Session 3: The Priestess Sings

The wolf had wandered off into the forest for many hours but it reappears when the butchering begins. Despite being such a large animal, it manages to carefully prod its snout between the legs of the humans without tripping them up. It lounges there comfortably, quickly snatching up and devouring any scraps they discard and catching the falling blood on its tongue.

After it practically swallows down a whole hoof, it notices Ragna staring at it in surprise. "Nothing should be wasted," it says. "Prey hunted well deserves respect. This is our way of showing respect to it." She frowns but before she can ask more questions, the wolf shows her its teeth, not as a direct threat but as a warning that she shouldn't press the issue. Ragna purses her lips but breaks eye contact, continuing to cut at the meat.

The wolf picks up a massive femur between its jaws and carefully manoeuvres it out from between the working humans. It settles down for a nice long chew; the rest of the carcass will be eaten later.

Vasil is exhausted. Between the weight of his eyelids, and the shame in his chest, he wishes for nothing more than to go to sleep. Taft's tone seems to suggest that he is expected to butcher his kill, or at least stay to learn.

Vasil remembers himself as a young apprentice, leaning the most basic of metalwork, of sweeping forges, and pumping bellows. The menial work that comes with the craft. Now, as then, he does his duty. He shoves down his weariness, and does as he is asked. He holds a leg, pulls hide, or scoops handfuls of offal, careful to keep his fingers clear of the hungry wolf's teeth. It's crowded with so many around the buck, but luckily it is a large animal.

Vasil helps to save long strips of siniew and appropriate bow string material. Enough to make several, and for patch repair existing pieces.

His knees ache, along with his back. His cuts and bruises sting. The old wound in his leg continues its dull, slow throb, as always. He persevers.

Taft asks him what happened to the arrows. Vasil explains that some were lost in the hunt, but the majority were lost while carrying the animal carcass back to their camp. He explains how he tripped, spilling the contents of the quiver down an embankment, how he gathered what he could. Salvaging heads and fletching of broken arrows. He believes he can make more arrows.

Taft doesn't seem disappointed in Vasil for losing the arrows, but his face becomes grim at the practical challenges they will face.

"We will have a hard time hunting without the arrows. And I cannot defend us as well, either. But we have a lot of meat now, so hopefully it will carry us through. And Shadow can help."

"I don't think it's worth our time to stay here to fletch more arrows. We need feathers, and obsidian. I think our best bet is to follow your trail on our way into the forest, and see if we can recover any more arrows at the embankment where you fell."

There is a palpable tension around the hunter. He moves a little more quickly than usual, and is often lost in thought, as he tries to figure out the best way to bring everyone home safe. He doesn't tell anyone, but he is wondering whether it might be safer to turn back.

He will wait and see if they can find the embankment where Vasil fell.

It is first light, and Vasil and Eirikr are tired from their long hunt. As Taft drags them to where Vasil claims to have lost the arrows, it’s clear quite how lost the two of them were.

Taft exhaustively searches the ravine where Vasil says he lost the arrows. It is getting dark before he finally accepts that he will not be able to find any of the precious missiles.

"We should set up camp. We can move deeper into the forest tomorrow."

He grimly begins collecting firewood. This expedition is taking a bad turn and he hopes he can still bring everyone home safe.

Vasil trails Taft, explaining the path he and Eirikr took, carrying the huge stag carcass.
"I think I tripped on that root." He says, pointing out a freshly turned patch of dirt and disturbed leaf litter.
Eventually leading Taft to the spot, Vasil explains how he and Eirikr nearly tumbled down the embankment. "As I said before, I gathered many of the arrows, but some fell from the quiver and slid down."
He gestures to where they may be, and helps Taft in any way required.

Shadow sniffs the air for Taft's familiar scent on the arrows, and then bounds off into the underbrush again.

Vasil is exhausted as Taft tracks his footsteps. The five wanderers do manage to find some landmarks that Vasil and Eirikr recognise, but it seems like none of the arrows are where Vasil said they’d be. The sun is getting low on the horizon when the arrows are gathered, and it’s clear that stopping to eat, gaining about half a week’s food, has ended up costing two days.

As the group travels on, Vasil spends an hour or so per night working by firelight. Fire that he lit and maintained himself, of course.
First, making a new bowstring to replace Taft's broken one, he moves on to trying his hand at creating arrows to replace some of those lost or broken.

On the first night of travel, Vasil sets to crafting a bowstring from the deer siniew. Smoothing, straightening and trimming the material, he works it to a length shorter than the broken string - accounting for stretching.

Vasil asks the others for help when necessary, he makes good use of the extra pairs of hands. "Hold this." as is required.

Despite their dwindling supplies, Taft does not force the group to push more quickly.

"Survival means living with the land, at its own pace. We will do better if we take our time, and find food as we go."

The hunter forages for mushrooms and berries, and keeps an eye out for rabbit runs, where he might set a snare overnight.

As the band wander towards their goal, Shadow often goes off alone. It scares smaller animals away from Taft's traps and herds a few larger ones in, taking down the ones that do not comply and dragging them back to the humans. Anytime the humans stray off course, Shadow sniffs the air and directs them back to the right course.

One night, as they camp beside a clear river which emerges from a cave in the mountainside, the wolf is uneasy. It paces back and forth at the edge of the water, sniffing at the frost creeping across the river, its ears pulled back and its tail straight out like a warning signal. "Winter is almost here," it says to the humans as they eat. "I have some business to attend to here. There is a spirit, an enemy of mine, that needs to be put in its place."

With the others out foraging, Vasil sits on a large dead tree, straddling the bow for a working surface. He gathers rocks for weights, along with deer siniew, and Taft's good knife. Tonight he reluctantly skipped his fire practice, in favour of the faster flint and steel method.
His makeshift workspace ready, he sets to work attaching the siniew to Taft's bow, hoping his novice hand can give the correct draw weight and strength.

In the edges of the wolf’s territory, it keenly scents trials old and new, and shows Taft places animals have passed recently.

The way to the lake has been dreadful. Each step becoming more difficult than the last. The lake provides water, but food is scarce, and the animals all around. Taft has called a few backtracks, the normal ways blocked by ice, fallen trees, or tracks of Moeve. Vasil is the only one who seems to have progressed according to plan, having cleaned the guts of the last meal, and tied them into a string that satisfies Taft.

At the lake, Shadow looks off into the distance, ears twitching as it hears the tik tik tik of its quarry’s tarsals on the lake’s frozen surface. The nighttime fog hanging over the river obscured the form that lies watching from a cave, but eight spots of light can be seen, forming a ring that moves slightly, as if taking the mark of the interlopers.