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PART ONE: COME FORTH HUNTRESS

Chapter One

Day hadn't broken yet, so there was still plenty of cover. The antlered buck raised its head in caution, as though expecting to find me somewhere.

But I'd taken care to keep myself exceptionally well-hidden, and I gave myself a satisfied smile. The scrubby heather growing rampant among the wild grasses of Whiterun Hold was perfect for hiding oneself in. The deer lowered its head and continued its grazing, albeit more guardedly than before. Had it detected my scent? The unbroken winds could easily change course. They'd been blowing towards me last, carrying my scent away from where the quarry stood.

Very, very slowly, I raised my bow, the arrow pressed tight to the bowstring. Narrowing my eyes in concentration, I scanned for the best place to aim for a swift kill. It was disrespectful to simply wound it and let the smell of blood attract wolves and sabre cats, and even those filthy skeevers. And I liked my kills to be clean. I earned more money for the hides that way as well.

I spotted a vulnerable opening, in the buck's throat. Perfect.

I loosed the arrow and smiled. It whistled softly through the air, making less sound than a luna moth, before planting itself into the deer's throat. It let out a startled noise, abruptly lost as the arrowhead silenced its life. Then, with a final gasp and a thud, its corpse landed on the packed earth, long legs clattering lifelessly.

Quickly I leapt from my hiding place. Legs cramped from holding the position so long, I stumbled a little, but straightened quickly and approached the carcass to field-dress it. There was no need. It was already quite dead.

A good shot, I knew. An excellent kill. My mentor would say the same. I knelt beside the lifeless buck and tugged the arrow from its jugular. After cleaning it on the grass I returned it to its quiver and exchanged my bow for my skinning knife. Flicking up the sharp blade I grinned, pleased that I'd taken the time last evening to sharpen it. But the sight of my reflection in the gleaming metal made me hesitate.

I'd hunted many times before, but this was the first I'd done it alone.

Was my mentor watching? I looked furtively over my shoulder, as though expecting him to suddenly rise from the same heather cluster I'd hid in, reprimanding me sharply for making too much noise, or startling the deer, or wounding it wrongly. Presently, all I was aware of was the soft sigh of the wind as it glided ghostlike through the meadows, making me shiver. Predawn was chilly, even for a Nord.

With deft hands, shaking with apprehension, I removed the majestic antlers from its head—they'd make a fine trophy or be worth some gold at the market—and began to skin the buck, cutting it the way my mentor Panjor had shown me. Until now, he'd always guided my hands, muttering softly the method so I did not forget and spoil the hide. On my own, it was quite different. I did not want to err, nor could not bear the thought of failing, or having to spend another night searching for a kill. It had taken me the best of three hours unearthing and following the tracks left by this particular animal and I was determined to do well.

I will not fail, I frowned.

My hand slipped; I winced as the tip of the blade scored across my skin. Cursing, I dropped the knife and watched my own red blood well in the cut on my palm.

Yes, this just had to be the day that I'd forgotten to bring the cleansing balm with me. The scarlet tip of the skinning knife didn't just bear my blood.

I wasn't revolted by the idea that the pre-bloodied knife had tainted me, but tasting raw deer blood would certainly make my tongue curl. Even so, when you're in the open wilderness of Whiterun Hold, you can't let your blood touch the earth or the beasts will follow your scent. Quickly I raised my hand and licked the wound like an animal, a foul, sour sensation blooming in my mouth as the deer's life's crimson mingled with my own. When the cut was clean (more or less) I pressed my thumb to it firmly and waited until the bleeding was staunched.

Fortunately the wound was shallow. I hoped that I wouldn't have to repeat the vampire performance anytime soon. I picked up my skinning knife and resumed the chore.

