Challenged (Mates for the Raskarrans #8)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

Rardek

A fter many sunsets of eating meal bars as we travelled here to the Mercenia hut, I am much looking forward to eating something freshly cooked. Meal bars might provide the sustenance a male full grown needs, but they hardly thrill the tongue. A useful tool for travelling, no question. Just one that tastes deeply unsatisfying.

Since Hannah took over the cooking duties from Namson, I confess to have grown accustomed to a finer sort of eating.

While none of us out here are possessed of Hannah’s skill, we would have to be abysmal to produce something worse than a meal bar if given fresh meat to work with. I consider myself a decent distance from abysmal and I am not even the best cook amongst our group. Shemza’s patience and knowledge of the forest’s herbs serve him almost as well at the broth pot as they do in his healer’s duties. If Jaskry and I can provide him with a few juicy frenelles, we will all eat well this night.

So it is a disappointment to find the first of the traps we set two sunsets ago lies empty.

“The downside of not knowing the hunting territory,” I say with a dramatic sigh. “We cannot know for certain that our traps are set in the places trod by little feet.”

Jaskry huffs. “It’s by the stream. What other location is more likely to be frequented by forest creatures?”

His tone suggests his disappointment, and his longing for something other than meal bars to eat, is as deep as my own.

I clap a hand on his shoulder. “We have many traps to check. There is hope for a decent evening meal yet.”

“I should hope so.” He huffs again, but rallies himself, shoots me a small grin. “I don’t think it will aid Larzon’s temperament to go without fresh meat for another sunset.”

I snort. “We could prepare him the grandest of feasts this night and he would still find some other thing to aggrieve him.”

Jaskry laughs, and I am reminded of how reserved he used to be when he first joined the tribe. Always so wary of endangering his place - and therefore his family’s place - amongst us. He does not hold those fears so close to his heartspace now, and he is lighter for it.

“Well, let’s hope that we aren’t the cause of his aggravation this night,” he says, grinning broadly.

“If only because it would mean our bellies were full of fresh meat also.”

Jaskry checks the trap is still correctly set, then we take off running together toward the next one. Normally, my hunter’s spirit would lift to be beneath Lina’s trees with a tribe brother. With a friend. But much as I enjoy Jaskry’s quiet company, there is something about the forest around the Mercenia hut - as if it has absorbed the ill feeling the hut inspires.

“I think I need a hot meal more to chase out the chill in my spirit than the hunger in my belly,” I say.

Jaskry nods. “It’s an ill feeling that lingers under these trees. I’ve felt on edge since a day or so before we arrived at the hut.”

“I think every male who has come out here has said much the same.”

“It can’t bother your brother overmuch. He’s spent more time out here than anyone.”

I grimace. “I think my brother was so far lost in his own headspace, he did not notice much of anything.”

“Not anything beyond his linasha, certainly.”

We run in silence for a while, saving our breath. As we arrive in the area we left the second trap, Jaskry moves to check it, brushing back the bush that he anchored it to. I am opening my pack to carry whatever we have caught when Jaskry turns to me, brows dipping into a deep frown.

“Also empty,” he says.

Unease tickles at the back of my neck, but I shrug. “We still have many to check. We will not be off on our assessment of good trap placement every time.”

The unease only grows when the third trap is also empty, but I try to suppress it, to remind myself that traps are not always successful. It is not abnormal to have several traps empty on one hunting round. It just feels worse because they have been empty one after another, making it feel certain that the next will be empty also.

But then the next trap is empty, and the next, and the next, until it is no longer something that can be explained by bad luck. It is either poor skill, or something is amiss with the creature populations here.

I do not question my skill. I certainly do not question Jaskry’s, when he alone kept his family fed for ten long seasons.

“Any sign that the trap was triggered?” I ask, crouching next to Jaskry. “Has it snagged some fur, at least?”

“Nothing,” Jaskry says. “And nothing in any of the others, either. They have all been set, primed, ready. Not falsely triggered, not near misses.” His expression tightens. “We should have caught something.”

I nod. “We should have. So why have we not?”

I rise to my feet, scanning the ground for any signs of animal activity. Footprints, scratches on the tree bark, scat. Signs will not be in every corner of the forest, but looking round at the trees, I should see something.

