The Lords Of The Hunt

Chapter 1-Living In Lohnocuse.


Tahmry laughed: squirrels make the best friends.

The young boy, about ten years old, picked up the rodent off the ground, and pet her behind the ear.

“Just because I can’t climb headfirst down walls doesn’t mean you should show off, Kiirin.” Tahmry said quietly. Kiirin the squirrel was black, then white, then black. She had neat, pink feet, and round black eyes surrounded by the black fur that covered her head and shoulders, halted abruptly, turned into white across her back and mid-section, then resumed it’s dark colouration on her hind quarters and tail.

Tahmry leaned against the post of the tall sign that read “Lohnocuse City Bazaar”. Tahmry spent a lot of his time on the packed-earth roads of the city, this one lined with market stalls and therefore labelled a bazaar. The city of Lohnocuse in the world of Gahrus wasn’t a big enough trade city to have a real bazaar yet. But with the overseeing of the kind, determined, and popular Baron Lenriion, it would be. There were whispers that it might already have been if the remarkably unpleasant advisor Isigyath hadn’t been sneaking money out of the city funds for himself, as everyone but Baron Lenriion seemed to know he did. But the city would eventually match the Baron’s vision. As things were, the dirt paths of the city were not yet paved, though, not all the houses inhabited, not yet all the inhabitants rich. But they had peace, and things were generally well: no raiders from the southern marshes, no beasts from the northern forests, and good trade from the port, very close in the west, and caravans from other cities, from down the wild roads that found Lohnocuse at the east gate.

Tahmry stepped out of the way of a young man pulling a cart of fruit and shouting. The man hadn’t noticed Tahmry. There was nothing particularly noticeable about him. And that was the way Tahmry liked it. It worked to his advantage, really. Tahmry was a thief.

The city bustled around him, not noticing the thin, agile-looking, mildly scrawny boy who was prowling around looking for something that seemed unwatched or unwanted. Tahmry’s bright, intelligent, brown eyes glinted mischievously, and the breeze of another passing cart ruffled the dark brown, curly, shaggy hair that dangled past his ears and sometimes in his eyes. His skin was toasted into a nice tan from working and playing in the streets of the city in the summer, a nice tan he would keep well into the snows of winter. Tahmry’s black pants were a bit threadbare and dust-covered, and his too-big, tawny, beige shirt besmudged. Some of the worse stains were covered by his dark brown leather vest, relatively new, recently acquired from the upstairs of a tailor’s shop. His hands were only partially covered by a pair of thin woolen gloves, which were absent from the knuckles up. He had a cloak about his shoulders, black and hooded, and actually quite nice, though he couldn’t remember where he got it. It had a pocket inside, useful for making things disappear when he wanted them too. He put his little pan-flute in there, and Kiirin was also quite comfortable in it, peering out, looking past Tahmry’s side as Tahmry walked down the street. His cloak had a red oriental Dragon modestly embroidered on it. His bare feet felt the dust veneer over the imperfections of the street.

Tahmry was getting hungry. It was practically dinner time. In a market stall nearby, fruit glinted temptingly. He slipped the string about his neck under his shirt, so the gold and silver coins, with the square holes he’d threaded the string through, wouldn’t jingle when he got close.

He continued the look of wandering. Looking at everything, looking at nothing, stomach rumbling, hand absently exploring the quality of the fruit. He found an apple, disinterestedly tossing it into the air. It quickly tumbled, fell, back into Tahmry’s hand and disappeared into the folds of his cloak almost as quickly.

“Hey, kid!!”

Not quickly enough.

Tahmry turned, looking the owner of the market stall square in the face, tensed and ready to run. The market stall’s owner was a Fiielrin, cat-like, walking on two legs. He had sand-yellow fur, shot through with white and black stripes. He shifted his weight irately from one curved and angled leg to the other, the tip of his tail twitching angrily. He was feline for the most part, with fur, and a long, lean frame...long bodied, long legged, long armed-...with claw tipped fingers, and a cat-like shape to his head and face. Fiielrin also had the plumes of a tropical bird arrayed in a ruff about their neck and extending further than their shoulders. This one’s feathers were raised bristling, an angry white ring splashed with bright red and blue.

“I saw that! If you can’t pay for it, you’ll have to give it back!”

This sounded reasonable enough, but Tahmry knew from long experience that the Fiielrin didn’t mention the part where he’d give Tahmry in to the first passing guard. Getting caught by the proprietors was one thing. Getting caught by the guards was rather more serious.

