Hunter's Beginning (Veller) (6 page)

It was when Kile turned eleven that things got out of hand. Her father had taken it upon himself to make other plans for Kile’s future, plans that did not include what she wanted. Oric Tallon owned the bottom land adjacent to the Veller farm, a piece of ground that Harold Veller coveted greatly. Oric Tallon also had a son, a little troll of a boy four years older th
an Kile, named Pordist. Pordist was a cruel and vindictive child that delighted in the torture and misery of others, but Harold Veller didn’t see this, nor did he truly want to, all he saw was an opportunity to expand his farm to more fertile grounds, and so an arrangement of marriage was made between Kile and Pordist. It would take place on Kile’s fifteenth birthday as stated in the charter of the Province of Shai. Kile was furious and it was the first time she ever stood up to her father, the discussion ended in a heated debate that marked the only time her father ever touched her.

What happened next, Kile wasn’t really sure.
She had thought, at that moment, her dreams were dead, but by the next day, her father had changed his mind.
The change wasn’t complete and it wasn’t without its conditions. Harold Veller would allow Kile to take the Hunter’s examination when she turned fourteen, but when she failed, as he believed she would, she would have to return home and marry Pordist Tallon and never speak about becoming a Hunter ever again. This was the best and only chance she was going to get and she agreed to it. The only problem was her father was not going to aid her in any way. That meant she would have to come up with the money and the means of getting to Littenbeck for the examination by herself.

The means of getting there w
ere simple enough. The supply wagon that passes through Riverport stops in Nortonville. From there she could easily get a ticket and a carriage straight to Littenbeck. The money for the venture was not as easy to come by. She had saved every coin she had earned but it wasn’t nearly enough. If it wasn’t for her brother Leon, she would never have been able to pay for the ticket.

She remembered the day she set off to Nortonville, of course she should have since it was only four days ago. It was her brother that saw her off on her journey. Her mother was not well enough to make the trip into town and her father had made it quite clear that he wanted nothing more to do with her.

Kile set her pen down and looked over what she had written. It was a lot more than what she had originally intended, and somewhere in there must be the reason why she wanted to be a Hunter; she just hoped it was as clear to them as it was to her. She looked around the rest of the room to see most of the boys had already finished writing. Alex was still scribbling away at his parchment, as was Daniel. Carter looked to be finished but as Daniel described it, Carter had always wanted to be a Hunter, so this assignment should be easy for him. She even glanced over to where Eric was sitting. He too had finished and was leaning back in his chair tapping the tip of the quill pen on his desk. Three times was all Kile could think about, he had taken the exam three times, or actually two times, this would be his third time, but that was still two more times than anyone else in the room. Did it give him that much of an advantage, and how did he fail it the last two times?

“Is everyone finished?” Mathew
Latherby asked from the front of the room. There were a few murmurs of “no” and “just one more minute” but for the most part everyone had finished. The parchments were then collected by two mystics in white robes that, for some reason, Kile had not seen in the room prior to or during the examination, but by now she was starting to get used to them popping up unexpectedly.

“You will now proceed to the next stage of the examination.” Mathew replied as the mystics handed him the parchments. “Go through these doors, proceed down the hall and wait for further instructions.”

A large set of iron bound double doors opened behind Mathew as the cadets slowly got up from their desks, each one looking a little nervous, no one really wanting to be the first to pass through the doors into the darkness beyond, there was no telling where they would end up. It was Eric that took the lead as he pushed past a few of the younger boys. It’s easy for him, Kile thought, he knew what was on the other side, but she was not going to be shown up by the likes of him and quickly followed.

It was one thing for the oldest boy who had taken the examine twice to pass through the doors with confidence, but when the only girl, who was already doomed to fail follows, everyone else is considered dead last as they all rushed to catch up.

