“Nay, my mum is a weaver and my da a record keeper.” She smiled with thoughts of them.
“Children usually follow in the steps of their parents,” Dar said, thinking of the path ordained for him since birth.
“Aye, it seems that way. But I spent a lot of time in the forest when I was young and my mum, thank goodness, realized it was where I was the happiest. She asked an herb-scribe if I could apprentice with her. It was contingent upon how I did after spending a day helping her forage.” She chuckled. “I knew every plant she collected, pointed out a couple that had me curious, told her how the leaves tilted in the rain and how there was silence before a storm. When the day was done, she claimed me as her apprentice. She told my mum that it can take years for an herb-scribe to learn to listen to the forest and that I already possessed that ability.” She turned curious eyes on him. “What about you? Did you ever want to be anything other than a Hunter?”
“My fate was sealed the day I was born. I trained from an early age, my duty clear. I would be prepared to lead the Hunters when the time came.”
“Is that what you want to do… lead the Hunters?”
“It is not about want. It is about duty.”
To Elara, he sounded as if he needed to defend his fate and perhaps accept it as well.
“Regina mentioned something about?—”
“Nothing but old tales,” he snapped, cutting her off.
“What old tales?” she asked curiously.
“Nothing worth repeating.”
“Tales often start from a grain of truth.”
“Or from lies,” he countered, “in which case they cannot be trusted.”
She was about to tell him she would love to hear the tales anyway when she felt a shift within her and she shut her eyes as it slipped over and through her. It was a vision coming on and she had felt it before it struck like last night, and she embraced it.
The scene stirred in her mind’s eye, a man on the road ahead, traveling towards them. Unease stirred around him leaving her feeling that something was amiss with him.
“What is it?” Dar asked, watching her eyes open slowly after seeing them flutter closed to see something no one else did. A vision for sure, but a brief one.
“Ahead, a lone figure walks the road. He heads towards us, not away.” She shook her head. “There is an unease to him.”
Dar’s hand went to the hilt of his dagger. “He travels alone?”
“I saw no one with him,” she said, but something had her quickly adding, “but I cannot be sure.”
Dar turned partially in his saddle to his six Hunters traveling behind them and ordered, “Two stay here, the others spread out and see if anyone lurks nearby.”
The men followed his orders without question.
Sure enough, as they turned the slight curve in the road not too far ahead the man came into view.
He moved without haste or burden, his stride unencumbered, his cloak loose about his shoulders. No pack nor blade in hand. Nothing tied him to any place but the moment he occupied. A wanderer? Or someone with a destination?
Dar called out with authority, “You there, halt.”
The man stopped at once.
He was lean, spare as the road itself, with dark hair pulled back and eyes sharp. He didn’t fit the description Bella had given him of the wanderer this morning, short and thick.
The fellow’s gaze swept over Dar, then Elara, and he was quick to say, “I seek no trouble, Hunter.”
“Be honest with me and you’ll find none,” Dar cautioned. “Did you pass a short, rotund wanderer on the road?”
Fear flashed in the man’s eyes.
“Truth will keep you from trouble,” Dar cautioned.