With a hand like a striking cobra, Tahmry grabbed several more pieces of fruit, shoved them in his cloak pocket, and ran for it.

The Fiielrin snarled, tiger-like, and gave chase, descending to four legs. His plain burlap garments rasped as he ran. Back coiled up--hind legs leap, fore legs forwards--hit the ground--coil again in a blinding instant....A tiger’s run.

Tahmry glanced briefly over his shoulder, seeing the Fiielrin tearing down the street behind him. It would not be an easy escape: one of the things Fiielrin did best was run. But Tahmry could run too. Kiirin climbed out of his pocket and up Tahmry’s cloak, perching on his shoulder. She squeaked, and Tahmry understood.


He darted a sharp curve into an alley, the last moment before he passed it. The Fiielrin skidded, turning, kicking up dust. He did not fall, his tail was too good a balance. Above the street in the alley were multi-coloured linens, stretched by ropes and poles into porch roofs. Tahmry leaped, grabbing the edge of one of these and flipped up, almost like a cat himself.

Or a squirrel.

The Fiielrin was panting. Cat-man or not, he wasn’t like the wild tribes of his people in the south and didn’t do a lot of running and hunting and catching: he lived in a city, worked for gold and silver.

The Fiielrin had enough left in him to jump onto the linen roof. Tahmry sunk into dints in the fabric caused by his weight, more jumping along it then running. Kiirin left Tahmry’s shoulder, jumping along the bulges easily, not heavy enough to bow it in. The Fiielrin’s claws stuck in the cloth: they were not retractable.

At the end of six feet, Tahmry came to what he knew he’d see: a window, just above the tent-like roof. He grabbed the sill and pulled up, pulled his feet onto it too, so he crouched like a monkey, then stretched, reaching quickly up and backwards, grabbing this time on to the roof, and swinging himself up, and Kiirin leapt and disappeared into Tahmry’s cloak pocket.

A moment’s pause. Nothing to hear. Tahmry turned around, and ventured a glance down over the rail, from his perch on the flat expanse of brownish roof. He was just in time to see the market stall owner stalking off, huffing rather heavily, on his two feet.

Tahmry chuckled to himself, and looked into this cloak pocket for Kiirin. Kiirin was already refreshing herself, digging into an apple. Tahmry took her out of his pocket, and put her on his shoulder. He took the apple off her, removed his knife from the arm-sheath inside his left sleeve. Tahmry cut away around the section of the fruit that Kiirin had been eating, handed the piece back to her, and started consuming the rest of it himself.

The summer sun was casting long evening shadows across the city. Tahmry paused, seemed to think for a moment, then looked at Kiirin.

“Let’s get going. The Clever Mice Club will be waiting for me.” he said with his mouth full, then hopped down onto the linen roof, then back to the ground. He smiled. This was one of the parts of the day he looked forward to the most.

Down to the end of the alley. Turn back out onto the street. Down three houses. Into the alley on the other side of the street--don’t get hit by the man with the cart!--out onto another street. The city was all those dirt-packed roads lined with a soft green verge, and the narrow little alleys where the colourful linen roofs covered the porches of the paupers. The buildings were mud and straw, so strong they were more expensive to demolish than to build. Inside the flat roofs (Often adorned with a picnic table atop them) were the lodge pole logs that held the roof up, laying horizontally across the tops of the walls. About two feet of the logs on the front and back walls of each building were visible, a ridge of wooden stumps jutting out near the tops of buildings. Two hills in the southeast and northwest of the city held the mansions of the nobles and the upscale shops, respectively. In the valley where the hills converged, it was scarcely more than a dip, but walking along in the city, one could sense the rolling sensation of the streets.

In a dead-end alley in the dip of town, Tahmry arrived to the meeting of The Clever Mice Club. He finished off his apple as he entered the alley, and gave the slender core to Kiirin. Around about ten other children of various races were already waiting, looking at Tahmry and smiling as he arrived. There was a Fiielrin there, a little girl cat with glinting teeth poking out of a clever little grin, and a ruff of pale blue feathers. There were two Wolfens, a boy and girl, brother and sister in crime and by blood, both young enough to have their cub-fur, the girl reddish, the boy almost black. They sat on one of the stacked crates, long legs stretched out in front of them, their arms folded behind their heads. Their twin tails, two each, totalling four between them, swept lazily, one each of a reptilian and canine tail. The coiling ram’s horns that rooted in the sides of their heads, the horns that would one day spiral out into a noble emblem, were little more than stubs. There, were of coarse, a collection of human boys of various ages and appearances, and a few human girls. The Clever Mice Club.

