The Hunt

Tristan wasn't a stolen horse, exactly. Two weeks after the new Legate of Mourne exiled Taylor and his associates from their hometown, Tristan showed up at the boardinghouse. At first, Taylor was touched that the animal would go to such lengths to be reunited with him, but the horse had been following Kasper. Whenever Kasper was out and doing chores, the horse shadowed him, never wanting to be more than ten paces away.

The boardinghouse was on the edge of Midway, with a good bit of yard around it and a shed they could use as a stable. So, they let Tristan stay. As the days passed and nobody from Mourne came looking for him, Kasper and his adoptive human parents (Cook and Blake) fixed up the shed and added the beast to their makeshift family. The little wolfkin pup was a famous sight around Midway, often seen in the early mornings running errands for the house. He liked to ride with just a bridle, blanket, and a strap to help him climb up. He didn't sit, but stood on the horse's back and could pilot without any obvious commands to his mount. Tristan never minded this treatment and seemed just as fond of running as Kasper was of riding too fast.

Tristan's favorite outings were when Taylor and Kasper rode together. He always seemed to know when they were packing for a journey, and was patient with the extra steps involved. As soon as they were beyond the confines of the town and the nearby villages, Tristan whinnied, eager for what came next. Taylor layered body enhancements over all three of them, but most of all on the horse. Soon, they were shooting over the landscape, barely touching the ground. They headed east, to the dark green line that marked the boundary between cultivated lands and the wilds: Rosewood.

The first stretch of woods was coppiced for gathering, the shorn trunks sprouting many fingers. Beyond the woodcutters' trails, the forest turned to old, wild growth. If they turned north, they would run into the many miles of IEF training grounds, a zone where generations of soldiers routinely cleared underbrush and thinned trees while learning to build fortifications. They took Tristan south and east instead, trotting and cantering in turns along the route taken by the men they sought. Their destination was an outpost used two or three times each year as a base for monster surveys. On the legate's map, it was labeled Camp Three, but it had another name: Bald Boy.

They had glimpses of the formation as they drew close. Bald Boy was a lonely hill capped with a dome of bare rock, with a vertical face on one side and a steep approach on the other. A spindly watchtower stood at the very top of the hill, but the camp was partway down the slope, occupying a flattened area large enough to house twenty men and their horses behind a heavy wooden pallisade and gate. They couldn't see the actual camp, but the map said it was there, on the opposite side of the hill.

Taylor halted their advance half a mile from the hill and dismounted. "Follow a hundred yards behind me." He showed Kasper hand signs for "further away," "come closer," and "escape," then put a sound-dampening barrier around the horse and its rider. They moved slowly after that, with Taylor feeling his way forward mostly on mana. The sun was low enough to be hidden by the trees, darkening the forest, but that wasn't his main concern. All three of them could see in the lingering light, thanks to a combination of natural ability and, in Taylor's case, magic. He was looking for unusual mana or monster signs, and he found plenty of both.

He expected ents, but the area around the camp had been trampled by giant deer. Dozens of spots of mana, maybe a hundred, besieged the trail going up the hill. They weren't moving much. Two hundred yards from the base of the hill, Taylor decided the wind was too unfavorable to continue and turned back to rejoin his party.

"I bet you could fight them!"

"I don't know that," Taylor cautioned the excited wolfkin, "and there are other lives at stake. It's a poor time to gamble. Let's find out if they know anything."

They rode to the most distant spot they could while keeping sight of the watchtower, and sent an origami bird. The enchanted letter shot through the crosswinds until it was a white speck against the dimming sky, adjusting course until it dropped into an open window. Normally, the sender knew who they were sending the message to, but line-of-sight delivery also worked. They ate dinner and fed Tristan while they waited. Taylor had supplied the special paper with plenty of mana, so the defenders should be able to respond even if they were exhausted.

When the bird returned, Kasper leaped into the air and snatched it triumphantly before Taylor could reach it.

"Fine." Taylor made a soft red light that wouldn't be obvious from a distance. "You get to read it. Consider it your homework."

"Deputy ex. What does that mean?"

"That was my tablet name when I hunted beasts for Mourne. Keep reading."

"Force seven slash five slash two ess one slash zero." He looked up from the paper. "What does that mean?"

