It’s been a lean year for the village of Stead’s Hall. Only three of Damien’s six smokehouses are full, the villagers won’t be happy. Damien is the village hunter and provides all the meat outside of what people raise themselves as livestock. It’s a hard job, and no one ever really thanks him for it, but he does it anyway, because he was raised in it. There was time left for one more foray into the mountains to look for prey before the deep snows came and made them inaccessible until the spring thaw. Damien was sitting in the leather chair by the stone fireplace in his small two room house. He was repairing his arrows in preparation for the hunt. He had waxed the string of his bow and oiled the stave just the day before. Several of the fletchings needed to be replaced and he had a basket full of goose feathers and several yards of twine made from sinew. Some hunters preferred linen, as it was easier to wrap, but he preferred the extra weight that sinew provided, he felt it carried his arrows just a little further. Some hunters also preferred swan feathers over goose. Damien didn’t really have a reason for liking goose feathers over swan other than that it gave him a reason to kill geese, he hated geese. Swans were beautiful and lovely, geese were nasty birds, angry, resentful, and downright rude.
He pulled the fletchings off of an arrow. Only two of them needed to be replaced, but as they were held in place by the same piece of sinew, he had to remove all three. He laid the good one to the side so that he could reuse it and set to making two new ones. He had a small wooden board that he would lay in his lap as a base to split the feathers in two. He dragged his knife down the center of the calamus, expertly splitting in half. He took the two new fletchings and cut the tops off so that they roughly matched the third he had laid to the side. He lined all three fletches up around the shaft of the arrow and held them in place, which was tricky. It had taken him months to become proficient at this step when he first started making his own arrows fifteen years ago, but now he could do it without even trying. When he was satisfied with where the fletchings were sitting, he began by wrapping sinew three times, not two or four, but three times around the front bit of exposed calamus. Then he wrapped the sinew in a spiral pattern, pulling it down between every few barbs of the fletchings as he worked his way to the back and tied it off just above the nock.
He repaired a few more arrows in the same way before getting up to stretch and start a pot of lentils for his dinner. He took his cast iron off of the wall above the fireplace and filled it halfway with water. He’d made so many pots of lentils, he didn’t need to measure them anymore, he knew how many lentils should go with the amount of water. He scooped them into the pot and hung it over the fire in the fireplace and stirred them a few times with a long wooden ladle. He added a few more pieces of firewood below the pot and settled them in with an iron poker. He also placed a cast iron teapot of water over the fire, and stared at it until it boiled, pondering to himself about his upcoming hunt. The whistle of the kettle pulled him out of his ponderance. He donned a thick leather glove and pulled the kettle off the fire and poured boiling water into his mug which was filled with herbs and tea leaves. He added a bit of honey and set the pot back by the fire, to keep it warm in case his lentils needed a bit more water, but they never did. He threw a few pieces of salted meat he had lying about into the pot of lentils before finally returning to his arrows. As the lentils simmered nearby, he finished his last arrow. Just before he was done, a light tap came upon his door. So engrossed as he was in his work, he didn’t even notice it at first. The tap came again, slightly louder this time. He looked up from what he was doing and said loudly, “it’s open!”
The door opened and young brown headed boy walked through the threshold. “Ahh, hello Landon. Would you like some lentils? I’ve a pot that’s just about done.”
“Sure, thank you Damien.” The boy replied politely. He was the son of the tailor down the street. He wasn’t old enough to help his father yet, and to be honest he didn’t much care for his father's trade. He much preferred the odd jobs he would do for Damien, such as chopping firewood and watching his property when he was away. He’d set the boy up in a small room at the back of his home to use while he was hunting, so that he could stay there all the time. He had become so accustomed to the room that he would stay there as often as his own home, even when Damien wasn’t away. Damien didn’t mind, he enjoyed the boy's company. Landon’s family also raised chickens, and he’d taken a couple of fertilized eggs and carried them around in his pocket for a week so they stayed warm. Two of them hatched and he allowed them to stay in his small room with him. This was several months ago and so now Damien had half a dozen birds taking up residence in the boy's room. Landon took care of them other than providing food, which Damien was happy to do in exchange for the five or six eggs they provided him with for his breakfast every morning. One of the other benefits of the chickens is that they would eat the insects that would get around the smoke houses. The smoke kept most of them away, but once the smoking was done and they became storehouses, the flies would be a problem. Not so since the chickens came around.
He scooped the boy a bowl full of lentils and gave him half a loaf of bread to use as a spoon, and then did the same for himself.
“How’s the preparations for the hunt coming along? How’s Bern?”
