About an hour passed as they worked their way through the dense, lush forest. Ahead of them, the trees fell away into a wide-open glade. It sloped down on either side towards a languid stream that flowed through its centre.
Calen knelt by the river, breathing in the fresh air, unfiltered by the dampness within the thick of the forest. The burbling of the river relaxed him. There was something about the way that it melted into the back of his mind without him noticing. But as he listened, a noise drifted into his ears. Something in the distance – a low rumbling, snapping, and cracking of twigs and fallen branches, rising to a crescendo. Dann and Rist seemed not to hear anything. They knelt by the river a few paces up, probably arguing as per usual. “Dann, how far into the forest did you say the herd of deer should be?”
“Ah, maybe an hour or so more.” Dann took a swig from his waterskin. “There’s a larger stream farther in, and they usually don’t come this far out. It’s too close to the village.”
Calen stood up slowly. The rumbling noise was getting louder. The birds around them chirped frantically as they jettisoned from the trees in flock. Calen caught Dann’s eye. He could hear it now too. Dann bounded over towards Calen, drawing his bow and nocking an arrow.
“How many of them were there?” Calen whispered, unsure why he felt the need to lower his voice.
Dann didn’t get the chance to answer. The bushes on the opposite side of the glade shook; the cracking of branches and stomping of hooves surrounded them. A tremendous stag, about eight feet in height, burst through the copse of trees on the other side of the glade, only stopping long enough to acknowledge the existence of the three hunters. Its powerful, sinuous horns caught Calen’s eye. As the stag came crashing towards them, more erupted from the trees. Four, nine, twelve; he stopped counting.
A piercing whistle zoomed past Calen’s ear. Dann’s arrow plunged into the right eye of the lead stag, killing it instantly. Its gargantuan body cascaded down the slope of the glade, slamming into a nearby fallen tree before being swallowed by the stampede. Both Calen and Rist loosed their own arrows into the onrushing herd. If they hit anything, it was impossible to tell, as the arrows disappeared into the blur of deer. The herd was nearly upon them.
Dann nocked another arrow.
“Get down!” Calen screamed.
Rist immediately threw himself behind the large boulder to which Calen had pointed, but Dann was lost in focus. His eyes narrowed as he found his target. He let his arrow fly just as Calen collided into him, sending their two bodies crashing to the ground behind the boulder.
In a daze, Dann whipped his head around to glare at Calen for ruining his shot, but seemed to catch sight of his rucksack being trampled into nothingness where he had just been standing. He glanced at Calen and nodded.
After a few minutes, when they were sure that the stampede had passed, they emerged from behind their guardian boulder.
“Well… fuck me. That was close,” Dann said.
“You nearly got killed, Dann!” Rist snapped.
“Pfft… You nearly got killed, Dann,” came the mocking reply as Dann knelt to look at the body of the large stag he had shot through the eye.
Calen’s heart still pounded in his chest as he surveyed the glade with a pensive gaze. It was a mess of upturned earth and broken branches. A shiver ran up his spine at the sight of the mangled body of a fawn that lay trampled on the opposite side of the glade, the snapped shaft of an arrow protruding from its neck. “Something spooked them good…”
Rist rested against the trunk of a tree, then slid to the ground with a sigh. “Maybe a bear?”
“I don’t think it was a bear. Come and look at this,” Dann called, waving his hand up in the air, a tremble in his voice. When Calen and Rist reached Dann, he was stooped over the corpse of the stag, tracing his hand along a vicious, wide-open gash that ran the length of the animal’s ribs.
“Gods…”
“What could have done that?” Calen asked.
“I have no idea,” Dann admitted, pursing his lips. “But the cut is far too clean to be a tooth or claw. It’s marked down to the bone…”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure,” Dann said. His hand probed the edge of the wound. He let out a sigh. “Whatever did it, I don’t think we should stick around any longer than we have to.
CHAPTER 2
The Gilded Dragon
By the time they emerged from the thick of the forest, the sun had already begun to set along the dusky horizon, but The Glade was still visible by the plumes of greyish-white smoke that gently rose from chimneys, and the warm glow of tallow candles that illuminated the cloudy glass windows of the houses.
Calen stopped to breathe in the fresh air and gaze over the familiar sight of the village in the distance. He tilted his head back and rolled his shoulders, cracking his neck to relieve some of the ache that had set in. The return journey had taken them a lot longer; they had taken turns hauling the stag, which was no simple task considering its size.
Dann had removed its entrails to reduce the weight and strapped it to his makeshift sled. It was quite a handy contraption. The two planks of reinforced wood were locked together with two bridging slats and secured with handmade bolts. The deer was then strapped to the planks with roughly cut rope, which was strung through small metal loops on the upper edge of the planks. It made it a lot easier to haul the deer and caused less damage to the fur. It was quite a
