Chương 7: Chapter 4.5: That One Looks Angrier

By dawn I was beyond the markers again. Orven's skinning knife rode at my hip, and his hunting spear felt awkward in my hand. The cut on my leg had reduced to a tender purple bruise, something that used to take a week to heal. The blackpine token moved beneath my shirt with each step, its three cut marks scraping lightly against the iron token beside it. I am not sure what it was for, but it felt right to wear it. I had left the cloak, bedroll, sharpening stones and snares beneath my bunk.

I saw the woods more clearly now. Frost crushed along the edge of a deer path, bark rubbed from a low trunk, and an exposed root system a rabbit had made a home from. Small tracks crossed open ground, while larger animals kept closer to brush and fallen timber. I followed the signs, looking for another Common boar. Something dangerous enough to teach me, ordinary enough to survive from, and useful enough to sell. Meat mattered. Twenty-seven iron mattered more.

The first sale had shown me a shut treasure-room door with candlelight glinting iron pieces, maybe even a copper piece, or an imaginary bronze piece beneath it. I had only ever seen a single bronze piece once, and it was never within touching distance. The danger looked smaller once I saw tens of iron pieces through the eyes of a small beast. The trail widened near a stand of blackpine. Snow had been churned down to frozen soil, and one trunk carried a tusk scrape as high as my hip.

Strips of bark hung from the exposed wood. I crouched beside a print broad enough to cover my open hand and began reconsidering scales of survival. Another print lay beyond it, deeper at the front and turned slightly outwards. The animal favoured one side. Scarred or injured, perhaps, which made it easier prey only if I ignored everything Orven had taught me about wounded beasts. I could still turn back and just cut pine.

More than Forty iron waited beneath my mattress, more loose coin than I had owned the day before and enough to make retreat feel wasteful. A branch snapped ahead. The boar burst from dense brush with enough force to break frozen limbs beneath its chest. It was larger than the first by half, its shoulders packed beneath coarse dark fur. Scar tissue crossed one flank in pale ridges, and one ear had been torn down to a ragged stump. Animals did not gather scars by losing every fight.

Whatever rank it carried, it had survived much more than I had. It charged before I could move uphill. I threw myself aside, instinctively and desparately. I knew only two things of boars. First, their meat tasted good cooked over open flame, and second, they charge in straight lines. Except this one turned at the last minute and one tusk caught my coat and opened the flesh along my ribs. Pain flashed white through my sight, followed by the wet heat of blood.

I hit the ground badly, lost the spear and rolled behind a blackpine while the boar tore through the place I had fallen. Now I only knew one thing about boars. It seems the ranked ones had their own rules. The beast wheeled with frightening speed. Fear struck hard, but the movement no longer filled everything I could see. Its front hoof slipped slightly on the turn. Weight carried too far through the injured side. The head dropped before the shoulders committed.

Desperate Counter found those details and told me one thing. Pick up the spear. Orven's weapon felt foreign in my hands. I had watched hunters brace spears and listened to him explain the work, but listening meant nothing when several hundred pounds of boar lowered its tusks at my stomach. I set the butt against frozen ground, adjusted once, and had no time for a second correction. The impact drove through my wrists, shoulders, and spine. The ash haft bowed as the spearhead entered below the boar's chest.

Momentum forced the iron deeper than my strength could have managed, and I felt its tusks scuff my knuckles and its hot breath exhale up my arm. For half a breath I thought the weapon might hold. The haft cracked. The boar wrenched sideways and tore the spear from my hands, and almost knocked me over. The spear erected from its side spinning as it turned. Blood sprayed across the snow, hot and dark, and far short of enough. The broken shaft hung from its chest as it staggered, found its footing and came again.

I seized Orven's axe. Axe Strike tightened through my grip, shoulders and hips, gathering every correction blackpine had beaten into me the day before. The boar's wounded stride pulled its jawline low. I stepped towards the charge because I had no where to retreat to. The blade landed beneath the jaw. Edge, wrists, shoulders, and weight passed through one descending line. Bone split. The boar screeched and collapsed close enough that one tusk struck my boot and knocked the leg sideways.

I stumbled back into the blackpine, and stayed there waiting for the animal to stand for round three. It did not stand. My breath dragged against the wound in my ribs, every inhale filled my lungs with ice cold air. The broken spear lay beneath the carcass, and the axe edge showed another bright chip. ABILITY ADVANCED Axe Strike has advanced from Common to Iron (early). Your axe blows now carry stronger alignment, heavier force transfer, and cleaner execution under pressure.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. When fear, fatigue, or injury disrupt your form, the ability better anchors the strike through your shoulders, hips, and grip. I pressed snow against my ribs until the bleeding slowed, then pulled the remains of the spear free. The iron head had bent slightly where the boar's weight forced it sideways. One half of the ash haft was still long enough to use as a drag handle.

Orven had carried the weapon northwest looking for his brother. I had broken it before the second morning was half finished. The carcass still needed dressing. My mind fell to the practical to distract myself from the pain in my ribs. I drew the bone-handled knife and opened the first line beneath the jaw. Skinning guided pressure through my thumb and wrist, showing where hide pulled against muscle and where the first boar's broad axe cuts had wasted value.

