I've been sitting on this story for a while. The reason is that it is about my character in an ongoing Pathfinder game. He is known only as "Hunter" and he never speaks of his past. Keeping this story under wraps helped heighten the mystery of the character for the other players, but we are reaching a point where the players (but not the characters) will be revealing such secrets, to better appreciate the plot to this point. As such, I feel it is now appropriate to post Part 1. I will publish Part 2 later, probably in a month or three, depending on how the game progresses.
The death was an accident of course. The boy had looked up to the magistrate’s son; loved him like a brother really. He would never want to hurt him. The boy’s parents were wealthy enough to send him to a tutor, one of the best in the cold city of Ghirisfal. It didn’t help him much. He was always a quiet child, and while not stupid, he took poorly to lessons. The other children made fun of him, but the magistrate’s son had seen something in him that the other children hadn’t. He’d taken him under his wing, and the boy was loyal to him for it. The magistrate had taught his son at an early age the value of loyalty and the son had learned it well. He was unquestionably the leader among the children and when he accepted the awkward boy, that was that. Now the other children never picked on the quiet boy who did poorly at lessons. He wasn’t liked, but he was accepted. He had a place. And that is why the boy would never want to hurt him.
When before he’d always run straight home after lessons, now he’d always tag along when the other boys went out to play. While the weather was often deadly cold, and the ruins scattered through the city dangerous, boys will not be contained. One day they were exploring a particularly interesting old building. The great stones showed it had once been a proud structure, but now it was barely more than a heap of rocks. The snow and ice had melted almost entirely off as the seasons shifted into beginnings of the short summer. On a ruin like this the rocks always shifted a bit from the frost heaving of spring and fall. Sometimes even a small amount of weight, pushed at the right angle could dislodge huge rocks and send them crashing down. A small weight such as the quiet boy, eager to prove himself, climbing higher up the ruin at the other children’s daring.
The magistrate’s son didn’t see it coming at all. The rock had tipped off almost silently, and he was looking away. There was a loud thump and a sickening crunch at the same time, and the magistrate’s son was dead. The impact dislodged smaller rocks which rained down, and some of the other boys screamed. Guards came running and saw the quiet boy crouched on the ruins where the stone had fallen from. One of the other boys pointed an accusing finger at him.
The boy didn’t think, he just fled. Over the ruins, out into the next street. He heard the shouts of the pursuing guards, bringing more into the chase. He didn’t consider that it only made him look more guilty, that he didn’t have on his warm cloths, and didn’t notice the dark clouds of a late blizzard boiling down from the icy peaks of the Broken Ranges. He only considered that he had killed his only friend, and knew, in his gut without thinking, that he would soon be next if the guards caught him. And so he fled, ducking through back alleys and abandoned buildings as only a boy could. The shouts faded behind him, and he was out the city gates before the gate guards even noticed him.
He was over the next hill when he looked back and saw armed men headed out of the city gate after him. There was little shade outside the walls, and all the snow there had melted into soupy mud. Slogging through it slowed him down, but it also slowed down the men following him. Still, they gained on him. They were grown men, and strong. Then all the men suddenly stopped and stared off into the distance. The boy wondered why, till he followed their gazes to the billowing wall of white and darkest grey looming towards them. The men turned and headed quickly back into the city, but the boy could not follow. A copse of stunted trees and brush several hills away looked like it might provide some shelter, and he made for it as fast as he could.
Even before the wall of wind and ice hit, the temperature dropped. In the late spring a freak storm could drop the temperature from pleasant to deadly in minutes. The damp mud covering his legs and saturating his summer shoes left his legs cramped with cold, and his thin summer jacket let the building breeze through like knives.
He wasn’t halfway to the brush when the wall hit. It felt like a physical impact. The world went perfectly white, and the wind ripped his hat away. The force pushed him over. He shoved his clenched hands into his armpits, stood back into a crouch, and kept walking. He’d never been outside in weather this bad, but he instinctively knew that if he stopped he’d die. It wasn’t long till he was ready to. His hands, feet and face burned like fire, his legs were cramped, and he could hardly stand from the shivers. Every footfall felt like stomping on sharp stones. Even though the wind let up fairly quickly, the cold stayed, and the snow continued to fall. Soon his extremities went numb and stopped bothering him altogether. He didn’t know how long he trudged on through the freezing mud and deepening snow. He just went. Finally his body gave out, and he pitched over into a drift. He felt warm now, and drifted into a pleasant sleep.
Waking up was anything but pleasant. The boy was shivering again. He was no longer numb anywhere, and each shiver sent waves of fiery pinpricks through his hands and feet. He was bound up snugly in a pile of furs. Hard angular objects where in his armpits and groin. While he still felt chilled to the bone, the air was chokingly warm and filled with smoke from the fire that crackled on a bed of rocks nearby. Water dripped from the warm hides of a hastily made shelter as the snow over it melted. He coughed on the smoke. There were quick footsteps before sunlight spiked into his eyes and a draft of chill air immediately swept over him.
“So, you’re awake,” said the man who entered the shelter. “Thought you’d die on me a few times, boy, but I see you’re made of tougher stuff than that.” The man was rough looking and stunted, like an old tree growing on a rocky hilltop. He was dressed in light furs, had skin like leather, or perhaps more like tree bark, and his shaggy beard and hair looked like they’d seen neither blade nor brush in many long years. A necklace of large claws hung from his neck. For all the roughness of him though, he had a kind look in his eyes. “No, don’t try to move, you’re still weak. Let me get those for you,” he added, unbinding the furs and removing three large fire blackened rocks from under the furs. It was less painful without the rocks in his underarms and groin, but still excruciating. The man set them aside and re-bound the furs snugly. “I’ll get you some broth, you’ll be stronger soon.” The man set about getting the broth from the small pot over the fire, and continued, “Saw you fleeing into the storm. Right stupid thing to do. Soon as it eased I went after you. Got you barely in time.” If the man was bothered by his patient’s complete lack of response, it didn’t show. He dropped in a little snow to cool the brew and fished out few limp lumps before bringing it to the boy. “My own recipe. Bear fat, dried sweet-beets and fresh ginger. Would’a helped more if you were awake to drink it when I found ya, but it’ll get you right warmed now.” He held the boy’s head up and helped him drink.
True to promise, the cold feeling went away by the time he’d finished the broth. The man unbound the furs, but gave him firm instructions to lie still anyway. “You may have frost-black, and we’ll have to see to that, but not until you’re rested a’bit.” He gave the boy a concerned look and said, “So, you want to tell me why you’re so afraid of those men as you’d risk that storm?” He waited in silence for a bit, and finally the boy faintly shook his head no. “Well, you planin’ on going back to that city?” This time the boy shook his head more emphatically. “Well, then you’re gonna have to learn to live off the land. I’m called Talon the Wildsman,” he said, pointing to his necklace of claws as he said his name. “And you can be my student.”
Notes:
- Temperature drops this fast actually happen in places like Montana, where in the summer, they say it can go from 90 to 35 in about 20 minutes when a storm rolls off the Rockies.
- Warmed rocks in the groin and armpits is a real hypothermia treatment.
- Broth, sugar, and ginger are also used to treat hypothermia. (Though the effectiveness of the ginger is somewhat dubious.)
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