"Seven men can fight, five are too injured to fight, and two are dead. They have enough food for one meal, and no healing."

"Eighty-five monster deer. They shoot points from their antlers." There was more about their ability to run and jump, ill temperament, taste for human flesh, and the effects their hooves had on wood. The letter concluded the wardens could hold out for another day, and was signed by "Warden Matthijs," an arc name.

Taylor dug out the tablet, put his thumb on the glass, and thought words at it, transcribing the full letter for Legate Marco. Taylor added that he would solve the situation the next morning. He wrote "See you in the morning" on the enchanted paper and sent it back to Matthijs. A few minutes after the origami bird vanished into the night sky, green sparks rose from the distant watchtower.

They made a heavily-warded camp and bedded down early. Kasper ranted for thirty minutes about how impossible it was to fall asleep under those circumstances, then dropped like a sack of wheat. Taylor was awake for considerably longer, figuring out how a hunter and a sidekick could break the Siege of Bald Boy.

"Want boy." The stubborn pictures of a wolfkin pup standing happily on Tristan's back refused to budge.

"No, Tristan. Stay here." Taylor had been using the horse to teach Kasper basic taming magic. Somewhere along the way, they had bonded far more tightly than he realized. When that kind of taming link emerged, the animal usually got smarter. They had been hiding their bond from him.

"Danger. Stay with boy!"

"Kasper, how long has Tristan been talking to you?"

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The wolf pup looked at his feet. "It's just a few words."

"How long?" He tried not to sound too upset. Kasper would misunderstand.

"Not long. Maybeee ... A week? Two weeks." His voice dropped to a whisper. "And a few days." He rallied to defend his friend. "But it's okay, because he's a good horse."

"I know he's a good horse. He's a great horse. That's not the issue here."

"Then what's the problem, huh? You can go on long trips and fight ancient monsters, and you're leaving soon, again! But I can't have a horse? That's not fair!"

This animal will die and take half your heart with him. "We can talk about it later. Tell him to wait in the warded area until you call for him. Unless he's learned how to climb trees, he can't protect you today. He'll be a liability."

Kasper focused on Tristan's eyes for several seconds. "He says I should get my bow and shoot while we run."

In another place against a different enemy, that would be a good plan. Under the current circumstances, Taylor was losing his patience. "Tell Tristan he's a fine horse, but a shit tactician. Either he stays, or you both stay."

The wind was in their favor, allowing them to approach without being scented by carnivorous deer. Kasper's wolf ears stuck up from his helmet, but his tail dragged. He was still upset about leaving Tristan behind. The moping didn't end until they caught wind of the deer, a scent like burnt mushroom and goat butter. When they were almost close enough to see them, Taylor sent Kasper up a tree, then handed up the boy's bow and quiver.

"If things go wrong," he whispered, "call for Tristan and ride him out of here."

"I'm staying with you!" insisted the cub.

"In this runaway scenario, I'm setting the forest on fire. I could survive, but you wouldn't." Kasper's eyes went wide.

Eighty-five monsters. Taylor could feel their mana ahead, massed along the trail leading to the camp's gate. The trail itself followed a deep crease in the stone hill, both protecting their quarry and hemming them in. Quietly, he removed his boots and socks to go forward barefoot, padding carefully along the narrow path to the bottom of Bald Boy. He needed to be touching ground.

He preferred to deal with magic in a rational and controlled manner. He liked things he could perceive, measure, and grasp. But even Taylor understood that the most wonderful magic was quirky and willful. He needed a large dose of that now. He reached into his satchel, grasped a handle, and pulled out a fifty-pound mana stone. A latticework of knotted rope provided handles, allowing him to maneuver the stone.

Months ago, Taylor had killed a thousand-year-old ent and taken a mana stone larger than he was. Several weeks of daily effort had purified and perfected the misshapen rock, ridding it of voids and dross. Now, it was Prater's Pith, a pure green stone half his own weight. Prater was dead, but his pith remembered his magic. Taylor had been using it off and on for one of his projects, but its facility with trees should come in especially handy today. If not, then he would use one of several escape plans. Despite what he told Kasper, a forest fire was somewhere near the bottom of his list of desired outcomes.

