30 Vhailar 702
The mighty hunter moved through the woods, his feather-light tread making no more sound upon the forest floor than snow falling. Like a panther he glided stealthily from tree to tree, closing on his unsuspecting prey, his shadowy outline only fleetingly visible to the keenest eye. When he reached a broad-trunked oak, not ten paces from his target, the hunter paused, leaning against the tree, unmoving as if he were a part of it. Then, after several trills, he peered carefully around the side of the trunk, the merest sliver of his head barely altering the tree’s outline. His quarry sat there, unsuspecting, defenseless.
He willed his breathing to slow and his heart to stop pounding as he slowly drew back the string of his bow, arrow knocked and poised for the kill. Countless trials of successful hunting had taught him that, as noiseless as he had been to this point, something as small as the creak of his bow limbs flexing might yet give him away. So he was all the more careful now not to make a sound. With his breath, body, and bow all firmly under the control of an iron will that would have awed Karem herself, the woodsman rounded the trunk and prepared to fire.
A clump of mud slammed into the far side of the tree trunk, just a few feet from the hunter’s head. ”I can hear you a mile away, idiot,” called Osric to his younger brother. Oram, undeterred, drew and fired his makeshift bow. ”Ha! Die, beast!” he shouted, as the stick tumbled a few feet through the air and landed well short of his elder brother’s feet.
Osric looked down at it. ”Nice shot,” he observed mockingly. ”Now it’s my turn again.” He bent down to pick up another clump of mud.
”Don’t you dare!” cried Oram, turning to flee. ”I’ll tell dad!”
A large hand caught him in the chest, arresting his run. ”Tell me what?” asked Oleg Mednix, peering down at the boy. The father’s hand then took hold of the little bow Oram held and removed it from his unprotesting grasp. ”That you were using my bow drill to shoot Os with sticks? Do you even know what this is?” Oram looked up apprehensively, saying nothing. Oleg didn’t press for an answer to that question. Instead, he asked another one: ”Speaking of sticks: there was a stick that went with this, whittled smooth. Do you know where it is? I hope you didn’t shoot it off into the woods somewhere and lose it.”
With a smirk, Osric pointed at the stick where it had landed when his brother had shot at him with it. Oleg glanced over. ”Good. How about you bring it over here to me.” The smirk faded when Osric realized his father was talking to him and not Oram. Chastened, he picked up the stick and brought it to Oleg. The hunter held the bow drill and stick and regarded them for several tense trills while his two sons waited in anxious silence. Finally, Oleg looked at Oram and invited him to look at the items more carefully. ”You may have noticed,” he said, flexing the bow string, ”that this bow isn’t strung very tightly. And you should also have noticed that this stick isn’t the right shape to be an arrow shaft.” He rapped Oram on the head with said stick, not hard, but sharply enough to get and keep his attention.
The hunter regarded both boys, then held up both the stick and the bow and waggled them for emphasis. ”How would you two like to learn how a grown up *really* uses these?” Oram and Osric exchanged an apprehensive look. They both *knew* that this was some sort of trap, to get them to do something they didn’t really want to do. But some traps couldn’t be avoided even when you knew they were there. The boys looked back and both shrugged wordlessly.
”Such enthusiasm,” Oleg said dryly. ”I see this is going to be a lot of fun. Come!”
