, kept them slow and steady, to calm himself, before he grew too excited and alerted the deer. He edged closer. The bow was almost soundless but the twang from a bowstring could produce enough sound to startle his prey. That would turn a sweet spot kill into a flesh wound or make him miss altogether.

The excitement was almost too much to bear. This was the largest deer he's ever seen, and it was the first one he's seen on the trip. If it was his Path to hunt this deer, then he would bless and thank the Ancient for guiding it to him. Right now, he still had to rely on his skills to bring it down.

He edged closer, his feet crunched the new fallen snow. He slid an arrow from the quiver and notched it. The deer's head came up and cocked its ears to listen.

“Kirosi Skeida!” Furlon nearly smacked his hand over his mouth. He only whispered, but at the same time, he feared that his words would carry across the clearing. “Was I making that much noise?”

There was no time to wonder what happened though. The deer dug in its hooves, its spine bent like a bow ready to be fired, and like an arrow, it shot from its spot. Within only a few seconds, it had nearly reached its top speed. It galloped full out, like a spooked horse, and straight for Furlon.

He had no time to admire its muscled flanks, the hide that would make his leather, or the beauty that the Creator provided. Branches scratched at its toughened hide as it seemed to fly through the underbrush. At that speed, its antlers would be deadly.

“Ancient, please!” He prayed to a being he wasn't sure even listened to him. Furlon released the arrow.

Desperation entered his movements as he tried to get another arrow notched in the bow. There was no time to watch the arrow fly.

The arrow drove deep into the deer's chest and startled the beast in its headlong run. Its head lowered in response to the pain, and its antlers caught in the brush. The momentum, along with its weight, did the work the arrow couldn't. It broke the deer's neck and killed it instantly.

A wide smile split his face as relief flooded through him. Furlon sagged against the tree nearest him.

“Kirosi Skeida! That was close! A few more seconds and it would have killed me!” Furlon walked towards the deer's carcass, its antlers still tangled in the underbrush. His eyes went wide as he got closer. It was truly a monster.

“By the Fallen! I've never seen a deer so big! Its the size of a horse! How did something this big live in these woods and never be seen?” It was easily twice the size of any other deer he could remember hunting.

“Is it from across the river?” A palpable dread began to fall over him. The steps he took to get to this point, in front of a deer that could possibly be from the Jakt-Agor, resounded in his mind like thunder and lightning.

The river. The bridge into the Jakt-Agor.

“Why did it run? It's full light, warm, and no one else is near. I'm downwind, so the deer couldn't smell me.” The dread continued to grow.

Something was wrong.

“Oh no.” He noticed something off in the distance. A patch of gray that looked like a wolf was standing beside a tree. If it was a wolf, he’d have to lie in wait to kill it before he retrieved his horse.

“Hitto! Wolves and their stomachs!” Furlon shook himself, fought the instinct to get out of there, readied his bow and patted the dagger in his boot. A wolf was a hunter, but could be a scavenger if it was hungry, and the meat was fresh. A free meal would be hard to ignore. A shiver went up and down his spine as he watched the animal cover a dozen yards in only a few seconds.

“By the Fallen, look at it go!” It was over a mile away when he first spotted the beast, but it started to close the distance in a very short span of time. “Gray fur, fairly big, and strong looking too. But why is its back white?” It entered a shallow depression and disappeared from sight for a few seconds. When it emerged from the gully, the color drained from his face.

“Oh no! Riivaaja! Kirosi!” Demon! A cursed and twisted version of a bobcat, a nightmare for every living thing on this side of the bridge, and straight from the Jakt-Agor. The natural denizens of that unexplored country were the most brutal and sadistic killers imaginable.

“I've hunted bobcats and you're not one!” Furlon slid around a tree, backed away from the deer, and tried to get out of sight. He wanted to cry out in anger, frustration, and fear.

The standard bobcat of the Ostyr-Agor grew up to four feet long from head to rump, stood two feet tall at the shoulder, and averaged about fifty pounds with beautifully colored fur that could keep a person warm during the season of Kalsea. This monster far surpassed the average at ten feet long, almost four feet tall at the shoulder, and two hundred fifty pounds of bone and muscle.

