It took a couple of months to get the fish farm completely up and running, but with the aid of some fish traps and a lot of work in my down time I was able to get it working. We also managed to water one of the fields with the run off from the pond. Of course that meant that over the next winter we were going to have to set up all of the fields so that they could be watered the same way. So we had a lot to do, but that just means that next summer was going to be a lot less work than this one.

Today was nice because it was a rare day off. Our harvest was in and my dad, Kurt, Westra and my mom were all heading into Meadow Rest to sell our crops. They were taking two carts filled to the brim with produce and grains so I got to watch the kids and take care of the house while they were gone. Now I would normally just stay home and mind the house, but I wanted to thank my parents for helping me out with the fish farm and I hadn’t really had the opportunity to do something for them yet. Today I would change that.

Today I was going to hunt a Lehmakin you know, those bulls on steroids I’d briefly mentioned. We’d never gone hunting for them before but today I was going to do it. Dad always said it was too dangerous and that the reward simply wasn’t worth it, but then Dad had never had my barbequed ribs before. Now I wasn’t exactly a great chef before I died and while I have improved over the last decade living here I’m still no master chef. But if there was one thing I could cook it was burgers and ribs.

My old mother taught me how to do ribs right, she even taught me how to make barbeque sauce from scratch. And after almost 10 years I finally had all of the ingredients to make my mom’s sauce again. The only thing I needed was the proper thing to put it on. I would have preferred pig, since pork ribs are better in my opinion, but the closest pig was deep in the forest and came with giant tusks. I figure an overgrown and aggressive cow would be easier to take down.

So I had Auttaa in my backpack and Gurt at my side as we made our way east to the plains. Oh wait, you guys don’t know what the plains look like do you? Well, if you are picturing Kansas you wouldn’t be far off in that there is a lot of relatively tall grass, most of it coming up to my knees. Of course the grass is blue instead of green or golden, but still it’s the thought that counts right? Oh and the plains aren’t exactly flat, there are a lot of flat stretches, but there are also a lot of low rolling hills. Frankly it looks pretty cool in my opinion, it almost makes me want to sing some country western songs. Well it would if I knew any… all that blue grass, that’s a thing in country western right? Anyway It took a close to an hour of walking straight west before we came upon some tracks of what I could only assume were Lehmakin. Frankly I would have been worried if I planned on hunting the beasts with just my spear. They were huge, and deep, the animals that made those tracks must have weighed well over 3 tons.

We started following the tracks and frankly it was some of the easiest tracking I had ever done in my life. It was like following a road, all I had to do was stay amongst the disturbed earth and I would easily find the beasts. That was the good news, the bad news was that there were at least 10, of the beasts in the herd. I couldn’t be certain on the number, but based on the number of different hoof marks I had been able to pick out, 10 seemed about right. We followed the path made by the giant beasts for close to two hours before I smelled something I was hoping I wouldn’t until the end of the hunt… blood.

The scent was relatively faint, but with the wind blowing in from the east I knew it was ahead of us which meant predators had come for the Lehmakin. I couldn’t bring my little brother into a situation where he could become the victim of whatever kills Lehmakin so I halted our little hunting party. I said quietly to Gurt, “There is blood up ahead, which means it is far too dangerous to bring Auttaa along. I will build an earth tent to keep you too safe, while I go on ahead and check out the source. If anything comes for you two use your mana to dig a hole and hide, I’ll be back within two hours, I need to scout out what’s ahead.”

Gurt said, “Okay, but make sure that your careful, and don’t take on something unless you know you can beat it. I don’t want to have to tell your parents that I let their son die while I hid in a stone tent.”

I smiled at Gurt and took Auttaa out of my backpack. He had been relatively silent for the trip so far but once I set him down he start to make some noise. I set him down on the ground then kneeled next to him and said, “I am going to be gone for a little bit, Gurt is going to be in charge. Make sure you listen to him and if he says to be quiet, be quiet it isn’t because he is mad at you, it will be because something dangerous is approaching, okay little brother?”

Auttaa nodded his cute little head and said, “Kay” then he started to dig a little hole in the bottom of the earth tent I’d set up. I smiled then left the small tent and started jogging toward the scent of blood. The first thing I noticed was that the earth had been greatly disturbed, something had gotten the Lehmakin to run. As I got closer the scent became much stronger, I even found the blood trail and based on the amount I’d say that whatever had been cut was probably already dead.

