Chapter 10: The Hunt

The preparations took Yorvig two days, and that with only a couple short naps. He was famished, having eaten only a single fish he’d managed to hook from the river in that time. Sometimes as he worked, dizziness would come upon him. He drank as much as he could, more to feel like his belly was full than from need. When he’d finished the preparations, he stared up at the ridge above him. He could not follow the river up into the next vale where the beasts had fled. The harder way must be taken for this to work.

Using his makeshift spear as a walking stick, Yorvig climbed up the broken ridge above the river, often bending over to brace his thigh with his free hand. Fatigue was setting in. Though he was only a day’s hike away from the claim, he was truly on his own. It had already been days. If something happened to him, the odds of his body ever being found were slim. It was likely that no one would look for him either; he knew the risks of going off alone, even though he did it for all of them.

The trees blanketed the ridges all the way up to their undulating crests, a mix of conifers and birches, beeches, and maple, mostly. Only the bare balds and spires of exposed granite and basalt rose above that cover of trees. Some of the deciduous varieties were showing the first hints of color. He did not intend to climb all the way up to the top of the ridge, but only enough to get into the next vale without disturbing the animal trail. The narrow gap where he’d seen the beasts did indeed open out into another small valley following the river course. It took him close to two hours to descend along the far side. He had not been able to even see the river for most of the journey, the trees were so thick, so he had to rely on the undulations of the landscape to pick his route. Eventually he reached the game trail along the riverbank near another narrows. He drank cold water from the river at a gap in the rock of the bank. Plentiful beast tracks revealed it to be a regular watering spot. After slaking his thirst, he climbed back up the bank and stared downstream. It was evening, and the sun was already well below the ridgeline.

He wasn’t looking forward to this part. It made him feel foolish just thinking about it. Still, there was nothing for it. Dignity mattered not in the wild. He cut a stout branch and stripped it, then held his spear in one hand and the stick in the other. Tapping into what wells of strength he still had, he took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his lungs. He jogged forward, whacking trees as he past by, cracking the branch against the trunks as he yelled and jogged forward. The vale was only a bit longer than half a mile, and significantly narrower. His voice echoed over the river.

This might all be for nothing. What with making so much racket, he couldn’t tell if there was even anything else alive and moving in the valley. Even as he ran, he started to plan on fishing. This was a stupid waste of effort, and he’d squandered days and energy for nothing. At length, sweating and huffing for breath, he approached the narrow gap between the mountain spurs. The trees grew less thick and tall here on account of the exposed rock, but just on the far side of the choke point there was deep silty loam washed up by years of river floods at a low bend.

His voice felt raw and he stopped shouting and slowed to a walk. If it hadn’t worked by now, it wasn’t going to work at all. When he grew quiet and stopped gasping for breath, he heard it—a grunting sound ahead. He broke into a jog again. Up ahead, the covering of the pit was broken and collapsed. Across the game trail, where the silt lay deep, he had dug a long pit, covering it with a crisscross of thin scrub willow branches, then a layer of grasses, and a thin cover of silt. He’d made it wide—wider, he hoped, than the beasts could easily leap. He doubted any animal would be fooled if approaching cautiously, so he had to scare them toward it.

Stepping up to the edge of the pit, he looked down, froze for a moment, and then laughed out loud. At the bottom of the pit were two of the beasts. They must have been running together. The pit was only four feet deep, and that had been done only at great labor, as he’d hit a mix of gravel, clay, and bedrock beneath the silt. The depth wasn’t the killer, though; it was full of sharpened stakes. One beast had been impaled multiple times through the abdomen, but the second, a specimen with great sweeping antlers, struggled and groaned, a sharp stake protruding bloody through its right shoulder as it tried to rise and free itself. Yorvig dropped the branch and grasped his spear in both hands. With a firm thrust, he drove the dagger blade into the creature’s throat and yanked outwards, parting windpipe and arteries. Its struggle was over soon.

Yorvig’s heart pounded. This was sweet victory, but there was no time to waste. If he didn’t act quickly, the meat would spoil, even though the days and nights were growing cooler. The first thing was to light the fire, then he would haul out the carcasses and begin to butcher them. This would all be so much easier with salt, but even if he still had the full five pounds of salt he'd brought, it wouldn't be enough. So instead, he had to use smoke. It would take days.

Only ten yards away on the far side of a boulder, Yorvig had carefully stacked a semicircle wall of stone against the natural rock, situated over a small hole and sealed with clay and mud taken from the pit trap. The concept was similar in a way to how they sometimes smelted ore in the wild, but in this case, the fire would be kept low and smokey. He already had a supply of green wood and kindling ready to be lit—the shaved bark of a birch tree—and with a few strikes of his flint and steel, he had a fire going. With so much birch bark to hand, he had no fear the fire would take even with the green wood.