“Perhaps they feel the same unease we do from the Mercenia hut,” Jaskry says. “Or were scared away by the humans and their terrible weapons.”

“If it was less than a season since the humans left, I might agree. But some nineteen seasons later, I feel the forest creatures should have grown bold enough to approach. To discover there was no danger remaining to them.”

“Then some other danger. Basran.”

I consider the tribe chief who made the Mercenia hut his home. A cruel and lazy individual by Sam and Dazzik’s accounts. He showed signs of eating well, but his tribe around him hungered. Because the hunting here has always been poor or because they made it that way? A tribe so far strayed from Lina’s ways perhaps would not hunt with the preservation of populations in mind.

“Do you think Basran’s hunters could have hunted the creatures here to the point of extinction? Forced them to find territory further afield?”

Jaskry’s expression is tight. “I believe they would have been careless enough to risk it. But to actually achieve it?”

Uncertainty gnaws at my spirit, also. It is a neat explanation. Convenient. If Basran is responsible, there is nothing to be concerned about. The creatures will return slowly as they realise he and his hunters are gone. Balance will return to the forest, as it always does. Perhaps it is that convenience my heartspace rejects - the sense that things cannot be that simple scratching at my skin.

“It would certainly explain why they travelled so far to attack Walset’s tribe,” Jaskry offers, as if trying to convince himself as much as me. “They would’ve needed the supplies to get through the big rains, if this was the state of the hunting in the sunsets before.”

“We know they were not eating well.”

The few that Jestaw managed to round up and take to Darran’s old village were desperately thin when we reached out to them after the rains.

Jaskry grimaces. “I want to believe it, but I feel…”

“As though there is something else going on here,” I finish. “The same feeling fills my heartspace, also.”

Jaskry nods. “Basran’s tribe saw out three rainy seasons here. Even if they ate richly for two and a half, I don’t think it would be enough time for them to have killed or driven out every creature under the trees.”

“Well, not every creature,” I say, leaning in to my habit of teasing, hoping to lighten the atmosphere. “Even raskarrans of Basran’s ilk would not stoop to eating krenittas.”

Jaskry’s serious expression does not shift. He is not the most easily amused of my brothers, but I feel I deserve at least a flicker of a smile. Instead, he gestures around us.

“Listen,” he says, voice low.

I do, turning my senses further outwards than just our immediate area. I have been listening hard for any hint of approaching feet, any suggestion that one of Basran’s tribe brothers might still be lingering in the area. Many died by Dazzik’s hand, but many more fled to who knows where. Nursing their wounds and filling their empty bellies far from here, with no inclination to return to the strange straight hut that Mercenia built in our trees, I hope. But relying on hope alone is a fool’s game, and for all I might play the fool, I am not one. I am not a warrior, but I will do my part to keep my sisters - both frozen and not - safe.

“What am I listening for?” I ask after a moment, when nothing obvious sounds.

Jaskry just watches me. Waits.

I frown, hearing nothing. But then that sinks into my headspace. I hear nothing. No animal cries, no bird calls. The forest is normally a song of noise whatever time of day it is, but the forest here sounds empty. Only the rustle of leaves in the wind accompanies the sound of my own breathing, the beat of my heartspace.

“Too quiet,” I say, the unease growing deeper with each passing breath.

Jaskry nods. “It has only truly struck me today how quiet the forest is here. I would understand if Basran’s hunters had driven out the creatures of the ground. But they cannot hunt the entire sky. Where are the birds?”

I look up at the canopy overhead, searching for signs of nests. I spy one almost immediately, a tangle of twigs shaped into a round structure, sound enough to survive the constant downpour of the big rains. The clever workings of tiny beaks and feet. I point it out to Jaskry.

“A glance inside will tell us how long since it has been inhabited,” I say, walking over to the tree it is in and loosing my claws.

I scale up the trunk swiftly, resting my weight on two of the thicker branches just beneath the nest. It is in an awkward position - the entrance pointing away from the best perches. I lean out, stretching myself to reach the branch it sits on, then putting my weight through it so I can lean just a little further and align myself with the entrance.