Somewhere, in the wilderness of the Whiterun Hold, I was sure that Panjor was watching me. Perhaps he was criticizing me in his mind, scolding my clumsiness as to having cut myself in the first place. "A good huntress never lets herself be discovered," he always said to me. Leaving blood was a way of being discovered, by other wild animals somewhat more dangerous than deer; wolves, no doubt. One of his infinite pearls of wisdom he always threw my way and expected me to remember, day after day. He knew hunting was important to me; it fed my family, and it provided a modest income with the pelts I scored from the kills. But above all, there was nothing more thrilling for me than the hunt.

My mother often described me to be like a she-wolf. I tended to avoid my brothers, constantly preferring solitude to company. I was proud; I wanted to do anything and everything without assistance, and I was wild; I loved the outdoors. I loved the surge of ecstasy that came of the chase, and of finding hidden things, and pursuing tracks until I came to the prize, waiting for me to claim it.

I smiled at the memory of her words. Thinking of my early days, when I was just a small child, utterly naïve to the world beyond Rorikstead, it helped me concentrate. Before I knew it, I'd finished skinning the deer, and as I removed the hide from the beast, revealing nothing but a mass of bones, sinew, and scarlet-soaked flesh, I struggled to contain my delight. I'd forgotten about the cut on my hand. Carefully I rolled up the deer hide, keeping the bloody part of the pelt on the inside, and then covered the carcass with branches and grasses to help hide its scent long enough for me to reach Rorikstead. Unfortunately, the flesh of this particular deer was diseased and inedible—the creature must have been sick—and therefore not worth gathering, so it needed concealment for a few hours before predators were attracted by the smell of a free meal. It wouldn't do any good for beasts of the wilderness to be following me back to my town, with only a few guardsmen and old Rorik to protect us from them.

And me, of course; I chuckled at the thought of my hunting equipment guarding my townspeople. Oh, I was a small person, my only weapons a worn bow and weathered arrows, but I could still be formidable to wolves. I'd already killed many deer, stealthily and cleanly at that. Wolves probably wouldn't be any different.

There was Panjor, too; he'd be a skilled protector of Rorikstead. But my mentor wasn't always in town. Often he had to leave on business.

But Panjor was here today. It was dawn by the time I returned to Rorikstead. The farming hamlet looked much the same, but the streets and fields were empty. Almost empty, I should say; the few guards still patrolled the roads even this early in the morning, and Panjor was waiting for me at the edge of town. His old wrinkled face broke into a smile at my appearance with the hide rolled beneath one arm and antlers in hand. "The hunt went well?" he inquired.

I still nurtured a suspicion he'd seen the entire thing.

"Of course," I said, in the jaunty voice I enjoyed using when I was with him. Keeping my hand hidden—no need to mention my clumsy slip—I proffered the antlers. "Plus, I skinned the buck correctly," I added, with a thrill of pride.

Panjor looked impressed. He asked me to spread the hide out on the ground so he could inspect it for himself. When he finished looking it over, his whole face was one big smile. "Very good, Aela! You're becoming quite a huntress. Soon I won't have any more to teach you."

I smiled back. "Good."

Panjor's tone was teasing. "What, are you sick of me already?"

"No, I'm sick of you treating me like a little girl."

"Have I?" He assumed an expression of innocence. "No, I don't think I've been treating you like a little girl for the last few years, when you began to get the knack of the art of hunting. I've been treating you like a girl, but you're not so young anymore."

"Don't treat me like a girl," I pouted.

"Do you want me to treat you like a boy?" asked Panjor.

"No; treat me like a she-wolf." The words passed my lips before I could stop them.

Panjor grinned coyly. "If I treated you like a she-wolf, I would trap you and skin you and sell your hide at market, as I would to any she- and he-wolf that so foolishly blundered into my sights," he said. "I'm sure that your hide wouldn't fetch very much, though. Not furry enough."

"One day it will be." I bore my teeth and growled my best wolf-growl to him. "And you wouldn't be able to catch me. I'm far too clever. I know how to undo your traps, because you taught me how to set them up in the first place."

