The ring caught the light as Stephan turned it between his fingers. The warm yellow of gold flashed, highlighting the engraving - a long-beaked bird in mid-flight.
Heron? Stork? Stephan was pretty sure it was one of the two as he left the room and stepped into the hallway.
“How did it go?” Muriel asked before he managed a step.
Stephan held up the ring. “Do you know what bird this is?”
Muriel gasped, her eyes wide. “That’s Boss’s bow-crane!”
Stephan looked at the bird again, now that she’d named it, he guessed he could see it - the elegant, bow-like, curve of the neck, the beak straight and narrow like an arrow, a little wider at the tip, kind of like an arrowhead.
“Is it a real bird or something made up for a crest?”
“It’s her seal ring you—” Muriel swallowed whatever Stephan was, her raised voice dropping. “I don’t know who you are, but that ring means anything you say is as if Boss said it in person.”
“Why do you all call the Marshal of the South ‘Boss’?” Stephan asked, the local lax approach completely different from the primness he had grown used to in the east.
Muriel shrugged. “Boss likes it that way.”
Stephan waited another moment for an explanation, and when none came, continued with his own questions.
“I would like access to your library. And what kind of training do you have here?”
“We don’t have a library. We can read and write just fine, thank you very much.” She made a face as if that was half-true at best, but didn’t pause, “but it’s not a skill we Trackers need. We learn to track, to stalk prey without being spotted ourselves, and how to move quickly through shrubs and rocky wastelands. Right, and how to use the bow. But archery is the least of our talents, really.”
Stephan took a moment to consider her words.
“Then how do you teach recruits? Do you hold lectures?”
“No. We use apprenticeship,” Muriel answered, as if the concept of classical teaching used to train Knights and officers offended her. “You find someone willing to teach you, family most often, and they take care of you for two to three years, greatly increasing your chances of getting the class. During your apprenticeship, you learn how to be competent at tracking and hunting and once you get the class and level it a bit, you’re ready to head into the wastes and grow on the other bank of the Desertcutter.”
I don’t have years—. Stephan frowned. Why don’t I have years to learn how to track and hunt?
He stood there, silent, arguing for and against learning how to stalk and read tracks could prove useful in a number of situations. Maybe even help him find the warlock.
“What level do you need to be to navigate the southern wastes safely?”
“At least fifteen, but most return around level twenty-two, twenty-three. Anything higher is tough.”
“And are there any human settlements?” Stephan’s plan for destroying the fiends had a foundation of pacifying the outlaw lands. He had decided to dedicate this life to finding out how he could do it, and if he could travel to complete his purpose while learning new skills, all the better.
“There are villages and bandit fortresses. We stay clear of the former and raid the latter to hurt the bandits’ ability to threaten us. Why are you asking all of these questions?”
“Are you interested in taking an apprentice?” Stephan grinned, and Muriel’s lip twitched as if she’d stumbled into a trap.
Half an hour later, they were sitting in a long mess hall finishing their supper of mushrooms stewed with cabbage, the smell of the latter filling the room.
“So, since we’re both high enough level, you want us to go to the waste and the lands beyond so you can learn to track there?” She crossed her arms. “And you want to leave tomorrow?”
“No time like the present.” Stephan forced a smile and shoved a spoonful of spongy stew into his mouth. He chewed slowly, then swallowed. “Besides, I’m not forcing you. If you’re not interested, point me at someone who is, and I’ll go with them. I just think that since you’re so young and you have so much authority around here, that means you’re really good, really talented, or both.”
Muriel snorted. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
Based on how she positively beamed, Stephan disagreed.
“And you have beautiful hair,” Stephan joked.
Muriel’s hair was a mess. A vivid hazel color, long as a palm was wide, and ruined by edges that looked like she had haphazardly cut it with a dull knife.
“You are asking for a beating,” she said, putting her bowl down after scraping the last spoonful from it. “I am going to enjoy teaching you. I’ve never had an apprentice, but I know what they look like in their first weeks.”
She shuddered. “I still remember the feeling.”
Stephan understood none of it, but the next morning, half an hour after they left Treetop, he was starting to.
