Chapter 22: Part One - Chapter Twenty-Two - Hunters

Hunters

10th Day of Harvest

766 Karloman’s Peace

It took two days of hunting through the Lenzen Hills before the Reubkes caught some of the wild people unawares.

A party of six men and two women were in the middle of moving camp when the Reubkes took them by surprise. They killed half their number and took the rest captive. Interrogations lasted hours, but the hill people insisted they did not belong to the tribe that attacked the Reubkes.

‘We should cut their throats,’ Audomar commanded.

‘No,’ Ekkehard challenged his brother, ‘we have no reason to do these people any more harm. They are not who we are looking for.’

‘We killed their friends, their family,’ Audomar argued back. ‘Would we let us go after that?’

‘Sorry Ekkehard but I must agree with Audomar,’ Florentin said. ‘If we let them go, we just give another group a reason to hunt us. If we kill them, maybe no one ever knows we were here.’

Ekkehard had no response to that and was forced to concede.

Audomar and Florentin opened the captives’ throats.

The next day they found a four-man hunting party and managed to capture one of them, killing the rest. The hunter also claimed to be of a different tribe but believed he knew where the men the Reubkes were tracking made camp. He offered to show the way in exchange for his life. The Reubkes agreed.

It took a further day of travel to locate the dirty camp, only to find it was empty. Gerwald, in his temper, cut off the hunter’s head before Ekkehard could interject.

That night the party revived the abandoned camp, taking rest there themselves.

Auriana made a stew from the rabbits the Reubkes had seized from the now-dead hunters, and Florentin aided her. Audomar and Gerwald sparred.

Ekkehard noted that the farmhand Dreux, once eager to assist the group, was becoming increasingly distant, choosing to sit alone at the edge of the camp.

‘So, friend,’ Ekkehard said to Dreux, sitting beside him as the group stopped to eat, ‘where do you hail from?

‘Hmm?’ Dreux replied.

‘We have not really spoken much,’ Ekkehard explained, ‘even before all of this. Tell me about your life before you came to work for us.’

‘I’m from up north,’ Dreux answered, ‘Werth, in the Akershus Prefecture.’

‘Akershus?’ Ekkehard exclaimed, surprised by the revelation. ‘I mean, I knew you're northern from the accent, but that is far north, a different region. What were you doing looking for work so far south?’

‘Erm, looking to get fed and housed, I suppose,’ Dreux answered, sounding unsure.

Dreux shifted, unwilling to look Ekkehard in the eyes.

‘Well naturally,’ Ekkehard responded, ‘but I mean why so far from home? Why would your liege even permit it?’

The question was valid.

Travel within the Karloman Empire was highly regulated, particularly for peasants. Nobles of rank were entitled to all the benefits of the lands bequeathed to them, including the labour of those who lived upon it. Free migration risked undermining a noble’s authority and thus, travel for the lower classes was only permitted under the express permission of their liege lord.

Dreux smirked in response, ‘I guess he just liked the way I asked.’

‘Still,’ Ekkehard continued, doubtful of Dreux’s explanation, ‘it’s a long way. Did you not have family up north? No one waiting for you back there?’

‘No, I have a family yeah,’ Dreux responded, ‘I mean no wife or children of my own or anything like that. I have a brother though and he has a few kids back in Werth.’

‘A brother?’ Ekkehard questioned, ‘tell me about him.’

‘Hmm?’ Dreux responded.

Ekkehard thought the man’s reluctance odd. Had the actions of him and his brothers made this man so wary of them, that even common interactions became unnerving? Ekkehard waited silently, to see if tension would force Dreux to respond.

‘He is good, yeah. He’s older, by about eight years. Always been good to me,’ Dreux explained. ‘Thanks to him, I’ve never really been without work or without a roof over my head. When I get back to the city, he will take me in again. He runs the family business in the city’s commercial sector.’

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‘The family business?’ Ekkehard asked, with a higher degree of surprise than he meant to, ‘I wasn’t aware you were Merchant Class.’

‘What? Oh no, no not at all, I’m no merchant,’ Dreux clarified.

‘But your brother is?’ Ekkehard was perplexed by the possibility.

‘Yeah,’ Dreux confirmed.

‘How does that happen?’

Dreux shrugged in response.

‘Right,’ Ekkehard said, deciding to drop the subject and move on, ‘well, anyway, I just wanted to thank you. I realise that you didn't ask for any of this, and it’s been difficult for you. You’ve had no obligation to stay, yet you continue to help us. I wanted you to know that, while we may be a little too distracted to express it, my brothers and I really appreciate your help.’

‘No need, I mean, this all just happened to you all as well, didn’t it?’ Dreux questioned, ‘we are all in this together.’

Dreux’s words sounded genuine, and they made Ekkehard smile.

He had almost forgotten about a person’s capacity for comradery and kindness. It had begun to feel as if the entire world was against him and his family. He had started to feel that any person other than his brothers was a threat that needed to be fought off. It was nice to be reminded that there were still friends to be found in the world, not just foes.

‘You’re a priest, right?’ Dreux asked him.

‘What?’ Ekkehard responded, his turn to be surprised.

