Nearly a month passed; the weather smelled like brisk October. The moon waxed gibbous, ready at sunset to help Fiona arrive punctually. "Good night to scope out the red meat situation," Gretched greeted her. She tossed Fiona a spear made of a chipped-obsidian glass tip lashed into a spruce rod.
"I have no idea how to use this thing, you know," Fiona said.
"Eh, it's a dagger with a long handle. You'll get it." Gretched tucked her knives into her belt, and the two set off uphill, crossing the underbrush. Fifty yards uphill, they joined another animal track, and followed it at a shallower slope up towards the ridge.
Half an hour up the track, Gretched pointed to the trees around them. "See how the branches are broken off higher up here?" she said. Fiona nodded. "Big critters have been using this trail this year. My money's on elk."
"Honestly I prefer taking a deer to an elk", Gretched held forth. "An elk's so big that the meat can last over a year for one person, and I can't abide wasting it if it goes rancid. But, haven't seen many herds travel this basin, so ya take what opportunity presents itself."
Fiona's foot squished into a soft mound; the scent of ruminant scat billowed around them. "Oh yah, definitely elk," Gretched said. "Good detective work!"
"Yeah, thanks," Fiona said, scraping her shoe through the moss on a nearby stone.
As the trail cleared a side ridge and opened into the next ravine, Gretched stopped abruptly. She flipped her left arm up at a right angle, making a fist. Fiona stopped short, nose just behind Gretched's raised elbow. She didn't know what the gesture meant, but having it be delivered in silence strongly suggested Fiona should be silent herself.
Fiona absorbed the new scene afforded by the turn in the trail. Her ears perked ahead. Snatches of sound drifted back to them from a few hundred yards beyond: rowdy conversation and laughter, men. Gretched scowled. Fiona nodded, acknowledging that she had caught up. Gretched turned and whispered into Fiona's ear – extreme caution given the distance – "Hunting party. They're here because the elk are here."
Fiona nodded, her lips a flat line showing her commitment to silence.
Gretched extended her arm and waved a hand towards her face, signaling that they were downwind of the men. Fiona hadn't yet caught a scent other than the ambient forest. "It means we can reconnoiter without a three mile detour downwind," Gretched whispered so close that her lips grazed Fiona's ear, so quietly she almost wasn't breathing.
Gretched straightened her posture, and waved Fiona forward. Gretched walked with exaggerated care, as if on tiptoes, in the hard dirt at the center of the trail. Fiona got the message: this was no time for stomping.
The pair would ordinarily have crossed three hundred yards in maybe four minutes. Their careful progress took double that, but the reward was that not a single pine cone was crunched underfoot.
Arriving at the campsite, it was evident that the stealth was an abundance of caution, for the hunters were raucous, bragging and telling stories and laughing too loud at the others, as one might whistle too loudly to prevent thinking about things that go "crunch" in the nighttime woods.
Fiona and Gretched each took careful stock of the scene. An overbuilt fire lit the glade. Two logs formed a vee upwind of the fire to stay out of the smoke; two men sat on each log. This put Fiona and Gretched in the line of sight of all four. The ogresses were still thirty yards away, masked by trees in a bend in the trail, and, most importantly, dark beyond the brilliance of the flames; their presence remained concealed.
On the left log, a tall man with a scar and a felt cap sat next to a stout man whose mouth hid under a bushy black beard. On the right, a weasely man with a hooked nose and stubbly chin, and a plain young man with straight black hair in a bowl cut. Felt cap man was saying, "...all three bears came at me at the same time! And you know wot I did, yeh? Th'as right, I wrastled 'em down with me bare hands." Bowl cut gaped at felt cap's tall claim; beard crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
"Ye can barely wrastle an entire pint to the ground, mate," said beard. The other two erupted into laughter again. The swagger and bluster continued this way, each in turn.
On the hillside behind the men was a big mossy boulder, taller than a man standing. In the clearing between the boulder and the log benches the men had laid out their packs behind their seats. Bedrolls on top, a soft sack that must have held clothes and provisions, and each bundle held an oilcloth cloak should it rain. Besides the basics, each pack was fitted with some manner of gear: A bow and quiver were lashed to felt cap's pack; beard's had a handful of spears and pikes. Weasel had box traps folded flat, twine, rope, and some hand tools, and bowl cut had a long knife and some fishing lures.
After watching the pair for a few minutes and hearing nothing but bravado, Gretched gave a sharp nod signaling their departure. They walked in silence the few hundred yards to where they'd first detected the party, and then Gretched spoke in a low tone: "That answers that question; the elk are definitely here, or those men wouldn't be."
"Are they bandits?" Fiona asked, trying to work out what made these particular men so scary to Gretched. Of course there are some bad humans, Fiona allowed, bandits and murderers.
"Were they skinny and pink? Does a bear scat in the woods? Drat it all; I moved out here to avoid the humans; a bit disappointing they'd travel this far for their quarry and end up in my valley."
"Why did you hide, then? Why not scare them back over the ridge where they came from?" asked Fiona. "You're the scariest thing in these woods!"
"Aye, ah might have. But right now we have an elk-hunter problem; later in the season, the elk will move on. If ah scared 'em off, they might be gone a few weeks, but soon enough we very well may have an ogre-hunter problem." Well that's certainly a sweeping judgment, Fiona thought. My parents are human, and it's not as if they would wish death upon a sentient creature that wasn't hurting them!
Gretched cracked a broad, toothy smile. "Maybe not the biggest concern for someone who's got a fire-breathing guard dog," Gretched continued, the smile collapsing, "but for me it means moving again. And I was just getting to like it here."
"So you'll just wait and hope they go away?"
"You got it, sweetheart."
Fiona couldn't find the common ground, and figured she'd better steer the conversation away from humans. "Do you still want to hunt the elk?"
"You know, I think maybe I'll head south and see what's grazing there. Two's company, six is a crowd. How about we call off tomorrow and the next night so I's can maybe bring back some deerburgers, and you can come back up in a couple days when my fire's alit again?"
The ogresses parted ways at the switchback, and Fiona returned to the tower.