“Bern is fine, he’s itching to get up into the mountains.” Bern was Damien’s domesticated reindeer. He was far from the only person to have ever domesticated one, but it was still an oddity. Damien had killed Berns mother in the spring six years before, leaving the pup alone and doomed to suffer until he died of starvation. Damien took pity on the poor wretch and brought him home, where the local barkeeper Myra had helped nurse him until he could eat corn. He had been a blessing that had paid for himself dozens of times over. He allowed Damien to get up into the mountains for his hunts in hours as opposed to days, and to carry back four or five deer at once, instead of just one or two. Damien had made a saddle for him out of the hide of a deer a few years before to make them both more comfortable during the trips.
“I finished replacing the fletching on all my good arrows just as you arrived. I’ll sharpen my knives tomorrow and pack some food, then I’ll leave the day after. The smokehouses are still going good, a couple more days on the second and a few weeks on the third. I should be back by then, unless I run into some complications.”
“Take your time, I know we’re light on food, if you have to stay a few extra days to bring back a couple more deer, it’ll be okay.”
“Oh, I intend to stay out as long as I can, boy.”
They talked about the trip for another hour or so and then said their goodnights and went to their respective beds. Damien awoke in the morning to the sound of an axe giving its best to the stump in his back yard, where Landon chopped firewood. He admired the boys work ethic, it was one of the reasons he kept him around. Most of the kids in the village just wanted to play hero, but Landon wanted to be a hero. And that meant work.
He got out of bed and built another fire after cleaning the ashes out of the fireplace. He dumped them in the barrel in the back yard that held the ash he used to cure hides. He waved to Landon before heading back inside. The boy must be cold, he thought, having felt the winter winds stirring themselves already. It was only the first week of winter, but it was very nearly freezing out. He would have to keep a close eye on the weather while he was away as to not get trapped up in the mountains, as that would be a death sentence. He grabbed a leather coat that was lined with wool and took it out to the boy who accepted it gladly.
“I’m going to make some sausage and some eggs, how hungry are you?”
“I’ll eat whatever you make.” The boy replied.
He simply nodded and returned to the fire. He placed a cast iron skillet on some coals he’d moved to the empty side of the fireplace and placed several pieces of sausage in it to cook. Meanwhile he cracked a dozen eggs into a wooden bowl and mixed them with a small tin fork. When the sausage was crispy, the moved it out of the pan and poured the eggs in, moving them around slowly with a wooden spoon. They absorbed the remaining heat from the coals as the slowly curdled and congealed into a fluffy yellow-white mass that smelled like morning. When the eggs were done, he topped them with a small pinch of salt and spooned them out onto two wooden plates along with a couple of pieces of the sausage each. He waited until he heard the thud of the axe and let out a sharp whistle to indicate to the boy that his breakfast was ready. There was one final hollow thud, as the boy brought the axe down a final time. A moment later the back door opened, and there was a clank as the boy set the axe down on the stone floor and took his place at the small table along the back wall. He placed the plates on the table and asked the boy if he would like some water. Landon held up with water skin, still half full. They ate in relative silence, the mark of a good meal. Flavor uninterrupted by chatter. Damien sat back in his chair and took a swig from his own water skin, though it wasn’t filled with water.
“That was the last of the sausage, we’ll have to make another batch when I get back.”
“It was delicious.” The boy replied.
“So were the eggs. I don’t know if I ever properly thanked you for bringing those chickens around, it was a brilliant idea.”
“You’re welcome, they’re very easy and eggs are very good.”
“Indeed. While I’m gone, get as much pork fat as you can from Leonard. Store it in one of the salt barrels out by the first smokehouse. We’ll use it in the sausage. I should still have some credit from our last exchange, if he says no, tell him I’ll pay him when I get back.”
“Sure.”
“Will you be here all day?” Damien asked.
“No, father needs my help with a few things, but I’ll be back in the morning to see you off.”
“Fair enough, I can handle the rest on my own.”
“Well, father will be waiting for me. I’ll see you in the morning Damien.”
“Goodbye Landon, thank you again.”
The boy waved as he departed through the fence that ran perpendicular to the house and separated the front and back yards.
Damien scrubbed the plates with some clean sawdust he took from the pile that Landon used as bedding for the chickens. While he was over by them, he threw them a few handfuls of corn and watched as they began a skirmish to feed. He grabbed the bucket by the barrel of corn and filled it for Bern, who hadn’t had his breakfast yet. He snorted when he saw his master, bobbing his head up and down triumphantly.