He returned to the beasts and tied his rope around the neck of the one he’d stabbed, but he soon found that it weighed many hundreds of pounds. Dwarves were hardy, used to carrying weight, but in the end he had to butcher it in the hole. He was sweating, more from a sense of urgency than from heat or exercise. It was awkward to part out the massive beast in the pit. He had to remove his dagger from the branch, but he got it done. First, he skinned it out and spread the hide flesh-side up onto the ground. Then, He butchered both animals, leaving the meat on the bones, pilling the divisions on the upturned hide to keep them clean. He divided into hips, shoulders, spine, sides of rib, and neck. He would have to build a second smoker. The first would only fit one of the creatures, but he would get it started.

The top of the smoker kiln was open, and he drove greenwood branches through the portions of meat and lay the branches overtop the opening in the kiln. The meat hung inside, spaced so as not to touch, and he carefully sealed the top with more stone and clay. Smoke would fill the chamber, slowly forming a preservative coating on the meat, but he would have to tend the fire for many days—as many as he could manage—keeping it smokey, and not too hot. Still, there was a risk it could foul, but if he managed it well, the meat could last for months. In Deep Cut, the folk still smoked meat, despite the plentiful salt, and they did it for the flavor. Some of the older dwarves swore by the flavor of coal-smoked goat in particular. Flavoring meat only took a couple days. Preserving it with smoke took far, far longer.

It took Yorvig hours to build another smoker kiln, get a fire started, and hang the meat from the second beast. He’d covered the meat in the second hide to keep flies and other insects away in the meantime, and he hoped it had not taken him too long. Once both fires were burning steadily enough, Yorvig returned to the carcasses. There was plenty still piled on the hides that he could not reasonably smoke. Liver, kidney, heart, and the headmeats. Dwarves did not eat brain, but the tender flesh around the head was sought after, as well as the eyes. He wrapped all this in the hides and carried it back besides the smokers. Last, he threw the offal in the river. He did not want any visits from scavengers.

At last, he started a cookfire for himself, setting flat stones around the edges and laying the organ meat to sizzle there. With his pick, he broke open the skulls to extract the creature’s brains—not to eat. The hides were valuable, and it was one of the true wonders of the world that each creature carried enough brains to preserve it’s own hide. Yorvig figured the same must be true of dwarves, but he doubted it, considering the behavior of his companions back at the claim.

He used the edge of a chisel to shave and peel the flesh off the inside of the hide, taking it down to the translucent skin layer. Then he warmed the brains over the cookfire and mashed them into a paste, added water, and spread it across the flesh side of both hides, folding them over themselves. They would stay like that as the brain paste absorbed.

Yorvig didn’t know why it worked—no one did—and it wasn’t the only way to preserve the leather, but it was the surest way in the wilds.

The hides would dry hard, and it would take hours of work later to break the fibers apart until they became pliable again, and they would need smoked as well, but now at least they would not rot.

It was the middle of the night. The stars shone above. The cool wind swayed the treetops, and Yorvig sat at his small cookfire near his two smokers. The Lord of Three Fires, he dubbed himself as he glutted on head-meat and rich organs. It had been so long since he’d felt truly full, stuffed and sated. He was determined to let none of it go to waste, and he didn’t finish eating or let himself take a short nap until the eastern sky lightened. The sensation was similar to intoxication. Still, much of the organ meat would go to waste. It had already been many hours. There was just too much.

After a nap, Yorvig awoke to the crass morning sun and tended the fires, then spent a few more hours cutting and splitting wood. As he worked, he tried to calculate how long it would take him to get back to the dell. On his trip upstream, he had walked slowly and quietly, taking hours to reach this point. Dwarves were not known for speed, but he was pretty sure that if he jogged the whole way, he could make it back to the dell in little more than an hour. Allowing only a short time to inform the others of what had transpired, he’d have to jog back straight away to tend the fires.

The problem with keeping a fire smoldering low was that there was a delicate balance between letting it flame up too rapidly or burn out altogether. Leaving the fires for nearly three hours would be hard, as he would not be able to regulate the heat and smoke, and he risked the meat if the stone smoke-hives were not kept full of smoke. Still, the process could take weeks, and he needed to let the others know. Yorvig would have preferred to be under stone. Being out on the surface like this was dangerous, but he couldn’t smoke meat in an unventilated mine, and it would have taken him at least two trips to get the meat back to the dell. Alone, he would have had to carry it against his body, soiling it, unless he wasted more time going back for help. Meat could start to turn within hours. It was not yet cool enough outside to make it last.

He had to deal with it there.

He’d leave his tools behind to lighten his load and hope for the best. The fire needed banked well, so he built up a deep bed of embers, laid atop some greenwood maple cross-stacked, and then placed large flat chunks of river shale in front of the fire holes, partially sealing them with clay to limit airflow. That should help the fire burn slowly and smolder while he was away. The folded hides he placed on top of a boulder to keep small rodents away from then. Then, he drank his fill of water from the river and started off at a jog with only his dagger tucked into its sheath at the back of his belt.