Hunter's Bounty (Veller) (3 page)

“This was posted by a Mr. Kraght.” He said as he looked over the rims of his glasses at Kile.

“Is he still looking for his book?” She asked.

“I doubt it.” Kane replied as he crumbled the small piece of paper in his hand and tossed it in the general direction of his waist paper basket. It never made it. “Mr. Kraght has been dead these past twelve years.”

“What about this one, a request for an escort to Shrop.”

“From a Mrs. Atkins.” Kane replied without even looking at the paper.

“Well?”
She asked when he didn’t say anything more.

“She didn’t succeed.”

Kile didn’t have to ask what she didn’t succeed at. Mrs. Atkins, most likely, tried to get to Shrop by herself, without the aide of a Hunter to guide her. Whether she got lost or worse, Kile didn’t want to know.

“Then why are we here?” She asked. “If it’s not to help the average person, why are we here?”

“I am here to run this guild house, you are here to carry out assignments evaluated and posted by the Guild.”

“Well, it doesn’t look as if I’m doing much in that area.”

“On the contrary, we have just received a request for a delivery.”

“But I thought the Guild put a freeze on all deliveries until they got to the bottom of the disappearances.”

“On all Class E deliveries, this is a Class D.”

A class D delivery was defined as a high priority package or the delivery of standard mail through hostile territories. Since the territories around Coopervill have not yet been classified as hostile yet, then the package must be of the high priority variety. High priority packages were delivered directly to the customer and didn’t go through the Guild houses.

“That is if you are interested.” Kane said as he looked over the rim of his glasses at her.

“Am I qualified to take a Class D assignment?”

“Under the circumstances I don’t have much of a choice with Steele on assignment and Taylor is off to… who knows where.”

A class D assignment was just one level higher
than what she usually received, but it was a step in the right direction. It was an opportunity for advancement. If she could prove that she was capable of completing Class D assignments then would her level four certificate be that far behind, and it did mean getting out of Coopervill, if just for a few days.

“I’ll take it.” She replied.

Kane said nothing as he turned and disappeared into the back room.

As she waited for the old man to return, she walked over to the far wall, the one where the second billboard hung. This was the board that held the open bounties. Criminals, thieves, or people just wanted for questioning by the authority hung upon the board awaiting capture. The faces of so many
vir staring out at her made her feel uneasy, but the one that really drew her attention, was that of a black haired gentleman with dark eyes. Beneath his picture, that really didn’t do him justice, was the name of Eric Rimes, wanted for crimes against the Hunter’s Guild, he had a substantial bounty upon his head.

She
was nowhere near good enough to go after open bounties, but the eyes of Eric Rimes always stared at her from the billboard each time she came in, and even if his face was hidden behind other parchments, another wanted vir, she could still feel those eyes staring at her. She was partially responsible for him being on that board, for him being wanted. If she hadn’t been in the Great Hall when he tried to steal those artifacts from the display case of Sir Jameson Flint, he might have gotten away with them. She still didn’t know what he wanted with those two stones, but now she figured she would never know.

“Here it is.” Kane called out from behind the window.

Kile turned to see the old man holding up a small package. He set it on the sill and began to fill out the required forms.

“Since this is your first Class D delivery, let me explain. You will not be delivering this to a Guild
House; you will be delivering this to a Mr. David Draw personally. His place is marked on the map. Before he takes possession of the package, you are to have him sign for it. If he doesn’t sign for the package, you don’t get paid, do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”
She replied as she carefully lifted the package from the sill.

It was a small box, although she couldn’t say much more than that since it was wrapped in brown paper and sealed with wax.
It was surprisingly light, and she wondered if this was just another test to see if she was ready to take on more responsibility, but test or not she would deliver the package.

“If he is unavailable to sign for the package, you bring the package and the
paper back here, do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”
She replied as she took the paper from Kane and slipped it into her pocket.

“If you open the box for any reason, don’t bother coming back.”

“Yes sir.”

The privacy of the package
was always paramount to the delivery, something she learned even before the Academy, back when she took the entry examination at the mystic’s tower. She tucked the box under her arm and left the Guild house.

It was starting to get late, an early supper, maybe a bath before bed, and she would get an early start in the morning.

***~~~***

2

Kile awoke to the steady tink, tink, tink of the blacksmiths hammer as it rang through her morning. The man mustn’t require much sleep if he can work well into the night and still wake up early enough to disturb any attempt at sleeping in. She tried to pull the blankets over her head, but it was no use, the sound wasn’t going to be dissuaded that easily. Throwing her legs out from under the covers she sat on the edge of her bed as a small white rodent ran up her arm and perched himself on her shoulder.

-Morning.-

Vesper’s voice
rang inside her head almost as loud as the tink, tink, tink of the blacksmith’s hammer.

“Is it morning already?” She asked as she got to her feet and headed
for the door. “And where were you all night?”

-Around.-

Around usually meant he was visiting the pantry in the kitchen on his never ending quest to find food, and it had not gone unnoticed. She heard Beth complaining about something getting into the pantry just the other night.

Crossing
the hall she entered the public bathroom that had now become her private bathroom that was until Gus rented out another room on her wing, which he wasn’t likely to do. There weren’t too many paying patrons that would or could put up with the blacksmith so early in the morning, but if it let her have a bathroom all to herself, she wasn’t going to complain.

