Chapter 3

By the time we left and started descending the steep slope - or the gorge - on the other side of the fjells, we had been on this hunt almost three weeks. I had hoped that this mission would be over by now but that wasn’t going to happen. Even if we managed to hunt down the beast the following day, it would take me more than a week to get back home.

I had to admit that I was somewhat fascinated to see what was waiting on the other side of that pass. There were no clouds nearby and we were above the timberline and able to see the distance of several day’s walking ... dozens of leagues, as the men pointed out. I had never been on this side and I’d never seen those plains and gentle rivers that were now visible in the distance. Another thing that was special was the lack of clouds, since on the sea side of the mountains, the clouds are the default - combined with the rain. This was different as there were almost no clouds at all, and the color of the foliage down there was different. Despite the fact that it was still spring, it wasn’t quite as green as I had been used to seeing.

Once we really started descending, there was no way to follow the change of the scenery if you didn’t want to hurt yourself. The easiest - and only - way down - was through a gorge filled with rocks. The smallest were the size of your fist, but the typical size was close to the size of your head. We all avoided the biggest rocks since it soon became clear that our path wasn’t a stable one. If you sidestepped or pushed the rocks it was quite possible that you started a rock slide. After two small slides we became extra careful and we also made sure to keep some distance between each other. I cursed our slowness, since this would have been a perfect place to challenge the monster. Attacking uphill would have been almost impossible and then we might have been able to use rocks as weapons - but that was not going to happen. I could tell that the rest of our group kept a close eye on the environment and they were especially careful around the large boulders lying here and there. I was almost certain that the creature was already down at the timberline. Almost certain.

The end of the rocky path was sudden - from one point on there were no more rocks but some small bushes and trees. There were some boulders nearby but there was no indication that there were any big animals nearby. In fact, I was very certain that there were no big animals nearby, and the same feeling extended quite a bit longer. If I’d needed to guess, I’d assume that the beast had been hungry, and it either was hunting some bigger game right now, or it had already done so.

After thinking about it I was quite sure that somehow it was able to use its magic while hunting. Only at that point it occurred to me that I had been doing exactly the same thing by myself with the rabbits and grouse. And I knew I also had other means available.

Maybe that creature was from a world in which those skills were ordinary. That thought shook me to the core and I suddenly understood why they wanted to hide the misuse of magical skills. I certainly wasn’t the only one who could make that connection. In a way, it also made sense to send a small party like this after the creature, since a bigger one would have caught much more attention. Without downplaying my companions, I only wondered if these volunteers were really the best ones they could get.

A week later, we were still a half day’s journey behind our target, but since the Lieutenant had made the decision that we’d visit the nearby village for some food and news, we’d drop back some more. As I had no way to stop this from happening, I decided to take the best of it and I wrote a short letter to Saga. Once the letter had been signed with the official ‘Guardian seal’ that Cajsa carried, I could trust that it would be delivered to my home village.

A Guardian seal wasn’t anything to play with. I had no idea when Saga might receive my mail but Cajsa assured me that it would reach her as quickly as possible. After all, all the merchants were obliged to take and carry Guardian mail amongst their merchandise and all of them were quite willing to do that because of the protection they received. Together with my letter there was also one sent by Cajsa to their superiors. I had no idea what she wrote about, and I had to make a promise not to write anything specific about the monster we were after or its magical background. That promise was easy to keep since the limited space in my letter was quickly filled with words of love and longing.

Even if I hated the idea of falling behind more, I had to admit that sleeping in a barn felt better than sleeping on the ground and the fact that somebody else cooked the evening meal felt almost like luxury to me. But the real luxury was the fresh bread and some tasty cheese the next morning. Now I had to admire the Guardians a bit, since they hadn’t complained even if they had been doing this for months now and I had only been with them for three weeks.

The Guardians kept to themselves, so I spent my time alone testing my magic skills - or the lack of them. I tried to remember all the feelings I had had while absorbing those sparkles left by the beastly creature. I could not really understand what the creature had done when it attacked the bear, but the feelings or images my mind created based on those sparkles were quite different when compared to the facts based on my observations: It was more like a crude combination of deer and elk approaching a bear. A scary combination that you might see in your nightmares. When we got moving again the following morning, I decided that I’d do my best to make us catch that creature sooner rather than later. I was quite sure that no beast could outrun me. Not in the long run.

