25 – Long Lake

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Draft 1 – Updated 11 Feb 2026 (C025/D001)

There was a savage bite in the air and it was too dark to travel safely, but LT was highly motivated. He wanted his pick of spots in the camp and was determined to get there early. The descent from Two Bears to the junction at Long Lake would take the better part of the day. Dozens who had attended the fights would ride down today and spend the night there before heading home east or west along the colony road. The first to arrive would get the best sites.

Bad blood and the settling of scores often made the first few days after fights lethal. Accounts not squared outside of Sewager’s saloon, might be squared in the camp below. Others would be paid in blood on the roads leading home.

LT hoped to avoid trouble by bedding down nearest the camp’s exit. Arriving late meant being pinned deep inside the camp up against the lakeshore or fenced in by forest too thick for a horse to ride through. Of course, starting early down the mountain had its own risks. But those were the types of risk he felt he could easily manage. Walking the horses and suffering the bite of night air until sunrise seemed a reasonable tradeoff if it meant he could secure a safe spot in the camp.

Hunter, as usual, said nothing beyond ”wait there”. He would accompany Tooplo to her tribe’s thicket and join them in camp the following day. After that? LT had no idea. Butcher would go with Tooplo. LT would go with Hunter. Where they were going, even the direction to be travelled, was information the elder elf had not yet shared with him. 

First down the mountain, LT got his coveted spot. It meant a long walk through camp to water and they had to deal with the dust of passing traffic, but their vantage could not be better. It allowed them to monitor the Long Lake junction—seeing who entered, who left, and who passed by on the colony road. And from here they could make a quick exit if they had a need to.

The Company men, a dozen of them, arrived later in the day. They were headed back to Eastbranch but seemed in no particular hurry to get there. Since their portion of the camp stood by stocked and clearly flagged for their exclusive use, they rode in like a procession of noble lords.

As neither he nor Butcher had crossed paths with them at Two Bears, LT felt relatively anonymous. He hoped to keep it that way by shutting his mouth, staying out of sight, and avoiding unnecessary eye contact. In case that proved impossible, though, he made sure the horses were fed and their tack was standing by.

The first evening passed without incident. Heavy drinking at the Company fire fostered plenty of bragging and loud talk, but nobody was heard to die. He rose at dawn assuming they’d be gone by mid-morning. But they lingered long past then and, as the morning turned to afternoon, LT began to wonder if they might be waiting for someone else. 

He and Butcher positioned themselves in such a way that thick tree trunks partially screened them from the Company camp. They also made an effort to keep their heads down and backs turned in that direction. But as the day wore on, their water ran low and Butcher began to fret. Filling a bucket was as simple as a walk to the lakeshore, but that required walking past the half-drunk deputies. 

“We can do it after dark,” LT suggested, “while they’re eating, before they get their load on.”

Heads turned a short while later when the elf rode into camp with the swiner. Eyes glared. Voices grumbled as a whiskey bottle made its rounds. Seeing those two together now, LT wondered if the deputies’ minds might turn to conspiracy. If they did, things could fix toward a bloody outcome.

Hunter’s horse was thirsty and their water was nearly gone. After a few quiet words, he picked up two empty buckets and sauntered toward the lake. The half-drunk thugs fell into a sinister silence and their narrowed eyes tracked his progress. Hunter skirted the edge of their camp, then disappeared down the slope toward the lakeshore. LT tensed for coming trouble. 

Uniformed backs turned toward him as men drifted to the top of the rise where they could monitor the elf below. Time hung for many moments and a sense of dread swelled. How long does it take to fill two bloody pails of water? Then shine hats slowly pivoted as they tracked his movement back. 

Hunter’s head appeared first over the crest. Then his body sprouted beneath it. He climbed the slope, buckets swinging heavy at his sides. Water droplets trailed behind. Step by unhurried step, the white-haired elf moved toward the camp LT had worked so hard to earn. 

He said not a word nor were any words said to him. If the sun was down and the deputies had their load on, someone would surely have said something. But it was early yet and darkness had not come.

Most lost interest when he tipped a bucket to fill the boiling pot before suspending it on a tripod over the fire. Still fewer were watching when he placed the second bucket down before his mare. And only a couple of the deputies seemed to notice when he swung up into his saddle and rode out of camp in the direction of Eastbranch the moment the mare was done drinking.

LT relaxed then and seated himself at the fire. Hunter’s distraction had drawn their eyes away, allowing Tooplo to escape unnoticed with Butcher. She knew every inch of wild in this area and would get the butcher back to Three Mills. Meanwhile, Hunter would find a safe place to tie his horse. Then he would canopy back to keep an eye on LT—who could sleep now knowing his back was covered.

*****

“That was a good call,” LT said when he joined Hunter on the road to Eastbranch at daybreak.

“Best to move before the elk lowers its horns,” Hunter replied. Then he changed the subject. “You know how to canopy?”

“Not a clue,” LT scoffed, laughing at himself. “Ain’t partial to heights neither.”

It was a stupid thing to say and LT regretted saying it the moment the words passed his lips. He had spent the past two days rethinking his approach to the elf and had committed to starting over. He was worried Hunter thought him foolish and not a man he could trust.

“Does it make a difference?” LT asked, attempting to correct his course.

Hunter glanced back, pausing to read his colors. He had been waiting for LT under an everwood branch on the side of the road. The branch hung so low that part of it rested on his shoulders, making him difficult to see. “Half a day, maybe,” the elf said, lifting his shoulders, causing the branch to rustle. “We should make Origin sometime around sunset day after tomorrow.”

“And if we canopy?” LT asked, feeling relieved by Hunter’s businesslike tone. 

