Chapter 5: 05 : Ale and Despair

A brittle dawn broke over camp, weak as watered ale. Will rose first, muscles leaden from cold and hunger, but he moved with quiet purpose: ash bow tucked beneath his bedroll, Bram’s yew slung across his back. Garret surfaced a half-hour later—unshaven, eyes inflamed, temper already sharp.

They ate in silence. Will’s share was little more than crust and air; Garret washed his down with the dregs of a fresh canteen—clear liquor this time, nose-sting sharp. The sword at his hip clinked whenever he shifted, punctuation to each gulp.

“Another empty day and Osric will tally your hide in silver,” he warned, wiping his mouth. “Fail, and the reckoning’s yours.”

Will nodded, but inside a knot tightened. Today we find something, he told himself. Anything.

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They turned south, deeper into timber Will barely knew—low ridges slick with moss, alder standing in crooked ranks. Hour after hour he read signs: faint boar prints blurred by melted frost; a fox’s pad less than a day old; feathers where some hawk had fed. None led to meat sizable enough for Garret. The yew bow felt heavier with every mile.

By mid-afternoon Garret’s patience thinned to tatters. Each swallow from his canteen shortened the fuse.

“No squeal, no rustle, nothing,” he muttered. “Whole forest cursed by your breath.”

Will kept three paces ahead, head down, senses wired. A misstep brought another lash of words; better to endure them than the fist that might follow.

They broke from shadow onto the same logging track as yesterday, then angled west toward their first campsite. The canteen was nearing empty now, and Garret’s stride wobbled—yet he pressed on, refusal flickering like fever in his eyes.

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Late light slanted between trunks when the trees parted and the tarnished-silver pond appeared. Mist skated its skin. Will’s stomach sank; the place carried an echo he couldn’t name—something felt, not heard.

Garret shuffled to the water’s edge, tipped the canteen, cursed when only a thread trickled out. “Waste of bladder-rot,” he spat. He turned to Will, ready to vent—then froze.

Will followed his gaze—and felt the world drop away.

Across the pond, half veiled by drifting vapor, stood a stag unlike any he had seen or dreamed: an elder deer taller than a dray horse, hide pale as frost-killed grass. From its skull arched a forest of antlers, twisting spires that caught the dying sun and shattered it into shards of sunlight. Steam flumed from black nostrils; each breath rolled like furnace smoke into cold air.

The stag’s eyes, dark and depthless, fixed not on Garret but on Will.

Time suspended. Water ceased to lap. Even Garret’s breath seemed to halt.

A branch cracked under the animal’s rear hoof. The spell splintered.

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“Draw!” Garret barked, voice ragged with sudden hope. “Take him, boy, take him!”

Will couldn’t move. The bow in his hand felt foreign; his heartbeat thundered so loud it drowned thought. The deer’s stare pinned him—calm, almost mournful, as if measuring something beyond muscle and bone.

Garret lunged, seized Will’s shoulder. “Shoot!”

Still frozen, Will’s fingers refused command. The stag shifted its great head, crystals singing against one another like distant chimes, then leapt—once, twice—clearing pond and bank in impossible bounds before vanishing into deep timber. Only rippling silence remained.

Garret spun on Will, face flushed crimson. “Blind whelp!” He struck—the back of his hand splitting Will’s lip. Will reeled. Another blow followed, a closed-fist hammer that blurred vision. Dirt rushed up. Blood spattered leaves.

“You saw glory and stood gawping!” Garret roared. “Do you know what a rack like that buys?”

Will tasted iron, world doubling. He braced on elbows; boot leather smashed his ribs, doubling him again.

Garret’s rage spiraled, fueled by a near empty canteen and failed fortune. “Pathetic,” he hissed, kicking once more before stalking toward camp, muttering curses at the empty sky.

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Night gathered by the time Will limped in. His nose bled anew, shirtfront streaked rusty. Garret lounged by the small fire, brandishing the sword point at unseen foes.

“Patch yourself. Won’t matter when Osric strings you,” he said, then lifted the canteen—drained to the last—and cursed its hollowness. He tossed it aside; it clattered among stones with a final, mocking ring.

Minutes stretched. Garret sliced silence with slurred invective, turning the day’s failure into a dirge of blame: Will’s birth, Miriam’s mercy, the rot of weak rulers, the price of drink, all fermented into a single venomous brew.

Will dabbed drying blood with a rag, staring past flame into the deep dark where the stag had run. The vision wouldn’t leave him—the impossible breadth, the solemn eyes. It felt like an omen, not a quarry.

Garret’s rant ebbed only when exhaustion and liquor tangled; soon his words slurred into nonsense, then into heavy snores, mouth slack, sword fallen across his lap.

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Will’s cheeks burned where fists had landed, but anger pulsed hotter beneath. If he returned home empty-handed, the beatings would only grow—Bram’s jibes, Osric’s sneer, Garret’s endless spite. If he found meat before sunrise, perhaps… perhaps.

He wiped nose and lip, eased to his feet. Chud, the gelding, flicked an ear but made no sound as Will approached to retrieve the spare arrows. He strapped the worn ash bow over his shoulder and fixed the quiver.

Garret snored on.

Will eyed the liquor bottle by the stones—how they glinted like splinters of the stag’s antlers. A chill traced his spine. He shifted gaze to the forest’s black mouth.

Alone, then.

He packed tinder, knife, a twist of twine, and slipped into shadows, moving south where the creek braided marshland. Moonlight threaded through branches, enough to pick a path without a torch.

For an hour he hunted signs—boar wallow, deer scrape—but night erased details. His ribs ached with every breath, but he pressed on until the trees thinned and the silver pond came into view again, flawless mirror beneath the moon.

Will crouched at the bank, scanning. The water lay still. No ripple. No breath. Only his own reflection looking back: blood-marked, eyes wide.

He drew an arrow anyway, nocking it to the old bow. He watched, waited, the quiet loud as thunder in his ears.

Nothing.

At last fatigue sank hooks behind his eyes. Tomorrow he could still range before dawn, but only if he rested now. He backed away from water, returned through the valley and brush until the camp-fire glow peeked between trunks.

Garret hadn’t moved. Embers pulsed red, casting long shadows. Will slipped beneath his blanket, careful to hide the ash bow once more, and lay staring upward at a narrow wedge of stars.

Sleep claimed him there, heart still echoing the silence of the elder deer’s gaze.