Lords of the Hunt [Eitan]

[Brenner Dornkirk]

Piers regarded the faces of the two men paused a few paces behind them, trying to glean whether they were picking anything up. He wasn't surprised to find that neither of them seemed particularly struck with anything. The wind was rustling the leaves in such a way as to muffle the sounds of fleet steps through the grass and underbrush. As for the aroma, well he hardly expected a keen nose for traces of woodland animals from a couple of city lads. He turned back round and crouched low to sniff the ground where the unpleasant odour grew more pungent. He grunted softly and grimaced as his eyes landed on the source of the stench.

"Deer scat." They weren't looking for deer, but finding evidence of them wasn't altogether bad news. They were, after all, a prey animal for wolves and it was entirely possible the howling from earlier might have been a member of the pack tracking the same deer who'd left them this little gift.

He rose to his full height once more as he perked his ears again to gauge whether those gentle steps he'd heard were getting closer or farther away. They hadn't sounded like hooves, so perhaps a different animal than the one to which his nose had drawn him. Perhaps their quarry was at hand.

He no longer heard the steps in the brush, and so he gestured for the two gentlemen in his charge to follow as he ploughed ahead- making a slight adjustment to their course, to head in the direction from whence the sound of steps in the underbrush had emanated moments earlier. With any luck, they hadn't been clocked by the pack as yet, but the winds didn't favour them.

It was another ten minutes or so, before Piers' halting fist snapped up once more to pause their progress. Brenner froze instantly and, after a moment, Piers gestured for them to step up to his side slowly and quietly so they could take in what he was sensing. The growls of feeding beasts tearing at flesh. It was hard to make out how many there were in the darkness of the clearing, but occasionally sets of eyes would glow yellow in the light of the moons. There were at least three, but it was hard to tell whether there might be more.

Piers patted both men on the back silently, and crouched low as he slowly unsheathed a blade as his charges drew their rifles.

Brenner aimed for a pair of eyes- the sight of his rifle offering a bit more clarity than the naked eye for its magnification. The Air Commander waited for a stiff breeze to blow through the canopy above to mask his whisper as he said, "Take aim, count to three and we'll shoot." Once the first shot rang out, the beasts were likely to flee, so better they should try to fire simultaneously in hopes of taking two down.

[Eitan Angevin]

Eitan hadn't noticed the scent of shit straightaway even though he was naturally closer to the ground than Lightborn until the tall man crouched down low to track more effectively. But Eitan's nostrils flared and he marked it, not quite the same as the smell of horseshit that sometimes accumulated in the less reputable neighborhoods. It didn't take his mind long to make a logical connection from the traces of deer to the presence of wolves, but he didn't try to overthink things. Instead, he paid attention to everything Lightborn did and said, straining his ears for the sounds he might be missing when all three men were silent.

When they sighted the grisly feeding, he nodded at the orders and began to unsling his rifle with the utmost of care, not wanting a single click or snick to give away their presence. He made note of which direction the wind was coming from, knowing that was important to trackers and hunters, before taking a knee for greater stability and sighting the lupine shape to the right as he was at the right of their trio and thought it best to aim accordingly though nobody said anything to that effect.

A headshot was the gold standard for a sniper, but they were hunting animals. In the gloom, he tried to aim for the chest—or thorax as Stefan's biological treatises would call it—of that feeding predator. It was a larger target, in any case.

He nodded at the order, having no problem playing subordinate as he was not the most qualified to lead in this situation. He aimed, counted to three, and fired. The blasts pealed out, leaving reverberations and a stunned silence around them. He couldn't help but blink at the violence of the shot; it wasn't fear, but a seeming physical impossibility. All the same, he looked hard into the dark, blinking away the afterimages of the blast, to see if they had accomplished their task or, alternatively, if Lightborn was going to pelt after the third wolf to kill with his blade and his bare hand.

Eitan wouldn't put it past him.

[Brenner Dornkirk]

Two thuds and a pitiful whimper pursued the twin bolts of thunder that accompanied their shots. The sound was nothing so majestic as the whilom howls that once pierced the evening. Brenner marked the sound of paws through the grass, but they sounded as though they chose flight over fight.

