Chapter 18: Chapter 17

Hatchet P.O.V :

 

I walked towards the blacksmiths house, I didn’t know much about him other than that he and his wife came here quite a few years ago very young and expecting a child and that they were both quite talented in their fields considering how high they climbed in this backwater while raising a child, then another and now a 3rd.

 

At the gate I saw the headman’s son and his friend both lazing about as per usual. The brat tried to get his father on my case for the incident 5 days ago but all he could do to me was ask “the hunters” to go clear out the stretch a bit away from the village meaning I had to sleep a night outside, not something that bothered me at all.

 

The kid, Ajax, came out the door, he had his bow on his back, sword at his hip and the dagger tucked behind his back, he then walked up to me clearly familiar with their weight on him from the countless hours of practice he had put in.

 

“Thanks for agreeing to take me on, I’ll do my best to meet your expectations” He eagerly parrots to me, probably the same phrase he said to each of the people that took him in for a few cycles as an apprentice.

 

“Cut the crap kid, we both know I took you on as a spur of the moment thing, so how about we make a deal you try not to get yourself and more importantly me killed out there and I’ll try to teach you as much as you can learn about being a hunter, what do you say?” I cut straight to it as soon as we are out of earshot of lazy number 1 and 2.

 

“Yeah I can work with that” he answers back with a self-confident grin.

 

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This was not what I was expecting the old hunter to be like when he agreed to teach me a few days ago but hey, beggars can’t be choosers, and I am pretty sure he knows more than all the rest of the hunters in the village, probably combined.

 

As we head into the forest the way he walks changes and I lose track of him despite looking at him not 3 feet in front of me.

 

“Hey, keep close and stop standing out” I hear from my left and I instantly spot him before activating my stealth skill and try my hardest to follow in his footsteps as well as keep an eye on him while giving him a nod.

 

We wander the forest like this for a little while. He stops and points me towards a small patch of earth with a few scratch marks in a small pit and the dug up earth right next to it.

 

“Wolf tracks” is all he tells me and then starts following what I think must be other tracks the wolf might have left. As he is moving I am trying my hardest to keep my stealth up, keep track of him and scan the route we are taking for any of the marks he is following.

 

Not too much later we reach a small clearing in front of a cave that must be used as the den for the pack. With only one wolf hanging around I take out my bow and as I move to draw back the arrow I feel an iron grip on my wrist.

 

“The fuck do you think you’re doing kid?” He is looking at me like I am a few marbles short of a full sack.

 

“I think we can take it out” I answer, after all isn’t that what we came all this way here for, right.

 

“Hmm, so bloodthirsty when you can’t even gain experience from the fight, take another look at how big the den is, no way this pack is big enough to even attempt to attack the village.” he shows me how small the cave is and that there is deer carcass with only one of it’s legs eaten down by the entrance. "In nature there is no such thing as open territory unless it’s worthless, we kill these wolves something else will take their spot and that something may have a bone to pick with the village.”

 

I can’t disagree with his logic and swing my bow on my back. Before he signals me to move back and I see him doing something as he follows me away from the cave. He must be masking our tracks, no point to tell the wolves something out here might be hunting them I realize.

 

“Not a surprise for your age but you really need to start thinking about more than just the next step. Getting into those fights again and again, wanting to take out a harmless pack, look at least to what the direct consequences of your actions will be. You got lucky the village looked at your fights as defending your sister’s honor and didn’t shun you.

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I bit back my retort about knowing what I was doing and raising my vitality unarmed combat skill and proficiency with healing magic, after all from his point of view my head must look hard enough to crush rocks with.

 

“Here, see these are good, they also keep you awake so try not to eat them when you’re on your way to turn in for the night” he said, handing me a handful of berries, as well as pointing out the bush he took them from. “Careful of the ones that look the same but come from a bush with round leaves, those ones will make you sleepy and sap you of your energy. It's a very bad idea to get them mixed up.”

 

I give him a nod and wonder what evolutionary process led the plants to look almost identical but have such a different effect, when I spot what I think is a hoof mark and I point it out to him.

 

“Not bad, now see if you can find a trail to what made the mark, I'll even give you a hint the foot was pointing in this direction when it made that mark he was pointing towards the right.

 

It takes me a while but I think I see a pattern in the way the earth is pressed on and I follow it through the trees, as soon as I make it through a bush I hear a resounding crack, as I feel a branch give way beneath my foot. An instant later I felt a sharp smack in the back of my head.

 

“Fuck sake kid, stealth or even if you do track the deer that left this it’ll know you are near before you even catch a glimpse of it.” His voice sounded fed up but the small smile on his face gave away the fact that I was going in the right direction and he was happy with that.

 

I ain’t proud to say that we moved about as fast as a snail while I tried to track the path of the deer and he also had to point out to me 2 times that I had lost the patch and move me back a little to pick it up again but a few hours later we finally caught sight of the damn thing calmly munching on grass.

 

I pull out my bow and take aim, I feel my breathing slow my heart rate pick up and I release the arrow. I nail the deer in the neck and don’t even get to celebrate as I see it stumble back from the power of the shot before a second arrow hits it between the eyes.

 

“Not a bad shot kid” Hatchet praises me while lowering his bow. “ Got it right in the neck”

 

“Then why did you take a shot?” calling him on his bluff.

 

“Because animals don’t need to wait to gain the power from levels and while I think the about level 5 deer might have died from that shot it would also have done so from blood loss a couple miles from here and I didn’t want to spend another few hours chasing dinner.” He gruffly remarks. “That wasn’t bad tracking there, to find it from this far away, even if you did lose the trail a few times.”

He was right, and right as I found the deer I had gained the Tracking skill. That thought alone made me happy, after all this time I could actually celebrate gaining a skill with my family. I was looking forward to tonight.

 

On the way back we found some of those sleeping berries and I picked a bush or two of them and packed them in my, well I want to say backpack but it’s more of a backsack.

 

“Didn’t you listen when I told you those aren’t the ones you want to pick, I swear young people it all goes in one ear and out the other” He mocks me after waiting for me to clear both bushes for good measure thinking this is a teachable moment, I would bet money on that.

 

“I know, I’m planning to sell these to Mr. Finean he’s been complaining about the merchants bringing sleeping drafts hiking the price on him” I smile knowing I can also gouge him for just a little under what they sell.

 

“Should have just been a fucking merchant like your sister you clearly think like one” he shook his head but still let out a good natured chuckle at seeing my smile, probably figured out I wasn’t going to be giving Finean that much of a price break on the sleeping berries.

 

“Just make sure to tell him not to eat more than 5 at a time if he wants to wake up the next morning. You can rip off your neighbors all you want but I don’t want their death on my hands just because you wanted to make some money.”

 

The rest of the way back was silent, “Here you can take this in, you shot it first” He passed me the deer. I guess you could say he wanted to make me look more promising than everyone thought I was but I’m almost sure he just didn’t want to have to take it to the butcher and spend another 30 min discussing the price with him.

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