NOVEL FROG 3. Hunted: Wiremu
3. Hunted: Wiremu
I thought it was reasonable that the bulk of the night shift would be taken by the Sentry as he had the perception bonus. At least one of the other two would be asleep. Then there were the hounds. Breaking the three out was looking pretty impossible. Sometimes we used poisoned meat or fruit in a trap, especially if we wanted multiple kills per trap. I had some made by our local Herbalist. It will poison both the physical and the spiritual. The hounds were probably too strong physically but maybe weak enough spiritually to be affected. These were some pretty big maybes that could get me killed.
Was I interested in living? Everybody I had loved was dead. Everybody I had grown up knowing was either dead or enslaved. I was a hunter. Maybe I should just hunt and see how many I could take out before they got me. That sounded much simpler. My mind settled at that thought.
I would need to start with the weakest. That was not the sentry. The only attacks I had were physical, except for the poison, which had some Spiritual effect, but I didn't know how much. I guess we were doing this the hard way. The only way I could take out these warriors, who probably had double the Physical Constitution to me, would be by getting critical hits. Because of their armour, this meant the face and neck from the front only. I would probably need two critical hits to be sure of the kill. So I would need to be reasonably close, and they would need to be reasonably still. The bear trap could hopefully do that. Then I would need to run like hell. I would probably have the hounds on my trail. I would head to the river and have the poisoned meat ready to drop for them. If that worked and I got away, I would see about a second hit later. The trap would be lost to them, unfortunately. That was the plan and now for the execution. Hopefully not mine. I wanted to take at least one out before they got me.
I set the trap near the bush they used for a latrine. They hadn’t dug a pit, but they did use the same bush. It was night. The Sentry was on watch at the village. One warrior was sort of on watch at the camp and one slept. I was waiting until one of them came to take a piss, or better yet, a shit. When it happened it would be fast. I had poisoned the trap and all my arrows. I was keeping my eyes averted from the campfire to keep my night vision. I was as ready as I could be. And I waited for hours.
It was the one who was supposed to be on watch at the camp. That was unfortunate because he had his chest piece, pauldrons, grieves and boots on. He had taken his helmet off. He didn’t step on the trap and was pissing just to the right of it. I moved around a bit and took aim just below his centre of mass. Yes, his groin. His hip, to be precise. And I hit it too. He stumbled into the trap which grabbed his leg, and he landed on his back. He was yelling, but now I wouldn’t get a better shot. I got him just below the chin with the arrow angled up into his head. If that didn’t kill him, I was out of time. The sleeper was rising, and I could hear boots thundering from the village. The Sentry was coming and coming fast.
I took off. I heard the Sentry yell at the other to loose the hounds. I used every bit of Physical Agility I could. Not keeping a straight line but dodging and ducking between trees. I heard the barking of the hounds change as they joined the chase. Something whizzed past me and slammed into a tree. I went faster. Just when I caught sight of the river, a massive pain erupted from my thigh, and I got thrown sideways. I lay there for a few seconds, then glanced at my thigh. There was a javelin pinning me to the ground, and one of my leg bones was also poking through my skin. A pair of boots arrived in view, and I heard the Sentry swear, “Fucking kid”. Then an armoured fist struck me and that was the last I knew.
When I came to, I was locked in the cage on the back of the wagon which was moving. One of the other villagers, Sarah, was trying to get some water in me. A male voice came from the other side of the cage and said quietly, “It might be kinder to let him die.” My leg was bandaged and a splint held the leg bone straight. It hurt like hell every time the wagon went over a bump.
I voiced my first thought, “Did I get him?” The voice across the cage replied, “Yea kid, you got him.” Consciousness faded away again.
The rest of that week was a blur. I was in and out of consciousness. Sometimes the wagon was moving when I came too and sometimes they were camped for the night. At some point, they had joined up with their main group, and we had a number of wagons, many with cages a lot more tightly packed than ours. At one point another four people were put in our cage and my days of taking most of the floor were gone. My leg was healing. It seems my regeneration beat the infection and started on the leg. Regeneration was a function of your constitution. My physical constitution was my highest, and the bone would be healed in about a month, although I could probably put careful weight on it in a couple of weeks. Regen couldn’t bring back limbs, but given time most non-permanent injuries would heal.
