“Keep your eyes above.  The bloodfeasters make a nest of the swamps jus’ north of here.” Tendrils of breath spilled out in the frost-bitten air as the wiry man at the front spoke.  He raised a crooked finger to the hills poking just above the treeline to their left.  The sun had not yet risen over the horizon, but the light of its coming had brightened the morning sky and given the men the luxury of scanning the woods for danger.  Unfortunately, this worked both ways.

“Is it true what they say?  The feasters are large enough to drain a grown man in seconds?” A mousy runt of barely thirteen winters asked the elder of the party, trying hard to mask his fear with a sarcastic tone.

Arnin wheeled around to face the boy.  “They wouldn’t dare try an’ drink the hot blood of a Karanin warrior.”  He looked the lad’s frame up and down with piercing gray eyes.  “They might mistake you for a lost fawn, though.  Best you keep your mouth shut an’ stay close.”

Rumi drifted towards the back of their group with a sullen face.  He shouldn’t have come with us, Tarin thought as he watched the youngling stab at a flower with his spear.  The Karanin had fallen on tough times, with the dwindling deer herds and a heavy frost that still hadn’t melted from the soil.  Even the strongest of their tribe had begun to waste away, and pestilence borne of infirmity slew a brawny warrior like a babe.  This had left their young boys, or any who could hold a spear for that matter, to do the work of grown men.  Tarin did not like the arrangement, but necessity cared little for his opinion.  He took solace in the knowledge that their mission was one of simple reconnaissance, an expedition to map the shifting of a herd’s migration path.  This meant the chance of encountering an enemy tribe or vicious beast was low, but never out of question.

For unknown reasons, the herd in question had diverted their normal path northwest along the Graymouth Ridge to a less direct route through the wood to the northeast.  Many took it as an ill omen, or a sign from the gods of their displeasure, but Tarin only saw it as more work to do.  He was at home in the forest, electing to spend his youth setting hare traps and tracking anything on four legs rather than run around playing hide and seek in the pigpens.  His natural talent and passion for bushcraft guided him into the role of hunter; a job he took very seriously.  The only other hunter left in the tribe with more experience than he was the party leader, Arnin.  The old crow had a sharp eye, but his tendons had long since begun to stiffen and his short tufts of hair had turned to a milky white.  Any winter could be his last as an able-bodied stalker of the wood.

“The tracks scatter here, some run off down toward the brook.  A couple off to the bushes there.  Most in towards the swamp.  Something spooked ‘em.”  Corvil, the heavyset man with a crooked nose, spoke up from the front.  Despite the famine, the trapper had managed to keep every ounce of meat on his frame.  More than a few had accused him of hoarding a portion of his catches, but those few had come out with a more crooked nose than he.

“Maybe the feasters.  Maybe gromblins, or snarkles, or janglysmoots too.”  Sneered Yrvin.

“Or a bear.  Or wolf pack.  A sign to take seriously, regardless.”  Arnin cut in, pushing past the green hunter who had turned to tease the young one.

Tarin walked past the youngling, who had stuck his tongue out at his tormentor, to get a look at the tracks himself.  He stooped down and examined the imprints, picturing in his mind the scene as it unfolded.  Something spooked the herd, there were signs of scrambling hooves in the soft mud.  They were fresh; it must have happened within the past day.  A splash of dried blood had caked on a nearby fern.  Whatever it was had teeth and claws, and was quick enough to score on a deer.  A shimmer of light from the nearby brush caught his eye.  Nestled in a pile of detritus sat a smooth piece of filed flint, one side jagged as if broken off a weapon.  Tarin palmed the item, bringing it closer to his eye to examine its grain.  Perhaps it wasn’t teeth or claws that tore into the herd after all.

“What’s that?”  Arvin squatted next to the veteran hunter.

“Could be just a rock.  Looks like part of an arrowhead, though.  Filed smooth, like by an edging stone.  No other tribes roam this area.  Nobody we’ve seen yet, anyway.”  Tarin muttered, rolling the stone between his fingers.

Arvin struggled to piece together an explanation.  The prospect of a foreign hunting party brought the bickering Rumi and Yrvin to silence.  Corvil had already begun to scan the woodline for signs of potential human trespassers.  “Rumi, Yrvin take watch around us.”  Arvin turned to face the two senior trackers.  “Let’s dig around this area and find everything we can.  We’re not goin’ a step further until we find something.”

The hunters studied the site until the sun reached its zenith.  Every leaf and stone they upturned, every tree examined, every inch of soil exhaustively searched for more arrowheads, spears, footprints, or any sign of disturbance - human or otherwise.  A fountain of blood had stained the foliage in the northerly direction, but this brought them only more confusion.  They could locate no carcass or gore at the killsite, only bits of fur and skin that one might expect from a vicious attack.  If a swarm of feasters had descended on the herd, they would have drank their fill of blood and left the sunken bodies to rot.  Had it been men, they would have dressed and harvested the meat and left the guts.  Even if they had some motive to not be followed, nobody was meticulous enough to scrape the earth of every piece of viscera.  Tarin had grown used to the tedious nature of tracking, but the lack of discovery stoked his ire.  Married to his irritation was the fear of a predator that could maim and kill without leaving a single trace.

