Bain Standon raised his bow gun and sighted along its length. The weapon was a perfect example of complex technology producing a simple-to-use tool, but it still required a steady hand and a sharp eye to put a bolt on target. Holding his breath to avoid any sudden jerks of his body with the flexing of his diaphragm, he fired.
The bolt slammed into the soft wooden practice dummy, buried several inches into the red dot that marked the humanoid target's heart. Perfect! He lowered the bow gun, grinning, to the sound of applause from two pretty girls, dancers at the Hunter's Guild bar. Unconsciously he found his pose taking on a bit of a swagger, preening before their gaze.
Suddenly, with a whirring of steel, a spinning blade blasted across the throat of the target to the right of Bain's, then swept left to hit Bain's own and the one beyond it. The blade continued its arc, sailing back to the hand of its thrower. The girls gaped, Bain's marksmanship forgotten in the wake of this new feat.
"Blast it, Alys, you're out of position!" Bain protested angrily. "That return throw might have hit someone." Range safety was not Bain's real complaint, of course, but it was the best he could come up with since he could hardly say, you made me look bad.
Alys Brangwin shrugged and folded the blades of her weapon.
"What can I say? I'm learning the slasher, and the whole point is to hit multiple targets. Besides, you weren't in any more danger than if I'd botched the throw aiming at only my own target and you know it."
He snarled savagely at her in frustration, but couldn't respond because she was right and he still had enough of a hold on his temper to know that he'd just get himself in deeper if he kept arguing with the apprentice hunter, especially when she was just a kid, barely fifteen.
"Ah, heck with it." He flung the bow gun to the dusty ground--it was a practice weapon rather than his own--turned, and stalked off.
Alys grinned and tossed her head. She'd been growing out her brown hair since she'd become a hunter trainee several months ago, and it just brushed her shoulders. She turned and walked back towards the Guild headquarters, and was surprised to see her mentor Galf waiting by the door, big arms folded over his chest.
"I caught your show there, girl."
"I put that strutting showoff in his place."
"Making you what, queen of the braggarts?"
Ouch. Alys realized that she'd been so puffed up with her feat of marksmanship that she'd completely missed Galf's tone of voice in his first sentence and just made it worse for herself.
"So, mind telling me the meaning of that little display?"
"He was posing for those girls, acting like he was the king of the world just because he made a few good shots with a bow gun. I wanted him to know the score, that's all."
Galf didn't say anything.
"Galf?"
"Sorry, didn't want to interrupt before you got to the second half of the story."
"That's all there is."
"Not even the part where Bain did something to you?"
Alys shook her head. She was beginning to get the idea of why Galf wasn't happy with her.
"He didn't do anything, except to put himself up on his usual pedestal."
"Boy's got enough pride for three hunters, no argument. He thinks he's all that and half again. But that's got nothing to do with you. Did he insult you directly?"
"No," Alys admitted.
"You trying to make time with any of those girls he was showing off for?"
"Galf! You know I'm not...I mean, I don't..." She flushed. There were just things she wasn't comfortable discussing with the gray-whiskered hunter! With as much cool as she could manage, Alys said, "I happen to prefer boys, thank you."
"Then what the heck were you doing?"
"He's such an idiot! I couldn't stand it!"
Galf sighed, then gripped her shoulder lightly.
"Time for a life lesson. You're gonna meet a whole lot of people who'll make your hand itch to go upside their head. It's one of the basic truths that people are stupid now and again, and there's a bunch who make a lifestyle out of it. Sooner or later, they're gonna do something that gets them put in their place. They happen to do that something to you, well, that's when you can pitch them in a lake. But you give it to them when they ain't asking for it, then you've sunk to their level. You're playing their game, making someone else look bad to prop up your own rep."
Alys hung her head. Galf was right, of course (darn him for that!). She'd been showing off. Oh, yes, she'd done it because the hunter's adolescent posing was annoying, but it wasn't her place to butt in. And there wasn't even, Alys saw now, the saving grace of having taught Bain a lesson. She hadn't shown him why what he was doing was unprofessional and unworthy of a hunter, the way Galf was showing her. All she'd done was to embarrass him, to stir up bad feelings, and needlessly make herself an enemy.
"Blast it," she said ruefully. "I'm such an idiot."
Galf squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.
"You made a mistake. Life's like that. Now, you've got two choices: are you gonna learn from that mistake, or aren't you? Only way you're an idiot is if you take number two."
"I wasn't even thinking. I just didn't like what I saw and acted. What if I do it again?"
"Then you keep working at it until you get it chiseled into your head." He smiled at her, his teeth white beneath his bushy gray moustache. "You know why most of the combat masters at the Guild spend half their time talking philosophy instead of battle? It's because all conflict works the same, whether you end by talking or by stabbing your enemy. You can't plan strategy in the heat of the moment, so you teach yourself to respond with it by reflex, just like how in hand-to-hand you move by reflex, analyzing the other guy and launching a strike or counter without having to think about it consciously. Trick's to teach your subconscious the right reflexes, 'cause the instincts you're born with are pretty much always dead wrong."