“Empty,” I call down to Jaskry. “There are some feathers left behind. A doors bird nest. They line their nests with mosses, but there are none left inside, just the decomposed remains. So it has been abandoned some time.”

“At least a season,” Jaskry says. “Longer, perhaps.”

I push away from the branch, shifting my weight back onto the better perch. “Well, one abandoned nest might just be that. But if we find the same in-”

A crack cuts through what I am saying, and my body drops suddenly. I scramble, grabbing at the branches around me, only to hear more splintering wood. I am not high up enough to injure myself badly if I land well, but the shock of falling has me disoriented. I throw my hand out, jabbing with my claws, and take a relieved breath when they sink through bark into wood. My shoulder jars as it takes my whole weight, but it orients me, and I grip at the trunk with my knees to steady myself as I pause. Take a moment.

I have landed little more than knee height off the ground and look ridiculous, gripping to the trunk of the tree as if to save myself from mortal injury.

“Well,” I say, setting my feet on the ground and pulling my claws from the tree, sheathing them once more. “That was undignified.”

Another raskarran would be far too busy laughing at my misfortune to pay attention to anything else, but Jaskry ducks to pick up one of the fallen branches. They are not small. I do not feel I was wrong to believe they would take my weight. The one I grabbed to slow my fall was smaller, but I still think it should have bent, perhaps cracked a little, not ripped from the trunk completely.

“Look at this,” Jaskry says, gesturing me to his side.

He holds up the branch, showing me the broken end. Immediately, it is obvious that the wood beneath the bark is the wrong colour. Instead of the light, yellowish colour it should be, the wood is dark, almost grey. The texture is wrong also. It looks rotten. I touch a finger to it, find the wood is spongy. Soft.

“No wonder it did not take my weight,” I say, looking round at the rest of the trees. “Do you think the others are similarly affected?”

“I think we should be very cautious as we climb to find out.”

We each pick another tree at random, going for different varieties from each other and the first tree. It does not take me long to find more rot. My second handhold sags, my claws ripping through the soft wood beneath the tree’s bark. I drop the short distance back to the ground, then scrape off the bark, digging my claws through the rotten wood to find the extent of it. It spreads about a hand span in all directions and goes deep into the trunk.

Behind me, I hear Jaskry drop to the floor. He comes to my side, clutching another rotten branch.

“What kind of blight is this?” he asks, as he examines the rotten spot I have excavated.

“None I have ever seen before,” I say, the unease I have been feeling intensifying.

“We should strike out in different directions,” Jaskry says. “Return here once we have checked five other trees.”

I nod, and at once we head off, me running back towards the Mercenia hut, Jaskry away from it. I run hard for a brief time, putting some distance between myself and the afflicted trees before I stop and start to check others.

I try to choose very different trees - young, old, different species, different surrounding terrain. I pick one that grows close to the stream, one that is close to rocks, another in open space. In all but the one nearest the stream, I find rot immediately. The one by the stream I think is unaffected until I test a branch with my weight and feel it give.

Jaskry is already back when I return to our meeting place.

“Every tree I checked is similarly afflicted,” I say.

He nods, confirming his own findings were the same.

“I checked the bushes and other plants,” he says. “Close to the water, the djenti bush grows well enough, but there is very little growing further into the forest.”

This is not necessarily abnormal - the trees take up most of the water and light. It is difficult for anything else to grow in their shadow. But there should be some plants struggling to thrive in the small pieces of sunlight that fall between the leaves.

“The carros vines are thin also. I tried my weight on one and it stretched and snapped immediately.”

I try to recall if I even saw any. Find that I cannot.

“It explains the lack of creatures,” I say. “If the plants do not grow well, then there is no food for the plant eaters. They leave, and there is no food for the hunters.”

Jaskry nods. “The blight covers a large area, if all the places we have set traps are affected.”

A troublesome thought, but less troublesome than the nature of the blight itself.

“It affects all the trees and the plants,” I say, looking round. “What manner of blight passes so readily between the different types?”

The furrow between Jaskry’s brows grows deeper. “A dangerous one.”

The chill of the cold season seems to deepen all at once, settling into my bones.

“Come,” I say to Jaskry, my heartspace heavy. “Gregar needs to know that yet another danger is lurking in these trees.”