As Kile stepped through the door she had expected to be whisked away again, maybe to another room or another test but that wasn’t the case. She had actually entered the room beyond the door. She turned around to look back into the classroom and saw the other cadets coming in behind her. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. It seemed like a bit of a let down after what she had gone through so far.

The room itself was
quite large, larger than what should have been in the tower, but then all the rooms she had seen put together were bigger than the tower’s base and she had never gone up or down a flight of stairs yet, so none of it made much sense. There were huge stone columns every fifteen or so feet, set out in a large grid like pattern, reaching to a vaulted ceiling high above. Some of the columns appeared on the verge of collapsing, some may already have, as large stones littered the floor. Small globes of swirling mist cast an early light that danced and flickered, bending the shadows of the pillars into swaying serpents, but the light was isolated to one side of the room. The far side remained cloaked in total darkness. It was difficult to tell exactly how large the room was, but it was a room, and that was a problem. Master Latherby had told them to go down the hall and wait for instructions, where was the hall? It wasn’t that Master Latherby was a bundle of information, to Kile’s way of thinking he seemed a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but even he should be able to tell the difference between a room and a hall. Maybe the room was a lot longer than she had previously thought, and then it could actually be a hall, but it would have been the largest hall she had ever seen.

She looked around at the other cadets to see what they were up to, but they appeared to be as lost and as confused as she was, all but Eric who was just leaning against one of the pillars, which only put her more on edge if that was possible. Eric was waiting for someone to come or something to happen. He must know what he was doing she thought. He had been here twice before.

Daniel was standing with Carter and the two were in the middle of some heated discussion. It looked as if Carter wanted to keep going, but Daniel wasn’t in so great a hurry. She found Alex standing not too far away and looking a bit more confused than the rest of them. He was staring up at the ceiling then down at the floor then at his hands all of which appeared to inspire some sense of wonder in him. She had just started to walk over to where he was, when a loud grinding sound filled the room and vibrated the floor, Kile stopped dead in her tracks. It was the sound of stone on stone and everybody suddenly looked up, thinking that maybe the roof was about to cave it, those large stones scattered about had to have come from somewhere.

Unfortunately it wasn’t coming from above them. It was coming from in front of them, from somewhere in the darkness. The sound suddenly stopped, and there was a brief moment of unnatural silence before the screaming. It came from the far side of the room where a few of the boys had dared to go, they had gone to look for the mysterious hall that Master Latherby had spoken of, or possibly the illusive further instructions, but what they found was something they
did not expect. Out of the darkness, shapes moved, and those boys who had dared to go forward were now running back.

Kile couldn’t make out what the boys were yelling, but she could hear what she thought was the sound of flapping wings like large bats, she even started to scan the ceiling once again before she realized that the sound she was hearing was not the beating of wings, but the sound of bare feet on stone, and a lot of them.

“Get out! Get out!” One of the boys was yelling as he practically flew past her. She would swear that his feet never touched the ground as he ran to the back of the room.

The cadets behind Kile were the first to start moving, but there was no door for them to ‘get out’ of.

“The door’s gone.” One kid yelled.

“It can’t be! It was right here.” Another one screamed in panic.

“Get out, hobgoblins.” Another boy yelled as he came running out of the darkness. This boy Kile recognized as the kid with the long neck and sharp nose that had been picking on Alex earlier. Kile looked over to where Eric was still standing beside the pillar. The older boy didn’t look scared enough, and in fact he appeared almost excited. She thought for a moment that this may be a practical joke. It wasn’t until the long necked boy with the pointed nose crashed to the ground with a large spear sticking out between his shoulder blades that she realized it wasn’t.

Sure enough, the slapping of bare feet got louder as it echoed through the vaulted ceilings, and then Kile saw it. One at first, then two, followed by twelve and then too many for her to even want to count.

Gulrik, otherwise known as hobgoblins, a scourge that had crawled into the underworld of Aru ages ago and thought gone with the passing of time, and yet here they were. They stood about five feet in height with barrel like bodies, long arms and short legs. Their skin was the color of wet stone, their large eyes almost shining in the dark.