They hadn’t even gone three trees away from where they descended the trunk with the shared barracks when his head started to spin.
“What are your eyes for? You just missed another one.” She pointed at a patch of ground no different from all the others—a bunch of leaves with some dirt visible beneath them. “Don’t you see it? Look, look.”
Her finger hovered a hair’s breadth away from the soil.
“Someone stepped here two to three days ago. See how much the ground is packed? Not fresh, but not too old either. And these leaves—a boot disturbed them when it caught them. Check the depth. It was a man, around one hundred and sixty pounds.” She moved her hand. “See the spacing. His left leg is lame; you can tell how it steps unevenly across prints here and here, and he obviously favors the right while dragging the left. It was probably Jerry, carrying messages.”
Stephan stared.
The ground did its best to return his glare.
His task was to find tracks older than one day in the forest floor. The only explanation Muriel gave him was to keep his eyes wide open and then he would see it all.
He didn’t.
His vision blurred and temples throbbed, both feeling hot from the strain. He had found several footprints, all of which Muriel judged a dozen hours old or younger. She showed him and explained in excruciating detail every mistake he made and each print he missed. How the edges of the prints were too regular, suggesting they were fresh tracks. How what passed for fresh tracks in the Iron Forest weren’t fresh tracks in the field or the muddy riverside or the desert. Or wind, or rain.
Stephan tried and struggled. He could feel a headache coming, and without meaning to, he quietly healed himself. The burning behind his eyes was gone, as was the migraine knocking on his temples.
Fifteen minutes later, it returned. He once more felt like someone was trying to squeeze his brain out the ears, but with healing, he pushed through the day’s abuse. They had covered around ten miles before stopping for supper.
“Not bad,” Muriel said, munching on smoked jerky. “Most people tend to faint or throw up on their first day. You’ve got a tough gut.”
She tore another piece and spoke while chewing. “Though you’re a bit too old. That might be it.”
She nodded with certainty, the mystery of Stephan enduring his training solved. And to an extent, she was right. He was incomparably tougher and had more stamina than an average person his age. Not to mention the healing.
Still, while Muriel praised him with a wolfish grin, Stephan was under the impression he hadn’t done anything that day. Despite trying his best, he failed to find a single set of tracks that satisfied Muriel’s standards.
As the evening settled and the day’s hardship began to fade, Stephan had more time to think.
I wonder if I should have visited the Ranger one last time instead of just leaving a letter that I was going out to learn to track.
The woman would die. It was a matter of weeks, or perhaps even days, and while he felt sorry for her and vowed he would help her in the future, he could do nothing at the moment, save to grow stronger and advance his own agenda.
This is why we will never eradicate evil.
The books written by the other Paladins were coming to haunt him. The few lines he read made him acutely aware of his own self-centeredness, of the evil of his callous decisions.
I could turn back and comfort her, but would that help her? Another notion came unbidden, just as he closed his eyes. I should have spent my last life in Brighthollow with my family. Only Lacy had forgotten me, and I could have spent years living a normal life with her and with the others.
It was a selfish thought, and yet his real regret. Something he could never again have, now that Tom had forgotten him. Now that someone else would forget him when the chance presented itself.
On the second day, Muriel spoke even less. Not in a sense that she had fever instructions, but that she had shortened them.
“Look at this edge here, and how it sank,” had transformed into a simple pointing of a finger accompanied by, “Edge.”
“Spacing.”
“Depth.”
Stephan had to draw his own conclusions. She pointed out what he missed, and gave clues, but forced him to connect them and recognized what they were all on his own.
They covered fifteen miles that day. Trampled leaves caught Stephan’s eye. The line where they had sunk was fluffy. The print wasn’t fresh, but since the compression remained, it wasn’t that old either.
“Here,” he said.
Muriel didn’t bother getting close. Instead, she spoke with a smirk. “My, my. Well, I guess even a blind hen sometimes finds a worm. Let’s see if you can repeat this miracle.”
Stephan missed the next track. And the next, and the next. But he spotted the fifth one.
It was humble, but it was a start.