Hunter's Bounty (Veller) (11 page)

“Are you sure this is the right way?” Folkstaff asked as he pulled his hat lower against the light of the setting sun. They had been up and down the road for the last few hours and they were now fighting against time as the light was beginning to fade.

Erin
unrolled the map again. She even went as far as to consult the files.

“It has to be around here somewhere.” She replied as she took another look at her surroundings. “There doesn’t appear to be anywhere else to go.”

“Fine pair of Hunters we are, we can’t even find a house in the forest.”

“It’s not like this map is the best in the world. If I didn’t know better I would think that somebody doesn’t want us to find the house.”

“That may not be far from the truth.” Folkstaff replied as he dismounted his horse Pathfinder and walked a little ways down the road. He crouched down and took a hand full of dirt, letting it slowly run through his fingers. “Well.” He said as he slapped his hands together. “There has been some activity on the road as of late, but whether it was the Guild investigators or just civilians, there’s no way of telling.”

“I don’t think many civilians would come this way. There’s nothing else around here.”

Folkstaff said nothing as he opened his pack and pulled out an old spyglass. He adjusted the lens and looked to the sky.

“Do you really
think they would try to hinder our search?” Erin asked. It was something that she hadn’t considered. She knew it was a race, but she thought it was going to be a fair race.

“I think they would try just about anything they could to see you fail.”

“So you’ve heard the rumors.”

“That the Sons of Terrabin are somehow behind the disappearances, that they are slowly gaining control of the council one member at a time, that they have plans to move the Hunter’s Guild in a new direction? I may spend most of my time in the wild, but I don’t spend it with my head in the clouds.”

“Sorry, it’s just that… well… you don’t…”

“Get involved in the political arena?”

“Something like that.”

“My dear, there are Dragons that you slay, and Dragons that you run away from. The Hunter that knows the differences between the two has a long and happy life ahead of them. I plan to have a long and happy life.”

“Unfortunately I don’t have that luxury.” Erin replied as she opened the file again, looking for something she might have missed.

“We all have challenges that we must face before we part from this world.” Folkstaff replied as he leveled the spyglass toward the horizon. “Some of our challenges come looking for us, other’s we have to go out of our way to find… such as a house in the middle of the forest.”

“And how do we find such a house.”

The old tracker collapsed the spyglass and slipped it back into his pack. “Fifty yards up, take a left down a long path and we should be right at the front door.”

“Really now, and you can tell that how, by a hand full of dirt and a view of the heavens?”

“No,
I can see it from here.” Folkstaff replied as he pulled himself back on his horse. “Sometimes the answers are obvious, when you know where to look.”

They had used up their two day head start just to get to the
Denal Province. By now the open bounty on Kile Veller’s head will be posted in every Guild House and public house across Aru. There will be no place she could run. No place she could hide where a Hunter will not recognize her. She was officially a wanted fugitive. It was just a matter of time before she was captured, and that was only if she was lucky. By now the Guild would have posted Hunters in all the key locations, any place that she has some connection with. As far as Erin knew, that was only Riverport and Coopervill. They would also seek out any friends, associates or family members that she might try to contact. In a matter of a single day, this had turned from an open script on a missing person to a full blown manhunt.

Folkstaff stopped his horse in the middle of the road and
Erin came alongside him. He was staring off into the woods, but what he was looking at, she couldn’t see.

“So, where is this house?” She asked him.

“Just because you don’t see something, doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just as if you see something, is not proof that is exists” Folkstaff replied, and he turned Pathfinder toward the forest, leading the horse off the road, and actually walked through one of the trees before disappearing completely.

“Robert?”

Erin dismounted Elemia and cautiously approached the tree that had somehow swallowed her companion. Although she had expected it, it still seemed strange that her hand passed through the trunk as if it wasn’t there. What she hadn’t expected was someone grabbing her hand from the other side.

“It’s an illusion.” Folkstaff told her as he pulled her through.

She stood upon a narrow path that cut through the forest all the way to a small cabin nestled among the trees. When she turned around she could still see her horse standing on the road waiting for her, although it was as if she was looking through a sheet of water as it rippled before her. She reached out to touch it, and again her hand passed through without any resistance. Although it was there, it wasn’t there.

“An illusion?”

If this was an illusion, it went far beyond what she understood of the mystic arts.

“Pretty impressive actually.” Folkstaff replied as he crouched beside the path and searched through the grass.

“Impressive isn’t the word for it. How did you know?”

“As I said, you can’t believe everything you see.”

“Imagine going through all that trouble, just to hide out in the woods.” She said as she looked down the path toward the small dark cabin that now seemed more foreboding.

“Oh I don’t think our Mr. Draw
had anything to do with it.” Folkstaff replied.

He wrapped his fingers around a small stone beside the path. There was nothing unusual about it, nothing that would have set it apart from any other stone, at least not to the average person. But Folkstaff was a
certified level one Hunter with an edge in the sphere of earth, and the unique properties of this stone just sang out to him. It was like a beacon in the night. When he picked it up, the illusionary wall disappeared.

“Very impressive indeed.” Folkstaff remarked as he turned the stone over in his hand.

“If you don’t think Mr. Draw placed the illusion, then who did?” Erin asked.