The tracks veered to the right to go around a small hill, I decided to go up the hill instead of around and hopefully avoid any straggling predators. It took less than a minute to get to the top of the hill, though I crawled when I got near the top so I wouldn’t present my silhouette to whatever was below me. As I reached the crest of the hillock I took a moment to scan the plains below. The first thing I noticed was movement, whatever was attacking the Lehmakin wasn’t done. The creatures were huge, they had horns and tusks and stood at least seven feet at the shoulders. There were three of them and they were circling a single moving figure. The only thing is that the moving figure looked like a man on a horse, which would mean that the Lehmakin were the hunters. I looked back along the path they had taken and I saw still bodies littering the way. There were dead humans, dead horses, and eight dead Lehmakin.

At that point I had a choice to make, I could ignore the plight of the horseman, harvest the body of one of the dead Lehmakin and safely make my way back to my little brother and my friend. Or I could race down the hill and try to kill three giant monsters in order to save some guy on a horse. The smart play would be to just mind my business, but then what in the hell was the point of training for the last nine years if I couldn’t save someone that was right in front of me.

I raced down the hill and gathered my mana. I wasn’t going to be able to kill these monsters with just my spear, not unless I got a lucky strike and somehow managed to pierce one of them through the eye and get the spear lodged in their brain. No my best bet was to try and kill the beasts with magic. I did as much prep work as I could in the short time it took me to reach the circling Lehmakin. The closest one to me was very obviously a male and it was suffering from multiple stab wounds. The horsemen must have been able to injure the large beast, but they had by no means been able to put him down.

The beast still hadn’t noticed me and I made sure to approach as quietly as possible. From the distance of only ten yards I could tell that Lehmakin were hunters, their eyes were forward set, instead of side set, so they could focus on their prey. While they may have once been herbivores clearly they had made the jump to omnivore at some point. I unleashed my spell about five yards in front of the Lehmakin and it worked quickly. The Lehmakin had no idea as it continued to circle, oblivious to the changes I had made to the ground in front of it.

It took the beast a mere two seconds to step into my trap and then the ground underneath it collapsed. The Lehmakin lowed in distress, as it started it’s fall, but that came to a brutal end as I heard its’ neck snap upon impact with the hard bottom if the pit I’d dug. That’s right I dug a pit trap beneath the topsoil so that the Lehmakin had no idea what was coming, it was how I was planning on bagging one without using my spear.

Of course my entrance into the fray didn’t go unnoticed by any of the participants, the horseman looked up and charged toward the opening I presented in his encirclement. I also noticed at this point he was riding double with someone else and his heavy armor implied that he wasn’t on a hunting trip gone wrong. The lance he pointed in my direction also gave me cause to worry, but frankly that was a secondary concern when compared with the now two pissed off Lehmakin racing toward me and after the horseman.

I gathered more of my mana and prepared another pit trap about ten yards in front of me, I made it longer and hoped I could get both of the beasts to fall in it. If they stayed on course I should be fine, but I would need to slow the one on the right down a little bit or it would arrive too early and would spring the trap allowing the last one to avoid it. So I threw my spear at the advancing Lehmakin, hoping the strike would slow it down just enough.

While the spear ended up hitting the frontrunner it didn’t do nearly enough damage to slow down the advancing Lehmakin. If anything the pain of a spear in its’ back seemed to goad the beast on to greater speed. Meanwhile the horseman continued to advance with his lance leveled at my chest. In order to dissuade him from running over me, or hitting me with his lance I created a couple of stone spears in front of me aimed directly at his horse’s chest. This seemed to disturb him as he veered off toward the right, which fortunately allowed him to avoid my trap. The Lehmakin advanced unperturbed by my display of magic.

I advanced closer to my pit, I walked over it onto the other side and sent a small earth wave at the closest beast. I figured that while a spear might not slow it down hundreds of pounds of earth suddenly appearing in its’ way might. My supposition proved correct and the beast slowed down enough that the two Lehmakin should arrive at my location at approximately the same time.

I backed up over my pit again and stood next to the two stone spears I had conjured. The Lehmakin continued toward me, blood in their eyes, hell bent upon my destruction; that is until they reached my new pit. Then they both disappeared into the earth. I heard two simultaneous and loud cracks and then the bellowing of a bull in distress. Apparently the fall wasn’t enough to kill one of the beasts. I approached the edge of the pit and saw the dead body of one Lehmakin and then the other stuck on its’ side, one leg obviously broken.