“Then sunset tomorrow.”

LT thought about it. The difference was one full day. “Will it matter?” he asked, attentive to Hunter’s reaction.

“Might could. Depending on the ships,” the hunter said, nudging his horse and moving out from under the branch. A long wisp of a spider’s web clutched at his hair before breaking off and falling free.

LT’s brows pinched. He wondered why that mattered. “Are we sailing somewhere?” he asked, carefully posing the question in a way that could not be seen as a challenge. 

“No. But I got a message needs to get out. One day might could make a difference.”

LT considered the problem. He didn’t know what the message was or to whom it was directed, but he knew that ships did not leave for everywhere daily. Missing a ship’s departure by even a few moments could delay a message for weeks.

“Let’s do it then,” LT said, setting his fears aside. 

“And the heights?”

“I’ll manage,” he said, hoping he would not regret the commitment. 

Hunter nodded, seeming satisfied. Then he stood in his stirrups to survey their surroundings in a slow fastidious arc. This, LT had learned on the journey to Two Bears, was a signal for him to shut his mouth. Humans scanned with their eyes for danger while Hunter used mostly his ears. 

If LT had been asked before leaving Three Mills about the quality ofhis vigilance, he would have ranked himself rather highly. Few amongst his brothers had better observation skills in the field than LT. But ask him now, after just a few days of travel with Hunter, and he had an entirely different understanding of that word.

The Brothers had told LT things about elves that he felt must surely be exaggerations. But he wondered now if they might have been understated. 

He was accustomed to his horse being aware of things before he was. Animals were like that. But it surprised him that an elf’s senses would be stronger even than a horse’s. 

Hunter could hear a mountain lion purring half a league away—through a dense screen of forest. LT would be lucky to hear one huffing or growling just a hundred paces away on an open road. 

This made him curious about Hunter. It made him want to know more. An extra day on the road with him certainly had some appeal, but he understood their mission’s priority. And learning more about travelling through the canopy would probably be useful anyway. If Hunter was willing to teach him a new skill, it was worth the day and discomfort. 

“Anybody coming?” LT asked in a low voice when Hunter completed his scan and settled back into his saddle. It was a dumb question, he realized after asking it. If anybody was coming, Hunter would surely say so. Talk less—listen more, he reminded himself.

Hunter shook his head and they continued on in silence.

Just a few days earlier, LT had thought he understood elves. His training with the Brotherhood was complete and he often felt as though he knew more about elves than he knew about his own species. But he realized now that his learning had limits. 

His time with the brotherhood had coincided with the years of disconnection. With the exception of a short stint in an Elvish work camp and periodic encounters with elf border guards, Hunter was the first elf he’d spent more than a few minutes with since childhood. And the more time he spent with him, the less he felt he understood him.

“I hope we can talk a bit,” he said in a soft voice he’d practiced over the past two days while killing time in camp. “I know you’re not much of a talker, but I’m hoping you can fill in some blanks.”

Hunter looked at him with a mix of curiosity and surprise. “It occur to you that I might not could fill in them blanks?” he asked eventually.

LT held his tongue, forcing himself to count off a pause. Notably, Hunter hadn’t said no. One mountain lion. Two mountain lions. Three mountain lions…

“My father’s partner was an elf,” LT offered after his ten-lion pause.

Hunter said nothing and LT forced himself to accept his silence. In camp at the junction, he had had two nights to reflect on their trip to Two Bears. As he processed those experiences he had been struck by a notion: beings who lived alone in the wild for long stretches of time might not be very talkative. To a human raised to be sociable this might be a little off putting. But if LT was to work with the elf, he could not let such differences annoy him.

“He was close to my parents,” LT continued after another lengthy pause. “I grew up calling him Uncle.” 

The fact that his father was a butcher was a thing he felt need not be mentioned. That much should be obvious to Hunter. If it wasn’t, he could ask.  Fewer words. Longer pauses. That was his strategy for now. 

Hunter again said nothing. But neither did he turn away. Nor did he ride away, which pleased LT a great deal. On the way up to Two Bears, he had tried the opposite approach. He had overwhelmed the elf with questions hoping that sheer volume would bring him some answers. That approach had failed, though, and he often found himself riding alone with Butcher as a consequence.

“He died in the war,” LT added, watching carefully for non-verbal cues. “So I never got to know him.”

He counted off ten more lions, in the middle of which Hunter rose in his stirrups and reached to brush a low hanging branch from his path. While he was up, he completed another long scan, allowing the branch to slip tenderly through his fingers as his horse moved ahead. This one took six lions, LT observed. Maybe ten is more than I need.

“By the time I joined the Brotherhood, you folks had disengaged. So everything I know about elves is theory. I ain’t got no real experience.”

Hunter’s head turned toward him. For the first time since they’d met, he appeared to be engaged. In fact, it looked like he might say something. LT held his tongue, resisting the impulse to speak, forcing himself to listen. 

A muffled tapping sound emerged from the dense forest to this right. It was a woodpecker. A small one, from the sounds of it, likely hunting for food. On LT’s other flank, a squirrel barked. Had it been barking at another squirrel, a reply would have followed immediately. The forest, however, stayed silent.

“Riders coming,” Hunter said in a voice so soft it was barely more than a whisper. “You hear ‘em?”

LT stopped his mount, becoming rapt. He lowered his head and closed his eyes, concentrating. He probed the forest with his ears, eager for the distant thump of hooves. A formation of swans trumpeted above the canopy, muffled wings whistling faintly as they passed. No, he shook, lifting his head with disappointment. He could not hear the riders.

Three. Hunter held his fingers up, nudging his horse forward to a trot.

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