Wizard's Sword (The Battle Wizard Saga, No.2) (20 page)

They shook hands. Sig felt bone breaking potential in Jacob′s grip. He wore tear-away athletic sweats like Rick always did.

"The woman inside is Giselle, our friend the Amazon. She′s deadly with the bow and a good hunter."

Jacob said sternly, "I don′t want to be accused of encouraging the same behavior with you that has caused me so much pack trouble."

Rick looked taken aback. "You think Giselle and me? No… if anyone." Sig saw Rick semi-surreptitiously use one hand pretending to conceal the fact that he pointed at Sig.

Sig started to make a comment but stopped when two wolves silently padded out of the woods.

Rick turned to them and beamed. "Lenny, Tommy I hoped you guys could come. Now the gang′s all here. Sig these are my cousins Lenny", He pointed at a medium sized gray wolf, "and Tommy." Tommy′s black pelt shaded towards gray on legs and belly. Both were considerably smaller than Rick′s wolf form.

Giselle joined them and introductions were repeated. "My, aren′t you two beautiful." She said to Tommy and Lenny,

Sitting on their haunches, they looked at each other, ducked their heads, and wagged their tails.

She held up a small espresso maker. "Do we have time for coffee before we start?"

Jacob smiled at her. "If you′re talking about espresso, there′s always time." He turned to the wolves. "Go rustle up some fire makings."

They blended into the forest, while Sig gathered tinder and built a starter pile.

Soon, two teenaged boys strode out of the woods bearing armfuls of branches. Giselle carried a bucket of water up from the pond.

She poured the first pot of espresso into three cups the boys brought from the cabin and spooned up grounds for a second pot. "Sorry, this isn′t fresh. I ground it yesterday. I don′t have a field grinder."

Jacob sipped from his cup. "Ahhh, the perfect start to a hunt."

Giselle nodded. "I′ve always thought so. Of course I don′t need to smell to hunt."

"Not a problem after we change."

Jacob related that he and the boys spent a few days scouting the area. He pointed at Sig and Giselle. "We′ll put you at the confluence of five game trails. When we get the deer moving, there′ll be a lot of targets for your bows."

Rick and the boys left to roam widely, flush deer, and chase them toward the trail junction.

Jacob remained with the bow hunters in case deer got past them. He would take down the deer if their arrows missed.

Sig and Giselle compared bows on the walk to their stations. Sig had a fiberglass compound bow with pulleys, cams, and crisscrossing strings. Giselle carried a recurved bow, a composite construct of wood, bone, and other natural materials. There were no pulleys or cams and a single string ran from tip to tip. Hers looked like a work of art compared to Sig′s engine of destruction.

They exchanged bows. Giselle looked over Sig′s intently and drew it several times. Sig walked alongside, holding her bow balanced in both hands.

"Aren′t you going to try drawing mine?"

He looked up from the bow in his hands. "It feels like magic."

"How do you know until you draw it?"

"I mean I can feel magic in it. It′s warm, and gently pulsing with energy."

She looked at him speculatively, handed his back, and took hers. She stood holding it as he had. She shook her head. "It feels like it always does."

He reached out and grasped it, then released it. "It has magic. Where did you get it?"

"The Weapons Master makes our bows. She custom made this one for me. It takes many years of apprenticeship before someone attains the title of Master."

"How did they select her to be an apprentice?" Sig asked.

"I don′t know. It happened long before I was born."

"Does she have any apprentices?"

"Many assist her and endure the exercises, but she hasn′t accepted anyone as apprentice."

"You said that Amazon magic is group magic. I wonder if there isn′t also individual magic."

Giselle missed a step and slowed. She looked at Sig′s back contemplatively as she strode to catch up.

In the lead, Jacob stopped and waited for them in a small clearing. He gestured toward several pathways. "The game trails come together here. You′ll have a good field of fire."

Sig walked around the clearing and dropped to one knee at the side of a trail. "Deer have used this one most recently; probably last night. They headed that way." He nodded.