This hide was thicker, scarred around the shoulder and tight across the belly. The work demanded both hands while the wound in my ribs felt like it would reopen if I leaned over too far. Steam rose from the opened carcass. I worked slowly to keep the knife out of the organs, freed the legs at their seams and used the remaining spear shaft to roll the body when my own strength failed. The first cuts were clean. The next ones improved. Even cold and blood loss could not erase the difference a proper blade made.

Near the scarred shoulder, hide had grown into old damaged tissue. I almost cut through it, stopped and changed the angle. The knife travelled around the hard seam and brought the valuable section free in one piece. Maybe Merris would be happy with that cut. ABILITY ADVANCED Skinning has advanced from Common to Iron (early). Your hands now better identify valuable cuts, weak seams, hide tension, tendon placement, and the cleanest path through damaged carcasses.

You waste less material when working under cold or poor field conditions. Two carcasses, one poor tool, one good knife, and life-threatening danger moved skinning out of common. Nothing about that pace felt ordinary after Pell's careful warnings. The charcoal lines beneath my sleeve remained painless while the rest of me provided more than enough hurt. I checked the lines twice while working. They had not spread beyond the place Pell had measured, though blood from my ribs made the wrist difficult to keep clean.

The marks offered no help with the carcass and no reaction to the Iron flesh. Their refusal to change should have reassured me. Instead, I found myself waiting for them to take my number. I finished the work before testing the new understanding. The last leg joint opened with less wasted meat, the hide folded without tearing and both tusks came free at the root. The dressed carcass smelled strongly enough to invite anything hungry.

I buried it in snow, hoping to preserve what I could while I fulfilled Harl's woodcutting order. I do not imagine he would let me use the cart to carry boars if he knew. I cut one blackpine and stripped it, it was as much as I could muster, but it was still worth more than a full load of ordinary pine that Harl has asked for. ⚜ ⚜ ⚜ Dunmere's palisades appeared after sunset, as I approached. Smoke lay low above the roofs, and the gate lamps had already been lit.

One guard stared at the hide bundle, then at the blood along my coat, but Talvek's order had apparently become familiar enough that he waved me towards the mill instead of asking for another account. The final stretch through town proved worse than the forest slope. Dogs barked at the wrapped meat and the occasional drops of blood from under the covering turned heads at every doorway. No people of Dunmere, I did not kill another Crimson Elf.

I had earned more usable material by skinning well, then spent the return paying for that competence through my shoulders. By the mill gate, the broken spear had rubbed one palm open beneath Orven's glove. Merris looked up from the scale station as I pulled the carcass onto the platform. His eyebrows rose slowly.

"Well," he said.

"That one definitely looks angrier." I leaned against the scale frame and held one hand over my ribs.

"It was meant to be a Common one."

"That is the sort of sentence men say shortly before someone charges them for funeral wood, which you have kindly already cut. Blackpine too, that iron body of yours is earning bank." He crouched beside the carcass, pressed one thumb into the exposed meat near the shoulder and inspected the hide seam. Labourers around the yard had stopped pretending not to watch. Their attention carried none of the easy curiosity the Common boar had earned.

Men looked at a dangerous thing differently once it had walked home carrying something worse.

"Iron boar, early maybe," Merris said, almost to himself or to the boar. The confirmation settled colder than the evening. He checked the tusks and ran his fingers along the clean section of hide.

"Better dressed too. It appears one of you learned manners."

"Is it worth more than common? It is bigger by at least half."

"Hide is clean. Meat is mostly intact. Tusks are worth something." He looked towards the counting shed.

"Sixty-eight maybe. Seventy-two if the evening continues to favour your endeavors." Merris weighed promptly. Seventy-two iron meant less than a copper by itself and more than a day's mill labour by far. Added to what I already carried, it turned three mornings of danger into a sum large enough to imagine choices. That was the trap. Injury could become arithmetic if the answer kept coming out higher than wages.

"Harl left money for you for yesterday's blackpine, he gave you 18 pieces, I'll give you 36 and have the labourers sort out your cart." At nine iron for an ordinary shift, and double for blackpine, the boar represented eight days before food. The ruined spear, chipped axe, torn coat and blood soaking the makeshift bandage under my hand belonged to a different column. Merris could price meat and hide. No one at the scale recorded how many more hunts my body could afford.

PAYMENT RECEIVED You received 72 iron pieces for an Iron boar in good condition. Your Current Coin is now 1 copper and 57 iron pieces. Merris cut a thick steak from the flank and wrapped it in butcher's cloth.

"Keep this one." I caught it against my chest and regretted the movement.

"Why?"

"If you are determined to bleed into the forest for money, you may as well learn what profit tastes like before Harl taxes the smell." I looked beyond the yard roofs towards the dark beyond the walls. Somewhere past the markers lay the clearing where Orven had died, the blood trail Talvek's men had searched and the route a dead Crimson Elf had taken out of a barred shed. The charcoal lines beneath my sleeve waited without pain. Merris followed my gaze.

I walked towards the bunkhouses with the wrapped steak beneath one arm, and for the first time in a long-time, a full copper in my pocket. Orven's broken spear struck the frozen ground with every second step I took.