The Dragons Of ArborChapter 14 Spirit Song
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The sound of the surf was alternately soothing and disturbing, depending on the time of day and my mood at the moment. I found it restful in the afternoons, laying in the sun. But at nights when I was trying to sleep, the sound of the sea called in a way that would wake me over and over again in panic. If that wasn't enough, I dreamt several times of falling into a stone wall like it was mist, and being lost in a deep, endless bone-jarring hum and throb that sounded in my dreaming ears like a ringing bell, a bell that was the entirety of Arbor, and the ringing tone would run across me like waves on a shore, and just as they threatened to tear me apart, I woke, gasping for air and desperate to get away from something that wasn't there.
Oereia was the name of the little fishing village that had announced my return to civilization, though any of the couple of dozen residents who lived here would laugh at you if you called their little village a sign of civilization.
I had been taken in, almost immediately and without question by Hold and Floe Mosa. I worked, certainly, mending nets and repairing gear under Floe's watchful eye. But I was given considerable latitude because I would go hunting every three days or so, back into the forests and hills and I would always come back with something, a deer or hog, or blacknecks. The people of Oereia lived mostly on the larder provided by the sea. My contributions were exotic and rare, and delicious.
By my internal calendar, it had been over three years since I had seen my parents, and I was hoping to get somewhere eventually where I could at least send them a letter, or tube a note through the Wizard's network. For the time being though, I had committed to teaching three of Oereia's older children to hunt, and that was going to take at least a season.
"Link, you are still bending your wrist too much here." I told the oldest of my students. "Your wrist is coming straight as you release and it is throwing off your shot. Here. Arms so, elbow so, wrist so."
I stood behind the thirteen year old and positioned his arm and joints as they needed to be. I already knew both of the boys I taught considered me an object of romantic interest, however unrealized.
"Here watch Spray again." I said, nodding to my one female student. Poor Spray Latta was the same age as both the boys, all of them past thirteen, and headed for fourteen soon. I think Spray would have been overjoyed to be the subject of even a moment's fascination by the other of my pupils, but not this one. He made a point of dropping into moon-eyed fascination over me and completely ignoring her. It was difficult enough for her, as Spray was a better student and hunter than either of them.
"Look at Scatter too. Arm, elbow, wrist. The sooner your body learns the correct positions, the sooner your mind can be devoted to the target."
Scatter Diophre was the tallest of my three, though only an inch or so more than Spray, but he had long arms for his size, and his mechanics with the bow had to be adjusted slightly for that. I had gotten my students to collectively work on making him a new bow with a draw more suited for his frame. We would probably have to do the same for Spray before the season was out. She was going through a growing spurt, as young girls her age tend to do, and she would probably be taller than either boy by the end of the season.
Link Yauntz was my problem student. He couldn't seem to keep focused, couldn't remember his lessons from day to day, had trouble with his coordination and I suspected he was near-sighted as well, but hadn't been able to confirm it. Joist Yauntz was the village's mayor though, and so I could suggest, and I could redo, but there was no hope of getting his father the Mayor to withdraw him from the training.
Today was a practice day. A heavy mist had rolled in off the sea and settled in as a dense fog that made moving off into the hills a dangerous idea. If we could get into the high hills we would probably find ourselves above the fog, but it was getting there that was dangerous.
I had stepped back from Link to let him watch Spray, which he dutifully did. Spray made a perfect draw and fired her arrow across the foggy field and into the stuffed burlap and canvas target that we had built ourselves.
"Very good." I said to Spray. When I said that, Link turned, arrow set and partially drawn, to make a comment of some kind. The point of his arrow passed across Scatter's location and headed towards mine. He never got to make his comment. I reached out and grabbed the shaft of the arrow to prevent it from being loosed, and slapped Link across the face. I slapped him hard and in anger, but without any external power in it, and it sent him flying backwards, but only a few feet.
"Get out. Go home. Tell your father what you did and tell him you are not welcome back in this class."
It was the second time that the idiot had turned from the firing line with his weapon drawn and ready to fire. It had been the first rule they had been given, and this boy couldn't seem to learn it, which made him a danger to us all.
"Scatter. Step up and take your shot." I said as soon as Link was gone. The young man did just that, taking a careful, measured shot that flew just as true as Spray's had.
"River, if Link isn't going to be with us, can we do more stick work?" Spray asked.
"Oh yeah!" Scatter added. "We never get to do any training with the staff."
"I have been asked to teach you to hunt, not to fight. The staff is not a hunter's weapon." I answered, taking in the disappointment on both their faces. "But the fog does make even these target lessons a bit of a waste today, doesn't it? Okay, stick work it is."
