Solo Routine and Ritual

[Konrad Venger]

11th Bell - 3rd Day of Spring, 517AV - Outside Endrykas

It wasn't a perfect shot, but it still found its target. "Perfect" would have been through the throat, or the flank into the heart, killing the deer within ticks, leaving naught but a corpse at the hunter's feet by the time he'd walked over. But the hunter was not an expert with his weapon, yet. He'd fired from a longer distance, and sacrificed better accuracy for lack of discovery.

The wind had shifted, and he was downwind. The deer was already getting antsy, he could tell; no longer comfortable peacefully grazing, head always snapping up to stare and study with that frozen, piercing look they wore. He'd been tracking his quarry for the better part of two bells, and wasn't about to have it bound away back into the lush grassland.

Konrad took his shot, and it was not perfect. But Dira came soon enough. Just not gently.

There was no leading on a merry chase, as the bards might have put it. Nothing merry about following a blood trail through grass and mud; nothing poetic about a dying animal trying to escape with a work of man impaling it through the side. As the grunting and gasping became louder and he finally came across the last resting place of the young buck, Konrad thought both that the scene was familiar, and utterly without romance.

Sodding poets, he thought sourly, shouldering his bow and pulling his kukri instead. Petch do they know about the dying business?

An old gripe that had never been disproved, in his experience, but it was rapidly replaced by the sense that this had happened before. The imperfect arrow, the brief, bloody chase... the dying deer and him, approaching it with blade in hard, ready to put an end to it.

He paused, standing over the buck, gasping out blood bubbles and snot as its chest heaved. This had happened before, and he knew what was to follow. Wordless and precise, without mercy or... appreciation. He blinked and found the last idea meant something to him now. It stayed his hand as he turned the kukri over and sighted cold, clinical eyes over the sweet spot in the neck, where the curved blade would chop through artery and windpipe and bleed out the beast in ticks.

No. A different way. He frowned, works seemingly not his own whispering through his mind. Unfamiliar and alien thoughts to Konrad Venger, but after what he'd seen in the last days of Winter, both concepts were very relative. A way that pays honor to Her.

Which was where he fell somewhat short. Whether or not it was a gasping man in an alley or a groaning deer in the grasslands, Konrad wasn't much for reassurance and pity in those final moments. The last time... that had been his way. Quick, precise, professional. No wasted time or words or sentiment that... insulted the victim. Because he didn't feel bad; he didn't regret.

What kind of man would lie to the man he'd killed, just before he died?

But as he approached the deer, crouched by its side, felt the warmth from its flanks and the steam jetting from its nose, fuzzy inspiration came to him. It was why this seed of faith, or at least reverence, had come from. There was predator and prey, and that was the world. That was Her world. But there could still be respect. And that, he supposed, was where their world was so different, if he'd pondered on all the others that could be out there.

Because here, if you want to pay respect to the winds or the beasts or luck or whatever else, usually you can give it a name.

"Go to your mother," he said in slow, careful Pavi. He'd heard Sedon mutter it over his kills before, a final benediction from killer to killed, and it seemed a better fit for the moment than his guttural, growling Sunberth Common. "Tell her I say thank you."

He reached out with his free hand, and covered the eye that was staring at him. It stiffened and struggled for a moment, but there was no fight left in it. Too much had seeped and oozed from that wound to provide any muster, and Konrad thought that was much the same.

It was not the first time he'd closed a man's eyes, before or after. Not the first time he'd shown a glimmer of compassion. He'd had a long career: you got all sorts of jobs.

"Do not see me now," he whispered, raising the kukri. "Go to what is next."

The kukri came down, carrying Syna with it in a flashing arc, then all was crimson in that curved stretch of steel, and Konrad's worship was over.

[Konrad Venger]

Several hours before that moment, Konrad rose among the dead. Or so it seemed to him.

He awoke and the typical sounds of Drykas industry seemed lacking beyond the material of his tent. There was the crackling of fire, the scrape of metal repairing or skinning, even the snuffles of horses, bu no voices. No footsteps. He groaned inwardly and gave his sleeping partner a gentle kick in the arse.

"Wuzzat?"

"C'mon," he growled, voice hardly pleasant at the best of times, but made almost feral with the first words of waking. "Time t'get up."