“My leather is not match for those claws!” He looked down at his dagger. “I hope you're up for the job ahead!” His hunting dagger and bow would prove highly ineffective.

That monster was one of the reasons they had a tradition of not hunting alone.

The animal's claws raked over the stones at its feet but never lost traction. Its spine curved, contracted and extended as it ran onward. The bony extrusions of its spine clicked against each other as it ran. If he had not been trying to get away from the beast, he would have been mesmerized by its fatal beauty.

“I need more time!” Furlon was only able to put a hundred or so yards between himself and the deer when the cat appeared next to it. It sniffed the arrow and growled low in its throat. He was too close.

“I’m not worth it. Go for the deer, go for the deer!” Furlon whispered. Furlon continued to put some distance between himself and the cat, and with each yard grew more hopeful that he might yet live to see another day. If the beast sensed his presence, he would have to try and kill it. It would not allow him to leave without a fight.

The cat still had not taken any meat from the deer and Furlon was sure he was far enough away that he could relax. He turned to try to get a last look, but the beast was nowhere to be seen. He could still see the brown coat of the deer, but the gray fur was gone.

“Where did you go, Kirosi?” He felt apprehensive, and decided to quicken his pace. Furlon started to scan the surrounding trees.

He caught a flash to his right as pain lanced through his left shoulder. He grunted, felt the area, and his hand found wetness. He raised it to his eyes and before he could see the liquid, he knew it was blood. He heard a growl on his right, but barely caught a glimpse of fur as it disappeared into the woods.

“It circled around me.” He pulled his bow off his shoulder, notched an arrow, and ignored the pain. “Got to get some cover!” He ran from tree to tree while trying to get back to camp.

“The horse might be able to scare it off. Maybe that will give me enough time. Maybe.” The horse's hooves might persuade the beast to go back after the already dead buck. He wouldn't be able to get close to the horse while it was rearing up, but if it's reins were still tied off, the horse could distract it. He might be able to get some arrows into its hide, maybe even win.

The cat continued its ambush tactics, attacking from the side but Furlon was able to release an arrow at only two horse lengths away. The beast yowled in pain and anger before retreating to the cover of the forest.

“How much can you take!” He yelled at the cat as it retreated. It slashed his other shoulder when he tried to get to the next tree. Pain lanced through him and blood flowed dark through the leather. He scanned the area again, looked for signs of the cat, but not quickly enough. It struck again from behind and slashed his thigh.

“Its enjoying this! Hitto riivaaja!” The cat was taking him apart a piece at a time. He wouldn't be able to defend himself soon.

“Veriside! If only you were beside me, this thing would be dead by now!” His best friend, Ta'rak, was not beside him though. Together they would have won. He straightened his shoulders, and pulled his blade.

“If I die, its going to be on my feet fighting! I won't be an easy meal for you!” Furlon was raised to believe that how you lived and how you died effected your rest at the end. The last moment before you closed your eyes forever was the most important one and how you met that moment dictated your level of comfort in your Final Rest. Regrets were not something you would want to take with you.

For a short time, the tactics and his resolve kept him alive. He was able to take a few shots at the cat with his dagger, stab it as it tried to slash him. The cat still wouldn't attack him full out yet.

Furlon ran to another tree, a large oak that completely covered his back, and that allowed him to fire another arrow at point blank range. The cat was injured, but not severely enough to kill it, and it did not change its mind.

“Stop chasing me and I'll stop hurting you!” Furlon ran to another large hardwood. This time, the cat was on top of him before he could set up to fire another arrow. Its weight came at him from the side, knocked him away from the tree, and onto his back. The cat was on his front, claws dug mercilessly into his thighs and belly, right through the leather. Furlon screamed in pain, took his dagger and slammed it into the side of the cat repeatedly. It jumped off and seemed to run away to lick its wounds.

Furlon turned over and lifted himself to his knees. He was injured and not thinking clearly. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet but failed to check for his adversary. It crashed into his back.

His face hit the cold snow, its pristine surface not yet darkened with blood. He tried to speak his wife’s name, but the impact of the fall knocked the air from his lungs. True to the nature of the feline species, it locked its large teeth onto the back of his neck, twisted and snapped it cleanly.