Solo The Snares of The Devil

[Konrad Venger]

5th Day of Winter, 516AV|| Outskirts of Endrykas

He wondered, now and then, if there was something was something wrong with him. Some missing piece of his soul that set him apart from other men. If that was so, he'd concluded that it was a common affliction, for he'd known many others with the same condition. But he knew that most people, when confronted with the flapping, chirping, desperate bundle of feathers and meat helplessly snared to the branches of the dead tree, would feel some pang of sympathy for the creature.

How long had it been there, panic-stricken and utterly unable to free itself? Had it passed even a moment in peace, or had its mind been shrieking in terror ever since the thin wire loose had tightened around its leg? Were there chicks that would starve, eggs that would go consumed by some slithering or scuttling predator? Would it see the giant approaching and mayhap even hope - if birds could hope - for some salvation in such a giant form?

Konrad mused that all things were possible. The gods walked the world. So did men made of mud without cocks, that existed on to destroy. Men could wield magic; women could heal with mere touches, and there were races that lived under the water like fish and swooped on bat wings through the night. Why not the mind of a person in the body of a plump little bird?

He reached out carefully as he approached the tree. The bird had been snared good, but only on one leg. So when it swung and fluttered, it swayed like a pendulum, back and forth and in circles, never ceasing to cry out-

-until Konrad's hand snapped out and grasped it around the neck. Tiny black eyes regarded him for a tick and then-

Crunch.

It was a pitiful sound. Twigs were louder. Konrad ran his eyes over the rest of his snares, squinting in the faint but soon-to-be blazing light of Syna, crawling over the horizon. Damn. Just that one, out of the four. He shook his head and collected them up, then loosened and pocketed the successful snare from the dead bird.

Also known as "breakfast". But not yet.

The tree was one of two. He'd learned well from the Drykas when he'd been a caravan guard, but learning wasn't enough. Practice, practice, practice, the only way to improve. But out there, in the Sea of Grass, failure could mean death.

Horses whinnied. Men shouted. Women did similar, and when Konrad turned... there was a city at his back. That it was made of tents, leather, rough wood and horse shit made little difference. Thousands of horse lords, all traveling in one vast throng across the grasslands... and him.

The Sunberth ganger shook his head and adroitly tied the dead bird to his belt with nimble fingers. Probably the only thing "nimble" about him left after what happened with Three Eyes. The memory was enough to raise fire in his leg and back and he plowed on, marching through the scrub to the other spot he'd prepared the night before.

His stomach grumbled and he licked cracked lips. Rabbit stew. Long time since he'd had that...

[Konrad Venger]

The evening before, and Konrad was oddly grateful for the unseasonable bent Syna had found herself in. She was setting later than was decent for so late in the year, and he had more light and thus more time to find out exactly where to place his traps.

He remembered Lesson One of the Drykas. It's the where that matters; do that right, and half your job is done. But to know that, you have to know how to see.

That took more patience that Konrad was born with, but what is life if not a grand chance to improve on those shortfalls? On the horizon behind him, Endrykas wheeled and chattered and roared and clattered on like some great beast sprawling under the dimming sky. Jonas and his gaggle of outcasts were on the rim of the tent city, going about the simple tasks of the evening with quiet, contented industry.

Konrad had to get away from them. Hence his particular enjoyment of this task, and endeavored to make it a daily one. So he gathered his kit, his wire and his little jars and bottles, and made his way into the steppe under the cover of his broad-brimmed hat.

Look down, look down, don't look 'em in the eye...

There was a snort that could have been in mirth or a blocked throat. It was hard to tell. That was the second time that tune had danced through his mind; once day he'd have to sit down and concentrate on where he'd heard it. But it seemed apt, given the task at hand. He marched slowly, head swinging left and right, eyes narrowed in concentration. It was a delicate task. So maddeningly specific. But once you knew what to look for, even if it was just the merest sign, things became easier-

There.

He stopped and peered closer at what he'd spied. A tunnel through the short scrub, given away by the flattened grass and the queerly curved stalks curling over the gap. A gap just large enough for a small, furry creature to go galloping through it.