Colfram knew better than to argue or grouse. Even if he felt like mouthing off to a man who looked and carried himself like one who have a cemetery's worth of death on his hands, the Drykas way was not one of sloth. Since he was, for the moment, a Drykas as well, he had to get his arse up and work, or he didn't get fed.

The two walahks unfolded out of their tent, strapping and pulling on clothes and boots, weapons and tools. Around them, Pridesun members crouched or squatted. Shuffled and chewed. Every movement grudging. Reluctant. As if the effort of living was unwanted.

Konrad shook his head briefly and rested his hat atop it. The believers had been hit the hardest, with how the Winter had ended. Jonas' two massive bodyguards never seemed to move from the main pavilion, staring into the flames as if their master would walk from it. Alive and whole, instead of burned into ash and spread to the winds.

By a god, no less. That was a pretty definite way to die.

"Gonna go check me traps," he said to Sedon as he strolled by, pausing when the Drykas cook didn't even look up. "Ey? Y'hear me?"

"Aye."

Konrad didn't spare the man a second look. He already knew what he'd find. Hollow eyes and a vacant gaze; a mouth slackened into a limp, lifeless line. Hands that were so quick and dexterous turned sluggish with belief turned to shyke. It was eight bells into the day and he should have been carving up and cooking up a storm, but there he sat. Meekly, slowly skinning a rabbit with all the speed of a one-armed man.

Petch it, he thought to himself, striding away from the depressing pavilion and into the grasslands. I still have to bloody eat.

It was part of his routine: every night, he set traps, and every morning, he checked them. Nothing with jagged metal jaws or clanging springs, but simple, purer, and arguably more vicious snares. A bear trap would kill an animal quickly, bleed it out or snap bones, but a snare? Konrad had been to his share of hangings. He'd even carried out a few of his own. That was no pleasant way to go.

Providing, of course, something is in the noose.

"Good start, though."

He'd found a trail the day before, rabbit tracks in the mud, fury little bodies clearing a furrow through the undergrowth to the river. He'd laid two traps there, then decided on just the one. If a rabbit did fall into one, the noise and struggle would scare off the others, rendering the second obsolete. So why waste the time and the effort?

He crouched next to the tiny carcass with a wire loop pulled tight around its throat. He was hardly a master, but half of trapping was placement; the rest was camouflage, and proper knots. The rabbit had gone bounding along, not seeing the hoop of wire pegged into the ground around the furrow, and once it tightened, it fought, it struggled, and that was that.

Konrad gazed into those black marble eyes and found no light therein. Satisfied, he reached down and started to loosen the noose, until he could remove it entirely and pick up the flopping mass of meat and fur. Then he yanked out the peg driven into the ground the noose was attached to, and used the wire to tie his bounty to his belt.

Thump... thump... thump... a steady beat of the carcass against his thighs as he strode through the grass, looking for the next snare. The same warren or a different one, he didn't know, or care. Only that it was far enough away that the first trap wouldn't have scared off anything... but that turned out not to be a problem.

"Bugger."

Something had been there. The peg was pulled almost entirely out of the ground, fresh, dark earth churned up around the hole, fur and blood speckling and gleaming on the noose... but no carcass. A few drops of blood and a trail he could maybe follow, but Konrad doubted he'd find anything soon, and there wasn't much of it. In a day, or ten , maybe the rabbit would die of infection, or survive with a fresh scar. Like those mad-eyed bastards he'd known back home who'd survived lynchings, convinced the gods favored them.

Konrad snorted at the thought. Gods above, petch knew what kind of demented little sod that rabbit might turn out to be.

He heard the last before he saw it. Chirping and thrashing, leaves and twigs breaking and rustling. Then he could see a bobbing form, frantically squirming in a trembling arc from where it was pinned to the ground. The little marsh bird was caught around the leg, and not long ago, by Konrad's eye. The furrow of ground around the stake the noose was tied to, was ragged and not a full circle. Barely a bell of struggling. The bird paused and looked up into Konrad's eyes.

The human blinked, and approached. The bird screeched and squawked and tried to fly away, demented flapping of wings keeping Konrad back until he got close enough to spring-

-wrapping both hands around the creature, pinning its wings, wincing as a desperate beak pecked and scratched.