Piers held up a fist to stay them for a moment to assess the aftermath. Their senses would inform them that one wolf had been killed outright and the other was wounded and suffering- its terrified whimpering still weakly resonating from the clearing.

"Good shot, Commander." Piers said as he lowered his hand and rose to his feet to stalk ahead toward the felled and the disabled wolves. Brenner blinked and looked to Eitan, unsure to which commander Piers had been referring, but promptly jogged ahead to join their ranger.

"Mm." Piers grunted, at the sight before him. Both wolves were actually dead and, as it turned out, the whimper derived from something else- a wolf pup which used its small jowls to tug at the fur of one of the deceased. A parent, presumably.

"Looks like you made an orphan of-..." Piers halted his speech as his ears picked up on a shifting in the brush and he whipped the front of his body toward the rustling, bracing himself as a wolf leapt out and toppled him onto his broad back. He was able to quickly roll himself on top of the snapping canine, which growled ferociously as he grappled with it.

"Shit!" Brenner rushed toward the scene, but kept a bit of distance. When Piers managed to hold the beast down Brenner raised his rifle and aimed toward its head.

"Halt!" Piers called out. "Don't." He snapped, firmly. The distressed wolf cub scrambled away from its deceased father over to its slavering mother and tugged at her fur. Her snapping ceased and her growling waned. Piers maintained firm eye contact with the aggrieved lupine aggressor and, when he was satisfied that she'd calmed down enough, he released her quickly and gave her distance as Brenner kept his weapon trained on her.

She growled once more, before grabbing her cub by its scruff and darting off into the night.

[Eitan Angevin]

Not knowing which of them had been the better shot, Eitan could only shrug at Brenner's questioning look, then follow him into the clearing. He too brought up his rifle to protect their instructor, though Brenner was a bit quicker on the uptake. All the same, they both stayed their shots and the ranger managed to negotiate the confrontation without further bloodshed. That, Eitan found almost more impressive than his tracking and his imposing physique.

"Well, shit," he muttered. He didn't stand down until he began to hear the sounds of crickets and such, enough of a sign that most dangers had moved away. He held out a hand to help Lightborn up, bracing for a weight greater than his own. Whether he deigned to accept help or not, Eitan didn't mind offering.

"For a moment there, I was wondering which one of us lucky bachelors had just become a foster-father." He chuckled at his own sally, glancing to Brenner, who was most likely to chuckle along with him. Then his gaze turned toward where the wolf and her cub had retreated. "That cub wasn't large enough to be much of a runner," he mused. "And I don't imagine she would range far with it dangling from her jaws if she's hunting. Their den must be relatively near."

He wasn't suggesting they track them to their den, destroy them all, and then salt the earth so nothing could grow there, but he shared his thoughts since they seemed apropos of the point of this hunting expedition. Lightborn would either tell him he was on the right track or tell him he was stupid, perhaps not in so many words, but this was supposed to be a learning experience, after all.

[Brenner Dornkirk]

"I couldn't have put it better myself." Was Brenner's reply to Eitan breaking the silence with an expletive.

Piers actually did accept the offered aid, easily using the purchase of Eitan to draw himself to his impressive height once more. He grunted by way of a 'thank you', and stared off after the retreating wolves as well.

Brenner did, indeed, chortle along with Eitan at his jest and grinned broadly. The exhilaration of the preceding events had heightened his emotions, which made the jape seem all the funnier and his relief showed through his expression.

"I think the so-called 'Wolf of Zaichaer' would piss his knickers if I had an actual wolf for a pet. Piers, is it too late to chase them down?"

"Yes." Lightborn replied, promptly and sternly.

"Oh, I was, um... That was..." Brenner cleared his throat. "Just a joke." He lowered his rifle until the tip of the barrel was resting on the ground, and he scratched the back of his neck with his free hand. Thankfully, Eitan broke the awkward moment with a practical observation.