Three months and three more letters later I wasn’t that sure anymore. Or I was sure that the beast couldn’t outrun me but it sure could make fools out of us. I remembered that, in the beginning of our chase, I had been wondering if my fellow Guardians wanted to catch the beast at all. Now I was sure that they didn’t. A few times we had been only hours behind it, but each of those times something had happened that slowed us down. Either somebody got slightly injured or then we suddenly were so low on supplies that we needed to visit some nearby village. All the time we had been chasing the beast. it had headed southward but staying high in the forested zone between the mountains and the plains. Had it gone to the plains, we might have been able to use horses while chasing it but there wasn’t much use for horses in these forests.

Finally, one day, I noticed from a pile of scat, that we were only a few hours behind the beast when I was told that we needed to stop the chase and visit the village down the stream we had just passed, in order to get some supplies - and to send a report of our progress. I decided that I had had enough.

“Wouldn’t it be better,” I asked the group, “to send a report that we had caught and killed the beast? We are now only a few hours behind it, and by pushing a bit we could attack it by sunrise. Shit, it seems to me that you fearless Guardians don’t want to face it. Well, I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to go back home to my fiancée. Fuck, I should be there, already!”

They all turned to look at me. I guess that was no wonder, since I had more or less yelled at them. But the truth was that I had had enough and not even playing with the sparkles could keep my mind off the fact that this chase had been going on much too long.

All the men avoided my gaze, the Sergeant looked angry and the Lieutenant was about to start yelling back at me but he was stopped by Cajsa, who put her hand on his shoulder and shook her head a bit.

“Elof, Rafal. Stian has been with us for a month, now. He deserves to know.”

Those few words made both the men look like they had been punched in their gut. Cajsa turned to me.

“Stian, why don’t you come with me. We need to talk a bit.”

At first I was about to use harsh words in my response, but the look in her eyes showed so much hurt that I just closed my mouth and nodded to her. We walked a bit upstream and sat down on a log. It had probably fallen during the spring floods, as it was still solid and there were some greens at the top of the big tree; it seemed as though the tree tried to negate its death by forcing out some green leaves even after falling down.

I kept looking at Cajsa and waited for her to collect her thoughts. Finally, she sighed deeply and turned to me.

“Stian, you certainly remember when I told you that we all are volunteers, right?”

“Yes, Cajsa, I do. However, even back then, I was sure that there was more to it.”

I was not sure which affected her more. The fact that I had noticed something - or that I called her Cajsa when until this moment she had been either ‘Ma’am’, ‘Lady’ or ‘Lady Guardian’ to me while we had been on this mission.

“You are right, there is. We are volunteers, but our choices were a bit limited. Either we took this mission or spent a long, long time locked in prison - or even worse.”

I flinched slightly, I just couldn’t help it and of course Cajsa saw it.

“Yes, we aren’t exactly the best of the Guardians. However, I don’t think that we are that bad either, even if we all have done some stupid things we aren’t so proud of. Once there came this opportunity to clean your record and make a clean start after it, we all agreed. The only problem was that we didn’t really know what we’d agreed to do.”

“Cajsa, I don’t think that you are bad people. I’ve seen how you all talk and act with the people at the villages, and really bad people wouldn’t do that. Not all the time.”

Cajsa smiled at me and squeezed my hand lightly.

“Thank you, Stian, those words coming from you mean a whole lot to me - and to us all. That’s part of what makes it so hard to explain these things to you.”

She took another deep breath and turned to look the other way, at the stream and the log that was partly lying there.

“Look at this tree,” she said. “It has fallen down, and it’s dying. It should just give up and molder but no, it refuses to give up but instead it grows some green leaves and tries to continue growing even if it has lost almost all of its roots.”

Then she turned back to me and her blue eyes almost burned my face.

“We are like that tree. We are doomed to die but we keep on living even if our life right now isn’t a very glorious one. We truly enjoy the hospitality shown to us at the villages we visit, and we even enjoy living here in the forest and chasing that creature.”

