The Hunter

A short story written as an experiment in constructing a story without the use of any dialogue, about a mountain hunter tasked with keeping his village safe from the very dragons he personally adores.

The dragon laid lifelessly in the snow, watching him with weak and listless eyes. Deep dunes of snow were driven up around it, exposing age-old ice and hard black rock beneath. Clouds flecked with crystalline ice blew down from the sharp ridges looming as the hunter apprehensively approached the limp body; he held the rifle barrel low, but ready. He reached forward with one hand for the heavy bone-laden snout; the dragon made a grumbling complaint and tried to throw its head at him. He recoiled out of reach, leaving it to sag back into the snow, defeated, as frost began to cake the fringes of its nostrils.

    The hunter shivered in the cold, even through his fur-lined hunting coat, and only hesitantly drew close again. Its breathing was growing slow and shallow, the snow around it slowly staining a nearly black red as blood seeped from its wounds; one wing rent through in its fall, a gash torn through its flank by a vicious, piercing rock, joined by the spattering of bullet wounds in its chest. It did not respond when he placed his hand against its muzzle, only watching with half-shut, heavy lidded eyes. Part of him wanted to comfort the creature, but in the end, there was only one mercy he could provide. He put the rifle to its head, standing still and motionless for nearly a minute. Then he shot.

    A single spasm ran down its back, and then it stilled entirely, eyes staring glassy and unfocused. He crouched down only to close the eyelids, and only the dark gathering clouds overhead managed to make him leave; the wind was growing harsher. Snow began to fall heavily as he walked through the deep dunes, the familiar crunching sound following him as he went. Why had it come here? He did not see dragons often; in the end, he always had to kill them, even if it was not their fault, when food was scarce and they went looking too close to home for comfort.

    The sunlight vanished as the clouds gathered denser in the sky; heavy snow turned into a blizzard, the wind rising to a ferocious howl. With gloved hands he clumsily lit his lantern and hooked it back to his belt; the flickering light illuminated only a bare patch around him, unable to break the veil of white ahead of him. As he trudged through the deepening snow, he pictured the dragon in his head, as it had once been; proud and powerful. It made his rifle feel heavy against his back.

    A half hour passed before the welcoming orange lights of the village came into view, distant and ethereal through the blizzard. He passed by a sign without noticing, the words covered over with ice but still vaguely visible underneath; Ennale. The forested hill and small, frozen-over river with its charming stone bridge came slowly into view, the bright lights peeking out from the other houses giving him his first proper sense of visibility since the blizzard had begun. Another ten frigid minutes passed by as he shovelled snow away from his door, before he finally managed shut himself inside, the wind still roaring even through the walls.

    He kindled a fire in the hearth, allowing the snow and ice covering his coat to melt away in the warmth before finally changing out of the heavy equipment. Outside, large drifts of snow had gathered on the windows, misted over and cold to the touch, like ice themselves. When he had stoked the flames to a healthy intensity, he drew up his chair by the windows and took up his whittling knife and a chunk of wood, and began to carve out a small statue, in the shape of a dragon.

    Tomorrow would be celebrations. He did not want to attend, even though it would be in his name; there was no glory to his actions. He only did it out of grim necessity. The shavings flaked down to the floor, bit by bit the body coming to shape. The knife nicked a finger, but he did not flinch, only continuing the work. He carved the wings with delicacy, etching in the scales and claws with the tip of the knife. The horns took him the longest, large bony and ram-like. He wondered how long it had lived for; none of the possibilities pleased him.

    The next hours passed without notice. He scooped the small pile of shavings and heaped them onto the fire; it flickered appreciatively with a newfound vigour, before settling once more. He set the statuette down with the others. Now there were five, gathered amongst a field of wooden animals. Perhaps he would not have to add another.

 

The mountain lake was a deep and rich blue under the crisp sky, reflecting the few wispy clouds that hung low in the air, the peaks of the black summits scraping at their underbellies. Trees filled the valley, dripping water as small icicles melted in the sun, a few small songbirds chirping to each other in the high branches. The hunter passed underneath them unnoticed, searching for traps placed the day before; he found one sprung but empty, the tracks of a fox, recently made, were visible in the snow.

    As he made his way through the trees towards the stony shore he managed to take a hare with his rifle, which he trussed up by the legs and slung over his shoulder, the crack of the gun sending birds scattering. He sighed inwardly, treading further through the trees as they began to grow sparser, emerging out onto the smooth pebble lakeside, resting his bag of traps against a nearby boulder, wet at its base from the tide and mossy at its top.

