Figo rested his back against a tree and opened his awareness to the sounds of nature, just as he had been taught. The Keel Doves were in mating season, and were merrily chirruping and trilling in their pursuit to find a mate. They were cautious birds; they would fall silent if they feared predators nearby. Figo hoped that would be signal enough.

“What’re you doing there, Feeg?”

Figo opened one eye to see Fiona staring up at him. She was reclined at his feet, one leg folded over the other and a daisy spinning between her fingers.

“I’m trying to estimate the distance of the Keel Doves, so we know how much warning we’ll get if Tallin comes this way.”

“Are you coming right?”

He sighed, “I’m afraid I’m not very good at it.”

“It sure looks like you know your stuff.”

“My father was set on me becoming the best huntsman in the whole of the Kaden Circle, but I’m afraid I have little natural ability.”

Fiona tilted her head towards the young archer, “What would you have picked?”

“I don’t know,” Figo confessed, “perhaps a baker?”

Fiona laughed, her voice was deep, but it still had a musical quality to it, “On behalf of the woods, hills and valleys that grace us with food and furs, I thank your father that he blessed us with a compassionate and capable hunter.”

“Why do you say that?”

The scout returned her attention to the spinning flower, “Mankind will always work the land, and will always take from the bounty of nature. There are those who do so with reverence and consideration, and there are those that think only of themselves,” she looked back at him, “If you weren’t doing it, then someone else would be. I doubt that person would be as thoughtful.”

Figo shifted uneasily, “Thank you.”

“Pleasure,” she smiled, “That one, by the way.”

“Excuse me?”

“Da-dum-dee-dum-da-dum-da-di-da,” her foot tapped in time with the birdsong, “He’s furthest away, maybe even as far as that twisted elm we saw. He’s loud, which is a little deceptive, but he’s got a bold voice. Probably a little desperate,” she winked.

“That’s incredible. How did you do that?”

She shrugged, “The same way you learn anything: practice, luck and determination.”

Figo wavered before asking, “Did you always know you were going to be a mercenary?”

“Gods, no. Kayla and I were merchant kids, believe it or not. We used to go together on market days to neighbouring towns and sell wares, while our mothers kept shop back home. We would always travel with a few of the local ‘strong menfolk’,” she deepened her voice in imitation of someone, “or hire a guard or two if the need arose. Anyway, we didn’t much like the idea of running and hiding if something actually did go down, so we used to spar and practice with the guys when we got a chance. Long story short, we preferred swinging swords and firing arrows to selling shoes and cotton dresses. We never did encounter any trouble on those roads, but we couldn’t deny that a point came when we wanted to. We were hungry for some action, so we signed up to the mercenary guild. We were already guarding goods going from here to there, so why not get paid for it?”

Figo wrung his hands together, “That sounds incredibly brave. I don’t know if I could do that.”

The scout raised an eyebrow at him, “What in the aether are you talking about? You already have.”

“Oh, I suppose I have,” he said apologetically.

“You’re an odd creature, Figo, but I like that. One day you’ll develop the self-confidence you deserve, and then I’m sure you’ll become insufferable.”

Figo thought about this, “I’m not sure which to hope for.”

The sun was beginning to dip below the hills. A blueish spot was staining the sky like an expanding bruise, chasing the bronze hues to the horizon, out of sight behind the trees. The doves were still singing, but their chorus was being taken up by a medley of insects and vermin, ready to claim the woods as their domain until morning.

“It really is quite beautiful about these parts,” Fiona confessed, “Every girl’s dream.”

“Is it your dream?” Figo asked.

“Are you suggesting I’m not a girl?” the short-haired woman grinned.

“No, no, of course not. I mean, you’re clearly a girl, a lady, even.”

“Quiet,” she barked, “Do you hear that?” she was crouched now, and her hand was on her bow.

“The doves.”

She nodded, “It’s time.”

The pair of them crept to their positions. They were hunkered behind a small hedgerow, hidden from the path that traced its way through the gulley below, running the length of the ‘V’ between two steep hills.