Tahmry couldn’t remember how they’d come up with the name, but it’d seemed a very good name at the time. It had a certain ring to it that they all liked, and whatever it had originally been intended to connote, it was there to stay.

“Kind of you to show up, Tahmry!” the black Wolfen yipped.

“Just thought I’d do you all the favour, Ruhadon.” Tahmry said with a grin.

Ruhadon was the brother in the set of Wolfen twins. He was the best acrobat of the group, even better than Tahmry, which was quite something by it’s self, and better than the Fiielrin even, which was truly impressive. As a result of his talent for finding the unseen, unlooked for, unguarded, and almost unaccessible path, he was the second-story-man, getting into the upstairs bedrooms of rich folk or merchants while the owners were eating, fill his pockets with whatever fit in them, and scramming, usually with the targets never noticing what was taken, and no one the wiser. Except The Clever Mice Club.

Tahmry sat down on a steadily decomposing bale of hay, and the Fiielrin girl looked at him suspiciously. Kiirin looked up briefly from her apple core and then went back to her dinner.

“Well?” the cat-girl asked, “Haven’t you gotten anything today?”

Tahmry nodded, and emptied the trinkets from his pockets as everyone else started to do the same. Then, almost in unison, every member of The Clever Mice Club, began to separate their daily prizes into two piles: one that they needed and one of the items they’d trade for things they needed. Kiirin finished her apple core and jumped down off Tahmry’s shoulder, and started tinkering with Tahmry’s things. Tahmry picked her up and put her back on his shoulder.

Tahmry had, all things considered, had a good day. In the pile of things that he intended to keep for himself was the fruit he’d taken from the market stall owner, a small packet of candies, a special sort of stone for sharpening his knife, a spool of thread and a needle, and a few handfuls of coins. In his for-trade pile were several little trinkets of no real use, but some value. Monty would go for these, Tahmry thought, the human boy in faded overalls had a knack for selling things. He also had more needles and thread-he’d only need one for himself-and a few pieces of jewellery. This last item was sure to interest Kahtcha, the Fiielrin girl. She was quick, a born pickpocket, one of the best Tahmry knew. Though a thief, Kahtcha had somehow developed a taste for the finer things: she adored anything shiny and beautiful, even cheap costume jewellery.

Tahmry lifted his head from his prizes, and looked around at everyone else. They weren’t quite finished yet, so he put his items to keep back in his pockets, and took off his coin-necklace, untied the ends, and started threading the coins in his to-keep pile on to the string, through the square holes in the centre. The coins jingled as Kiirin batted joyously at the string.

The others were finished their sorting very soon afterwards. Tahmry slipped his string of coins back around his neck, and stood up, looking at everyone else’s stolen merchandise, just they way others strayed over to look at his.

The overalls-boy, Monty, grinned. “Tahmry! Hey! Tahmry! This stuff your’s?” Tahmry grinned. He’d been right: he did have the sort of things Monty was always after.

“Yeah, that’s mine. At least for the moment.” Tahmry walked over to Monty. The boy in the overalls was shorter than Tahmry, and had sand-blond hair. “What do you want to give me for it?”

“What do you need?”

Tahmry considered this question for a moment. Food, was the answer that came readily to mind: a few pieces of fruit weren’t going to cut it for his evening meal. All things considered, meat of some kind would be what he needed.

“What I need would be a bite to eat. Some meat. Any kind.”

Monty took a good, long look at what Tahmry was offering and decided he had enough food that he could spare some. He went over to his own pile and gave Tahmry a fair number of strips of jerky, and a couple strips of hard, dry bacon that looked absolutely mouth-watering to hungry Tahmry. Tahmry gladly handed over the trinkets to Monty, who stowed them in the front pocket of his overalls.

Tahmry had pretty much gotten what he wanted. He had enough gold and silver to get by, enough food to feed himself and Kiirin that night, a needle and some thread to repair what needed repairing, and some other useful items already laid away at his “house”. He stood by his pile of things that were up for trade, and waited to finish his business.

His hunch about Kahtcha was right. It only took a few moments for her to be bounding over on four legs like a kitten, purring about the jewellery he’d stolen.