Konrad knelt down and pushed his hat further back on his head, giving him a better view. His leg screeched in protest under him, still-healing dagger gash gnawing and snarling under his breeches. Damn him. Damn that bastard to hell, for...

For doing what you would have done, if the coin had been right. But yes, damn him, anyway.

Turning his mind to the proper task, his green eyes flickered over the sand and dirt until they caught the imprints there. Lumps in the dirt. He licked his lips, practically tasting that stew and reached out gently, caressing the shape of the dents in the ground. They were never as perfect as he'd wished, never definitive. But that was the game, he'd learned. Nothing was certain, but you stacked the odds with your knowledge.

And your rumbling stomach.

So, a run and tracks. But what else? He looked up and down the above-ground little tunnel that snaked from the scrub into the denser foliage, now bereft of leaves and green life but still thick and adequate protection for little creatures. He stalked closer, almost on his hands and knees, ignoring the creaking in his leg and the howling in his back-

Gotcha.

Grass chewed down. Stalks nibbled from tapering ends into short, flat tips, as if a knife-man an inch tall had come along swinging his blade. The novice hunter looked around and smelled, inhaling deep, hoping for a scent of dung... but no. He was denied. Three out of four signs, though... he would take those odds.

The snares came next, and he found that he enjoyed makes these simple but devilishly effective little devices. They were nothing but knots in wire, but how you used them... that was the trick. A smaller noose tied into the end, then curled into itself, and looped around the rest of the snare... and like that, the noose was ready.

Snare. Or trap. That's what they're supposed to be called. But they're always nooses to me.

Then came the short stake that he drove into the ground next to the rabbit run and tied the snare to, since there were no branches or roots to use instead. Long chimes were spent in the careful arranging of the snare, fixing it just so in the tunnel, so it circled the edge, but would snap tight and immovable when his prey came rushing through it. By the time he was done, Syna was nearly touching the grass and he knew his time grew short.

He would have preferred four more snares, like he'd made for the rare bounty of a tree he'd found a mile or so away. But as it turned out, he only had time for two before the night closed in on him and the bright tents of Endrykas did not mark his way home, but instead the blaze of braziers and camp fires.

Things moved and rustled in the grassland now, as Syna vanished and the darkness cloaked their movements. Konrad had listened to them before at night, moving around beyond the camp fires. Sometimes fleeting, barely disturbing the grass; sometimes loud, fast but heavy, uncaring of who knew they were there. Out of habit, his hand went to the curved kopis at his belt. His mind took a quick inventory of the others. His kukri, the dagger in his boot, the hidden "puncher" in his belt... even the brass knuckles in his pocket.

Again, that strange, choked sound. Brass knuckles? Against a bear? A wolf? A glass beak?! Ah, would that not be a tale to tell? Even the Horse Lovers would tell that one around their fires.

Aye, probably. But they'll not get it out of my damned hide.

He quickened his step back to the light of the city, back to his adopted crew, and wished for a hasty night and a well-caught breakfast when he returned.

[Konrad Venger]

"Unbepetchinglievable..."

That was the only word that Konrad had for what greeted him when he checked his traps. The birds, well, they'd only been effective one case out of five, but at least he'd caught something. And a whole something, at that.

Not just a leg.

He crouched down and puffed out his cheeks, pulling off his hat and shaking his already-sweating head. It was a leg, true enough, a buggery knew where the rest of the creature was. Not a rabbit, though. Too long, and the fur was wrong. Coyote, if he'd had to guess. Some sort of wild dog, and there was a trail of blood spattered across the grass, leading off into the horizon.

Where he probably bled to death, Konrad thought, turning over the dismembered limb with the tip of his hunting knife. It wasn't a clean rip, of course. The bone and flesh and muscle had been gnawed away, leaving frayed strips of muscle and gristle putrefying in the dust. The heat was already turning it, a skirmish of flies finding their newest treat before the division that would shortly arrive. The bone was a jagged white mes in the middle of it all, where the desperate coyote had finally snapped it off and freed itself.