Taylor set the gem on the ground and put his hands on it. There were no formulas or spellwork in Prater's magic. He felt the forest through his feet, root and branch and leaf. The trees knew each other well, and gave each other space. Mushrooms spread the mycelial empires just under the surface of the earth. Vines climbed to find the hot sun. Brambles tangled in moist low places. Stubborn little pines clung to rocky heights and made the most of poor soil. He felt the tremble of alert deer, suddenly aware of a change in the forest.

The monsters grunted at each other, querulous about a possible interruption to their hunt. He could feel their mana through the earth, sharp and hungry enough to change ruminants into carnivores. They had recently come into contact with a powerful mana source. He was sure of that.

By Taylor's will, the forest moved. Tall hardwoods came first, followed by lowland brambles that slithered along the ground like knots of thorny snakes. The deer milled in restless circles by the palisade, snorted their alarm, then made a break for the trees to escape before they were cut off. Taylor Flashed them. The popping noises and bright lights were weak from that range, but they were enough to make the deer doubt themselves, crowd each other on the narrow trail for a few extra seconds. Trees packed themselves into a deep cordon against the hillside. Taylor knew from experience how deceiving the speed of large objects could be. The small delay sealed their fate. A few deer made the run and got their heads stuck between trunks. Others threw themselves against the hard bark repeatedly. Fearful screams rose from trapped animals.

Several of the highest jumpers escaped the trap by leaping over an edge of the trail, then fell down the steep gradient, legs and antlers cartwheeled as they fell. Some of them broke their legs, but the rest charged at Taylor. He took his time with his offensive magic, ignoring the shards of crystallized horn they shot at him. The glassy projectiles flew with deadly force, only to go around him at the last moment. Spatial Defense was another of Prater's gifts, a technique Taylor had devoted himself to learning. By warping space just so, he could send any targeted projectile awry. It had been a maddening skill to fight against, which made it a worthwhile trick to learn.

When he started working on the new spell, he thought he knew all he needed to about manipulating space. But there were many complications with Spatial Defense. Light, sound, and air had to move in and out of the protected zone without telltale distortions, and outgoing projectiles needed to fly true. He took more than one wrong turn on his road to mastery and learned several new tricks. More than once, Taylor found himself locked inside a closed space utterly subtracted from the world, an accident with interesting possibilities. Spatial Defense and Prater's Pith were the reasons he hadn't left Midway yet, even though summer was all but over.

Calmly, he Speared the charging deer with pure force. He shot the lame deer from a distance, using oblong steel bullets propelled by Rock Shot.

"Kasper, come down." The boy clambered down with his bow strung over his shoulder, quiver rattling its hundred arrows. He was mute with wonder. Or was that fear? Witnessing a moving forest could be unnerving for some people.

"We're going up." Taylor pointed at the most climbable tree of his living pallisade. "Do you need help?"

In response, Kasper showed Taylor his claws and a big eye roll. He took a running jump at the tree, hugged the bole, and heaved himself up a foot at a time, which almost made Taylor laugh. He didn't want to hurt the child's tender feelings by making fun of him, not while he was feeling stung from the Tristan situation. Taylor followed by shaping handholds in the wood and climbing it like a ladder. Once they were installed, he checked both of their enhancements and defenses and put a slow-falling spell on Kasper. This would be a stupid time to have a fatal accident.

Meanwhile, the deer panicked, kicked each other, and tangled their horns against the brambles that had filled in the space between trunks. Their coats were white-dappled dun, and the tips of their antlers shimmered in the morning light. Kasper didn't seem happy about this kind of hunt.

"It's not what you expected, is it?"

"No," he said, a little tearfully. "I thought they'd have a chance to run."

"Do you remember why we're doing this?"

"To keep people safe," he sighed. "This is not sport." Several shards of antlers flew around them. They'd been spotted.

Taylor observed his teary companion. They had no legal or biological tie, but, in every way that mattered, Kasper was a younger brother. "It's okay to be sad about killing them. They didn't get to choose to be this way or not. It's not their fault, but they still have to die. You don't have to do this if you don't want to.

Kasper steeled himself. "I want to help."

"Take the slowest, closest ones first. Try to kill with one shot. I'll start with the ones farthest away."

Kasper cried when it was done.

The next day, he couldn't wait to hunt again.

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