“Then why don’t you just catch that creature and kill it? Wouldn’t that solve all your problems?” I asked.

The look on her face had not been happy but suddenly her face turned ashen.

“You don’t know what you are talking about, Stian. You haven’t seen that creature - we all have. We saw how it killed our Magician - just like that - and then it looked each of us straight to our eyes like evaluating us before turning away. The most terrifying thing was that we could not agree what it looked like since we all saw it differently. Another thing is that we all were sure that the monster wasn’t even close to Ivar when it slashed his stomach open. Only afterwards when we saw its tracks we knew where it had been. How can you kill such a beast if you don’t even know where it is?”

“Cajsa, I’m sure that it can be at least wounded from a distance, if not killed.”

Cajsa just shook her head sadly.

“You don’t understand. They don’t expect us to kill it. They expect it to kill us. That’s our punishment. The Guardians aren’t very anxious to let any of their own to be punished in normal courts, since that would bring some unwanted publicity and normal people might find out that all the Guardians aren’t those legendary protectors of the bedtime stories, but normal people with flaws; people who make mistakes just like all the others. So, instead of publicly punishing their own, our great leaders send the failed Guardians on missions from which they are not supposed to return. When they get killed while trying something stupid but heroic it will only make the legend bigger.”

Even if I had expected something bad, this shocked me to the root. I guess I had been one of those little boys who had wanted to believe in those heroic stories. Hearing the truth behind some of them wasn’t all that glorious. I put my hand on her shoulder as I wanted her to know that I didn’t think badly about her.

“Before he died,” Cajsa explained, “Ivar told us they would be gathering all the most powerful Magicians they could find. But since they are from all around the country, they’d need to be trained to face the creature. It might take more than a year. The Magicians aren’t willing to take any chances when they face the beast and they will then be supported by a big group of Guardians. Until then, there will be small groups like ours that will do the chasing.”

“Small groups? You mean there are others?”

“We are the second group they’ve sent after it. The first group was smaller.”

Even if I knew the answer, I had to ask the last question.

“What happened to that first group?”

“They caught the creature - or it was more like the creature caught them. That group is now part of the legend of the Guardians.”

Our party was quite silent during our trip to the nearby village. I watched how the group acted once we got there, and I had to admit that they behaved extremely well. Each of the men was respectful, they all accepted the food and the support the people living in the village offered, but also how the villagers clearly respected the Guardians. During that visit, I really understood that I was considered as one of the Guardians. There was a girl in her late teens that was always there when I needed something, I asked her to whom I should give my letter.

“A letter? Why do you want to send a letter?”

“I have my fiancée waiting and taking care of my house. I want her to know that I’m fine and that we are close to our target.”

The look on her face changed from excited to disappointed and only then did I understand.

“Oh. My father is going to see the merchant in a few days, so I’m sure he can take it.”

“Thank you,” I told her.

When I turned away I could see Cajsa snickering at the look on my face.

“Poor girl. I think you just broke her heart. Look, Stian, all of us would understand if you’d want to spend your night somewhere else while we are visiting these villages. The truth is that we all feel bad for you, after taking you away from your fiancée and considering our chances...”

I felt like I had been slapped and it must have shown.

“Cajsa, I’m engaged to Saga. I still intend to go back to her after this mission. I want to be able to look straight into her eyes after this trip and tell her that I’ve been true to her!”

Suddenly it was Cajsa’s turn to look like she had been punched and slapped.

“I’m sorry, Cajsa,” I apologized, “that came out too harshly. I’ve been talking about these things with Saga and we both know how we feel about it. Before we started being intimate with each other, we had already discussed the possible consequences and we decided that we’d face them if necessary.”

There were some tears in Cajsa’s eyes when she shook her head. “Sorry, Stian, my comment was out of line. I just thought about our possibilities and I thought that it would be okay for you to have some fun before we actually face...”

I moved in front of Cajsa and put my arms on her shoulders.

“You may think that I’m a fool, but I haven’t given up. I won’t give up.”

Once the villagers had fed us and given us some fresh supplies, including some clean clothes, we were sitting together by the fire enjoying some of the wine they had given us. For the first time, I felt as part of the group even if reasons behind this new bonding could have been better. It was one of the men who started speaking.