"Do you both have work to do this afternoon?" I asked.
"I have to help my mom get the rugs clean, but that shouldn't take too long." Spray answered.
"I have to put another coat of pitch on the planks of Dad's skiff and check the caulking, but that shouldn't take too long."
"Alright, then we will do some work with the staff this morning and plan for a hunt in the afternoon if the fog burns off by then, otherwise it will be running on the beach."
Their groans at that were not unexpected. They hated running, especially on the sand, but I made them do it. These were hard working folk, and their children weren't exempted from that condition, but the stamina they would gain from the running would serve them well as hunters. Game seldom fell to the hunter who was sweating, tired and struggling for breath in the hills.
We rarely were able to get in any work with the staff, because Link was not allowed, his father complaining, rightly, that it was not a hunter's skill, and not what I had been asked to teach them. But on those days when Link couldn't make the lessons, for whatever reason, most of which I ascribed to his basic distaste for the lessons themselves, I would give Scatter and Spray some instruction. They made good sparring partners as well. Scatter's strength and reach was more than offset by Spray's speed and coordination. She struck me as having more natural talent for it than Scatter. She seemed to absorb all my lessons instantly, bow and staff. Scatter took it with good humor, calling Spray 'warrior woman' on those occasions when he was in a mood to tease. I suspected there might be more teasing, and other things, as they grew older. They seemed a natural fit.
At midday meal in the Mosa household, the topic was the fishermen who had not returned before the fog rolled in.
"They will be holed up in some inlet or bay somewhere, with a fire on the beach and some crab boiling in a pot. They'll break out the jug and have a little something to warm away the chill of the fog." Hold said with confidence.
"I hope they didn't get separated from each other." Floe said. "They'll do better if they are together."
There were five ships still out, they were the village's largest, and the ones that typically fished farther from port than the others.
The village had three separate 'fleets' that fished for three separate kinds of catch. The sole fishermen were the ones who stayed closest to port, fishing in the long sandy shallow that ran north and west from Oereia. The crab fishermen went further out and fished deeper, with their larger boats tending and pulling pots that had been set the day before. The largest boats belonged to the whitefin catch. These large, meaty and delicious fish were caught much further east and out in the truly deep waters. Those boats tended to skirt the shore on their way east before heading out to the deep waters. The familiar shoreline, in combination with the location of the sun in the sky let them fish a different line every trip, or to repeat the same line again if the fishing had been particularly good, and they could do it without resorting to the more rigorous nautical time and chart discipline that the serious sea-going long distance travelers did.
It was the whitefin fleet that hadn't returned, but it wasn't an unusual occurrence, so it was given no great importance, but I had already learned in my time here that fishermen could be a superstitious lot, and their hearts and minds were never far from the Spirit's influence. Compared to these hard working folks even the devotion and faith of the Sisterhood seemed flighty and shallow.
Scatter's father was one of the whitefin captains, and I was reluctant to ask him to leave the village to set off into the hills on a hunting trip, but I knew that if I treated the fleet's absence as unusual, I would be 'hexing' the situation.
The sun did break through, in scattered patches at first, but we were able to follow the creek back up and into the hills before we set off parallel to it and into the higher hills. We were looking for some gully hogs today, hoping that the fog this morning would have kept them out and feeding longer than usual. The series of ravines and pocket valleys in these hills were ideal gully hog locations, and we had a good chance of coming home with something.
Spray was taking the point on our line of travel, keeping the field of fire to our left and slightly downhill. There were a series of flat thorn bushes growing along the opposite slope, and the berries and green shoots growing on them were prime gully hog food.
I spotted the slight movement first, but waited to see who would notice it. Scatter spotted it first and made a signal. Spray turned slightly back towards us and spotted it as well. They both looked at me. Scatter had seen it first so I gave him the signal to go ahead. He silently brought an arrow to the bow and drew it. I watched his form critically, but it looked good. He and Spray were both well past the point in their training where they had form problems.
Suddenly the arrow was loosed, and it flashed in the afternoon light and struck the hog high in the throat. The hog squealed in panic and pain and began scrambling through the brush. Suddenly a blur of noise and motion came past us from our right, and I heard Spray grunt loudly and then collapse with a cry. Another gully hog had been flushed from just in front and above us on our side of the ravine, and had knocked Spray down on its way by. Without thinking I managed to get two of my throwing knives into it as it passed, but then my attention turned to Spray.
"Scatter, take your knife and go check your kill. Be careful!" I said.
Spray lay in the dirt shaking her head and groaning.
I didn't see any blood though there was a groove gouged into her leathers. I didn't expect a life threatening wound, but even a blunt blow to the heart could be life threatening, so there was no time to assume the best.