"True," Panjor conceded. "Only a foolish hunter would teach his prey how to avoid him."

Here we go, I said to myself. Another few pearls of wisdom.

"So did I pass?" I asked him, before he could start up again. I knew that this had been a set assessment, and though it might not even matter in the future, I wanted to do well. Panjor had been teaching me since I was six, barely old enough to hold a bow properly, to knock an arrow straight, to even pull the bowstring. I knew that he'd been expecting me to do well, too. I held my breath tentatively.

"Oh, definitely," he replied. "With flying colours, in fact."

"Excellent."

Panjor looked amused. "You sound as if you expected to pass."

"Well, I...hoped," I said grudgingly.

He laughed. "I've been teaching you for ten years," he told me. "Of course you were going to pass, my girl. You've successfully killed and skinned your own animal by yourself in the middle of Whiterun wilderness, which proves that you're well on the road to completing your training."

The prospect of ever completing my training was a strange and exciting one. I'd never really given much regard to what I would do when Panjor left Rorikstead for good. My mentor had been a part of my life since my earliest memories, and the very thought of him not being in it was a haunting one. He'd been like an older brother to me, and more so than my two younger siblings at home, who regarded him with something akin to hostility.

"So am I going to head to more advanced stuff now?" I asked. "Like hunting the hunters?"

Panjor considered this. "Learning the tracks of bears, you mean?"

"And giants. And mammoths. And sabre cats. And trolls."

"And...? And...?" Panjor echoed. He waved a hand and chuckled. "You sound like a child demanding one sweet after the other."

I scowled. "I want to learn all their tracks! There are so many animals in Skyrim to learn!"

"Most you won't need to learn the trails of, because you won't hunt them—at least, not often," said Panjor, "and I've taught you most of them. You know sabre cat pawprints, and the tracks of wolves and foxes."

"Foxes are cowards—they always flee from danger—and wolves hunt in packs," I argued. "Besides, I don't just want to learn the trails of more serious animals. I want to learn how to hunt them as well. Though they don't bear good meat, they're made out of stuff that alchemists pay a lot of money for."

I crossed my arms. "You told me yourself that a good huntress hunts for those who need what is from the quarries."

"And that is completely true," said Panjor. "I'm glad that you listen to most of my advice."

"Some," I corrected. "And some tend to linger in my head a lot more than they should."

"But you're not ready to start learning troll trails yet."

I frowned angrily. "Why not?"

"Trolls are still too dangerous for an apprentice hunter to take down on her own," warned Panjor, and his voice became firm and authoritative, the tone he adopted when what he said he really meant. "And they're very strong. They possess a self-healing factor in their blood, which allows them to recover from any wounds that they receive. Their skin is thick and fatty. There is a special technique that you use for killing trolls but you are not ready to start learning it yet."

I sighed grumpily. "So I'm back to chasing fox trails?"

"No." Panjor paused thoughtfully, and then added, "I'll teach you how to pick up the tracks of bears."

I brightened almost at once. Bears were dangerous in Skyrim, but their solid, shaggy pelts were worth quite a lot. "Really?"

"Of course. You're ready to learn, but you'll need me at your side again. You won't be taking down bears by yourself until at least a year after your training. Bears, as you know, are large, fast and strong. Taking down one stealthily will prove difficult. Their hides are like armour, hard to pierce with one arrow alone."

"So how do you take down bears?"

"Simple; you wound and weaken them with bear traps," he answered matter-of-factly. I recalled the large, heavy traps that, when pressure was applied in the centre, the sharp edges would clamp shut in a heartbeat on whatever had stepped on the trigger, holding it helpless. "Then you wait until they're too exhausted to fight back anymore, and aim for their heads. Their skulls can be pierced with a strong, well-aimed shot, and it'll end their pain quickest."

He patted my shoulder. "But I won't begin until after you've had some rest. You've been up for half the night, hunting. Nor will we start until I return from my journey."

