Here is part one of another three part short story. In the Kristiansen Expedition, a young woman named Isabella Ward joins a fabled company of hunters in search of dangerous game. What Isabella finds surpasses her wildest hopes—if she can survive it.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three
12th Fall, 58th year of the Company Calendar
Somewhere in the Viridian Coast
The fog settles into the pines, hanging like curtains between the evergreens. The hunting party treading through the forest’s loam pass with hardly a sound, but the forest’s stillness is quieter yet.
The hunter in front raises a closed fist, silently calling for a halt. He is wearing a mottled green oilcloth duster and wide brimmed hat. Belted at his waist is a long knife and a pouch of cartridges. He carries a longrifle cradled in the crook of his free arm. His skin is mottled and near the same color as his duster. His jaw is elongated, wide, and his canines protrude out from his thick lower lip. He is from Iskilarion, where many look as he does, but he has traveled far away from that place.
He squats upon his heels, palm flat to the ground, feeling for tremors in the earth. The game they hunt is large. Very large.
A beast trills out a hunting call of its own. The sound echoes of the trees, deceptive, elusive, and the rest of the hunters crouch reflexively. They strain, listening for the crash of a heavy body moving through the dense brush. Nothing. The beast is close, then; but not too close.
“A green,” says one of the party’s members a bit further back, his voice not quite a whisper despite the creature’s proximity. His name is Joss Marat. He is a seasoned woodsman, grizzled and hardened, and he will be dead within the hour.
“Alone?” whispers a woman, her repeater carbine raised in the direction of the sound. Her voice is dripping scorn, even pitched so low. Her name is Hannah Rosch, and she too will be dead soon. “Greens travel in packs,” she hisses.
The man in front, still crouched low, is named Harlan Glass. He doesn’t say anything, but he agrees with Hannah. The beast is big–he can feel the earth tremor with its distant movements–but it is definitely alone.
Of the fourteen members of this hunting party, Harlan Glass will be one of two people who is still alive come tomorrow.
“Shouldn’t be anything but greens, forest thick as this,” mutters one of the other men. His name is Lukas Eichmann, and he towers over the others at nearly eight feet, his cheekbones and jaw angular, as if chiseled from stone, and his eyes a single solid hazel color free of any iris. He is not the second survivor.
All together the party is composed of nine men and five women. They have names like Lucia Solano, Anetta Sepp, Aaron Michaud, Justin Sands, Tambo Otieno. Some are fair skinned and soft of feature. Some are tall and lithe, pale skinned, with ears that come to a point. Others are shorter, some with thick beards and stout limbs, others fresh faced and diminutive. A few have dark skin. One has skin of scales, a snout, is nearly as large as Lukas. They all wear thick oilcloth dusters, crossed by the straps of the packs each carries. Many have carbines, a few have longrifles, and all of them have revolvers. They have twelve long knives, three big axes, four longspears, and two crossbows between them. They carry enough food for twelve days. They have the tools to sustain themselves for many more. Most wear thick gloves and wide brimmed hats. All have sturdy boots.
They are, all of them, seasoned hunters, veterans of numerous treks into the wild. All of them have bagged a specimen. Or, better to say, all have worked in teams like this present party which have brought a creature down–no one hunts these beasts alone.
All of them–except Glass and one other–will be dead soon. Only a few will be grieved. Life for some of these hunters can be long, and even richly rewarding, but it is not that way for most; just one reason among many why it is also almost invariably a life lived without many meaningful personal relationships.
“How near is it, Glass?” asks the captain of this party, a man named Elias Kristiansen. He is the one with scales instead of skin. He is over six feet tall, solid and wide. He has slits for nostrils, a wide snout like a snapping turtle filled with sharp teeth. He is sixty seven years of age. Like most of his company today is his last day amongst the living but he does not yet know that. He stands near Glass, hand nervously resting on the five-shot revolver in the holster at his hip. Glass just shakes his head, unsure.
“Could be close,” mutters Joss.
“Could be not close,” Hannah retorts. “Fog like this, sound plays tricks.”
“We’ll continue on,” says captain Kristiansen, after a moment. “The plan is the same. If we can make that ridgeline, we should have an unimpeded view of the valley once the fog lifts. If there’s a green out here alone, we’ll bag it and set up a camp to harvest. An equal share for everyone.”
Glass straightens, begins to cautiously pad forward.
“It’s not a green,” Hannah says, sullen. She follows, carbine ready.
The rest of the party follows, spread amongst the trees, silhouettes in the fog.
The only other person who will survive the next few hours, besides Glass, is a woman named Isabella Ward. At first glance she belongs with this company, wearing a similar duster and outfitted as they are, carrying a longrifle with the ease of familiarity. She does not, however, belong. Though mindful of her step, she does not manage the same quiet grace as the others. Though tense and alert, she does not experience the same healthy fear the others feel. Though respectful of the captain, she feels none of the intimidation or loyalty the others direct at the man and his long and storied history.
This lack of fear allows her to join Glass and Elias at the front, and while the rest of the company does not know who she is nor why she has been allowed to join theme or this expedition, they all make note that the captain and the pathfinder accept her imposition without complaint. This is not the first such time, either; speculation has been running rampant amongst the rest of the hunters, though they agree on few details beyond the supposition that she must be spectacularly wealthy.