"Aye." Piers seemed as content as Brenner to move on from the levity, "There were more a the carcass when you fired, but they didn't have as much cause to linger as the mum. I reckon they're all en route to their home base if they haven't gathered there already. As I said earlier, wolves are smart. They know they can't contend with guns, so I don't imagine we'll be seeing any more of the pack tonight... unless you wanted to seek them out?"

Brenner shook his head,

"I think not." He glanced down to their quarry. "Shall we make trophies of the heads, Eitan? They'd make for sterling conversation pieces, I should think. A fine reminder of Man's dominance over Beast."

[Eitan Angevin]

Eitan didn't need voluble gratitude for a hand up. If Lightborn never lightened up, it wasn't the end of the world. As long as he earned Brenner's coin, they would be square. He sniggered at Brenner's subsequent joke, though.

"Next thing you know, he'll have jerked off his mentor for approval to get Animus carved into his arse so he can turn into a wolf at will and lope out here to please the lady wolves." He paused. "Perhaps you should tell him about the recently widowed she-wolf who might like him?"

Though he tried not to inherit Vigilant Richter's prejudices, what little he had seen of Monteliyet seemed in line with her assessment of his mentor. That Brenner habitually rolled his eyes about the man spoke volumes, as well. And his grandmother couldn't even be bothered to comment upon them, and she had a cutting epigram for just about everyone.

As for the trophies, he considered. "I suppose we could also have the pelts preserved..." The more hunting-minded might make blankets or rugs out of them, or display them on the walls. He wasn't certain if tonight's efforts would turn into them going in on a hunting chalet together, but he wouldn't mind having something to remember the shared experience by. The head seemed a bit gruesome to him, though.

"I suppose wolf is edible if not palatable?" he mused, sure to draw some acerbic response from Lightborn. He hoped they wouldn't be reduced to augmenting their rations with wolf on the expedition. The airships of Zaichaer were kept well stocked so he rarely had to rough it when it came to meals. After a moment, he regretted his passing question. Lightborn might demand they butcher the animals here and now in order to learn some grisly lesson in survival.

[Brenner Dornkirk]

Brenner's guffaw might have rivaled the howls that had led them here in volume as Eitan joined in on his disparagement of the figurative wolf over the carcasses of the literal. Actually, perhaps he'd more than joined in, he'd rather taken it to another level by defaming the poor bloke with imagined bestial attractions to complement his confirmed pro-mage sentiments.

"You, sir, are incorrigible!" Brenner noted when he caught his breath enough to phonate words.

Piers rolled his eyes at both the content and the volume of the exchange, but knelt down at the sides of the wolves.

"I don't mind you taking trophies, if you don't mind carrying them." Piers noted, cavalierly.

"Well, I certainly don't want to lug the whole thing back to camp, but a head and a pelt doesn't sound altogether daunting." Brenner mused aloud.

"All right, then." Piers stood upright and crossed his arms. "Then get to skinning."

Brenner blinked at Piers, then slowly shifted his gaze to Eitan, before parting his lips to respond.

"Gah." Piers interrupted, "I'm just fucking with you. I'll do it."

It was a bit after midnight, when the trio arrived back at their camp. Piers got his two charges settled in and started a campfire, before excusing himself to wash up in a nearby brook they'd passed during their trek. Once they were alone, Brenner broke out a flask

"That was invigorating, I thought..." He tipped the flask back and took a few warming gulps of schnapps, then handed it off to Eitan.

"What do you make of my new man? A bit brusque, I know, but he seems quite capable." He sniggered, "Certainly not the sort to shirk getting his hands a bit dirty. Literally." They'd been matted with blood ere he sought out a stream in which to wring them clean.

[Eitan Angevin]

Eitan laughed too. They had killed their wolves; the rest were already long gone and wouldn't flee from a bit of levity.

"This far from civilization, we needn't be so polite," he said, nudging Brenner with his elbow. Then, to Piers, "'Twould amuse, Lightborn, but you lack the context and you're probably better off that way." He chuckled, wondering how the wannabe Rathari would react to Piers Lightborn, mountain of a mountain man.