"Quick and clean, mate," he whispered, not even bothering with Pavi as he closes a thumb and forefinger around that slender neck. "My thanks t'yeh."

Crack

One twist and a snap of spinal bone later, and all those struggles were over. Konrad went through the motions. Wire and peg retrieved, pocketed or tied to his belt, along with his future, feathered meal. He sighed up into the sky, then cocked his head to listen... to hear...

The Pridesuns may have been quiet, but Endrykas itself was not. He found a direction, and started marching back home.

[Konrad Venger]

It was a bloody business, but a necessary one. The patience and thrill of the hunt, that was what most imagined the life of a hunter to be. Probably because it didn't involve you up to your elbows in intestines, spending bells skinning, boning, jointing, gutting, replacing the sweet, clear air of the grasslands with the stink of innards already turning to poison.

A bloody business, but an essential one. Because without meat and skin, without the sustenance and commodity a kill became, what was a hunter but a killer? What purpose did he serve, other than to end lives for his own amusement?

Well, that ain't me, Konrad thought as he finished shifting the deer carcass into position. I get me blades wet, there's a purse waiting for me. One way or another.

Which wasn't entirely true, historically speaking, but he wasn't about to quibble with his own mind while in the middle of this. Carrying the deer back to the Pridesun pavilion had taken enough out of him. Now the positioning of it on the ground was, incredibly, more of a relaxation for what was to follow. The man stood up and flexed tired muscles. Barely even midday and already he was sore, worn, tired.

Then he looked down at what he'd accomplished, and smiled. With his kukri in his hand.

"A'right. Les' geddit done..."

There was a finesse to the gutting and cleaning, he knew. He'd seen Sedon work his art with thin blade and skilled hands on many a creature in the past, but he wasn't that man yet. He was a novice, and he worked with what he knew, and what he had. He stabbed the kukri into the deer's underbelly, just above it's anus, and ripped it upward until he struck pelvic bone. Stuck his hands into the wound and-

"Ruros' sodding sack... petch me, how'd you stand the stick a' yerself?"

The deer, of course, gave no reply. Konrad just sighed and started scooping out the ropey, fleshy, swollen things inside. They went into a bucket, handful after handful, trailing blood and viscera over the ground as they went. After a few putrid chimes, the chest cavity was almost empty... save for the heart. Konrad picked it up and held it to the sky, turning it this way and that, studying it with hands as bloody as the organ like a merchant examining a rare stone.

Good meat, right there. Fine meal.

That went onto the ground to one side, where everything else would go. The kukri rose and fell over and over, hacking off the legs where they joined the torso. He wouldn't bother skinning them too thoroughly: it was the meat he was more concerned with, and besides, the torso would fetch a better price. Bigger mass, bigger pelt, more use and thus more mizas.

The legs were simpler. He sat on his haunches and pulled down the skin from the ragged edge where his kukri had hacked them from the deer. It was chimes of gritty work, boring and tedious, but eventually he had the whole flapping mass peeled away from the muscle and fat like a stinking sock hanging from the hoof. Then he cut that away, along with the hoof.

One. Thud. Two. Thud. Three. Thud. Four. Thud. Until they were all tossed on the grass next to the heart, and there was only the torso left. Konrad wiped his brow with whatever relatively clean part of his forearm he could, ending up with a smear of blood right across it. No matter. Hardly the first time. Not even a distraction.

"Now comes the trick part."

Skinning. Always the work of a careful, patient hand, but his last efforts had made the job easier. With the legs and then the head hacked off, there were no awkward limbs or lumps to peel the skin around. No, it was just slow, steady work, one hand pulling, the other working the kukri through the yellow fat between skin and muscle and meat. He had to nudge over the torso with his foot several times, getting a better angle, until with one final rip-

"Shyke!"

-he nearly tottered backward, dripping skin coming away in his hand. He held it up like a dirty sheet, holding it up to Syna and looking for extra holes... finding none. Satisfied, he folded it as best he could and set it down next to the legs and heart... before turning back to the mass of muscle and bone that was no unrecognizable as a once-proud-and-swift buck.

"A'right," he panted, promising himself a thorough wash and a strong drink once the last, easy stage was over with. "Ribs and steaks, comin' up..."

