3

Fields of Hircine

Marcus McDonald

Chapter I

"Damn effective if you ask me." I said as I continued to ignite a pile of a merchant's finest timber with a spell I had learned from a traveling merchant.

Most people thought of magic as weak and his tribe would have ran to the hills if they saw me doing this. The only spells we were allowed were the ones that improved health and growth. Any destruction or illusion spells were forbidden. It didn't matter though, I was far from home.

The thought of home made me think of how the orcs had overran my home. Made me think how the king of the gods had forsaken us. We had prayed day and night before the raid for good hands in battle and a glorious victory. The god had turned his back on us but Y'ffre had stayed true to us through our separate journeys through the wilderness.

For that my picnic in the deep forest of Skyrim was true to the Green Pact. He had a deerskin blanket, a bone smoking tool, cooked rabbit, a jug of rain water, and his nordic flute. I had also brought a book of songs with left over money I had gotten from a local trader who needed the hides I had poached recently.

Covering most of his deerskin picnic blanket however was my bow and a few materials to make arrows. It had been in his family's tradition to make exotic types of arrows. All for the tribe to use as they wished. My bow however was unique in its own nature. It was made of treated and shaped mammoth bone; it had hide strings and was worth more than I was, at least to the nords.

It wasn't that I didn't like the nords that occupied Skyrim but they didn't like me. A long long time ago before I had crossed the southern border I was a member of a terrorist group that attacked Nordic strongholds. We called ourselves the Forsworn.

That was a past life however and I had severed ties with them. They had taken to the western side of Skyrim and I had preferred the wilderness that was close to Helgen and Riverwood. The great planes separated them and I decided I was going to keep it like that.

Figuring I had stalled the ritual long enough I grabbed the bone smoking tool and used fire magic to ignite the caterpillar insect inside. I wrapped my lips around the bone and inhaled and blew the smoke out into the air. Smoking before dinner was a tradition for the men of my tribe. A few minutes later I was done and got on to the rest.

I grabbed the cooked rabbit and was done with it in seconds. I grabbed my jug of water and drained it till there was no more. I could survive days without water or food; this much would fill him till sundas. By then he would have already been back to his small hut by a river.

From my tunic pocket I withdrew a bone carving of Y'ffre God the Forest, the spirit of now. I put it close the fire and bowed before it. I could feel the grass around me get a little higher and the darkness around me retreating.

That was when I heard it. A loud guttural roar, weaker ears would have dismissed it as just another wolf. But I knew better. I equipped my bow and grabbed all the materials I could and put them in my sack. I used the deerskin to blow the fire out and ran to where I heard the sound.

There it was again, but this time it was closer. He ran blindly to where he heard the second roar. His arrow was notched and he was ready for anything. He heard the footsteps no not towards him but around him. Not a pack of wolves but the footsteps of a lone beast fast and terrifying.

Hours of wandering in the darkness and he stopped hearing the sounds. Content that he couldn't find anything now he returned home. The trip there would take a normal nord a quarter of a day. It only took me two hours.

When I got there the first lights of day were beginning to show. It didn't matter I was sleeping in.