“Settle down boy, I’m coming.” He lifted bucket of corn and dumped it in the trough within Bern’s stall and the reindeer dived into it as if he’d been days without food. “You’re so dramatic Bern.” He laughed as he scratched the reindeer between his antlers. “You ready for our trip? It’s going to the last one for a while. We’ll settle in for the winter after this one.” Bern snorted again, but it was probably just a cough from eating too fast, not an acknowledgement. Damien opened the stall and went inside with Bern. He grabbed the saddle that was hanging from the back wall and checked it over, to make sure there was nothing that needed to be repaired before they departed. Satisfied, he headed back into the house and started another large pot of lentils which would serve as his meals for the first few days of the journey, until he’d bagged his first kill. At least that was the hope.
He began to gather together everything he always took with him into the mountains. His arrows and quiver, and an extra bowstring. His wool lined bedroll and a small linen tent to keep out the rain and most of the wind. His cooking pot, filled to the brim with lentils, and some salted meat, which would be crucial in allowing him to stay in the mountains long enough to make the trip worthwhile. He would tie it onto the side of the saddle, and the extra meat on the opposite side right before leaving in the morning. He would set the pot of lentils outside to cool as soon as they were done cooking. Additionally, he took a lantern. The fuel was expensive, so he didn’t use it at home, but it was extremely useful out in the mountains, especially when he had to venture beyond the timberline, which he did not like to do. He packed the lantern and a can of extra fuel in a small leather bag that he’d made waterproof with beeswax and set it with the tent and bedroll. The last thing he set aside was several pieces of firewood, strapped together with leather strips, in case of an emergency. He had never had to use the spare wood before, but he didn’t feel safe leaving it behind, regardless of the extra weight.
After everything was prepared and set aside for the morning, he turned his attention to his knives. He took a small wooden box off of the shelf above the fireplace. Inside it were three stones. He took them and placed them in a bucket which he then filled with water. He stared into the bucket until small bubbles stopped ascending from the stones, at which point he took them out and laid then on the table they had used for breakfast. He took each knife and ran the edge of the blade across each stone methodically, twenty strokes, then onto the next stone. When he reached the third stone, he would check the edge after each set of twenty strokes and if it was unsatisfactory, he would do another twenty. He did this until all three knives could shave the hair from a man’s face. He’d become so skilled at sharpening knives, that the town butcher, Leonard, had begun coming to him to maintain his own knives.
He always took the same three knives and a hatchet with him into the mountains. The first knife was small, and stiff, with a slightly curved blade it reached from the bottom of his palm to the tip of his thumb. It was for cutting around and through bone and tough cartilage. The second was thin and flexible. It’s blade stretched from the same point on his palm to the tip of his middle finger. It was for cutting through soft tissue and skin cleanly. The final knife was for cutting through large pieces of meat, it ran from the tip of his middle finger to the tip of his elbow. With a drastic curve on the end, it resembled a deadly sword more than a knife. He laid them on a rectangular piece of leather, tied them down so they wouldn’t slip out, and then rolled it up and tied the entire roll together. The hatchet didn’t need sharpening; it was just for hacking up small limbs and splitting pieces of wood he found on the ground. He slid it into the protective leather sheath he’d made for it and attached it to the roll with the knives, setting them all together by the other gear.
Once he was ready to go, he decided to take a walk in the woods. There were several trails that lead through the woods surrounded the village. He picked a loop that both started and ended near his home, as he didn’t feel up to walking through the town and risk running into someone he’d have to talk to. Other than the butcher and the boy, he wasn’t much interested in conversation. When he arrived at the trailhead, he picked up a small smooth stone and placed it in a sling that he had hanging from his belt. He casually twirled the sling around as he walked the path, quietly listening for the sounds of nature around him. After a few false alarms, he heard the chatter of a rabbit chewing on a wild parsnip. He got behind a nearby tree and leaned out slowly, watching the animal. When it had finished eating its dinner, it stood up and sniffed the air. This was his chance. He slowly moved from behind the tree, quickening the pace at which he spun the sling, and let loose the stone which keenly struck the rabbit, killing it instantly. He was relieved by this, he abhorred making animals suffer unnecessarily. This is why he still hunted, instead of raising livestock. He went out and took what he needed when he needed it. Otherwise, the animals were free to live their lives as they saw fit. There was a beauty to this for him, a balance. He carried the rabbit home on his left shoulder. When he arrived, he quickly skinned and eviscerated it, skewering it on a rod and placing over the fire in the fireplace. He added a few more pieces of firewood and then sat down to slowly turn the spit over the fire until the rabbit was golden brown and deliciously aromatic. He picked every last morsel of meat off the bones of the critter, knowing this was the last time he’d have fresh meat for at least a few weeks. After his dinner, he made himself another cup of tea and pondered a bit longer about how he’d like his trip to go, and then he went to bed.