"Spray, where does it hurt?" I asked. She did indeed indicate her upper chest, on her right side. She must have turned right into the hog's charge, the sound of it drawing her attention.
I began to open her tunic and pull her shirt up. I could sense her panic for a moment.
"I sent Scatter to check on his kill." I said, which relaxed her a little.
Spray had a fiery red streak right across her breast, which was probably going to be very sore and very beautifully bruised for a while. It would look much more glorious in a day or two, I was sure.
I did a little pushing and prodding, checking for broken ribs. Spray's nipple popped right up to full hardness immediately. I looked her in the eye and raised an eyebrow.
"It does that a lot these days." She giggled. "If Scatter were touching me like you just did I would have probably fainted dead away."
I got her clothing back to normal and had her stand.
"Move that right arm and shoulder." I told her.
She did, and gave an immediate gasp of pain.
"Those muscles all along here just below the collar bone are going to be really sore, and you'll bruise beautifully, but it looks like the hog was more interested in getting past you than in goring you. You took the side of a tusk."
With Spray on her feet, I went looking for the second hog and my knives. I found both about twenty feet back down the ravine. One of my knives had struck the hog right behind the ear, an almost perfect shot that I couldn't reasonably take credit for. I had thrown without time to pick a target.
I brought my hog back up to where I had left Spray and found Scatter back with his hog as well, standing beside spray with a look of concern.
"Spray says its only a bruise, but she won't show it to me." Scatter said.
"Scatter, our little warrior woman was struck in the chest. Right above the heart. You will not be seeing that part of her anatomy today, I can guarantee that." I answered.
He blushed, she blushed, they both smiled, and then we all laughed. Time to field dress our hogs and head back home. Field dressing hogs is never fun work, and here in the steep sided ravine where we had been hunting, we had less than ideal conditions, so we did the minimal needed to safely transport our game without damaging it.
"what should I carry?" Spray asked.
"You are walking wounded at the moment." I told her. "We've got the hogs, you just make sure you don't fall on your ass on the way back."
"Okay. I'm sure my Mom will get upset when she sees the bruise I'm going to have, but I can sure give her an 'I told you so' about these leathers you made us all wear. I think they protected me from getting gouged."
The fleet was back by the time we came down out of the hills, and there was already a bit of a mini celebration going on. I knew better than to mingle with these fishermen when they were drinking. A few of them were too likely to forget that it was supposed to a hands-off deal with me if they didn't want to wind up with broken bones or worse.
Scatter and I dropped both hogs off at Grip Twill's house. He was the acknowledged master butcher for the village, and the townsfolk had collectively built a meat locker in the back of his place for storing the communal larder.
"How did you do?" Floe asked, though she could see blood on me and could make a good guess.
"We got two gully hogs." I answered. "But we had a close call. The second one surprised us and scraped Spray a good one with a tusk. Her leathers protected her, so she'll have an impressive bruise, and her right shoulder and arm are going to be sore for a while."
"Maybe we can have a big feast tomorrow after the men have finished their carousing." Floe commented.
"That would be good. The rest of the village can see the consequences of the training I've been doing, both good and bad. I almost wish it had been Scatter who had been scraped. Spray is the better hunter of the two of them and there would be less public reaction to the close call."
"Would you like a bath?" Floe asked as I was finally polishing off the plate of leftover dinner that she had kept for me. "I'll fetch Tremor to come heat the water at the bath house for you."
Tremor Stelp was the proud possessor of a minor Talent, and could heat water up to a toasty temperature, though not up to a boil. The trick was, it didn't matter if it was a teacup worth or a pool large enough to hold ten men. She couldn't heat the teacup's water to any higher temperature than she did the pool's. The water had to be standing too, in some way my mirror image, since my power seemed to be tied to moving water.
I took my leathers off and washed them in my room with a pan of hot water heated, the more traditional way, in Floe's tea kettle. I threw on a pair of cotton pants and a soft cotton sweater that had been one of my first gifts from the Mosas after they took me in. It was special too, because the fishing families here were more prone to wool and canvas than they were to cotton, which had to be bought or bartered for. The shirt had been Floe's, and she had hoped to hand it down, but after two stillborn daughters, there had been no more chances. I was the happy surrogate for that loss, and happy for now to be so.
The bath house was the only stone building in Oereia, and the only one with a lock on the door. It sat beside the small stream that ran beside the town, and a channel of cut rock ran to the stream to divert a bit of the flow into the baths. The water ran through a series of stone ribs on the bottom of the channel that helped remove debris and sediment from the water before it made it to the tubs themselves.
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