He reached out and grabbed the stake. It was wobbling. Another bell of struggling, maybe the thing could have wrenched itself free. But it didn't think that far ahead. He'd heard something screeching in the night before, crying out in that high, animal fashion. But he couldn't venture out there to find out what it was. Beyond the city, beyond the fires, the Sea of Grass was a death trap. So he'd blocked it out and tilted his hat back over his face and tried to sleep.

Konrad straightened up and squinted at the blood trail. Aye, it went all the way into the haze. He could track it easily enough; even a blind man could follow that splash of red against the grey, the dull brown, the sand of the heat-blasted steppes. He made a note to tell Jonas as soon as he got back, maybe get some men together.

Full-sized coyote, he thought to himself as he retrieved the snare, the stake and, yes, the leg. Meat was meat, after all, and the Sea was running low on food. Big sods. Twenty, thirty pounds. Well... maybe not anymore, for this one.

There was a yellowed slash in his leathery face as he smirked at his little joke. He wrapped the fly-ridden end of the leg in a length of cloth and tied it to his belt along with the bird. The other two snares were, predictably, bare. Konrad was hardly surprised: what halfway intelligent rabbit would go near that run with a sodding coyote trapped in the middle of it all night?

His ears pricked a little as he heard a muted call from behind him. Wordless, thanks to the distance, but the tone was known to him. The man that cooked for Jonas and his group, calling them all to breakfast. Konrad patted his bird and planted his hat back on his head, all his snares retrieved. He spared one last look over his shoulder, at the blood trail and the eternal expanse the stunted wolf had limped into to die.

Maybe later for you, mate.

[Konrad Venger]

He spoke when he was spoken to, and for the most part, the group seemed to respect that. Konrad couldn't find a better term for their collection of stragglers and Drykas, born Horse Lords and "walakhs" who spoke not a word (sign?) of Pavi. They were all bound together with only one common purpose: Jonas Pridesun. His message, such as it was, and his kindness.

The latter, in Konrad's case. Fortune to Jonas that he hadn't asked too intently as to whether the scarred stoic he'd saved on the grasslands outside Kenash gave two shykes about his "Dual-God".

Focus on the food. Be useful. Be quiet. Mark the time.

He remembered what the cook had told him the first time he'd bought back a grass quail. Squatted on the ground, cross-legged, the limp feathery mass in one hand, his hunting knife in the other. First he straightened out one wing, and started sawing it off with the blade.

Shears. I need shears for-

"Here."

As if his thoughts had been spoken aloud, the cook appeared and a pair of rusty game shears were hovering in front of his face. Konrad's reptilian gaze snapped to them, then slid up the beefy arm holding them... and nodded a silent thanks. Cookie let him have them without another word. Every man had a job to do, after all.

Snip... snip... and the wings fluttered down to the grass.

The legs were next, at the knees. Then the head, as close to the body as possible, and Konrad felt a perverse little twinge of nostalgia. Well, he'd never used shears, but still...

Then came the delicate part. He flicked his fingers of the dirt and down and readjusted his grip. His tongue poked out a little through his lips as he grabbed the top of the skin and feathers by the stump of the head and, very carefully-

"Peel," the cook had told him before, narrating every movement and action as he did them in front of the mercenary. "Don't pull. Peel. Better to do it slow and get all of it."

-glistening red muscle was revealed as brown and white feathers were pulled off the mutilated little carcass. Konrad pulled to the side, too, all the way around, until the feathers the bird had worn in life were hanging around its tail and footless-legs like a toga shed from a naked body. He took the shears and snipped off the tail and feathers with it, turning the bare chunk of meat and bones around, admiring his work.

He even smiled.

"Nicely done," the cook said as he took the prepared bird, then held up one finger with a smirk that Konrad didn't quite like. "Forget one thing, though..."

Konrad kept watching and mentally slapped himself. Old bastard was right, too. He took back his shears and made a hold where the thing's... arse, would be, he supposed. Then the cook reached inside and pulled out heart and lungs and stomach and everything else like he was shelling peas. The whole stinking mass was tossed into a separate pot and the "good stuff" went into another.