‘That was what the others on the farm called you,’ Dreux explained, ‘I mean the other workers, whenever they saw you coming, that’s what they’d say. “Stop sinning boys. Here comes the priest.” I assumed they meant it literally.’

‘I didn’t know about that,’ Ekkehard admitted, smirking a little to himself.

He took a moment to absorb the revelation. He knew the men probably meant it as a negative, but Ekkehard felt warmth in his chest knowing that was their perception of him.

‘I’m not a priest,’ Ekkehard said after a moment of quiet contemplation. ‘I almost was once upon a time. I studied scripture in the Harvest temple in Hirsau. Even made the five-temple pilgrimage when I was young. My father took me. But then, the war came, and both Audomar and I were of fighting age, and I hadn’t yet taken my oaths.’

Ekkehard’s mind drifted to his memories of the war, and the time that came after.

‘When we came home from the war, we had lost our father and I suppose after what we did to survive, I didn’t feel worthy of that life anymore. But I still read the scriptures, from time to time.’

‘The war?’ Dreux asked.

‘The Merchants’ Rebellion,’ Ekkehard explained. Ekkehard thought he saw the man bristle a little his words and said, ‘I’m sorry, did your brother fight in the war? For the Merchants?’

‘Oh, gods no,’ Dreux replied with a chuckle, ‘no, not at all. “Rebellions, they are bad business,” that is what he would always say.’

‘I suppose they are,’ Ekkehard said, nodding in agreement.

He was smiling; the act almost hurt his face it had become so foreign to him.

‘What about you?’ Ekkehard continued, ‘did you have much interest in the scripts?’

‘None,’ Dreux answered without hesitation. He must have thought he’d offended Ekkehard, as he quickly tried to explain himself, ‘it’s just all those words. You know, those ones. What do you call them? You know, “Karloman, the magnificent, illustrious, indomitable, immutable, ineffable, transcendent son of the Father,” and all that.’ With each word, Dreux spoke with a louder and increasingly mocking tone as he conducted an impression of an over-impassioned preacher. ‘It’s just too much for me.’

Ekkehard chuckled at Dreux's impression. ‘Yes,’ Ekkehard replied in half agreement. ‘I see what you mean.

‘I don’t know though. That’s kind of what I like about it. Those repetitions of seven, trying to capture the grandiose nature of something more than us. I find it comforting, you know. The knowledge that there exist things too great even for our words to fully capture them. That those things are looking out for us.’

‘I can see that,’ Dreux replied, nodding his head, ‘though if I could have a word with them, I might tell them to do a better job of it.’

Ekkehard nodded and chuckled, humoured. He took a moment and thanked Spring for this brief respite from the suffering of his journey. He had enjoyed it. He was thankful.

‘Well, eat up,’ Ekkehard said, indicating the bowl of Auriana’s stew resting in Dreux’s lap. ‘We will each need our strength. Plenty more ground to cover tomorrow.’

Three days later they found the first signs of their attackers' tribe.

Eight men returning from a raid. Six were killed in the Reubkes' ambush, the other two dying from interrogation. Before they died, however, they admitted to being part of the group that raided the Reubke camp, and after some persuasion by Florentin, they gave up the location where Gisla and the others had been taken.

It took a further day for the Reubkes to find the large camp of hill people, nestled within a small valley between several large hills.

The camp had been set up along a small stream which ran through the valley. It was the largest camp Ekkehard and his brothers had seen in the hills, comprising somewhere between thirty and forty dirty tents made from what looked like animal skins.

It must have been a major settlement for the hill people, as a small number of the dwellings at the camp's centre resembled shacks more than tents. The poorly constructed wooden walls comprised bundles of uneven sticks and branches and were the most permanent structures the Reubkes had so far discovered.

Ekkehard and his brothers spied on the camp from atop one of the surrounding hills.

Leaning over the rocks to inspect the camp, Florentin whispered back to the group, ‘Must be eighty people down there, and we are way too high up to tell if any of them are Gisla.’

‘She will be down there,’ Ekkehard replied in a hushed voice, ‘she has to be.’

‘What’s the plan then?’ Gerwald asked.

No one answered, and when Ekkehard looked back to his brother, he saw once more all eyes were on him.

He took in a deep breath.

‘Too many for us to fight,’ he explained, ‘we wait until nightfall when they are asleep. We go in two teams, a forward team and a backup team covering the others with bows. Kill off any watchguards or patrols as quietly as possible and go tent to tent until we find Gisla.’

His brothers nodded along without objection.

‘Once we have her, we get out as fast as we can and get the fuck out of these hills,’ Ekkehard continued.

‘Auriana,’ Ekkehard said, turning to his wife, ‘there are a lot of people down there. We need all the help we can get, meaning, I need Dreux to come with us. So, you’re going to have to wait for us, up on this hill.’

‘Alone?’ she asked.

‘Alone,’ he confirmed.

Ekkehard’s words hung like a death sentence in the air.

Auriana went wide-eyed at the suggestion but after a moment’s contemplation, she silently nodded her head, accepting the situation, and looked off into the distance.

Her expression turned vacant.