He smoothed his beard with one big hand, which Alys had come to recognize as a sign he was going to change the subject.
"Now, that's enough sage advice for one morning, don't you think? How about I get to what I actually came out here to tell you?"
"There's a special reason?"
"Yep. Been spending too long sitting around here anyway. Probably why you're getting into one-ups with guys who are barely less of a kid than you are. Time we got out into the field again."
Alys's spirit perked up at once.
"What's the job, Galf? A straight-up monster fight, or do we have to track the creature back to its lair and fight it on its home ground?"
"Neither, actually. I figured it was time you were exposed to something a little more cerebral. This is a bounty job, with a human target."
"Target?" Alys's head snapped up, and she couldn't quite keep the edge out of her voice.
"Figure of speech, Alys. The Guild does not do assassinations. This job is an investigation, anyway. We've been hired to look into a theft, solve the crime, and catch the crook."
"That sounds like fun."
"We'll see. It's a lot different than dealing with a monster. Once you put people into the mix, stuff gets a lot more confusing."
"Because they're smarter?"
"Nah. Sometimes they are, but that's not the point. With people you get morality and emotions into the mix. Start dealing with love, greed, hate, and treachery, to say nothing of good and evil, and you can have trouble keeping your head straight."
Alys mulled this over for a moment, then shrugged. She'd find out one way or another.
"So where are we off to?"
"Zema, to the house of a man named Preston Cross."
"Do you know him?"
"I asked around. Minor merchant but has a good slice of agricultural property."
Agricultural property? Alys asked herself. Every so often Galf had the habit of dropping phrases into the conversation that didn't fit with his country-boy speech patterns. Her master was definitely deeper than he let on.
"The key point of information was the fee. Ten thousand meseta if we catch the thief, and an extra five for recovering the stolen property."
"N-i-i-ce," Alys whistled appreciatively. "I guess that just leaves one question: do we start for Zema right away, or wait until tomorrow?"
Galf glanced toward the horizon, where the setting sun was already vanishing behind the mountains.
"In the morning. Always get a good night's sleep before starting out on a job. Odds are it'll be the last decent rest you get until you pocket your commission, and doing serious work when you're wiped out is a good way to end up in the back corner of town." Which, Alys had learned since moving to Aiedo, was the location of the cemetery.
They went back to Galf's home in the residential section of town to the west of the marketplace, where Alys made dinner. Her father had taught her how to cook, and she was a hundred times better at it than Galf. A man had to have some weaknesses, after all, he'd joked, but the kitchen had become Alys's domain from day one. Galf then suited his actions to his words and went straight to bed after helping his apprentice with the dishes. His low, raspy snoring drifted out his door and down the hall to Alys's room, where she found it much more difficult to get to sleep.
Part of it was the excitement not only of a new case but a new kind of case. She'd wanted to be a hunter to fight against evil and protect people (while getting paid for it), and the monsters she'd fought thus far, while dangerous and definitely a threat to people, weren't even intelligent, let alone evil. This was her first time to take on someone who'd willingly chosen to make his living at the expense of others--like the highwaymen who'd killed her parents, and would have killed her, too, if Galf hadn't saved her. That wasn't even a full year ago, and she hoped she could handle it.
In truth, though, Alys was a practical young woman, not at all the kind who'd transfer her grief into a psychopathic hatred of all criminals. Her nerves were mostly over whether she had the skills, not the mindset.
Which is the real problem, she admitted to herself, the reason you're staring at the ceiling, Alys. You don't want to disappoint Galf. She'd already let him down with that moronic stunt on the training ground, and she didn't want to follow it up by botching the job. She owed the veteran hunter way too much for that.
It wasn't just that he'd saved her life. In a way, that was the least of it. He was a hunter, after all; he got paid to save people and fight bandits. She was grateful, of course, but there were limits to how much you thanked a professional for doing his job. What she owed him for was what had come after–for not turning her over to the orphanage in Tiria, for making her realize that, as much as she might not be ready, her family's death meant that she had to make a serious decision about her life. Above all, for taking her as his apprentice when she settled on the Guild, knowing that it meant taking responsibility for an emotionally bewildered teenager. In essence, he'd sentenced himself to being a second father to a girl who had the emotional baggage of losing her parents and lifestyle in addition to all the normal struggles of adolescence.
Saving her life may have been a job, but taking her as an apprentice was the act of a hero. Alys didn't see how she could ever repay him for it; the best she could do was to not add anything more to her tab, which was why it cut so deeply to disappoint him.
She rolled over and punched her fist into her pillow. Stupid to be worrying about this stuff! It was costing her time and rest and doing her no good at all. Come tomorrow, she'd have a job to do--a job to learn.
With a sigh, Alys flung herself down and thrust her worries out of her mind by an act of will. If trouble came, she'd face it when it was real, not before. At last, she slipped off into sleep.
It wasn't dreamless sleep, though. No will was that strong.