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He needed to talk to Charles. Preferably now, but camp is miles away, so he settles for pushing his spurs just a little more into Carrion's flank. She responds with a longer stride and a harsh whicker, gnawing on her bit. Arthur reaches down and pats her neck in apology. There's a crunch, a pathetic chirrup, and a heave from his horse to tell him that he just ran over a rabbit, a squirrel, hell maybe even a raccoon, but he doesn't spare the time to check. He has to go, and he has to go now. He needed to talk to Charles.
He had been out hunting; tracking deer through Little Creek all the way to Black Bone Forest. He had his bow slung across his back, notching an elk bone arrow that Charles had carved for him. Duck and goose feathers had been trimmed as fletching, tied together with twine. Its Ivory body blends with its bone head. It's stunning, truly. Stunning in a way that only Charles could have done. All things good and whole are made from Charles’ hands; or maybe they aren't, but Arthur sure thinks so. He had pulled back the string, letting his arm burn with tension, and set his sights on a buck further downstream. He looked at its exposed neck, bent down to take a drink, and made note of its large antlers; how they splay above its skull. Fourteen points, he counts. The antlers split into fourteen different points from base to tip, and he lets go. The arrow shot through the open air. Hot gore arched its way through the plain, raining down on the hummingbird sage below.
The buck's head swung with the force of the arrow driving deeper into its head. It stumbled, legs folding under dead weight, and Arthur worked his arm through the bow and pulled it onto his back, string taught against his chest. He made his way over to the animal, knife drawn and recently sharpened. He drove the tip of the blade just between its front legs and pulled downward, gashing the deer from front to back. With careful hands he pulled the skin off its legs and rips, yanking to get the rest out from under it. With the pelt tucked under one arm, he drove the knife again into its skull, carving out its horns. Fourteen points. To waste is to insult, Charles told him once out in the plains, hunting bison. You honor the animal by using it in its entirety. He whistled, and in the distance he could hear Carrion trot over from where she was grazing, and when she was close enough, he draped the pelt over her flank and placed the antlers in his saddle bag.
He turned back to grab the corpse to cook, to use what he needed and donate the rest to the camp, but Carrion made a panicked bray and bolted, straight to the other side of the stream and the edge of the opposing wood.
On high alert, Arthur drew from his offhand holster. His volcanic pistol weighed in his hands, a bullet in each chamber. A cougar, he thought, or a bear. He stepped back, suddenly feeling very vulnerable in the open valley. If it were a bear, it would be making a hell of a lot of noise right now. But cougars don't come up this far. He took another step back, and his boot squished against the grass. He looked down, pressed his boot further into the ground, and watched as red bubbled up from the soil.
He blinked once, twice, thrice before he realized he was standing right where he had shot the buck down. He looked down, fully expecting to have stepped on it by now. He's standing in its blood, arching well over three feet in a single direction, but where was - where was the - where . . .
He looked up, slowly. There, off a ways to the right, just short of the stream, was the buck. It bled, oozed, from exposed muscles. Its eyes, with no eyelids to hold them in place, seemed to wobble in their sockets. There it stood, skinless, bleeding, horrific, and atop it's head splayed fourteen points. Arthur stood, frozen; his grip on his gun almost painful in the way his knuckles creaked. The buck didn’t move either. Instead it looked him in the eyes, and it was then that Arthur realized that they were front facing - like some sort of predator. It stood there, disgusting and putrid and every way wrong, and it grinned at him with human teeth.
He needed to talk to Charles.