Dawn

Dawn and Cobble had followed the scouting party for over five hours already, always making sure to stay downwind and keeping a safe distance.

"So when are we gonna join them? Or do you plan to follow them across the border and back?" the black-furred shaman apprentice asked while dunking under a branch.

"Shh." Dawn was being much sneakier than Cobble was and had crouched down in a dense bush.

"Hiding from the scouting party will not convince them that we are supposed to come along, you know?" Cobble noted.

Dawn hesitated. He was kind of right, but Dawn knew that there was very little chance of them convincing Frostsheen that they were supposed to be here anyway.

"Is it just me, or are we getting a little too close?" Cobble noted in a hushed tone.

Dawn didn't have a lot of time to consider that, though, as the wind changed direction

Frostsheen always stuck out of a group with her pearl white fur that normally made her blend into the snow perfectly.

She moved quickly while talking. "Once we reach the border, we will split into two three-man units and cross it. We will look for a suitable meeting point for our rendezvous once we are there."

The huntress stopped and seemed to take a sniff of the air. A toothy grin fell on her face, and she turned toward Dawn and Cobble.

"You can come out, Dawn. Good job in staying hidden so long, but you can't hide from me forever, and bring your friend," she said loudly.

"Trying to follow one of the best hunters in the clan. Should have figured that that wasn't a great plan," Cobble said with a shrug.

"We managed longer than I expected," Dawn admitted to Cobble and then got louder to address the scouting party. "We weren't hiding. We just wanted to talk to you." The amused expression, not only Frostsheen had, told her that no one believed her.

"Oh, you were? And what affords me that pleasure?"

"We are coming with you to scout," Dawn shrugged.

Frostsheen raised an eyebrow. "Really? And why exactly should I take you?"

"Because we will go either way," Dawn replied. She had considered lying about her father wanting her on the mission, but that would have never stuck. Her father would be furious with her anyway, but using his authority in such an easily debunked way would make whatever punishment might happen even worse.

"So you are saying that I should take you along so that you don't get yourself killed alone?" Frostsheen asked.

"Basically."

"Should I take them back? I can probably catch up with you guys before you reach the border," one of the other hunters offered. He was small with brown fur and a crooked nose, which also afforded him his name, Crooked.

"No, we can't afford any delays, and I think you would find them quite an annoying charge. If she wants to put herself in danger, that is her own call," Frostsheen replied. "If you slow us down, I will personally tie you to a tree and leave you there until the snow melts. Do you understand me?"

"Understood," Dawn replied.

"I would rather not become an iceicle," Cobble followed suit.

Frostsheen nodded and continued her march without another word directed at them.

"That was surprisingly easy," Cobble noted.

"Frostsheen is pragmatic, and we are useful enough for her not to bother. It is our own problem if we put ourselves in danger, and she doesn't care about clan politics. Even if my father will probably scream at her, she won't care," Dawn explained. There was no way that she would have tried this with Moloch, for example, but Frostsheen was always happy to play along as long as it didn't interfere with her mission.

Their journey north took two days until they came close to the border. The trek through the forest wasn't bad. Fighting against the snow wasn't pleasant, but they were all used to the wilderness, even Cobble, and so they held a good pace.

Once they had found a suitable campsite from which to conduct their scouting operations, Frostsheen sat Cobble and Dawn down to talk.

"Okay, listen closely because I might not get the chance to repeat myself. You two are now a part of my scouting group. Which means that I will treat you like any other hunter or warrior. I will take you with me, so we are a three-man unit out there. I expect you to do what I say, when I say it, and without so much as a hint of argument."

Frostsheen fixated both of them with her gaze until they nodded.

"Good. Your addition allows us to spread ourselves a little more. We now have two three-man units and two solo scouts. We will go past the pale tree and follow the stream north-west toward the great river. We are going into enemy territory, so we need to be careful and, quite possibly, get out very quickly. Remember, this is not a fighting mission; we will not fight if we can avoid it."