    He had brought a spear with him, makeshift as it was, and spent a few long and idle minutes waiting at the water’s edge for fish, taking them one at a time, while a few ibex gathered on the other side of the lake to drink. He watched them with some interest as he waited for more fish, until they wandered off back up the slopes, vanishing from sight; it fascinated him how easily they moved on the rocks.

    Eventually, he decided to move on, heaping what he had caught into a basket inside his trap bag, scraping out some ice from between the rocks to help preserve them, though the mountain chill helped greatly itself. He inspected a few waterside traps, finding another hare and an unfortunate stoat, before a large shadow passed overhead. At first he thought it an eagle, but when he looked up he saw a shadow far too large to be a mere bird. It was a dragon.

    He hurried to the cover of the snow-laden branches, watching the shadow circle overhead. It was smaller than the one he had shot down just over a week ago, narrower with larger wings. It called out across the valley in low, carrying cries, the noise echoing distantly off the steep icy slopes; there was an almost longing note to the sound. Eventually it began to descend towards the lake, until landing lightly on the stony shore; it stumbled clumsily with its first steps, almost collapsing outright.

    He moved quietly through the trees so that he could see it more closely while it lowered its head to the lake’s surface to drink; he saw it was thin and hungry-eyed, with deep ridges formed where its skin had sunken in between its ribs. A sharp twinge of pity shot through him; it did not look like the dragon would last very long, and he knew that it was another creature he would have to bring down. There was too much risk of such a starved beast preying upon the village’s herds. But even so, he could find no solace in the idea.

    A small group of fish swam up to the edge of the lake, and the dragon’s head quickly arrowed forwards to snap one up out of the water, before it stepped out into the water as if looking for more. Long minutes passed, and still it only stood in the shallows, as if it lacked the energy simply to move just as much as it was waiting for another chance, even though its first catch remained clutched in its jaws, uneaten.

    For a short moment he wondered if he should offer the catches slung over his shoulder to it, as if the small animals would do it any good, and he knew in the end he would have to shoot it down like every other dragon which had appeared so close to the village. Grimly and with hesitance he drew out his rifle; at the very least the dragon would not need to slowly starve to death, he thought. The noise drew its attention, however, head whipping around towards him. It stared at him for a second, comprehendingly, then turned and fled through the shallows, water cascading around it as it tried weakly to leap into the air.

    The feeling of pity only grew as it finally opened its wings in the air and carried itself away, silent, over the ridges of the mountains, the rifle already lowered again.

 

Heavy grey clouds were gathering in the sky as he pulled himself over the lip of the last cliff, breathing heavily and sweating despite the cold. A very light snow fell around him, a few flakes settling on his face before melting into little more than trickling droplets. A few more metres of steep slope buried thickly awaited him; a slow trudge with his legs aching brutally from the near vertical climb, as he used every opportunity afforded to him to make going easier with his tools.

    He came upon a small, level strand of ground, a spindly trio of trees with scruffy branches almost devoid of leaves reaching through the snow, anchored to the stone underneath. A cramped and dark opening just over half his height stood in a gap in the snow, enshrined by years-old ice and only slightly blocked by recent snowfall, claws marks visible both in the black stone and hardened ice; recent and old, and so he stood apprehensively at the black maw, crouching with his rifle clutched in both hands.

    The dragon had flown back here certainly; he had watched it go inside and waiting down at the base of the slope for nearly an hour, without seeing any activity. He was certain it had gone to sleep, but even so he did not quite wish to go inside. It seemed cruel to him, to kill it while it slept, even if it was a more peaceful end when it came down to things. He sighed and resigned himself to the task, slipping cautiously inside.

    The walls were damp and glistening with gradual melt further in, widening enough for him to stand and have some comfortable room above his head. Icicles hung smallish from the ceiling in amongst older stalactites, almost invisible in the poor light, but the hunter did not dare to light his lantern. He kept his rifle half-raised as he continued deeper inside, and yet still nothing stirred. He saw the dragon not long after; its grey and white scales stark against the black stone even in the darkness.

    He froze where he stood, uncertain and watchful. A minute passed and it did not so much as move; it was then that the hunter realised it was not even breathing, its sides still and motionless. He drew closer, rifle lowered, carefully lifting one wing from over its head to reveal glassy and lifeless eyes. The body was only scarcely warm; he pulled away, glad he had not had to kill the dragon, but saddened nonetheless. There were small bones scattered around from older kills, stripped bare and split open for their marrow.