“Are we going to stay here until the feasters come back?”  Yrvin groaned.

“This wasn’t the work of feasters.” Arvin replied.

“Right, well whatever it was.  I wouldn’t particularly care to find out.  Let’s keep moving.”

“I think we should head back.”  Corvil said.  His expression had grown increasingly grim with every fruitless hour.  “Whatever did this isn’t natural.  It must be smart as a man, but couldn’t have a body like our own.  Nothing is this traceless.  Nothing human.”  The trapper held firm to the many myths and folktales of the Karanin people.  His mind raced with the possibility of the many spirits and shifters that senile elders and bored wives gossiped about.  Tarin himself was not a very superstitious man; he had encountered very little in his journeys to suggest the woods were full of giants that feasted on babies, wolfmen, swamp hags, and other beasts of legend.  Though, the fireside stories of spectral hunters and their hounds that dragged the living back into their shadow realm couldn’t help but creep into his mind with the uncanny evidence before them.

“We’re pressing on.  Into the bog where most the tracks lead.  I don’t want to hear any more ghost talk.  Everything that kills has a body that can be killed.  We’re hunters of the Karanin, and our people are starving.  If you turn your back on this task, I will plant my own arrow in it.”  Arnin barked.  Despite his age, his bronze eyes burned with fiery intensity.

Whether inspired by his vigor, or quashed by his threat, the other men fell in line to continue their trek.  A silence thicker than fog hung in the air as the party stalked through the woods.  Tarin weighed the words of his superior.  They were sensible, if nothing else was.  Their tribe was in desperate need of a good hunt and fresh harvest.  They could not afford to turn back and delay tracking their primary source of food.


While the situation had the hunter on edge, it only served to sharpen his senses.  The closer the sun came on its descent to the earth, the more the wilds around them began to stir.  Tarin felt the breath of every living creature, from the smallest fly to the songbirds above.  His heartbeat felt intertwined with the flow of life around him.  The bog beneath his feet pulsed with every step, sloshing mud and grime on his cracked leather boots.  If they were to make it out of the swamps alive he had to pour every ounce of concentration into his surroundings.  In addition to the threat of their earlier encounter, the bog teemed with man-sized crawlers with carapaces like polished stone.  Though they frequently made prey of birds, rabbits, and the occasional fox that drifted too far into their swampy domain, he had once seen the half-digested remains of a wolf strung up in a web that spanned the height of an aspen.  He imagined they weren’t so fussy about eating man-flesh given the chance.  Then there were the feasters, that flew in hordes and drained any warm-blooded thing that moved.  Usually they preferred to drink from the small and the weak, and would leave you alone if you swatted one or two down to spill their pasty guts.  Tarin wasn’t one to take chances, however.  He kept his eyes rolling and ears trained on the vibrations of the air.  Should anything spring at them, he would be ready.

“Nightfall will be on us within the hour.”  Corvil remarked.  The sound of a human voice felt foreign to Tarin after their pensive voyage into the lowlands.

The tracks had led them through the heart of the swamp.  With night rapidly approaching, they had little chance to make it out and set up camp in the safety of the mountain slopes.  “We’ll find a place to set down soon.  The fen will be our bed tonight.”  Arvin replied.

Though nobody said anything, the air soured with the party’s mood at the prospect of spending the night in the bog.  After another half hour or so of walking, Arvin stopped them in a small clearing that boasted more grass than mud.  The warped boughs of aspens sprouting around the verdant island served as a makeshift palisade and lent to a general feeling of security.  “This will do.”  The old man said as he set down his bow and quiver in the center.  “Start fetching some tinder and sticks.  Green, leafy plants too.  We’ll need a lot of smoke to keep the buzzers off of us tonight.”

“You mean to make a fire?”  Tarin asked.

“Aye.  I do.”

“With what we found earlier, don’t you think that a bit unwise?  Just as many predators are attracted to fire as are repelled by it.  Predators of a more clever strain.”  The veteran hunter replied coolly to Arvin’s indifference.

“Listen son, that was a half a day and fifteen miles ago.  The kill was over a day old, if it were even a kill.  Who’s to say it wasn’t just a couple of bucks fighting for a mate and the loser dragged himself off to die here?  Losing wit over a phantom predator is one thing.  Taking precaution over the known threats of this swamp is another.  I’ve waded through this muck since before you were born;  I know what I’m doing.  Go get me some damned firewood.”  Arvin waved Tarin away and began digging at the soft soil with a flat stone, refusing to carry the conversation any further.

Corvil caught Tarin’s eyes with his own, trading him a look of uncertainty, but they went off in silence to comply with Arvin’s order.