Date: March 25, 541, from the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored
The dawn over Ligra was gray and cold. The fog, heavy and damp, slid down from the surrounding hills, enveloping the city walls in a ghostly shroud. Dur stood by the northern gate, leaning against the cold stone of the masonry. His bow was un-cased, the string checked thrice, and in his quiver rested arrows whose heads he had personally sharpened the previous evening by the light of a candle stub in the attic.
Maël had stayed in the city. "In the forest, I'm about as useful as a goat in a library," he'd grinned in farewell. "I'll be here, listening to the whispers. If Horn decides to screw you over, I'll be the first to know. Good luck, forest man."
Soon, five figures emerged from the fog. Horn walked in front, clad in a lightened chainmail shirt, over which a gray cloak was thrown. Behind him followed four guardsmen—sturdy men, whose armor clinked softly with each step. They looked at Dur with poorly concealed skepticism. One of them, a young guy with a short mustache named Kest, couldn't help but snicker: "Master Horn, are we seriously going to drag this runt into Rot Hollow? He'll fall apart as soon as we leave the road."
Horn didn't even turn around. "Kest, if you open your mouth again without an order, I'll make you clean the estate's stables with a toothbrush. Dur, lead on. Show us your 'straight lines'."
They went out through the gates. The city road quickly gave way to a narrow path, which soon dissolved entirely into the dense undergrowth of the suburban forest. This forest was different from Torm's thickets. There were more fallen trees, more trash left by people, and a strange, unhealthy smell of stagnant water and smoke. But for Dur, it was still the forest. His element.
First, Dur led them to an abandoned sheepfold on the edge of the Agrim estate. Here it smelled of death and old fear. The mud was trampled by hundreds of hooves, but Dur knelt down, ignoring the guards' squeamish looks.
"Look," he said quietly, pointing to a print at the very edge of the fence. "That's a sheep's track. Deep, clear. But look at the edge. A sheep is a timid animal; it always shifts its weight to the outer side of the hoof when it's nervous. But here… the pressure is even, heavy. As if the sheep weighed twice as much as normal and was walking completely calmly."
Kest snorted: "So what? Maybe it was just fat?"
"A fat sheep doesn't jump a five-foot fence without touching the top rail," Dur stood up and pointed to the fence. "There's not a tuft of wool or a scratch here. Whoever left here was carrying a hide, imitating the track, but their stride was human—long and confident."
Dur turned and plunged into the thicket. The guards followed. At first, they walked noisily: metal armor snagged on branches, boots crunched on deadwood. "Quiet!" Dur turned, his eyes glinting dangerously. "In the forest, sound travels further than an arrow. Walk single file behind me. Step only where my foot has already been."
Horn nodded to his men, and the noise subsided. Dur led them on a strange route. He didn't follow paths. He climbed slopes, pushed through blackberry bushes, stopping every hundred paces. He read the forest not only with his eyes. He sniffed the wind, catching the smell of smoke, and touched the bark of trees.
"Why are we stopping?" Horn whispered after two hours of travel.
"A man passed here," Dur pointed to a young pine. "At shoulder height, the bark is slightly scraped. A poacher was carrying a carcass, brushed against the tree. Look at the moss at the base. It's flattened, but not crushed. That means he passed here yesterday at sunset, when moisture was beginning to rise."
He followed a trail invisible to the ordinary eye. For Dur, it was a screaming path. A broken dry twig, a stone pried from the earth, the unusual silence of birds ahead. He felt the city dust washing away from his senses, returning that sharpness which Torm had instilled in him.
Soon the forest changed. The trees became sparser, the ground rockier. They were approaching old excavations where slate had once been mined. The air here was heavy, smelling of damp and old ash.
Dur suddenly froze and raised his hand. The guards instantly stopped; Kest even stopped breathing. Dur crouched and pointed ahead, at a dense thicket of ferns at the foot of a cliff. "There," he mouthed silently. "The entrance to a cave. See how the air shimmers above that boulder? That's heat from a doused fire. And the smell… mutton fat. They were roasting meat this morning."
Horn drew his sword, his face becoming predatory. "How many?"
"Three inside," Dur listened to the ground. "I hear footsteps. A fourth is circling on watch up on the cliff. He has a crossbow, I heard the mechanism click a minute ago."
The guards exchanged glances. The skepticism in their eyes turned to cold professional interest. Dur couldn't have heard a crossbow click fifty paces away if he weren't what he was.
"Kest, Tul—flank left," Horn began commanding. "Dur, can you take the one up top without noise?"
Dur nodded, already nocking an arrow. His movements were smooth, almost lazy, but they held deadly precision. He slipped silently to the side, dissolving into the greenery like a shadow.
A minute later, a short, muffled cry came from above, turning into a gurgle, followed by the sound of a falling body. Dur didn't look at the result—he knew he'd hit the throat. He was already descending when Horn and his men burst into the cave.
The skirmish was short. The poachers, not expecting to be tracked to such a remote spot, were caught off guard. The clang of steel, cries of rage—and it was over. Three criminals lay on the ground, bound and angry. Scattered around were the very sheep hides they'd used to mask their tracks, and the carcasses of dressed game from the reserve.
Horn emerged from the cave, wiping his bloody sword on one of the prisoners' cloaks. He looked at Dur, who stood apart, calmly collecting his arrows.
"'A savage with a head on his shoulders is a rarity,'" Horn quoted someone great, and genuine respect sounded in his voice for the first time. "You didn't lie, boy. You found them where we'd patrolled three times. Your 'sense of rhythm' saved us a lot of time… and possibly lives."
The veteran walked over to Dur and firmly gripped his shoulder. "You've honestly earned two silver. And keep the token. From now on, you're Ligra's eyes in this forest. Report to the office tomorrow; we'll formalize the contract. We need people like you, Dur. People who know how to listen to the stones."
Dur nodded, feeling warmth spread through him. It wasn't a hunter's triumph; it was something more—he had found his place in this stone world, without betraying what the forest had taught him.
Returning to the city with the patrol, Dur looked at the walls of Ligra. Now they didn't seem like a cage to him. They were a fortress he had just agreed to defend. His hunt in the "new conditions" had succeeded. But he understood: this was only the beginning. The real beasts in this city wore not hides, but silk, and tracking them would be far more difficult.