They didn’t have to wait long before Tallin and a small band of followers came into view. There were six in total, including Tallin. They wore farmers garb but their bearing and the expensive lanterns they carried, shielded on three sides to direct the light in front of them, gave them away. Nonetheless, Figo looked to Fiona for confirmation, who nodded and indicated a pigeon-chested man at the center of the pack.

The pair of archers waited the painstaking length of time it took the group to get into position. The point-man was cautious; he scanned his surroundings frequently, making their going slow.

When the group were below and between them, with Fiona at the front and Figo behind, the mercenaries unleashed their volley.

Fiona was first to fire, dropping the lead lamp-bearer with pinpoint accuracy. The lamp landed face-down, smothering the light and stretching the men’s shadows before them.

Figo took aim at Tallin, as agreed, striking him in the shoulder. He cried out in pain, but did not fall at first. The way the arrow protruded indicated Tallin wore light armour beneath his simple sackcloth tunic. Desperately, Figo drew and fired once more. This time the arrow struck Tallin squarely in the lower back, arching his spine and tipping him forward, his body rigid. Figo watched the grim display for a fraction too long, allowing the men either side to arm themselves.

One man pulled a cleaver from beneath his tunic, and charged the embankment in the direction the arrows had come from, heading directly towards Figo. The other man melted into the trees on the opposite side of the path. As he did, he unravelled a short bow and some arrows from a bedroll.

Figo made to retreat, his job done, but hesitated once he realized that Fiona was still firing. After faltering back and forth, he made the decision to stay, and notched another arrow. Figo returned to his station to find the details of the swordsman’s face had started to resolve, and he could clearly see the man snarling in rage and bloodlust. It was an unnerving sight, but there was no danger. The man slipped and scrabbled as he tried to gain the high ground, allowing Figo to easily dispatch him with an arrow to the chest, which sent him tumbling back into the gulley.

There was a short back and forth between Fiona and the archer in the trees beyond, neither of which Figo could see, during which half a dozen arrows were exchanged on each side. Figo watched helplessly as the missiles blurred from high to low and back again, like the pair were passing a ball.

Finally, all was quiet.

The peaceful woodland had become a sepulcher. The path below was riddled with bodies strewn haphazardly. The men had dropped either where they stood, or as they tried to flee from their fate. The sight appalled and intrigued all at once, and Figo found himself both anxious and unable to look away. There was a sacrosanct quality to the miserable place that demanded attention.

“You’d better be alive over there, Figo.”

Fiona’s rich voice tore Figo from his reverie, and he rushed to find his ‘partner’.

“There you are. I would have been very disappointed if one of those amateurs had got you,” Fiona tried to smile, but grimaced instead.

Figo noted the perspiration on her forehead, glinting in the fading light, and soon spotted the cause, “You’ve been hit!”

“Your father was right to train you as a huntsman; you’re an observant one,” she laughed, “Luckily it’s just the leg, but it hurts like being told, ‘Let’s just be friends’. Can you run and fetch one of those lanterns? While you’re there, grab something from Tallin to show we got the bastard.”

“What should I get?”

“I don’t know, Figo, use your imagination. I’m sitting here with an arrow in my leg, so if you wouldn’t mind?”

Figo made to leave and then looked back, “Do you think maybe something like-”

“Gods, Figo,” she cut him off, “A broach, a ring, a signed copy of a novel he’s been working on, anything! Just go!”

Figo nodded and slid down onto the path.

He picked up the upended lamp and went to inspect Tallin’s body. Luckily, the man was dead. Figo had half feared that he may still be alive, he’d collapsed so awkwardly. A short search revealed a signet ring on Tallin’s right hand, engraved with a prancing lion, mouth open in a roar – Tallin’s personal sigil. Figo took the ring and returned to his wounded partner.

Fiona looked pale in the light of the lantern, but her eyes were alert.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“Please, don’t be sorry. I deserved it,” Figo said, as he leaned in to inspect the wound.