They charged the cadets in great number, most of the boys turned and ran to the back of the room, scratching and clawing at where the door had once been, stepping on or running down their slower companions in the process. There was no way back and no way forward. Was this what Master Latherby meant by surviving? Kile wasn’t going to debate it as she looked around for something to defend herself with. She couldn’t turn back, turning back meant failure. She may survive but she would end up married to Pordist Tallon and that wasn’t much better than a
gulrik.

She grabbed the only thing she could find, a rock, since there were quite a few of them
scattered on the ground, and she threw it at the first glowing pair of eye that she saw, it struck him dead in the head and he went down hard actually taking two more of the creatures with him, but there were three more behind them. Kile quickly picked up another rock and threw that one as hard as she could, but her aim was sorely lacking and it went wide. She was reaching for a third stone when another one flew past her as it bounced off the chest of the gulrik. The creature was staggered but only for a moment as it continued to charge, holding over its head what appeared to be a rusted sword.

Soon more rocks came flying past as more boys took up the assault, but it was very one sided as the rocks did little to deter the destructive nature of the
gulrik.

The creatures came in on both sides, there was no tactics to their attack, there never was
. It was all out aggression. Kile waited until they got closer and then threw another stone, striking one on the side of the head. It spun as it went down giving her enough time to run out and grab the rusted sword that it had been wielding. She poised to deliver the killing blow but faltered, she had never killed a living creature before and she couldn’t bring herself to kill this one. One could argue that the gulrik wasn’t a natural living creature, but it didn’t matter, she backed away, still holding the sword in both hands, never taking her eyes off the gulrik that was even now beginning to stir. It rose slowly, but was too dazed to even notice Kile. It staggered for a bit before another stone hurled by another boy put it out of its misery.

The
gulrik slowed their assault and actually retreated just beyond some imaginary line that only they could see. Kile surveyed the room. A lot of the boys were already down. Whether they were dead or not, she couldn’t tell. Were these the ones that failed the test? It seemed rather final she thought. Most of the other boys were standing with their backs pressed against the wall. That would mean that they were the ones that passed, it just didn’t seem fair.

Off to her right Daniel was helping a few of the
wounded. Alex had said that Daniel had the ability to heal as she watched him lay his hand upon the forehead of one of the injured boys, but it didn’t appear to be working as well as he thought it should. There was a look of confusion on the young man’s face. Kile began to move slowly in his general direction, she knew she couldn’t be a front line fighter if she didn’t have the instinct to kill, but she might be able to give Daniel a hand.

Suddenly the ground began to shake more violently
than before, and she heard the familiar sound of bare feet on stone again, only this time it was a lot louder, as they were larger feet.

From out of the darkness, beyond the
gulrik another threat emerged, and Kile didn’t need anyone to tell her what these were. The valrik had come. Valrik were larger, faster, stronger and if possible meaner and uglier than their gulrik cousins. Each valrik stood just over six feet tall with long narrow heads and large mouths filled with razor like teeth. Small black eyes and large ears that lay flat against the sides of their bald heads. They were the foulest of creatures. They had no regard for life or the imaginary line that the gulrik had stopped at. They charged the ranks of the cadets tossing them aside like rag dolls.

Kile saw one moving toward Daniel and the wounded. She reacted without thinking as she ran
alongside the valrik, throwing herself between it and Daniel. It was a clumsy attempt to stop it and she really wasn’t sure how she was actually going to do it, but she grabbed at it and wrapped herself around one of its legs. As it tripped over her, it came down hard, landing on the stone floor and on Kile, knocking the wind out of her. Carter was there within seconds with a large rock to quickly finish it off. He grabbed the fallen valrik’s weapon and even gave Kile a nod of approval as she staggered to her feet. At least that was something she thought as she retrieved her own rusted sword from beneath the dead creature.