Looks like I’d have to hop down and cut the beast’s throat, or maybe I could try and send a spear into its’ brain. As I contemplated how best to kill the lamed animal I noticed the sound of hoof beats getting closer to me. I turned my head and noticed the rider was approaching me, lance once again leveled at my chest. Whoever the rider was, he sure was persistent. I walked back to the spear and broke a chunk off, then I used some mana to mold the broken piece into a rock close to the size of a softball. When the horseman got within twenty five feet of me I threw the rock as hard as I could at his shoulder.

A human pitcher at best could throw a baseball around one hundred miles per hour, I’m pretty sure I matched that speed without exerting my full strength. After all I was going for accuracy as opposed to power. Either way when my improvised projectile hit the rider he was knocked spinning out of his saddle. The horse kept coming for about twenty steps before it slowed down to a walk. I took the rest of the spear and launched it as hard as I could at the Lehmakin, shattering its’ skull.

With that unpleasant task taken care of I approached the fallen figure, or should I say figures. Based on what I could see they were both roughly human shaped, one was close to six feet laying supine on the ground, the other was closer to five and a half feet tall. The bigger one looked to be carrying a lot of muscle, or at least his full body plate mail suggested as much, the smaller one looked like he or she was still growing. As I got closer I could hear the big one moaning, I’d probably shattered his shoulder with that throw, the little one didn’t make a single sound.

When I got within a few feet of the unfortunate duo I could hear a rasping breath coming from the smaller of the two while the larger one started cursing me. Well I assume he was cursing me, after all he was almost shouting and there was a lot of hate in his voice. He pulled a knife from his belt and started waving it at me, so I held up my hands and pretended to want to talk to him. Then I moved at my top speed and grabbed the hand with the knife, I squeezed as hard as I could and I could feel the metal bracer starting to give. He could to, probably because his bones were starting to grate on each other. With a firm grip on his functioning arm I took the knife away from him, then proceeded to take away any other weapon he might have on him. I wound up with a boot knife and the sword on his hip, the lance was too far away for me to worry about, having been dropped when the armored man took a tumble.

My next move was to disarm the quiet small one, the man protested while I did so, but quieted down when he saw that I wasn’t going for the kill. After I had their weapons in I pile I removed their helmets and saw something I hadn’t seen in a while… Human faces. The bigger of the two looked to be somewhere between forty and fifty, there was some grey in his primarily brown hair. The smaller of the two was also clearly male and clearly hadn’t looked in a mirror for quite some time. He had a wispy little brown mustache to go along with his brown bowl cut hair. He had clearly started puberty recently and either didn’t know how to shave, or was deluded into thinking that his mustache looked cool.

I remember when I tried to grow one when I was thirteen, I thought it made me look older, it didn’t… maybe I will let that memory go, needless to say he clearly had the unique blend of confidence mixed with inexperience of a young teenager. I sat down next to him and sent my mana through his body. It was worrying me that he was unconscious and I wanted to make sure he didn’t have a concussion. What I found was much worse. He had a small cut on his hand that had clearly gotten infected. It was inflamed and his body was doing a piss poor job of fighting off the infection

I could feel the heat radiating off of the boy as the last ditch effort of the body’s immune system slowly cooked the boy alive. The first thing I did was give the boy some water as he was clearly dehydrated. It wasn’t easy since he wasn’t conscious enough to swallow on his own, so I ended up using some mana to force the liquid into his stomach. Then I sent mana into his bone marrow to stimulate the production of antibodies. After putting in a little work to strengthen his immune system I then focused on the source of the infection. I sent my mana into the wound, focusing on feeling the difference between the antibodies and the infection. It wasn’t easy to do, but I was eventually able to puzzle it out, the bacteria felt foreign to the body, like it didn’t quite belong. I used my mana to start separating out the bacteria from everything else and after close to twenty minutes of gathering the bacteria I pulled what I could out of the wound.

After I pulled as much of the infection from his body as I could, I debrided the wound and focused on reconnecting the skin and flesh so that it wouldn’t get reinfected. After I finished my mini bout of healing I looked up to see the older man staring at in in disbelief. I then walked over to him and sent my mana into his body. He tried to recoil from my touch but I wouldn’t let him I grabbed his good shoulder while keeping my other hand on his bad shoulder.

With my mana inside him I could feel the various wounds on his body, not only was his shoulder wrecked from coming into contact with a flying rock someone threw at him, but his leg had apparently been gored at some point by one of the Lehmakin. I sent my mana to close off the wound, reconnecting all of the tissue, then I went to work on his shoulder. It was painful for him as I had to drag pieces of bone through his flesh in order to get them back in the right spots. At some point during the procedure he passed out, which I was frankly thankful for. You can only take so much yelling in the ear before you really start to get annoyed.