The arrow was lodged in her shin, and surely must have fractured a bone. More worryingly, Figo could see angry red webbing eking out from the wound, and already there were signs of inflammation.

“How does it look?” Fiona asked, a hint of worry challenging her calm demeanor.

“I can’t be sure,” Figo stammered.

“Figo, look at me,” when she had his attention she repeated, “How does it look?”

“I… I think it might be a poisoned arrow.”

Fiona covered her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed loudly, “Crap. Okay, what do we do?”

“I suppose, well, we need to bind it?” he looked to her for confirmation.

“Figo, whatever you need to do, do it. Just do it fast, okay?”

“Okay, okay. Right,” Figo thought a moment, “Umm, please put pressure here, below the knee. I’m going to try and find something to bind this with.”

Fiona complied, and Figo ran off to find what he needed.

When Figo returned, he was carrying a length of cord, a short stick, and an assortment of herbs.

“What took you?”

“I had trouble finding any Fangleaf. Father says that’s the one that cleans the wound,” Figo said, as he set about tying a tourniquet where Fiona’s hands had been. He thought about tying it further up when he saw how quickly the infection was spreading, but decided that would probably worry Fiona further.

With the blood flow cut off, Figo set about removing the arrow. He wrapped the head in a strip of leather and snapped it off, before drawing the rest of the shaft back through the entry-wound. Fiona winced and seethed as he worked, she even shed a few discrete tears, but not once did she complain. Once the arrow was disposed of, Figo chewed some of the leaves he had collected and, with an apology, packed them around the puncture points on either side of the leg. Finally, he made a small fire next to Fiona, and took the other herbs to brew into a tea.

“Have you done this before?” Fiona asked.

“No,” Figo confessed, as he stirred the leaves, “but this is what I was instructed to do if ever one of us got a snake bite.”

“You or your father?”

Figo nodded.

“What if you found an animal like this?” Fiona asked.

Figo strained the liquid and handed the tea to her in a small wooden cup, “If it were a small animal then we would put it down immediately. If it were a larger animal then,” he gave her an attempt at an apologetic look, but his gaze was fixed somewhere in the past, “the meat can be saved if you amputate the extremity immediately. Otherwise, the venom will spread, and the animal becomes unfit for consumption.”

Fiona forced herself to look at her leg. It was a swollen, grotesque impersonation of what it had been. She wept openly this time.

“Figo, I think,” she swallowed to silence a whimper, “I think you have to do it. I think you have to amputate.”

“Don’t say that. We have all the right herbs. This will work, I feel it. Let’s try the remedy first. We can always amputate later if we have to.”

Solemnly, Fiona nodded.

The night progressed and, despite the pain, Fiona succumbed to sleep. She was fitful, twitching and shaking as nightmares conquered her thoughts, and she woke herself frequently with convulsions. Figo watched over her tirelessly, replacing the poultice and dabbing the sweat from her brow with a warm cloth.

When morning came, and Fiona saw her leg for the first time in the light of day, she screamed. The wound was caked in puss, visible even around the flaking wad of herbs. The colour on the distended skin of her shin and foot ranged from crimson, to faded black. Her knee and her thigh were not much better; they looked much like her lower leg had the night before.

Figo watched, absorbed in his shame, as Fiona cried, swore and shouted.

When she was finally done, she spoke to him without looking, “Figo, it’s time.”

With his head hung low, Figo drew the knife he normally used to prepare animal carcasses for transportation, “I’ll try and take from the knee first. I’ll save as much as I can.”

“No, Figo, I think we both know it’s too late for that,” Fiona looked at the young man and forced him to look back, “I mean, it’s time.”

Figo processed what he was hearing and then shook his head, “No, not yet. We can still try. We have to try. I think you… I think you can still survive this.”

Again, Fiona allowed herself to be convinced.