Jacob knelt, looked at trail, and nodded. "Very good. Yes, they should be returning this way today. The boys will urge them along." He looked up at them. "Find yourselves a spot while I look around." He rose and vanished into the dense undergrowth.

They sampled the wind direction in relation to the trails before selecting spots of concealment. Sig stood several arrows, points stuck in the ground, within easy reach. Now, the wait.

Wolf howls sounded in the distance. A reddish brown wolf, at least as big as Rick, loped into the clearing. He stopped, looked at the tree Sig hid behind, and then where Giselle sheltered. His head bobbed in a nod, and trotted back into the forest. The howling continued and drew nearer.

Sig heard the crackle of underbrush. A deer bounded into the clearing near him and stopped. Sig dropped his aim at the buck. It didn′t have antlers, but he could tell by the shape of the head. It had a flat ledge for antlers. They agreed to only kill does. Does have rounder foreheads

The rustle of underbrush shoved aside heralded another arrival. A doe plunged into the clearing, hesitated, and dashed in front of him. He shot and missed. As she passed in front of Giselle′s position, an arrow appeared in the doe′s side, just behind the leg, buried almost to the fletching. It took another bound, her front legs buckled, and she slid across the ground.

Another deer, a buck, passed through. A doe followed it. Sig released his arrow. It struck the deer high in shoulder, causing it to stagger before it continued following the buck. He couldn′t leave a fatally injured deer to die painfully in the forest. He would track and finish it later.

 Except for the decreasing sound of deer running away from the clearing, he didn′t hear anything.

Without preamble, a large deer bounded into the clearing. Sig dropped his aim, expecting a buck. When he realized it was a doe, running directly at him, he aimed for the chest and released, just as she dodged to the left, towards Giselle. Sig′s arrow hit her in the haunch. She leapt and when she landed, an arrow appeared in her side behind the foreleg. She collapsed. Giselle to the rescue again.

Three wolves entered the clearing. The dark brown massed almost twice the size of the other two. All three glided over to sniff at the does lying in the clearing.

Jacob entered the clearing. "I got the deer you hit high in the shoulder." He walked over to the two does and turned to Giselle. "Nice shooting. Both of you, nice shooting. Running deer make for a difficult shot."

He looked at the wolves patiently lying next to the deer and said to Sig and Giselle, "Would you clean these two? I promised the boys the heart and liver. Rick, come with me. I′ll clean the other."

Rick jumped up and loped after him into the woods.

Sig and Giselle watched with amusement while the wolves devoured the choice parts set aside for them. "Great shooting. I′ll sign up for lessons," Sig said to her.

"Lessons are good, but practice makes perfect."

"Did you make that up?"

"Wise ass."

Jacob brought two bundles of canvas wrapped, metal poles into the clearing. They unfolded into travois. He and Sig loaded the deer on the travois. Jacob strapped the contraptions to the two young wolves to drag to the cabin. Sig and Giselle went along to help. Jacob arrived a while later with Rick dragging the travois with the third deer.

Giselle carried her backpack out of the cabin. "OK, somebody start a fire. I′ve got the fixin′s here to make deer chili. Now that it′s this close I can barely keep myself from drooling." She pulled spices, pork sausage, and cans of tomatoes and beans out of the pack. "We′ll let it cook until early afternoon. It should be perfect by then."

While the chili cooked, and after Tommy and Lenny packed the rest of the deer meat away, everyone took advantage of the pond beside the cabin. Weres and Amazons shared a casual disregard for nudity that Sig lacked. After he slithered into the pond, he discovered that his concern about his body involuntarily signaling his appreciation of Giselle′s naked form was overwrought. The pond temperature almost made his heart stop.

He stayed in the pond until she went inside the cabin, to ensure that recalcitrant body parts didn′t start functioning. Before he got out, he feared that he might have stayed in the cold water long enough to render it permanently inoperative.