The last sentence was clearly directed at Dawn, who was a little annoyed at being singled out, but didn't say anything.

"Good, now let me give you some things to pay special attention to while we are in Boarclan territory."

Frostsheen spent the next hour explaining Boarclan markings, traditions, hunting tactics, and everything else they might use to discern the pig's intentions. Some Dawn knew already, but the depth of knowledge Frostsheen possessed about a rival clan astounded her.

She stayed with them around the small fire even after her explanation had concluded. It was tradition that a hunting unit was like a family; as long as they were out hunting, they would stay together and keep each other company.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Their wolf ancestry had given their clan an even stronger sense of community than any of the other clans possessed.

"I see you still refuse to use traded goods," Frostsheen noted while watching Dawn take care of her ax. "You should at least allow yourself to use weapons made out of material coming from the dwarves or humans. It is much stronger than what we can find ourselves."

"I will stick with vargr-släkt craftsmanship. This I can trust with my heart," Dawn replied.

"Is your ego still so bruised from your loss to the human lord, pup? It is neither the warrior's nor the hunter's way to throw away an advantage over a petty grudge," the white huntress pressed.

"My ego has never been bruised by that," Dawn snapped. "He used a magical trick to surprise me. Next time, he won't get me with such cheap tactics."

"Next time? You don't expect this peace to last? Or is it that you wish to challenge him again to heal your totally not bruised ego?"

The calm manner with which Frostsheen picked at her annoyed Dawn nearly as much as the insinuations the huntress made.

"Peace with humans will never last, which is why I will not be tempted by their stuff. We won't have access to it forever, and you all will become so dependent on it that you will feel the pain once this ... break is over."

Frostsheen chuckled quietly while Cobble watched their exchange in silence. He definitely hadn't refused to partake in dwarven and human luxuries, considering the fine cloth and dwarven metal chains he was wearing his shaman bones on.

"The pup that knows more than the wisest elder," Frostsheen laughed. "I, for my part, thought that Lord Rowan seemed quite genuine in his wish for peace. He even returned those back to us who tried to sabotage that peace by attacking the kingdom."

Dawn fletched her teeth. "Why do you insist on calling me a pup all the time. But you never showed that human child anything even close to the same disrespect."

"Why should I show someone disrespect who has my respect?" Frostsheen asked, her words driving daggers into Dawn. "He might have looked like a child back then, but he acts decisively and with a level head like a warrior and leader should, and I respect that. Once you start acting like that, then I will treat you with the same respect."

Dawn gnawed on those words, and her dislike of the human grew just a little bit.

- Some hours into the next day -

Frostsheen, Cobble, and Dawn had followed the stream for a while already. They had been the first group to leave camp with the widest area to scout. Till now, everything had been quiet with only some small scares that turned out to be wild animals.

"How is it that when you are hunting, you never see a single living thing, but the moment you try to stay unnoticed, they seem to emerge out of every thicket," Dawn complained quietly.

"And that's why I wanted to become a shaman. Herbs don't run away, and hunters bring you all the animal parts you need," Cobble replied happily.

Frostsheen stopped and turned to look at them sharply. "You two seem quite lax, having a nice little chat. I would recommend that you keep quiet if you don't want to end up above a cooking fire."

"Wait, do the Boarclan really eat other people? I thought that was just a story to frighten children into behaving," Cobble asked more carefully.

Frostsheen gave him a malicious smile. "It is not. They are always hungry, and meat is meat."

Cobble seemed sufficiently cowed by that reply, and even Dawn felt much less relaxed.

"Good. Now keep your eyes out and your mouths shut if it isn't important. Remember, I don't necessarily have to be faster than the pigs, just faster than you idiots if you bring a patrol down on us."

They continued following the stream, stopping from time to time to inspect interesting tracks that had survived the snowfall or abandoned campsites.

Frostsheen didn't seem very happy with what they were seeing and became tenser with every new discovery.