The preparation took a little time. Figo found what he needed to make Fiona as comfortable as possible. He built her a bed from cloaks and torn fabric, and mixed her a strong sedative to knock her out for the procedure. When she was completely under, he got to work.

As a hunter, Figo had disemboweled, dissected, and skinned any number of creatures. It was not a task he loved, but he had, with time, become detached from the process. His actions were mechanical, devoid of feeling. As he operated on Fiona he struggled to find the same mindset. Removing himself from the task was proving near impossible, and, try as he might, he couldn’t think of the diseased flesh as anything other than Fiona’s leg.

He thought back to the first deer he had killed; he had cried then as well. He half hoped and half didn’t that, just as with the deer, he would one day be able to shut off the part of him that made him weep at the suffering of his friends.

Fiona awoke late in the afternoon. She was quiet and reserved. She took some water, but said not a word. After staring at the stump of her leg for a full three turns of the clock, she huddled in her blankets and cried herself silently, tearlessly to sleep.

The next morning, Fiona did not wake up. At least, she did not properly wake up. Her eyes were open but her pupils did not react to the light, and her body shuddered and heaved as if she were trying to vomit but couldn’t. That was how Kayla and Hein found her, with Figo kneeling helplessly over the young woman, cleaning the flecks of spittle from her chin.

“What the hell have you done to her?” Kayla whispered, pale, despite her tanned complexion.

“Get away from her, you monster!” Hein kicked Figo squarely in the chest, sending him tumbling into the hedges.

“Fiona, oh Fiona,” Kayla repeated through her sobs, cradling her childhood friend. Fiona looked almost like an infant in the larger woman’s arms.

“It was a poison arrow,” Figo said tonelessly.

“And you let her get like this? What the fuck is wrong with you,” Hein bellowed at the top of his lungs, “I wouldn’t treat a rat like this, you twisted bastard.”

“I… I’m sorry.”

Kayla lowered her friend to the ground and kissed her forehead. Then, she took her dagger from her belt.

“Go,” she said, barely audibly, “This is not for you to witness.”

“I’m so sorry,” Figo said again.

“Go! I don’t ever want to see you ever again, do you hear? Never again!”

With his head bowed and his heart lead in his chest, Figo backed away from the people he thought would be his chance at a new life, and ran. He didn’t see Kayla end Fiona’s suffering. He was not privileged to be there for her when she died.

Figo had no recollection of the journey back to Gladstone; he didn’t even recall deciding to return. He knew that night had come and passed, and he was quite sure that he had missed several meals, but he could not picture the steps he had taken or the path he had picked. He couldn’t even tell if thoughts or feelings had entered his wounded mind, although he felt sure they must have. It was only when he was close enough to the outlying houses to see the texture of the wattle and daub walls that he became aware of himself once more.

There was movement in the streets of Gladstone, morning movement, he knew intuitively. Smoke billowed from chimneys where dwellers cooked a hearty breakfast, carts rattled towards the market square, and there were even a few travellers smoking outside The Hair of the Dog, just as Hein and Fiona had been the day he had met them. He tried not to look at that place.

The hunter-cum-mercenary stood and watched the town for what felt like days. It didn’t seem fair that there should be so much life in one place. Life permeated the buildings, the roads, even the air, like Gladstone was a giant lung, bursting with the energy it had inhaled from the land.

His left leg bucked beneath him and he stumbled to his hands and knees. Only when he was face-to-face with the spattered dirt did he realise he had been crying.

With a colossal effort, he hoisted himself to his feet. He didn’t particularly know or understand why he bothered to, but his legs were tired, and his stomach was empty, and these needs had a way of asserting themselves whenever will and purpose fled. So, he walked. Feet dragging, arms hanging, he walked.

A mild flash of surprise illuminated in some distant part of his consciousness when he looked up and found himself at the foot of the stairs to the mercenary guild hall. In some ways it felt like the worst place to be, like it was a monument to his utter failure, but then he thought of home, of his father, and realized which of the two he would rather confront.

With something approaching determination, he moved forward.

He froze on the first step.

