Hunt Sworn: (Forest Wardens: Book 3) by Justin Herzog

Author:Justin Herzog [Herzog, Justin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Creative Writing Mastery
Published: 2021-10-20T16:00:00+00:00

17

“What does it mean?” Hal asked.

“Duck if I know,” I said.

It’s possible I didn’t use the word duck.

Hal considered it, his mouth curving down into a heavy frown. “It could be a trick. Just a false trail to keep us chasing our tails.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But she seemed pretty adamant that the Seeds not be allowed to seize the Blessing. And since she can’t hope to defeat them with only a handful of braves, sending us off on a wild goose chase seems like it would only weaken her overall position.”

“You’re assuming that’s all she has,” Hal said. “We don’t know that. It could just be an advanced scouting party. Plus, there’s the Sunborn tribe as well.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “How many braves could the West Wind field if it came to it?”

“Depends how much time we had to prepare.”

“Suppose not much, say only a few days.”

Hal made a pained face. “Not enough for me to feel confident going up against the Seeds.”

“And any one of your warriors is worth five Cloudsoar braves.”

Hal nodded. It wasn’t a boast. Just a statement of fact.

One of the burning questions the Forest Service had regarding the tribes had always been their numbers. Depending on who you asked, the estimates varied widely. I tend to go the more conservative route. Historians have never been able to give an accurate account of how many natives inhabited North America prior to the European’s arrival, although the number generally falls somewhere between two and eighteen million. Assuming the Great Spirits managed to save one percent while also accounting for women, children, and the elderly, and the math worked out to a number that was neither insignificant nor overwhelming. And of course, there were other factors that needed to be taken into consideration. The tribesmen had been more or less shielded from worldwide diseases these past centuries, but they were still wholly dependent on trade for the majority of their medical supplies, minus those the Greencorn tribe grew, and there’d been casualties from infighting and ongoing skirmishes against the Cold Ones as well.

“She’s not wrong, you know,” Hal said. “About the knowledge being dangerous.”

“Well, yeah. Obviously.”

“No, really,” he said. “The Great Spirits are… well, they’re not gods, per se, but it’s close. To slay one of them would be to unmake the very foundation of our tribes. Not to mention how it might affect the Land itself.”

I turned in my seat and was quiet for a long moment before I said, “Go on.”

Hal drew in a long breath and let it out slow. “When the Great Spirits first appeared, they found a fractured people, pushed to the brink and devastated by war and disease. The tribes’ way of life was in tatters. Leading them through the Divide and into the Land didn’t just save their lives. It saved their identity, both as individuals and as a people. Gathering them together under a new tribe allowed them to reform under a system that made sense to them. Their affinity with the Spirits gave them an opportunity to start a new life under their own terms.

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