He
tossed her the stone. “That my dear, is a very good question.” He answered, “But if this Mr. Draw was trying to hide, just disguising the path would not be enough. No, this was place afterward.”

“A delaying tactic?”

“Quite possibly, maybe just a simple means of buying some time.”

“To kill Mr. Draw?”

“If that were the case, then there should have been something in the files by the previous investigators. It’s hardly something that would have gone unnoticed.”

“Unless it was one of the investigators that set it up
. But why?”

She
opened the files again and reread what the lead investigator had written. If what Folkstaff said was true, there should be something, an illusionary wall of this nature would not have gone unreported.

“We could debate that all day, or we can try to find out what it was that they were
trying to hide.” Folkstaff remarked as he lead Pathfinder down the road. Erin closed the case file and followed with Elemia.

It was a simple dirt path that followed a random course through the trees to the clearing where the cabin sat. The cabin itself was small, a simple one room structure with a chimney, flower boxes under the windows and a small yard out front. It was not the type of place one goes to hide, but to escape, a place completely isolated from the world around.

Erin hitched her mare to one of the smaller trees and walked across the clearing to stand in front of the cabin. She fell into her edge and opened her mind, listening to the sounds of the forest. When she was sure that there was no one else around and that they were completely alone, she stepped onto the porch, and pushed open the front door.

There was nothing to hinder the door's motion as it swung open, and a breath of stale air was released from within.
The interior was just as modest as the rest of the house. There was a single cot in the far corner, a chair by the fireplace, a small table set up beside the door. All in all, it was not an inhospitable place, but it was definitely a place of escape from something. What was it that David Draw was trying to escape from?

She stepped inside and took a quick look around, but the only things she could say were out of place was a chair, that had fallen over, and a few books that lay scattered carelessly about.
Her eyes fell upon the suspicious looking stain on the floor where the files said the body of David Draw was found, beyond that it looked as if anything of any importance had already been taken. She stepped back out into the yard and opened the file once again.

“Okay, it says here that the Guild Investigators found the body of David
Draw lying face down on the floor in the middle of the cabin with a long knife still in his back. The long knife has been positively identified as belonging to Certified level five Hunter Kile Veller. There were no signs of a struggle or of a forced entry. The door was open when they arrived.”

“Who conducted the investigation?” Folkstaff asked as he started to search the surrounding area.

“Let’s see… oh, you’re going to like this. The lead investigator was Craig Morse.”

“
Morse? Are you kidding me? The man couldn’t find water in a rain storm.”

“That may be so, but it was signed off by Andrew Drain himself.”

“That figures.” Folkstaff scoffed. “Just from a quick look I can tell there’s been quite a bit of activity in the yard, all around the house for that matter.”

“Well, according to
Morse’s theory. Kile Veller arrived, delivering a package. Mr. Draw let her in. He must have turned his back on her for whatever reason, and she stabbed him, case closed.”

“Seems pretty cut and dry to me.” Folkstaff replied.

“And what, she fled into the forest, leaving her horse and supplies behind, never to be heard from again? And what about motive? Why would she want to kill this Mr. Draw anyway? If she was really an assassin, she wasn’t a very good one. How many assassins do you know leave something that can be so easily identified behind as a murder weapon? And why such a quick turn around, why rush this case through the system?” Erin closed the file and looked around the yard, but Folkstaff was gone.

“Robert, are you even listening to me?” She called out.

“You might want to see this.” Came the reply

She headed into the forest a few yards behind the old cabin where she found Folkstaff crouched down, brushing pine needles away from something on the ground.

“This is a little far away from our crime scene.” She remarked.

“Yes, but I found something.”

“And how is this going to help us?”

“You tell me.” He said as he pointed to the indentation in the ground.

“Is that a… footprint?  Well even if it is, I can’t see how that has any bearing on our case.”

“Don’t you? Look closely.”

She crouched down beside Folkstaff and brushed away a few more of the pine needles. It was clearly a footprint, or part of one, that was easy enough to see. She could make out the toes as well as the arch, and that was when she realized that, what she was looking at was indeed a footprint and not a boot print.

“What runs through the forest with bare feet?” Folkstaff asked.

“Uhyre? Are you saying that this is the footprint of a valrik?”

“Given the overall size and definition, I would have to say yes, and not just one, I’ve noticed a few of them in the front of the house as well. Now, whether or not that has anything to do with this case, it does bare keeping in mind. If the
uhyre are involved, this might not be as simple as you led me to believe.”

“Do you have a timeline?”

“Unfortunately not. It would appear that Morse, along with his investigators, left enough prints of their own to confuse the situation, as for this one; there really isn’t any way of telling for certain if it has any connection with what happen to Mr. David Draw or Hunter Veller. All I can say for sure is that it was made about a week ago, and it was heading west, at a good pace.”

“That's about the time Draw died and Kile went missing.”

“I’m not one to believe in coincidences.” Folkstaff replied as he tipped his hat back. “Should we follow it?”

“As you say, we can’t be sure of a connection. Our primary concern at the moment is finding Veller, which mean we should get to Coopervill, see if we can dig up any more answers there first. I’d hate to be chasing a wild
valrik into the flatlands.”

***~~~***

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