[Konrad Venger]

If he was honest, it was relieving to eat in silence, without anyone jabbering in his ear. Before the end of Winter, every meal had been an excuse for Jonas or one of his minions to extort, preach, ramble, or just badger the other walahks and outcasts. Asking them questions about the day, and if they saw the hand of the Dual God in their labors. Asking them about their pasts, their plans, their dreams, their fears, even when they had a mouthful of food they were trying to swallow.

Konrad looked around the sullen group and suppressed a smirk. Ah, yes. Far more pleasing to his digestion.

It was his kills feeding them, but not the big one. The deer meat would be salted and jerked later that day, and the cuts wrapped and put into storage. Sedon may have been lost without his damn sodding Prophet, but he still knew his job, and he didn't want the pavilion to gorge one day and starve the next. Instead, rabbit and bird stew was bubbling away over the campfire, and Konrad was practically licking the bowl.

"Wassat inna' sauce?"

It took a moment for Sedon to realize he was being addressed. He looked over and found Konrad smacking his lips, looking disgustingly at ease compared to the others.

"Hmm?"

"That... dunno, tangy taste?" The man was already strolling over for another steaming scoop of stew. Midday meal was always a filling but simple affair, unlike the minor feast of dinner. Konrad wanted to keep his strength up. "S'like... onions?"

"Oh... yeah..." Konrad blinked in disbelief at the cook actually had to think about his answer. Like he didn't make the same damn stew every day, with the same damn ingredients. But now the answer seemed to seep into his mind like water into stone, and it was far more ticks than necessary before he finally said, "Wild onion. And parsley."

Konrad nodded his thanks and filed that away for when he'd need it. Water, meat, onions, parsley, and whatever else Sedon could toss into the pot, until all was a congealed mess of satisfaction. He sat in silence and ate, pondering on his day, where it had gone and where it would go.

Chores, although most of his were now done. Just the traps for the next morning, really. But his practice, his wyrd and his weapons, that was something that never ended, not really. He ordered them in his mind, marshaling the bells into neat lines and filling them with exercises. By the time he had them organized properly, his bowl was empty again and he dropped it next to the stew pot.

"Thanks" he signed in Pavi to Sedon as he walked away, getting only a slow jerk of the chin in response. His eyes swept around as he walked, meeting no gazes, all others staring at the ground or in their bowls... and shoot his head for the tenth time since he'd sat down to eat.

Gods above, they lose one sodding charlatan and it's like their world ends.

Konrad didn't have that problem. He strode away from the broken little group without the ghost of Jonas and his shattered promises dragging at his ankles. His eyes were on the horizon, the swaying grass and the bounty it hid, the endless cycle of hunter and hunted within it. Out of some instinct he couldn't name, his hand dipped into his pocket and stroked the coyote claw he'd found a season ago. A trophy of an early and botched hunt. Now a morphing model, and perhaps something else.

He touched it, and gazed out into the plains laid bare with high Syna's rays, and felt in that sharp tip of claw, some kinship out there with those hot, hungry eyes surrounding the camp. He didn't concern himself with the shapings of men like Jonas, nor the gods that had killed him.

He remembered the look in the deer's eyes. The struggles of the fowl. The face of the thing that had bound a grassland menagerie into Endrykas at the end of Winter, and told them to respect the land. Her land.

"Aye, well," he said, voice sounding almost tired. "m'trying, ain't I?"

[Shaqira]

G R A D E

xp

Hunting +1
Tracking +1
Trapping +2
Weapon: Kukri +1
Philosophy +1
Butchering +3
Organization +1


lores

Dying is not poetic & poets know naught of dying
Trapping: An art of placement, camouflage & knot-tying
Trapping: A successful trap set too close to another may scare off any potential catch
Pridesun Pavilion: Devastated after the loss of Jonas
Butchering: Field dressing a deer
Butchering: Remove limbs to make skinning easier
Butchering: Breaking a carcass down
Butchering: Separating the hide from the fat & muscle
Cooking: Wild onion & parsley flavour a stew
Konrad: A prayer to Caiyha


notes

Don't forget to deduct living expenses for Spring 517AV from Konrad's ledger!

If you feel I missed anything shoot me a PM.
Don't forget to edit your grade request here -