There had been a reason to come here. Something had driven him, he recalled.

He fished in his belt pouch until he found the signet ring.

Here it was, the symbol of his very first ‘success’ as a mercenary. It was a symbol of a job well done. No matter what had been lost in the process, they had still done their duty, and fulfilled their promise. He would be rewarded. He would be lauded. The guild and its members would embrace him, acknowledge him, call him one of their own. He had made it. Despite all else, he had made it.

He turned ring over in his palm, rubbing a thumb over the crest.

The lion laughed at him.

That haughty creature, that symbol of pride and honour, stepped up on its hind legs, opened its mouth wide, and laughed.

He looked at it, and laughed too.

A white-haired mercenary exited the guild with a cluster of mages and warriors in tow. He frowned at the laughing boy as he passed him, giving him a wide berth.

Figo smiled at the man apologetically, but he was already gone.

Finally, the archer climbed the stairs to the mercenary guild two at a time, hesitating only briefly before pushing open the heavy wooden door and entering.

Outside, discarded on the steps, the laughing lion fell silent.

Figo wasn’t sure what to do next, so he did what most mercenaries do when they have no clue which way is up - he ordered a beer, and sat down at one of the tables in the common area.

There were a few people in the hall, some alone but most in groups or pairs. Figo watched with interest how the mercenaries interacted. There was laughter, there was boasting, there was swearing, and there was no small amount of animated gesturing. They all looked larger than life, he realized. It was as if they threw themselves into whatever joy they were feeling one hundred percent, and now he thought he understood why. He had always idolized them, had sometimes even envied them. Now, though, he empathized with them.

As Figo watched his fellow mercenaries interact, his attention was drawn by an animated conversation between a bald fighter, a redhead, and a dark-skinned mage. Three others spectated, with ales in hand and sighs on their lips.

Figo was watching them idly, sipping his beverage, when he noticed a tall, long-haired man peel away from the peculiar mish-mash of adventurers. The boisterous redhead seemed to issue a few instructions, and then suddenly the man was heading towards him. The mercenary made to turn back on two occasions, but both times the young woman ushered him onwards. A sword swung on the long-haired man’s hip, slapping against his thigh as he walked in a way that simply cannot have been comfortable.

Conscious that he may have been caught staring, Figo engrossed himself in his drink, upending the beverage and draining the contents in slow gulps. When he lowered his mug, he found that the pasty looking man was sat across from him.

“Aether! I mean, hello,” Figo spouted.

“You a ranger?” the man said quickly.

“Uh, sort of? I’m a hunter. I was a hunter,” Figo explained.

“You’re new here,” it wasn’t a question.

“Um, yes.”

“Do you know who I am?” the mercenary probed. It didn’t sound like a threat, despite the wording.

“I, no. No, I don’t. Sorry.”

“That’s probably for the best,” he was staring vapidly at the guild entrance as he spoke.

Figo looked back over his shoulder but nobody was there. Not a soul had entered or exited in half a turn, save himself and the white-haired man with his small entourage.

"Are you expecting someone?"

"No, no," the long-haired man said, seeming to relax a little, “So, a hunter? You kill monsters?”

“I suppose I could.”

“Beasts?”

“Certainly.”

“Animals?”

“That was my trade, yes.”

“And I guess you can track them too, yeah?”

“Often.”

“Like, follow a trail?”

“If it’s fresh enough.”

“Identify prints, feces, that kind of thing?”

“For some creatures, definitely.”

“So if we were hunting something, or someone, you could read the signs and take a pretty good guess at which way they went, what they had done, how long they had spent there, and all that rubbish?”

“Well, I guess if there was suff…” Figo stopped.

He heard himself.

He heard Kayla. He heard Hein.

He heard Fiona.

He changed his answer.

“Yes,” Figo said.

The long-haired mercenary regarded him cautiously and then started nodding to himself, “Good, good. That’s good,” he started tracing the grain of the table’s wooden surface, “How are you with cats?”