After I put his shoulder back together I focused on repairing the damage fixing the joint had caused. There was a lot of tissue damage, but I was able to repair it, well most of it, I had to stop before I ran out of mana, but another session with me should get everything back in working order. For now he would just have to tough it out.

After my little healing session with the humans was over I tracked down the horse that had managed to run off and brought it back. The horse didn’t really like my scent as its’ nostrils were flaring when I approached, but it calmed down enough as I spoke sweet nothings and approached it properly. You know what they say, slow and steady wins the race, or in this case gets the horse.

When I returned to the site of the “hunt” the two invalids were still unconscious, so I loaded them on to the horse strapped them in and then made my way back to Gurt and Auttaa. When I got close enough Gurt saw me coming and made his way toward me. When he got within ten feet of me he said, “What in Alamaailma’s darkest pit have you gotten yourself into Swift?”

I smiled and said, “Honestly I’m not too sure, I found these two getting attacked by what I can only assume were Lehmakin. Apparently their entire party was killed by the beasts as I saw a string of dead bodies, both Lehmakin and whatever these guys are. Anyway there were three Lehmakin left and only these two, so I stepped in and killed the Lehmakin. After that I healed their injuries and brought them back. They should be relatively fine when they wake up, but we have some stuff to do. First we need to tie them up since the big one tried to attack me, then we need to go back and get some of that meat before it goes to waste, plus we need to grab their weapons since I forgot to bring them. After that we can return home with food and whatever the hell these guys are.”

I beamed at my little companion and he glared up at me. He said, “Let me see if I have this straight, you saved the lives of beings that tried to kill you, after killing three of the deadliest animals on our planet? Do I have that right? And now you want to bring them home, but only after getting some Lehmakin meat… Swift are you an idiot?”

I raised my eyebrow and said, “No… why do you ask?”

Gurt shook his head and said, “Because you clearly fought three very dangerous animals in order to save the lives of two northern barbarians… you know, those guys that come down from the north, attack our villages and are in general monsters… You need to kill these two… they will only bring you grief otherwise…”

As he trailed off I simply shook my head and said, “Sorry Gurt, I put a lot of effort into saving their lives and I am not going to throw that away just because you think they are northern barbarians. Besides we found them in the east, not the north, so maybe you are wrong. Either way I am bringing them home, so help my tie them up so that we can gather some meat and skin.”

Gurt sighed, but then complied. We bound the two arms behind their backs, feet together inside the stone tent, then I put Auttaa in my pack, grabbed the horse and we made our way back to the hunting site. I built a small travois for the horse to drag back home then loaded it up with meat. I kept the meat from spoiling by draping a couple of skins over the pile. I then loaded up my bag with the best cuts of meat I could find among the dead Lehmakin. I would have brought back ribs, but frankly it would have been a waste. There were better cuts of meat that I couldn’t leave behind, so sadly, my dream of ribs would have to wait.

After loading up our bags and the travois Gurt and I grabbed the weapons and made our way back to the stone tent. By the time we got back the two humans had returned to consciousness and were discussing something. I couldn’t make out any of the words, but it all sounded vaguely like Spanish. When they saw us arrive the two looked both startled and afraid. I tried talking to them in every language I knew, even the ones from earth, but they didn’t seem to understand. Instead the older one just glared at me and the boy just stared, fear evident in his features.

I shrugged and then loaded the two back on to the horse, tying them to the beast. It was a little awkward as I had to untie them and let their arms come to the front as it would have been impossible for them to stay on with their hands behind their backs, but I managed. Then I got us all moving back toward home. I had to let Auttaa walk as much as possible since carrying him and the weapons was awkward, but we eventually got home. The journey normally would have taken us only two or three hours, but encumbered as we were it ended up taking five.

When we got home the sun was already getting low in the sky and things had changed quite a bit at the farm. It wasn’t a burned out wreck or anything, but there were a lot of people in and around my house both Susi and Vuohians. I was worried about bandits at first, but then I saw my dad walking freely amongst them and realized we simply had a lot of guests. Looks like it was a good thing I’d gotten so much meat.

When we got close enough to home someone noticed us and I could see their face change from curious to hostile. The Susi glared and pulled out his sword. He snarled and yelled, “Who the fuck are you and what are you doing with those savages?”

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AN: hope you guys liked the chapter, next chapter is going to delve a little into Susi culture, then I think I might do a side story from the human's perspective. Side chapter is only a maybe though since it might not come together properly, but get ready for a rumble as there is a lot of racial hatred between the Susi and Humans.