Lessons in Hunting

        Aradiel Argentsong ground her teeth and wished for the tenth time that she'd studied a little - just a little bit- of magic, like her mother had wanted. If she could command the air even the tiniest bit, she wouldn't be faced with this dilemma now: breath through her nose, and smell kodo shit for the rest of her life, or breath through her mouth, and get a lung full of the fat, buzzing flies that followed her like her own personal black cloud.

        "What is your litany this week?" the Huntingmaster asked behind her, voice low and full of gravel and other people's teeth. She sighed, and smelled kodo shit.

        "This is my shovel. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My shovel is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life."

        Privately, she thought the words more fitted to the elegant elven bow that hung over her bunk in the training hall, and which she hadn't touched in a month. It was only the thought of her parents' self-satisfied smirks that kept her from fetching it and leaving.

        "So what have the kodos been eating this week, student?" said the Huntingmaster, as she resolutely shoveled dung. She turned to look at him- or more appropriately, up at him. The ancient orc towered over her, tusks long and chipped, skin painted in darker bands of brown and black. He looked, she thought uncharitably, like a green tiger. She turned her gaze down to the shit she was shovelling. It was dry and clumpy, long, half-digested strands of grass matted into it. Here and there, red dots showed through where berries swallowed whole had been passed unscathed.

        "Lingham bushes and sedge," she said after a second. Last week it had been cliffmoss and desertbloom bulbs. She surprised herself by continuing: "You've moved them around to the north side of the bluff, haven't you?" The Huntingmaster grunted and picked at his tusk with with one of the bearclaws strung around his neck on a leather cord.

        "Go and get your bow," he said. "It's time for an archery lesson." Finally. The month of shovelling kodo shit was going to be worth it.

 

* * *

 

        "That's a thunderlizard," she said, crouched behind a bush. He hadn't even let her wash the dung off her boots.

        "So shoot it," he said.

        "I thought we were having an archery lesson."

        "This is a lesson."

        "I thought the point of a lesson was to get better. I don't think I can improve if it eats me after I fail to kill it with a single shot."

        He frowned at her, thick brows descending over dark eyes. She ground her teeth, and pulled back the bowstring.

 

        Moments later, as the pair ran pell-mell for where the Huntingmaster had left the wolves, she dared a glance back at the massive, scaled behemoth that was lumbering after them deceptively quickly, one tiny arrow sticking out of its shoulder.

        "Two lessons," said the Huntingmaster. "Number one: running is the most important thing you will ever learn as a hunter. Number two: get a bigger bow."

 

        That night, she fell into bed stinking of sweat and, yes, kodo dung. She tossed and rolled, trying to escape the omnipresent smell, and the imaginary eyes of her parents.

 

* * *

 

        The Huntingmaster woke her in the morning with the mimicked sound of a thunderlizard roaring in her ear. She shrieked and fell out of bed, still in yesterday's clothes, only to find him grinning at her.

        "Next time I want you with your bow in hand in under ten seconds," he said. "And the time after that, I don't want you to be surprised." She groaned and rubbed at her eyes, only to open them again in shock when he leaned down and sniffed her audibly.

        "What are you doing?"

        "Smelling you. Too much sweat- a raptor would know that stink a mile away. Go and wash, and then back into the kodo dung for the morning. At noon, we're taking another trip."

        She cursed quietly under her breath, and thought treacherously of the stables back home, where the only dung came from horses, and somebody else shovelled it. She'd been expecting panthers when she'd signed up for this; instead she'd gotten pack animals, and dirt.

 

        At noon they took a trip to the bowyer, a massive tauren with thick stalks of grain braided into his beard, who dwarfed even the Huntingmaster. The two talked over Aradiel's head in Orcish for a good ten minutes before the tauren went into a back room of his little yurt and came out with a bow Aradiel doubted she could even lift, let alone pull.

        "Buy it, girl," the Huntingmaster said.

        "There's no way I can fire an arrow out of that thing," she said.

        "That's fine. You're not buying arrows. It's for your arm. When you can pull a decent amount of weight, we'll come back for something more your size."

        As she counted out the bowyer's gold coins, she savoured having functioning limbs, certain it would be the last time.

 

        After they left the tauren's yurt, the Huntingmaster took her out into the badlands again. Her loaned wolf ran happily beneath her, shaggy fur coarse beneath her fingers where a horse's roan hide had been smooth, back home. The Huntingmaster called a stop near yet another stand of trees for no reason she could discern, and she slipped off the wolf's back and patted it gingerly on the head. The Huntingmaster coughed, and she pulled a parcel wrapped in heavy, waxed parchment out of her satchel, and unwrapped three thick slices of bloody meat. Two she gave to the wolves.

        "What's the third one for?" she asked, only to drop her jaw as the Huntingmaster grunted "me" and picked it up in two thick fingers to dangle it over his open mouth for a moment.

        "Hah. Actually, it's for you," he said, then slapped her in the face with it, smearing her with blood and meat-juices. Then he turned her bodily around and pushed her on the rump to get her moving towards the bush.

        "Go find us a raptor!" He called after her. "It shouldn't be hard. They're scavengers, and you smell like a dead kodo!"

        "What do I do if I find one?" she asked over her shoulder as she stumbled into the bush.

        "You could try punching it."

        "No, really."

        "What's lesson number one?"

 

        An hour later, when she climbed over a fallen log and the bushes started to rustle, she reviewed lesson number one, and ran.

