The Chronicles of Cael MacMorna - Stormrise
By RS Taylor
He paused longer than he should, admiring the proud grace of the creature as it stepped forward, unaware and at ease.
Despite his caution—perhaps warned by the whisper of a mischievous baḋḃ—the young deer grazing in the clearing raised its head into the light of the setting sun, the last beams of day crimsoning its dun-coloured winter coat with rich summer's red, its shimmering eyes enrubied.
The man crouched unmoving, taking a long breath of the wild, briar-scented air of the woods. His hand found a knotted length of waxed cord looped about his wrist and gently eased the barbed and feathered throwing dart up over his shoulder.
The deer looked around, taut and trembling, ready to spring into the undergrowth at the slightest hint of a threat.
Only twelve were its tines, not yet fully grown, and in his heart was an echo of sorrow that it would never come to the fullness of its growth.
But the pangs of his stomach left no room for sentiment and the hunter steadied his spirit, slowed his heart, and willed even his perspiration to calm, for he knew that the strange bond between wild things carried on winds other than those rustling the leaves overhead.
Holding the cord between thumb and forefinger, he readied himself to strike, when in the distance a roll of thunder rumbled and the deer's head lowered once again.
Sliding from one shadow to the next in the ancient dapple-light of the forest, his liquid movements belied the taut muscles of his powerful frame, his fierce blue eyes narrowed beneath a heavy brow, and he steeled his arm for the fatal cast, quick and clean.
He drew breath with the deer, moved when it moved, looked where it looked, and heard what it heard. He read in its movements where it would step and when it would be still.
His arm glided forward, ending in a snap, the cord amplifying the strength of his throw and bending the dart almost into a bow before it whipped gracefully outward.
The deer bounded up and away, vanishing into the shadows.
He almost fell forward and chased after it with a wild snarl of anger and a string of frustrated profanity.
"By the nine dreaded fates!" he spat, but then fell into a wondering silence as he too heard the sound that had startled the deer.
A horrific screeching and howling cut through the forest writing a tale of agony that distance did little to soften. His hackles rose as many voices, man or beast he could not tell, gave throat to their last torment.
Never before had such a terrible bedlam assailed his ears, although he knew he'd hear it again when he slept, and almost without thought he leapt in the direction of the ruining echoes.
He bounded with catlike agility through hummocks and over roots, dodging around berry-bent bushes and nettle beds, over heavy undergrowth and across gurgling brooks, his dart forgotten.
As he raced all things seemed unsettled. The knots in the trunks opened mouths wide with shock, leaves and branches were raised in warning and foreboding.
Birds fled before him shrilling unseen danger and brambles tried to trip up his headlong plummet out of misplaced kindness, but he passed them all by, some deeper instinct and empathy pushing him onwards to lend what mercy he could, as one living being to another.
The shrieks reached a crescendo and then ended, leaving only a bitter aftertaste of echoes as he sprang across the trunk of a moss-girded fallen alder and found himself on a fresh cattle trail.
He felt his heart plummet and his head suddenly spun with an inexplicable sense of vertigo. The gloaming forest took on an air of awareness as though some dread beast had looked up from a grisly feast at the sound of his approach.
A menacing silence grew, in its own way almost as shocking as the bedlam beforehand.
Baring his teeth and shaking off the ominous feeling of foreboding, he muttered to himself and drew his heavy leaf-bladed steel sword from its wooden sheath.
Looking about warily, unable to shake the feeling that the hunter had become the hunted, he moved cautiously up the trail in a guarded crouch.
An overwhelming stench of fresh blood warned him moments before the path opened into a clearing and he halted again, aghast at the horror revealed by the storm-domed sunset.
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All characters in publications on this website are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright ©
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, audio, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
All characters in publications on this website are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.