Giselle declared the chili ready at six in the afternoon. Jacob produced ingredients, including fresh corn, to make jalapeno cornbread. It was an unforgettable meal. The companionship as everyone took part in the delectable food′s preparation and consumption made it worth remembering.

The entire pot of chili disappeared, to Giselle′s amazement. "One pot feeds the members of my tribe at college for two meals, at least, and there are over a dozen of us. We only have six here."

The chili reminded Sig of his Mom′s cooking. After he helped clean up, he walked behind Giselle and hugged her around the waist. "Wonderful meal, thank you."

As he released her, she spun in his arms and placed her hands around his neck. Her lips parted as she looked into his eyes. She inhaled deeply, trembled, and then said, "You probably shouldn′t touch me. It will lead us where I don′t want to go right now in my life." She pushed her hands against his shoulders.

He just wanted to thank her for the dinner, but when she spun in his arms, she felt so good, soft but firm. Her lips looked so inviting. Her hands on his shoulders generated heat down into his core. Then her words said no, but her eyes… This must be why people said they didn′t understand women.

He stepped back and dropped his hands. His parents schooled him in his role as a gentleman. His eyes still locked on hers. "You′re right. I′m sorry." She put her fingertips to his face. "I′m sorry on many levels."

He looked away. "I think I′ll take a walk." As he pivoted and walked away, he had proof that the cold pond hadn′t done any permanent damage.

†††

Sig returned in the dark from his walk. Rick, Jacob and the cousins sat around the fire roasting S′mores. Sig sat. "Which part is carnivore food—chocolate, marshmallow, or graham cracker?"

Rick waved an exquisitely prepared S′more. "The melted chocolate, definitely it′s the melted chocolate."

"No, the melted chocolate converts the marshmallow into protein" Jacob said.

The boys laughed.

Sig looked toward the cabin. "Shouldn′t we save some for Giselle?"

"She wanted to go to bed early, the day took a lot out of her."

"Her and my lizard."

"Your lizard?"

Sig looked sad. "It came from a joke with my Dad. I asked him what the television commercials about 'a reptile dysfunction′ meant. He said it meant you had a sick lizard."

Everyone laughed. Sig smiled, "After that we referred to it as a lizard." The smile evaporated and he stared into the fire with a solemn expression.

The silence stretched until Sig looked up and asked Jacob. "I understand your wife is a witch. What are the benefits and drawbacks of a mixed marriage?"

Jacob raised his eyebrows. "What a question." He looked toward his boys. "There are two of the benefits." He smiled at them.

"You have two girls and two boys?"

"Yes, and one on the way. The girls are in Chicago shopping with their mother."

"Are all of your kids Weres, and did any of them inherit other magic?"

"You′re an inquisitive one, aren′t you?"

"I′m sorry. Let me know if I′m out of line."

"No, that′s fine. Out here in the boonies, I don′t get questions like that. Either people know the answers or they don′t even know what questions to ask. Three of the kids can change. Our youngest, Laura, just started changing this year. She′s eight. The eldest, Jessica, has never changed. She′s the spitting image of her Mom and seems to have inherited her magical genes. Lenny has shown some magical talent, but nothing major."

Lenny nodded. "I can start campfires with magic."

Sig decided not to hit him and smiled. "That′s a nice trick to have. I wish I could." He looked back to Jacob. "OK, those are the upsides, are there any downsides?"

Jacob stared into the fire, which crackled in response. Sig assumed the conversation had finished until Jacob turned back.

"It depends upon a person′s situation. I′m a Were, born and raised in a pack. My Alpha didn′t condone what I did. Breaking away from the pack was rough. Staying away has been tougher. Protecting this land is the hardest of all. There have been bad feelings."

He smiled at his boys. "Now we have our own pack." The boys′ faces brightened in the firelight.

"Jacob should be our pack Alpha, but he′s been away for so long, he likes it better here," Rick said.