 

* * *

 

        "And that's how you catch a raptor," the Huntingmaster said. "Of course, it's easier if you have a rope."

        "You...you killed that bird with your bare hands."

        "We needed new bait after you fell into the river and washed off all that scent we worked so hard on."

        Aradiel wimpered, and tried not to picture the golden songbird she'd left in its silver cage back home. The raptor hissed at her futilely, jaws trussed closed with the belt from the Huntingmaster's pants.

        "I think we'll camp out here tonight," said the Huntingmaster.

        "We didn't bring any bed rolls," said Aradiel, tentatively, hoping against hope that that might actually be a deterrent.

        "The ground will do," said the Huntingmaster. "Now lead the wolves to that river you said you fell in, and take the canteens with you. If you see anything edible, bring it back with you- tonight we eat what you provide."

        Aradiel groaned, and her stomach growled. Later that evening, when the Huntingmaster took the larger "Instructor's Share" of the double-handful of berries she'd scrounged, she knew it was going to be a long night.

 

* * *

 

        "Don't clench your knees, girl, he'll buck you," the Huntingmaster said. "And if he gets you on your back, he'll open your gut and feast on your innards." She let out a breath, and tried not to clench her knees against the raptor's ribcage as she drew back the bowstring. It was surprisingly easy- the massive tauren bow had done its work on her arms over the months since she'd bought it, and if she still couldn't fire it, the smaller bow she'd gone back to the bowyer's yurt for later was proving to be more than enough to fell most creatures.

        She sighted down the arrow at the target downrange, inhaled, and then breathed out once more as she released the string-

        "What have the kodos been eating this week?" the Huntingmaster asked just as she let the arrow fly, and it flew past the target to sink into the dirt as she said "what?" and clenched her knees. The raptor bucked and she toppled off to land on her back. She tensed up as the raptor turned on its heels and dug its snout into her abdomen, only to let out a shaky breath as it simply began to nuzzle.

        "Once they're broken, they're broken for life," the Huntingmaster chuckled. "Now what have the kodo been eating?"

 

* * *

 

        "It's dung was full of brittleweed and it's the third month- moon- of the season," Aradiel said. "So it's just finished its rutting season, and will be lethargic. I'll ride by and put two arrows in its neck, and that'll be that."

        "Is that so?" said the Huntingmaster. It was a month later, and the two of them were once again crouched behind a bush, watching a thunderlizard.

        "Yes," said Aradiel. "It's so."

        "Then so be it," said the old orc, and she slung up onto her raptor's back and pulled her bow out of its holster on her saddle. She had dark stripes in brown and black smeared on her pale skin- unguents to hide her scent, and also simple visual camouflage. She looked something like a white tiger, actually.

        She knocked an arrow as she spurred the raptor on, and they darted out of their bush towards the thunderlizard, which turned its ponderous head to look at them. Then its beady eyes narrowed as it recognized her, somehow, despite her camouflage. It shifted its massive shoulders and prepared to spit lighting, sparks crackling off of the plates of its back, and off of the tiny arrow embedded in its shoulder blade. The air reeked of ozone.

        Aradiel whistled, and her raptor changed courses beneath her, dodging the first lighting bolt, which grounded itself behind her, turning a jagged circle of sand to glass. She fired as she went, sinking arrow after arrow into the thunderlizard's shoulders and face- but its bones were thick, and it hunched to protect the fleshy portions of its neck. She spurred her raptor on, and it dashed in and lept at the thunderlizard to claw at its flesh with its rear talons. The thunderlizard turned its head to bite futiley at the already-retreating raptor, and Aradiel dropped her bow back into its saddle-holster and dove off of the raptor's back to cling to the thunderlizard's leathery neck and stab viciously, repeatedly, into the softer exposed skin with the long knife from her belt. Blood fountained when she severed the carotid, and after only a moment the thunderlizard began to slump.

        "Away, girl!" shouted the Huntingmaster, and she rolled away as the dying lizard's electrical energy began to discharge into the ground in random arcs and bursts. It was only when the last *pop* died away that she realized she was saying "shitshitshitshitshit" over and over, and she forced herself to breathe slowly and calmly as she picked herself up and walked on shaky legs back over to the corpse.

        "Two shots to the neck, and that will be that, hmm?" said the Huntingmaster, as he came closer. Aradiel ignored him, and wiped thick, red blood off of her face. She'd killed the thunderlizard, and now she had to suffer through what came next. She pulled the long knife out of the corpse's throat and walked around its massive bulk to its flank, and together she and the Huntingmaster heaved it over onto its side.

        "Do I really have to eat its heart?" she asked, futilely.

        "Just start cutting," said the Huntingmaster. "We don't want to be here when the raptors show up. I don't have enough belts for a whole pack."

        Grumbling, she began to cut. If only her parents could see her now.

        "Still," said the Huntingmaster. "You did well. There's work to be done, but...we might make a hunter out of you yet."

 

* * *

 

        Back at the Argentsong Manor in Quel'thalas, Viridia Argentsong went to investigate who might be pounding at her door. She faintly wondered if it might be her daughter, finally come back to beg to learn magic like she should have years ago. She opened the door, and looked up- way up.

        "Do this be da Argentsong house, mon? I an' I be lookin' for mage training," said the troll, blue-skinned and savagely dressed. Viridia shut the door and quickly opened it again, in case she had been imagining it. What were the neighbours going to think?