The Way of the Beast

***

  By nightfall, the Den Forest had thinned away behind Sten and Chohla. They moved snow, made camp and settled in. Chohla woke at dawn and let Sten sleep a while longer. When the hunter finally opened his eyes, Chohla asked, "How are your wounds?"

  Sten sat up, rubbing his scalp with one hand and his neck with the other. "Healing quickly, I'd say, and not too tender."

  "No infections to worry after?"

  Sten shook his head. "I used the trick of drawing water and cleaned them; a few cuts I had to burn shut," he explained as he gingerly bent his knees, warming his muscles while trying to avoid opening any of the scabs under his pants. He then looked at the stumped pinky finger on his left hand. "I'll never hear the end of this from my mother," he said with a sigh.

  "Better to lose part of a finger than your throat. Here, have some jerky."

  After a while of chewing in silence, Sten asked, "Do you know if there is a trail that passes near your white woods?"

  Chohla grunted and gulped down his bite. "I looked at a trader's map while you were on your quest. Your people have named the white woods the 'Birch Groves'. We could keep to trails and come near that place after a time, or we could trek across the wide Thunder Plains straight to it. While a longer route, a trail would still normally be the quicker way. With this deep snow, however - and more to come - I'd favor the wilds."

  "As would I," Sten agreed. "I've had enough of villages and their troubles for a time."

  "But you've only been to one other besides your own," Chohla said, smirking.

  "Yes, and look what happened."

  "I take your meaning, but there's something else to consider. Your new forged supplies can't travel with you from a hallowed place, remember? We could stay on the trail to the village called Ikaali. There, you could sell those items and then..." He stopped when Sten slowly shook his head. "No? Then what did you have in mind?"

  Sten sat up straighter, took a deep breath and said, "I want to see the hallowed place in the Birch Groves, but I won't use it to travel this time. I want to trek, to explore the land between here and home. There's obvious magic in hallowed travel, but there's also a sort of magic in finding new places. I don't care that winter has come early and strong; it's still worth doing."

  Chohla nodded. "I understand that yearning."

  "Besides," Sten added, "I did too much to earn all this forged gear just to sell it. I want my father to have it."

  "Those are wise and commendable words, Khoveyo, although you may want to bring gifts for your worrisome mother as well."

  The good advice made Sten grin. "She'd wear me down with guilt otherwise, as would Annori."

  "Perhaps you may visit another village after all, but in your own time," Chohla said, standing. "Gather your things, and let us go visit these plains of thunder."

  The two travelers set out to the southwest, intent on skirting the Den Forest and then crossing the wide stretch of open ground. To Sten, the Thunder Plains seemed like an endless landscape of wild fields and low plateaus, all covered in a blanket of snow. The vast plains held many narrow brooks and shallow, frozen ponds. Only small, infrequent patches of trees stuck out of the snow, most of them needled pines. Sten saw the land as both austere and invigorating.

  Three days into their trek, a blizzard blew in from the north. Sten and Chohla were at a place where the forest line curved back to the southeast - the general location of where they would commence their southwestern march across the windswept plains. They saw the storm coming and retreated back into the cover of the forest to wait it out. Under a hastily built lean-to of fir boughs, the two travelers watched the driving snow come down and held short conversations when the howling winds would lessen to a dull moan.

  Doubting there'd be much wood for fires out on the snowy plains, Sten and Chohla gathered bundles of dead branches from the forest before setting out again. The storm had left behind a layer of wet, heavy snow, which made their trek somewhat easier in snowshoes.

  After two days out in the Thunder Plains, the travelers saw a herd of caribou in the distance. With Sten leading, they moved closer and studied the animals. Dried rations did not equal the appeal of fresh meat, and an extra pelt would help to keep the bitterly cold winds at bay.

  Sten's arrow brought down a weak member of the herd that was lagging behind. That evening, while camped against a low outcrop of rock, they sat around a small fire and feasted. During the meal, Chohla talked of distant lands while Sten listened with fascination.

  A day later, another snowstorm rushed in. Without any obvious protection in sight from the oncoming weather, the two men hurried over to a high snow drift up against a trio of stunted pines. Sten, having never camped in open ground, relied on Chohla to show him how to dig out a proper snow cave and smooth the interior walls so that it wouldn't drip on them.

  They finished just as the strength of the storm came upon them. Once inside, Chohla asked, "How are your fingers and toes?"

  "My mittens and boots are stitched tight," Sten answered. "Even scooping and kicking snow, they served me well. Thankfully, too; I've never felt such a frigid wind."

  Chohla nodded. "The woods you grew up in took the brunt of the elements. Weather strikes harder out in open places like here, and this season is a proving to be a harsh one. Even ones of our blood can feel the cold if it bites hard enough. Do you still keep to what you said - that you didn't care if winter was upon us?"

  Sten smiled at Chohla's light mockery. "I can think of better seasons to trek in, but yes, I would have wanted to venture out no matter the weather."

  "Then enjoy it; snow doesn't leave this land too willingly," Chohla said while he pushed his blanket under himself to lie down on. "You may as well get comfortable if you're able; I expect the storm to carry on into the night."

  Sten was about to ask how he knew, but thought better of it. He'd most likely get another vague answer, just like any other time he'd questioned the secretive traveler about strange events that sometimes happened around him.

  The two travelers emerged from their cave in the morning to find that the storm had been more wind than snow. Indeed, some stretches of ground had been swept by the howling gale, letting sparse blades of wild grass arise from their cover of thin snow.

  Days of sunny skies and vast barren flatlands followed. Sten and Chohla had to be careful of snow blindness as they kept true to their course. The caribou haunch they carried had frozen solid, and they'd run out of wood for a fire to thaw it. The dried food in reserve was stiff, and tested their teeth.

  At the crest of a long, gently sloping rise, the men came upon an intriguing vista. Along the horizon was a forest. Between them and those distant woods was a wide snow-packed prairie with an enormous herd of huge Kaldevarr bison meandering through it.

  Sten had seen a bison pelt once, but not the big animal it came from. He gazed on with awe, wondering at their size. An adult male's humped back was easily taller than him, and the girth of its rib cage could hold two squatted people. The smaller two of a bison's four horns could equal his forearm in length, and were considered rare prizes. Sten's chest heaved with the sense of a bull bison's power, feeling that exhilarating rush of life.

  "Those grand beasts won't simply hand their hides over, Khoveyo," Chohla said, interrupting his thoughts. "You're in need of a new coat, and my stomach is tired of stale bread and jerky. So go, hunter - bring one down if you can."

  It wasn't long until Chohla was watching Sten stealthily moving out into the snowy plain, getting close enough to touch one of the nearest animals. The young hunter then skillfully separated one from the herd, matching speed with the bolting bison while he shot arrows into it. The temporary curving horns that had grown out of either side of Sten's head as he hunted were never mentioned.

  Together, the two travelers skinned and butchered the giant carcass, then moved on with what they could carry. They reached the wide swath of mixed evergreens soon after midday, and went into the forest proper. The interior of the Birch
Groves was not what Sten expected.