    There was nothing more to be done; he respectfully closed the dragon’s eyes with one gloved hand, before leaving the quiet and cold cave behind; outside the wind had grown fierce, and the snowfall had intensified. In the face of a blizzard so far from the village, the hunter had no choice but to stay within the cave and wait for the storm to pass by, kindling a small fire just a small ways in from the entrance, the crackling of the fire masking a quiet rustling from the back of the cave.

 

The sun was rising when he returned home at last, the wind settled and the snow reduced once more to a light fall. The snow and ice shone brightly in reflected orange light, bathing the mountainside in a warm glow, leaving the village in a quiet and welcoming peace. In the distant fields, hands worked their early shifts, herding the sheep to fresher pastures freshly cleaned of snow, in the shadows of the pine forest.

    He cleared his door out of the snow banks once more and stepped inside, swiftly kindling a fresh fire to fill the air with warmth. He left it burning to step out the back, lowering a pair of rope-hung baskets to the ground in which he placed the last day’s catch, with yet more ice for the fish, before returning the lids and hoisting them back up once more; a simple knot tied around a wooden post kept them hanging high.

    The air was comfortably warm when he returned inside, quickly melting the snow and ice still clinging to his clothes as he exchanged them for more pleasant wear, and he gladly sunk into the chair by the window, in the full heat of the hearth and its bright luminescence. He took out a few chunks of wood and found his whittling knife once more, carving out the fish, then the hares, and the stoat, small and charming figures that he left briefly on the nearby table.

    Then he began carving out the dragon; he tried to imagine the creature as it had once been, before the harsh conditions had driven it to its sorry state. He wondered if perhaps it had been driven so far up by another village, which had failed to bring it down. It was not much comfort, to imagine elsewhere was another hunter too incompetent for his work, leaving the beasts he was meant to kill to suffer slowly to death.

    The hunter’s carving was interrupted abruptly by a loud crash from outside; he jolted upright from his chair, the dragon statuette left on the table, unfinished, with the rest. He kept his carving knife in hand as he went to inspect the noise, pausing only to slip into his thick snow-boots before emerging out to the back of his home. One basket lay skewed in the snow, lid only half-on, with its rope snapped. Embedded in the snow, it rocked side to side vaguely with motions of something inside, gorging itself happily on his latest catches.

    He drew the lid away, expecting a fox or a stoat, then froze. Slitted topaz eyes looked up at him, a hare held bloody and half-eaten in-between strong jaws. A hatchling dragon. At first he did not know what to do, simply standing there in indecision, before he realised the oddity of his position, knife held in one raised hand, motionless. He slotted it through his belt and hauled the basket, hatchling inside, into his house before anyone could see.

    It let him lift it out once they were inside without complaint, too busy with its haphazard meal, and he quickly placed the basket high up out of reach, hoping the one hare would satiate it. But even so he still did not know what to do with it. The knife was still there in his belt, but the mere thought of killing the small creature was monstrous to him. Yet it was a dragon, it would grow into nothing else, and the rest of the village would never agree; to them it would be small act to make, and nothing would be thought of it after it was done.

    The hatchling, finished with its meal, began an unimpeded exploration of his home, seemingly unperturbed by the change of its location. He found it in the living room, likely attracted by the heat of the fireplace, forepaws placed on the windowside table as it looked at the small wooden statuettes. As he approached, he saw it was nosing at the unfinished dragon, before looking up at him and mewling in a curious note.  He picked it up, kneeling down to present it to the hatchling, much to its fixation. He left it there on the floorboards, returning a moment later with the rest of the dragon carvings.

    Yet, when he placed them all out, the hatchling paid attention to only one other, no matter what he did to try and entice attention. The hunter frowned when he realised the hatchling was only interested in the carving he had made just over a week ago; the dragon he had brought down further up the mountain. He slumped against the chair behind him; what was he doing? There was no chance of the village accepting him keeping the creature. Even if he fed it, they would fear for the livestock. Even if he trained it, they would fear for their lives. Neither could he abandon his home simply to keep it alive.

    Could it even be trained, he wondered, but the proof was already in front of him; already it could take recognition from something as bare-bones as a statue. He looked at the knife, still in his belt, one last time. The very idea was still too much. It would always be too much. He sighed, and tentatively, slowly reached out one hand to stroke its muzzle. The hatchling did not so much as flinch from his fingers.

    He made his decision; it did not matter what the others thought. He would rather take the risk, and have to fix a mistake, than kill something so innocent. Carefully he took the unfinished statuette from the floor, and with the hatchling watching from his legs, took his knife and slowly whittled out the last of the details, before placing it onto the shelf with its companion. He never added another.