Isabella, walking alongside Glass, speaks to him using sign language. The two of them are fluent in it, capable of full and nuanced conversations. Glass, born mute, was forced to learn. Where and why Isabella came by her knowledge is only further fodder for the speculations. Of the company, only the captain and a woman named Anetta also know a few signs, but their vocabulary is very limited, utilitarian.
“Is it so unusual for a green to be alone?” Isabella asks Glass, in sign.
It is. They go berserk when alone. When taking them alive, you have to take two - a single one will thrash in its bonds until free or until it ruptures its own heart from its exertions. They’re never alone. Glass signs none of this, only nods.
“Then is it possible this one is not alone?” Isabella signs. “I have heard tell that they employ ambush tactics in their hunt, at times drawing attention to a noisome one while the rest of the pack attacks from the sides.” She seems not the least bit alarmed.
Glass shakes his head. Noises in the fog are full of untruths and phantoms, but tremors in the earth do not lie. There is only one.
“If a green cannot be alone, and there cannot be more than one, then it isn’t a green,” she signs. “The other breeds are often alone, are they not? Should we not then conclude it is one of the other colors?” Isabella is able to put just the right amount of amused exasperation into even her hand gestures, aided by a quirk of her lips and a raised eyebrow.
Glass just shrugs, leading the party towards the sound of a creek. Easy to follow that towards the ridge.
Undeterred, and sensing the need for silence has passed, Isabella simply asks her question aloud to the party as a whole.
“It’s a green alright,” Joss says. “That bugle was a green, on my mother’s grave it was.”
“Your mother’s still alive,” Hannah says. “And that’s no green bugle. It’s just echoing off the trees, like a green’s, and you’re too thick to notice the difference.”
They’ve abandoned the hushed whispers of earlier, though these are people accustomed to quiet, their voices still pitched low.
“To answer your question, Miss Ward,” the captain, Elias, says, “It would be unusual to find any other breed in pine as thick as this. Blues might stray this far from the coast, but only in the air, and if there’s swampland or moorland around for a black, we’re yet to see signs of it.”
“Thank you captain,” says Isabella. “But what of the metallic variant? And what of the reds?”
“The metallic breeds won’t be above ground while the sun is up, even in a fog as thick as this,” the captain says. “Though if for some unknown reason it is one of the metallic breeds, finding signs of its lair would net us a sizable profit. If we can find and harvest the beast, even better. As for reds…”
“Not red,” says Tambo. The bones he uses to braid his red hair and beard tinkle softly as he shakes his head. “Got a certain way of bugling, those ones. There’s a hate in them, telling you truth. Never forget the sound of a red, me.” He pulls back his duster along his left shoulder, exposing blistered and twisted flesh - burn scars. Most of the members of this party–Isabella excluded–have scars earned in the hunt, but Tambo’s burn is the worst by far. The conversation lapses into silence.
The party follows Glass down into a creek bed, some of them casting him annoyed looks. Glass ignores it. Normally they would follow the creek, not hop down into it and walk upstream, soaking their boots in the process. But Glass senses something none of the others do, though he isn’t certain of it yet. His instincts say that right now it is time to keep a low profile.
“Well, I am sure there will be ample opportunities out here to turn a profit, captain,” Isabella says, nimbly descending the crumbling bank. She can’t resist a little jab as she adds, “As long as you continue to seek employment with the right patronage, that is.”
“With respect to your position, ma’am,” the captain says cautiously, “We are a contractor company, currently under limited contract only. Once this hunt is completed, I shall contract where the terms are most favorable, and it remains to be seen if that means staying in the employ of the Republics–or not.”
Isabella waves aside the captain’s comment with an air of unconcern. “The Corelin Empire won’t have many lucrative contracts to offer, now that the Republics have taken an interest in the region,” she says.
The captain thinks Isabella is an agent of the Republics, a wealthy scion sent to watch over some stakeholder’s investments while at the same time playing at being a dangerous huntswoman. He thinks that, of course, because that is the character Isabella has been coyly playing at, and while it is not far from the truth–captain Kristiansen is far too perceptive and shrewd for anything that strays too far into the realm of deceit–he has seriously underestimated how dangerous of a huntswoman she really is.
It is just that she hunts a different kind of quarry.
As she speaks to the captain, she watches, out of the corner of her eye, another member of the company: Justin Sands. He is her prime suspect.
“You would think that after more than half a century of decline,” she continues, “that the empire would have the grace to follow the Saeralin Royal Family’s example and give up their aristocratic pretenses in exchange for company shares. Honestly, sometimes it seems the Corelin almost look forward to the sharp setbacks the Republics deliver to them.”
Yes, there it was, a quickly suppressed flash of anger from Justin ‘Sands’. Not enough by itself to be sure he is a Coven agent, but she has had a bad feeling about him since the start of this expedition. I mean, really, the name alone is enough: Sands?
“I try not to pay any attention to politics, Ms. Ward,” the captain says. “In my line of wor-”
It is upon them without warning, coming out of the fog and grabbing a man named Leon Haschke before anyone can react. It drags him back into the thick brush in the blink of an eye, his scream of fear echoing off the trees. His cry is cut off nearly as soon as it begins, choking into a sick wet sound.
The forest descends into madness.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three