I deflated. "Not another one."

"Yes, another one," he said ruefully. "I'm afraid that this is going to be a longer one. I'll be gone for five days, perhaps a week, but I'll definitely return in at least ten days. This I can promise."

I scowled. "So you get my hopes up with the promise of learning to trap and kill bears, and then dash them by marching off into nowhere on business for ten days!"

"Use that time to reflect on all you have gained from me in the past ten years. I've spent that time sharpening your skills to perfection." Panjor studied me with pride. "I expect you to have plenty of pelts to show me when I come home."

"Where are you going?" I asked. I hoped that this time he would tell me, though he rarely did. It was as if the purpose of his 'journeys' was some dire secret, one dark enough that he kept fromme, his apprentice. Probably I was exaggerating, but even so, his reluctance made me curious.

But this time, I had luck. "My friends in Falkreath have unearthed the den of a she-bear and her cubs. They want my help in subduing them, and we'll gather some nice pelts at the time. We're heading east into the Rift."

"The Rift?" My jaw fell open. "But that's...that's miles away!"

"Of course. That's why I'll be gone for so long. The den was an old one, but they've found her tracks; she's moved into the Rift and it'll take the most skilled of hunters to find her." Panjor had the decency to at least look apologetic. "I'm sorry, Aela. Perhaps next time, when you know how, I'll take you on one of my trips."

"You've never taken me before, even when you go to wolf lairs and exterminate whole packs, something I know I'm more than capable of doing," I protested. "I wish you'd tell me more often where you went."

"When you're older."

My scowl deepened. Apart from his many pearls of wisdom, that phrase was Panjor's favourite thing to tell me. It cropped up most whenever I asked to accompany him in his travels, or to learn a new hunting technique, or how to set a new trap.

At the sight of my rebellious face, Panjor laughed and petted my shoulder fondly. "You do remind me of a she-wolf! I hope that you don't bite."

"I might, if you don't stop treating me like a stupid little girl," I warned him.

"You are neither stupid nor...well, you're not as little as before," Panjor responded. "And I will take you on a journey, one day. I promise, Aela." His voice was sincere, and I knew he spoke earnestly. "But it wouldn't exactly be good for you and I to suddenly disappear from Rorikstead without telling anyone. Your parents would have a fit. I'd become a wanted fugitive."

That was true. Mother and Father still needed me, particularly to provide the meat for the table. I was always proud that they, my own parents, looked up to me to provide for them, and smugness that while my role in the family was to hunt, my brothers had to plough the fields and weed the vegetable garden. They weren't hunters. They didn't even know how to shoot.

"Your place is still here in Rorikstead, helping your family," said Panjor, "and I'll be back soon enough. Use what I've taught you to feed your kin." He bent down and rolled up the deer hide, and took the antlers from me. "I'll sell these while I'm away," he offered, "and bring you half of what I get for them."

"Half? Come on, I want all this time."

"Half goes to me, for providing you with the tools used to kill and skin the deer."

That did seem fair, so I relented. Panjor had paid out of his own savings for my bow and arrows, and he wasn't the richest man, either; and half was better than nothing at all, or a mere quarter of the share. So I shook his hand formally and declared, "Fine. Half. But don't think of cheating me, or I will bite."

Panjor smiled at that, and then the next thing I knew, he was striding out of Rorikstead and up the road towards distant Whiterun across the vast Hold. I watched him leave with mixed feelings; though I relished the opportunity to perfect solo hunting, I was impatient at having to wait to learn how to trap bears.

Still, rest seemed a good idea. I wearily turned back to my cottage. She-wolves had to close their eyes sometimes, and even the most fearsome huntress of Whiterun Hold needed to sleep.

A/N: Panjor is my original character and doesn't appear in the game, but stands as a fictional character and as Aela's mentor. Later in the story he'll play a very significant role.