She couldn’t get comfortable.
There was nothing different about her bed. The same old, thick, plush bearskin she’d been using for ages. Its fur was tamped down smooth and flat in the places where her lithe little body seemed to favor curling up amid slumber each night. Certainly nothing was different about the ancient earth beneath the hide. Yet every position into which she arranged her weary limbs left her muscles feeling twitchy and unsettled. Back and forth she rolled, dozing fitfully in between.
Outside, a soft rain was falling over the Chetwood. Crickets sang in slow, tired rounds of their shrill choruses. They would live only another few weeks before the creeping chill of autumn silenced them. The sounds were all familiar and comfortable.
What was keeping her awake?
She dreamed of sitting by her campfire under clear, pale moonlight. Some dead thing was set over the flames, roasting for her supper. She tried to inhale, wanting to catch a whiff of what must be an appetizing scent, but she smelt nothing aside from the fire-smoke. Annoying.
On the bearskin, the drowsy, annoyed huntress rolled over yet again, her bare feet kicking out in vexation.
This little spasm awoke her once more. She lay still at first, blinking at the dim shapes of her hideaway; the massive tree roots forming her little shelter, her pack, quiver, and bow propped nearby against a mossy stone, a makeshift seat from an old stump she’d rolled into the hollow many years before. The dream seemed to linger on. She could still smell the phantom smoke of the campfire.
Wait. No.
She sniffed again. And again, louder and deeper. There it was; smoke in the air.
She did not feel any immediate alarm. Campfires were commonplace in the forest. Travelers and other hunters passed through now and then. While there was no fear, curiosity bloomed instead. She sat up and crept to the wide, dark opening of her hideaway.
The night was damp and cool, and she did not despise the wet, chilled ground on her skin. Thus she slunk forth without stopping for her boots. She did not intend to wander far, and she knew the forest floor as well as her own face. She would not trip or stumble in the dark so near to her home.
In silence, the huntress moved in the shadows. A few steps at a time, and she would pause. Taking in what her senses might bring to her among the grey mists that hovered under the boughs. The wood had a way of telling its tales to those souls who had the patience and reverence to simply wait, and look, and listen.
The acrid smell of the smoke stood out easily enough for her to follow its direction. Her steps were soundless, and she did not break into a hasty rush, but continued her wide-eyed, open-eared creeping on bare feet. Half an hour passed. The source of the fire was somewhere to the west, deep in the Chetwood. She knew there were old hunting cottages scattered in this part of the forest, for she had holed up in them herself once or twice during times of desperate need for shelter. But it was not often that people wandered here, and even less so that they settled down and built fires.
Presently, she spied the orange-red pinprick of light in the distance. Not a hearth-fire in one of shacks, but an open campfire. On the sluggish, damp breeze, sound carried easily, and it was not long until voices began to drift to her ears. Snatches of words and phrases, rising and falling as the air brought them to her.
“...can’t sleep out here…”
“...keep your eyes peeled!”
“...which way he went…”
The huntress’ gut clenched. No hunters, these. No travelers.
Blackwolds.
Her face twisted into a bitter scowl. Bow-thieves. Kidnappers. Arsonists. The hardened knot of memories of her time in their captivity swelled suddenly to life again.
She hunkered down into a crouch at the base of a tree. She would not dare going closer without her weapons on her person.
She had not seen nor heard a whiff of the Blackwold brigands for over a year. It was known that they crawled about the ruins of Andrath, hiding like rats in the rubble, stealing what they dared from farmers’ fields nearer to Bree-town, and occasionally waylaying travelers on the Greenway Road. But she had not seen any of them within the Chetwood for so long. The bustling, brazen camp they once maintained some years before had been long abandoned. The old cottage they’d used as their cowardly base sat quiet for season after season. Why were they here now? Surely, they were not trying to re-establish another bold presence in the forest?
Her skin prickled and crawled at the thought, and she shook herself like a wet dog.
“...can’t have got too far…”
“...nothing out here but trees and more trees…”
“...the reward for his hide!”
So, they were tracking someone. Not one of their own; no reward would be offered for a dirty, toothless member of their own clan. Unless it were one of their leaders, but they would not be sitting about a fire, plotting such a mutiny in the open. She remained still, adjusting her crouch slightly, and continued to listen, hoping to learn more.
“...snake, anyway…”
“...call him in the south…”
“...quiet! Eyes open!...”
A southerner?
The distasteful scowl on her fair, young features shifted into a puzzled frown. She searched her brain for any sighting of southern folk she’d had lately. But then, she had not ventured into Bree-town proper for several weeks. Her tongue ran thoughtfully over her lips. A southerner who was worth a reward? A reward from whom?
“...got it wrong, anyway.”
“...yer yap!...”
“...viper, not snake…”
Everything screeched to a halt.
Viper.
No.
Her stomach ached suddenly, and she realized she’d stopped breathing. She sucked in a hasty, ragged breath. Her hands clenched and fidgeted, reaching over her shoulder and around to her hip. Nothing was there. No quiver, no bow.
It couldn’t be.
It had to be.
No other person she’d ever known in all her years had taken that name for themselves.
Another realization descended on her then, freezing her briefly, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. If they were looking for him, it meant he was here. In the forest. Or close by. She gasped softly and her back straightened, and she looked all around the murky, shadowed trees, as if she might see him just step into view at any time.
Fool, she scolded inwardly. He’ll be hiding as well as you can, or even better. Might’ve run clean back to town by now.
Questions bungled about inside her skull, jostling each other so that none could stand out alone and be examined. Why on earth would he be here? He was gone from Bree, long ago. Off to be with his black-haired mistress. To live at the end of her leash and grow old like a proper, gentlemanly cur. If he was here, where was she?
She ignored these clamoring thoughts. Immediacy was more important. If he was here in the wood, alone, fleeing bloodthirsty Blackwold bastards, she could not sit idly by. She turned from her hiding place and began to crouch-trot over the forest floor, back towards her tree hollow.
She might not know where this fleeing southerner was, but she knew where his pursuers were.