After inspecting a camp which must have held a party of ten people at least, Dawn finally dared to address her.

"Frostsheen? There are an awful lot of pig signs around. There is no way that they would hunt this area this heavily, right?" she asked carefully.

The white huntress shook her head grimly. "No. Only if their entire territory were barren would they descend on a single swath of land in these numbers and in such high frequency."

"How is it that we haven't found any patrols or hunting parties then?" Dawn pressed the question that had been burning on her mind for a few hours already.

"I don't have an answer for that question. We should have run into someone by now, or at least found fresher tracks. It nearly seems like they pulled every party they had out here back."

Cobble gazed at the stream and seemed to be counting on his fingers.

"We aren't very far from the great river anymore. Maybe they gathered supplies to attack the kingdom," he said after concluding whatever calculation he was making.

Dawn looked back to Frostsheen expectantly, and the huntress frowned while following the stream with her eyes.

"Maybe ... It doesn't explain why they violated our borders, though," Frostsheen said, but it seemed like she was thinking out loud rather than talking to them directly. "Either way, we will have to make sure. We will continue following the stream toward the great river, but we will do so faster from now on. I would hate to spend the night in enemy territory, but things are starting to point to that."

As they followed the stream, they were beginning to see more and more signs of activity, especially recent ones. They started to move slowly, always alert to any patrols or other things that could alert the natives to their presence.

Frostsheen soon motioned them to follow her away from the stream; it was too open and too obvious a path for any Boarclan patrol to follow. Having to make their own way through the underbrush slowed them down even more, but they didn't have much farther to go.

Frostsheen noticed the patrol first. Dropping down in the snow where her fur and clothing immediately blended in, and signalling Cobble and Dawn to take cover.

Dawn, with her bright brown fur, and Cobble, with his even darker fur, had a much harder time finding good cover in the snow-covered landscape.

Cobble ducked into a large root network of a dangerously tilted tree, and Dawn had found cover in a dense group of bushes.

Dawn's heart felt like it would pound itself out of her chest as the bass voices of the Boarkin became louder and louder, long before they made their way into her line of sight.

"I am looking forward to trashing those weaklings, and then we plunder," one of them said.

"It has been a long time since I have been thoroughly full. I hope they have filled their winter stocks thoroughly, or there won't be enough to trickle down to us," another answered and got a couple of snorts of agreement.

That was when they stomped into view. Their group consisted of five boarkin. All of them were broad and heavily built with bristles ranging from a dirty brown to black. They weren't much taller than a human, though, just wider and stronger. The small tusks that extruded from their lower jaw and the pig nose gave them a broad face, and Dawn was sure that they had thick skulls to boot.

They continued talking while they stomped through the underbrush, uncaring of attracting attention.

Come on. Just say who you plan to attack, Dawn thought, frustrated as the pigs changed the subject to food rather than their obvious upcoming raid. Her wish wouldn't be fulfilled, though. The boarkin stomped away while not returning to that subject.

After she was sure that they had left their earshot, she whispered, "They are definitely going on a large-scale raid."

"But against whom?" Cobble asked in a similarly hushed tone.

"We need to go further to find out," Dawn replied.

"I am getting the feeling that it wasn't my best idea to come along."

"Then why did you?" Dawn snapped back.

"Quiet!" Frostsheen ordered, and Dawn could see that the huntress was focusing on something.

Dawn pushed more mana into her senses, it was disorientating for a moment before she readjusted and tried to find what had attracted the huntress's attention.

First Dawn only heard the sounds of nature, then she also managed to make out the distant sounds of water and snapping wood.

Wait, snapping wood? she thought and tried to pinpoint that sound. It hadn't come out of either the direction the boarkin patrol had come from nor the direction they had left toward.

Her eyes widened as she looked back in the direction they had come from.

Frostsheen had also noticed and motioned them to her.

"This mission is over," she whispered. "Now we have to get out of here alive."

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