80 Ymiden 709
Dan stretched slowly, methodically, one limb at a time, then picked up his spear. He had been taught a number of solo drill patterns growing up. Each was a series of thrusts and blocks, steps and sweeps intended to allow someone without a training partner to keep in practice with all the various moves that made up fighting with a spear like his. He had learned then by copying demonstrations until he got an approving nod, and still practised them when he remembered to - which probably wasn't as often as his old teacher would have thought that he should.
He shuffled his feet into position, and angled the spear across his body, one hand gripping the shaft up towards the head of the spear, the other hand gripping lower down, towards the butt of the spear. Having both hands on the spear sacrificed length for strength and flexibility. For now, he worked two handed. There were other drills for using the spear one handed, and he would do those later, or on anoher day entirely, whenever he had the time and the energy left from plain survival.
He began by swinging the spear up two handed above his head, as if to block a blow coming down from above, then swung it smoothly - if a shade too slowly - down and to the side, first to the left and then to the right, as if to block blows coming from those directions. He then swept the butt sideways and out, the way he would if he was trying to knock an opponent's leg out from under them, and coiled from that into sweeping the head down as if to slice someone, or something, with the sharpened edge of the spear, and then finished up with a quick thrust and recovery back into the starting stance. Basic moves, that he repeated over and over in different combinations of block and sweep, slice and thrust, so that in theory he didn't get locked into a single pattern but could respond to whatever his opponent did. When his practice time ran out and he had to go and check on the snares he'd set out for rabbits, he took the spear with him out of habit as much as anything.
The snares were all empty, and he was hungry enough to consider taking something larger if it offered him the opportunity. He paused, listening to the wild, while he decided whether to go looking for something, or to head back to the stream and see if fishing was any better today. Branches cracked as something large moved through the brush and Dan froze still where he stood while he worked out what it was and whether it was dangerous as well as predator or prey. He could feel the breeze on his right cheek as the sounds of movement came from in front of him, which meant he was downwind of the animal and didn't have to worry about his scent being carried to it on the wind. Ahead of him, the bushes thinned out, jerking a little as the animal ate the remaining leaves, and he caught sight of it. It was a yearling buck, too young to even have antlers yet, which meant, since it wasn't a doe, he didn't have to worry about taking out a potenial mother of next arc's fawns. He could hunt this deer without risking overall damage to the local deer population. It was small enough that he would be able to process the carcass fully before any of it went bad, yet big enough to give him a good supply of meat, as well as precious skin and sinew. It was, in fact, almost perfect.
He propped the spear against a tree, within easy grabbing range, nocked an arrow to his bow, and waited as the buck edged back and forth in its grazing pattern, looking for the best shot he could get. Finally, it moved enough to give him a clear shot of the deer's chest through a gap in the bushes. He drew the bow back to his jaw, sighted along the arrow, and loosed the shot. It hit the centre of the chest, a large enough target that even he couldn't miss at this range, and sank deep, but not deep enough to prevent the deer from turning and charging him before it died.
Dan hastily tossed his bow to one side, snatched up his spear and pointed it straight at the charging animal, which suddenly looked horribly, dangerously, large. He grounded the foot of the spear in the dirt, so that it was braced for the charge, and the momentum would funnel through the spear into the ground, rather than through his arms into him, and relying on his strength. It was time to put the drills, or some of them, into practice for once. It was only then that he remembered why boar spears - which his wasn't, not in any way - had sturdy cross pieces. It was to prevent the animal from simply continuing straight up the shaft of the spear as it sank in and taking you with it. The sheer weight and momentum of the impact sent him sprawling back in the dirt, even as the now dead deer slumped on top of him. He lay there for a long moment, bruised, and grazed, and knocked utterly breathless. Then he dug his elbows into the dirt, and shoved at the deer until he could drag himself free and start on the slow, messy, process of butchering his kill.
First, he pulled his spear and arrow out of the carcass, drew his knife and cut the deer's throat, letting it bleed itself clean before the blood itself curdled and contaminated the meat.Then he began to skin the deer's shoulders. He pulled up an edge of hide until it stretched the bonds holding skin to muscle, slid the knife in to cut it free, then pulled a bit more. Sometimes the knife slipped and poked a hole in the hide. Gradually though, he got one side of the hide free, and paused to clean the knife and start on the meat. He cut the foreleg free, hoisted it up on his shoulders, and carried it back to camp, then came back and did the same for the hind leg. The remaining half of the deer was now light enough that he could just about drag it along by its own skin, and that way he got the whole thing back to his own camp and in position to cut it up for preservation.
He cut thin, not quite even slices from the body of the deer, and strung them up on the drying lines to dry and smoke high above his fire. Wood smoke would have added a better flavour, but he hadn't the time or the energy to waste hunting down wood when he had dried dung from his horses to keep him warm. The smoke as much as anything else would keep the flies and other insects away. When he got down to the bone, he heaved the carcass over onto the other side and began to skin the other half.
At last, after much pulling and tugging and cutting, he managed to get the entire skin free and pushed it to one side while he dealt with the rest of the meat. He cut it up with tired hands that were clammy with drying blood, removed and sorted the guts, and tossed the smaller bones and the scraps that clung to them into a pot. He added water to make a sort of soup and hung the pot over the fire to simmer long and slow.
While it cooked, he cleaned his spear, and checked both it and the arrow over for damage, then took himself down to the stream and began to clean himself up. He found a patch of soapwort and crushed a handful of leaves, dipping them in the water to create a soapy lather, then winced his way out of his clothes and used the soapwort to scrub the dirt from the scrapes, grazes, and bruises he'd acquired bringing down the deer. He shook the worst of the dirt from his clothes too, and pulled them back on over clean damp skin. They clung to him as he plodded back to his camp and settled by the fire to dry out and warm up. The fact that he had needed his spear to bring the deer down meant that all the practice he had put in was wrth it, he decided, leaning forward to add a bit more fuel to the fire and stir the soup, but the fact that he had gotten so much battered in the process meant that he really ought to work harder on it and improve. Next time he might not be so lucky as to get off with only scrapes, and then where would he be?
"Signed words" Spoken words