She washed her face in the sink, combed back the wild strands of her hair and fastening it into a
pony tail with a length of leather cording. She stared at herself in the mirror and a tired young girl stared back.

Kile looked over at the beckoning bathtub. A bath would be wonderful this early in the morning, but that would require her to stoke the fire in the kitchen to heat up the water and carry up the stairs to the tub. It was not something she looked forward to doing and usually paid little Toby to do it for her, but money was tight these days.
Maybe she would treat herself to a long hot bath after the assignment was over.

Of course little Toby wasn’t all that little
. He was almost as tall as she was, but he was only ten or eleven years of age. He did odd jobs around the Bird and Bay for extra money but for Kile he would have done it for free. Toby had a bit of a crush on her, but she wasn’t going down that road. He was way too young for her and she was sure it was more to do with the whole Hunter mystique than anything else. In three or four more years he would be eligible to take the entry examination at the mystic’s tower, but that was if he really wanted to.

She
wasn’t sure if she would recommend it or not. She had mixed feelings about her time at the Academy, most of it was a living hell, but there were a few good times and a few good friends, and the fact that he was a boy would definitely go in his favor. The thing was she really didn’t want to get his hopes up. For all the times she had watched him do his chores, he had never once showed any sign of having any influence in any of the mystic arts.

It was common knowledge, or it was common knowledge to most people, she didn’t know when she entered the examination that every Hunter had to have some acquaintance with the mystic arts
. This was known as the Hunter’s edge. It was that rare ability, that special skill that sets them above and apart from the common mercenary. Daniel Leary, her best friend back at the academy, had the ability to actually heal wounds. It was an incredible skill, one that helped Kile out quite a bit back then. Then there was Carter who could turn invisible and Alex who created the most realistic illusions that she had ever seen, not that she had seen many illusions before, and of course there was Murphy, who could turn his body to living stone. Most of the time a Hunter’s edge was grounded in one of the four basic spheres of influence but every so often, a hunter came along that had something so rare, something so different that it defied the categories and confused the mystics, and Kile was one of those rare Hunters.

That wasn’t to say that Toby had no chance in becoming a Hunter if he put his mind to it. The boy could be filled with the mystic arts, what did she know? She didn’t understand her Hunter’s Edge until her first year at the Academy.

She threw her pack on the bed and pulled on her boots. If Toby was really interested in becoming a Hunter as much as he was interested in Hunters, then she probably would try to encourage him, but he would still need a sponsor. She was sure that if she tried to sponsor him, it would only do him more harm than good. She wasn’t even sure that she could sponsor him, what with her only being a level five.

She took the key from its hiding place in one of the small ebony boxes that sat on the shelf and unlocked the trunk at the foot of her bed. She didn’t keep much in the truck, since she didn’t have anything of real value, or at least what other people would consider to be valuable.

There was an old leather jacket, threadbare and worn with age. It had belonged to another Hunter, but she had it taken in by a tailor so that it would fit. Pinned to the collar was a small golden tree, a final gift from another old friend. A wide rimmed hat was the next thing that came out of the trunk, and it too had seen better days. It was her brother’s and he had placed it on her head when she was fourteen, the day she left to take the entry examination, that was almost four years ago, and she hadn’t seen him since.

At
the bottom of the trunk, the last things she took out were the Lann that had been given to her by the Guild Master himself and they had once belonged to an alverian maiden. They were two thin, slightly curved blades nearly three feet long with worn cherry wooden grips wrapped in leather. Each one had a small bird’s beak protruding from the blade just above the guard and each was etched with a writing that she couldn’t read. Along with that was a long knife, bearing the same worn wooden handle and the same writing. This fastened to the back of her belt. The Lann strapped crossed her back in a crisscross fashion, although she had never really gotten used to them being back there. She was fine drawing them, and it actually looked pretty cool when she practiced in front of the mirror, but trying to put them back into their sheathes without looking awkward was difficult to do.

She grabbed the leather
courier bag from the back of the chair and dropped the small Class D, high priority package in it, Vesper climbed in afterward. He didn’t like riding in the bag as much as he liked riding on her shoulder, but there were strict rules against pets in the Bird and Bay, not that Vesper actually thought of himself as a pet.

Guild Master Lathery had once told her that the only things that a Hunter really needed was a good head, a good heart, a good horse and a good weapon, everything else was just extra baggage, of course there was nothing wrong with a few extra comforts she thought as she slung her pack over her shoulder, now it was just a matter of getting her horse.

She locked the door to her room and took the stairs down to the main dinning area were Beth had a small bundle of supplies waiting for her at the counter.

“Finally got yourself an assignment?” Beth asked from behind the bar as she was setting up for the day. The Bird would be opening in about an hour’s time and the miners would be arriving in droves to have one last drink before they went down into the pits.

“Just another delivery.” Kile replied as she picked up the tightly wrapped bundle of food.

“Where to today?”

“Don’t really know. Some place off the main road. It’s a private delivery to a Mr. David Draw… ever heard of him.”

“Can’t say that I have love.” Beth replied as she wiped down the counter one last time. “You take it easy then.”

“See you when I get back.” Kile replied as she headed out the door.

The tink, tink, tink of the hammer was louder outside as she passed the forge. The blacksmith was hammering away at some piece of metal and looked as if he had a lot of unresolved anger issues to work out.
She suddenly felt sorry for that small piece of metal, it wasn’t like it could have done anything to the blacksmith but he was sure taking out his frustration on it.