I checked my Status sheet to see what improvements I gained.
Hunter Class Total
Type
Attribute
Level
3
Constitution
Physical
Strength (PS)
9
2
11
45.0
Agility (PA)
14
3
17
Perception (PP)
11
6
17
Mental
Strength (MS)
9
1
10
34.0
Agility (MA)
12
1
13
Perception (MP)
11
0
11
Spiritual/Magical
Strength (SS)
10
0
10
28.0
Agility (SA)
8
0
8
Perception (SP)
10
0
10
Totals
94
13
107
Free points 2
Resistances: Pain +2
Skills:
Novice:
Fishing 3, Skinning 4, Butchering 1, Cooking 1
Small Blades 4, Spear 1, Tracking 1
Identify 1, Hearing Aid 1
Apprentice: Stealth 5, Bow 5, Trapping 7
The first thing I noticed was I levelled the Hunter Class. It took a month of normal hunting to get it to Level 2 and one fight to get to Level 3? Admittedly it was a fight I almost died in. The surprising thing was my baseline Physical Agility went up two. Raising your baseline Attributes got progressively harder the older you got. I guess I was still young, but I had also worked pretty hard at it in order to stay alive.
I also seemed to have gained Pain Resistance and levelled it to 2. Resistances get applied directly to your constitution. I was a little surprised it was a Mental Resistance, but I guess I shouldn't have been. It doesn’t do anything for the physical wound. This not only added 2 to my Mental Constitution but also meant a pain Reduction of 2%. It doesn't seem like a lot. And it is not, yet. I really don’t want it to increase, but looking at my situation I think there might be quite a lot of pain in my future.
Stealth and Bow both broke through to Level 5, often referred to as the Apprentice Level. Usually, you have to do something extra to break a class or skill through to the next level. Novice Levels are generally 1-4, Apprentice 5-9, Journeyman 10-14 and Master over 15. Breaking through a level can often reward you with some attribute points or other skill options. This doesn’t always happen, but it might explain why the Physical Agility went up twice. Trapping went up as well.
I have two attribute points to assign. I don’t know what to do with them. If I was in the village I would have either put them into Spiritual Agility to bump it to 10 as this was a common level as a minimum for skills. Spiritual Agility is all about flexibility in using the Spiritual. Disarming Spiritual Traps, altering and tailoring Spiritual abilities and speed in using those abilities. It would get me closer to Spiritual Trapping, or the points could go into Mental Agility and I would get closer to Mental Trapping (probably what I would have done). Now I just didn't know what my future held. I decided to wait. They wouldn’t go anywhere.
It took us another week to move out of the forest and onto the rolling plains. I basically spent the week in shock and staring into nothing, not sure about anything. I missed my parents. I missed my master and the village. My future was bleak. All my dreams were gone.
When the forest thinned and we moved onto the rolling grasslands I perked up and started taking an interest in things around me again. My leg was healed enough to stand carefully on it and was causing me less pain. As I observed our captors the smouldering hate started building again. What right did they have to do this to me? To us? Did might give them the right? As I listened to their conversations with my Hearing Aid, they blamed us for the number of soldiers they lost, ignoring the fact we were defending our homes. They even lost their Slave Taskmaster or they would have been making compliant slaves already and they wouldn’t have had to do all the scutt work. Apparently, that was our fault as well. So apparently it was our punishment to sit in our filth for days and they called us filthy savages like we had any choice. Yeah, the anger was building.
The only other thing I could try to level was my Identify. I started Identifying everyone I could see. When I levelled it to 2 the range at which I could use it increased, but there was no increase in information which was what I really wanted. I stared at the back of our wagon driver for hours trying to discern more information than Level 11 Warrior. Then it occurred to me that Warriors have high Physical Strength and high Mental Strength and that maybe their Mental Strength was blocking my Mental Perception, which was very low. I started using it more on my fellow prisoners who were farmers, foresters and weavers etc. I started getting clues about the highest attributes and secondary classes and key skills. It didn't seem consistent, but Identify started levelling. It was at the Level 4 block when the grasslands came to an end. Hearing Aid had also hit the Level 4 block at that point. I was getting much better control over my hearing and was trying to figure out how to break through to the Apprentice Level for both of these.