While Eitan reached for his belt knife, Brenner's hesitation earned them a reprieve from the bloody work. He would have done it, though he would have done it badly and likely ruined their trophies.

Later, the work done, it felt more like a bit of a holiday. He supposed he could see how hunting might be an enjoyable pastime. In the Corps, they saw plenty of actual life-threatening danger. Out here, it all felt a bit more primal, though. Simple. Perhaps he ought to go in on a hunting chalet with Brenner and perhaps Stefan. Even if they only came out to drink far from the madding crowd, it might be nice. It might be helpful, as well, if top-secret missions became their bread and butter.

He accepted the flask with thanks, took a pull, and handed it back before pulling out his own flask and clinking it to Brenner's. Of course, he wouldn't come unprepared!

"You didn't hire him to be our mate," Eitan pointed out. "Entirely capable, yes, and that's what matters. So long as he follows orders when we're no longer his students but his commanding officers." He paused. "Then again, he seems like a survivor, and I'd wager a survivor understands how chain of command will increase our chances of survival and success when it comes to the sticking point."

[Brenner Dornkirk]

"Ah!" Brenner smiled when Eitan declined his flask in favour of his own, "There's a good man." He nodded approvingly, maintaining firm eye-contact as they clinked metal to metal and poured the rich, warm spirit down their gullets.

"We should do this more often. I'm surprised we never had you to the lodge, though that's always a more formalised affair. Foxes and pheasants always call for such pageantry. It's nothing like bonding with a stout-hearted mate out here in the wilderness..." He took in a deep breath and appreciated the piney scent in the air, still focusing more consciously on his senses than was typical. Piers must have been rubbing off on him.

"Quite right. And that stony exterior seems to be cracking a bit. It was easy to miss, but he even made a joke back there..." Brenner trailed off, looking in the direction of the hill they'd climbed to claim their quarry.

"A survivor he is." Brenner's eyes returned to meet Eitan's, and his expression turned grave. "He might hate Kalzasi more than we do for what they did to him..." He narrowed his eyes at the thought, "When I was interviewing him, I wasn't altogether sure what to make of him. He admitted to being Kalzasi-born, but when he got into some of the details I could see why he hated them so.

"I never really thought much of their 'dead legion', but the entire notion is passing cruel. When I think about that pedantic pidge prince coming into our city and condescending to us about our ethos, it enrages me to think that he comes from a culture that enslaves people and forces them into abject danger until it kills them. At least fire is a clean death. Especially when set against the notion of being feasted upon by monsters that feed on your screams as well as your flesh, so they start gnawing on the bits that won't kill you straight away." He shook his head,

"Ghastly." And gulped down some schnapps, as if in memory of those cruelly slain for Kalzasern 'justice'.

[Eitan Angevin]

Perhaps after the expedition and the war to follow, if they survived it all, there would be time for hunting lodges and wives and children and legacies. With Kalzasi neutralized or annexed, the Pax Zaichaeri could spread through Karnor and make the land safe for inhabitation and civilization. It was the dream of the Brass City, and they were dreamers.

"May all their legions die," he muttered darkly, raising his flask. He knew there was no way to escape innocent casualties in the struggle to come. He only hoped all their sacrifices would bring about the utopia they planned. Of course, even if they were successful, Eitan would have to be one of those sacrifices. He was a monster and what he did was evil, and he had no illusions about that. But what he did was necessary to bring about a better world, and the best he could hope for was a loving wife and friends like Brenner Dornkirk to tell his mostly human children that he had been a patriot and a hero in the time he was allotted, before the corruption of his rune made his death a necessary thing.

He only hoped he lived to see the Promise near fulfillment before his time came.

He smiled bemusedly, and it turned to Brenner. It was good that there were men like him to carry on after the monsters of the world were put to death.

"I still don't understand the Kalzasern delegation at all," he finally said. "I wasn't here, of course, but it seems as though they had no true ambition for peace. How could they? They revel in their ill-begotten power and lord it over the common man." He shook his head and drank more. They had felled their wolves and earned their rest. With luck, what they had learned this night would serve them in good stead on the expedition to come.