"Waste not," the cook said, wiping his fingers on an already-filthy rag. "Not bad, though. Be as good as me, soon."

That would have been a good moment to speak. He had been spoken to, after all. But there was no query or request. Just a flat statement. So instead Konrad gave him his now-customary nod, and went back to the other game he'd found that morning. Such as it was.

[Konrad Venger]

It was too dangerous, and it was too late. That was what Konrad had been told. Not that it was stopping him.

The cook watched the scarred man who never seemed to take off his hat suck down more of their breakfast stew Clearly not a horseman, that man. What was his name again? Gods, he'd been so taciturn over the last score of days that he'd barely-

Hansel. That's it.

The cook kept his nose over his stew pot but his eyes on the man bent on apparently killing himself. He'd heard snippets of his talk with Jonas. His insistence that the rest of the coyote he'd maimed was out there, easy to track, wouldn't be too far, only a bell he'd be gone and bang, back with thirty pounds of meat.

Jonas was skeptical. So was the cook. He'd had to carve off a hefty chunk of the coyote leg that had already gone bad; gods alone knew what the rest of the thing would be like. And, Jonas had calmly pointed out, with the Sea in such turmoil, every predator would converge on such a prize. The stench of blood and coming Dira would fill the steppe and everything from flies to glassbeaks would taste it in the air. If Konrad thought he was beating any of them there, he was a fool.

The man with half a face had listened to it all, wearing naught but his customary scowl, his duster and his hat. He'd swallowed every reasonable word... and shaken his head. The cook could see what Jonas could: his pride was wounded. His trap had failed. But it was just bad luck, not a fault of his novice craft. Coyotes were as desperate as every other predator in the Sea of Grass; they ventured closer to settlements, deeper into rabbit runs, and this time, this one... well, he'd picked the wrong spot.

If you go out there, he'd heard their de facto leader say, in that same level voice that had talked down furious ankals when he'd returned, you will die. So will your mount. I can't stop you from going, but I can keep you from a horse you'd otherwise lead to death.

onrad had not shut up; he'd argued and cajoled and gods, said more in one argument than he'd said in twenty days. He would track the prize he'd lost; he would bring it back if it was whole, and if not, then he would know. But he would not be gone long, back well before Syna set and, after all, with the seasons in an uproar, wasn't He settling to sleep much later nowadays?

Jonas knew the man's reasons. His pride had to be assuaged, somehow, but not that way. He had held firm with his decision, and Konrad had stalked away from him with naught but his usual scowl and terse nod of his head.

The cook tasted the stew... hmm... some salt, definitely... and marveled at the miracle he'd made from some jerky, root vegetables and a coyote leg. Most of it, anyway.

Konrad ignored them, and everyone else. The stew was gamey and thin but it was sustenance, and he was grateful for it. Probably his damn bird and beast in there, anyway, and that thought just wound him back to the path he was determined to be on.

Meat was meat, and they needed it. Besides which, he was tired of being useless, tired of being stuck around those zealots, tired of...

He sighed. Just tired, he supposed.

[Rufio]

　　　
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　

g r a d e s

xp

Philosophy +1
Trapping +2
Observation +3
Tracking +1
Endurance +1
Logic +2
Tactics +1
Butchering +1
Wilderness Survival, Plains +1


lores

Trapping: Knowing where to set traps is key
Trapping: Setting staked ground snares
Tracking: Signs of rabbit
Butchering: Grass-quail
Cyphrus Fauna, Coyote: A full-size adult weighs 20-30lbs
Wilderness Survival, Plains: Staying within the safety of camp-fire at night
Wilderness Survival, Plains: A dead carcass attracts grassland predators
Tactics, Surviving with the Drykas: Be useful & be quiet
Konrad: Dark of humour
Konrad: Tired of hanging around the Pridesun zealots


rewards

+ half lb grass-quail meat
+ 1 coyote leg


penalties

- half lb grass-quail meat, eaten
- 1 coyote leg, eaten

NOTE: Don't forget to pay living expenses for Fall 516AV

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