“Tahmry! It’s so pretty! It’s like you picked it up just for me!” She stopped in front of the pile and crouched on her hind legs, and started to paw at the necklace and two bracelets. She picked them up and handled them, purring and making delighted sounds in her throat. One might have thought she was going to try to steal from another thief, but that was one of the pacts of The Clever Mice Club: never steal from another member, though everyone else is a mark. During trading times like this, even the most sticky-fingered thieves put their skills aside. Kahtcha looked up at Tahmry with shining eyes, still kneeling in the dust.

“What do you want for them, Tahmry? I’ll give you anything I’ve gotten today!”

Tahmry had already acquired what he needed. He knew Kahtcha was practically in love with the necklace and bracelets, however, so he shrugged and told her to show him whatever she thought would be a fair trade. A thinking expression crossed her face, then her feline features lit up with inspiration. She bounded back to her pile--again, four-footed--and picked up something in her hands, then returned quickly to Tahmry.

“I know you’ll find this a fair trade! And I think you’ll like it very much! It’s very useful!”

The cat-girl pushed an oddly shaped bundle into Tahmry’s hands, and looked at him hopefully, expecting him to okay the trade. He unfolded what she’d given him, and examined it. It was an irregular-shaped chunk of leather, well tanned. It was dyed a discreet, dull red, very close to the colour of the Dragon on Tahmry’s cloak. It was a fine piece of material, and Tahmry saw the many uses it could have, especially with the needle and thread he’d acquired that day. The trade, Tahmry decided, was quite acceptable.

“I do find this a fair trade, Kahtcha. Enjoy your trinkets.”

Kahtcha grinned and purred in delight, taking the necklace and bracelets eagerly. She put them on immediately. The false jade necklace she slipped loosely around her neck. The bracelet of woven bamboo that was really wicker bleached in the sun then coloured light green was slid on her left wrist. The gold bracelet, shaped like a snake, fit like a charm on her right wrist, and looked quite splendid there, despite the fact it was fool’s gold.

Tahmry pocketed the large leather scrap and picked up the last remains of his goods: the needles and thread. Practical stuff as it was, but who here would be interested? He thought to himself. Ah! Riiaga, Ruhadon’s sister. An excellent and merciless thief of small livestock (It’s not uncommon to find a chicken coop that contained nothing but feathers when she and her dagger were done in one. The farmers’ bane. Never caught yet, though.), but Riiaga had a very feminine personality, with all the associated hobbies. Sewing included.

The red-furred Wolfen’s bright green eyes glowed up at Tahmry as he approached her. She had been kneeling, gathering the items that she wanted to keep into what looked like a well-worn purse.
“Hello, Tahmry.” Riiaga said sweetly. “Do you have something to offer me?”

“I think I do. Here, give them a look over.”

Tahmry handed her the needles and thread, and she smiled. Riiaga began saying things Tahmry didn’t understand about the quality of the thread and the size of the needles and the shape of their eyes. Tahmry didn’t have the foggiest notion what she was talking about, but she sounded excited.

“I think I do like these, Tahmry! Now...what to give to you? -ah!” She handed him some unusually filleted pieces of chicken. She’d apparently cooked them herself, seeing as they were still warm. “Everyone can do with a little more in their tummies, right Tahmry?”

“Uh-right!” he said. Usually, one was supposed to ask if the offer was fair before ending the trade, but Tahmry didn’t make a deal out of it, as he did in fact find the trade fair. He walked over to a pile of trash in the alley and extracted an old, tattered newspaper that didn’t look too unclean. He wrapped the chicken in it, and places the bundle in his cloak pocket. By the weight of that pocket, he was starting to figure exactly what he wanted to make out of the sheet of leather Kahtcha had given him.

The trading had finished, but it was not yet dark. The Clever Mice Club sat together in the alley, laughing at each others jokes--and sometimes their own. They swapped stories about their days and their exploits. Apparently Kahtcha had taken quite a long fall in her adventure to get that piece of leather she had traded to Tahmry for the fake jewellery: a tailor’s workshop window, five floors up in the air. She’d been caught by the proprietor, who had cut off her only way of escape. So, she jumped out his window. Tahmry told his story, the one where the Fiielrin had caught him stealing fruit. The talk only trailed off and stopped when the stars were crisp in the sky.

Tahmry left by the alley that had led him down to the meeting. He turned at the corner of the narrow side-street and followed it out to the wide main road that ran parallel to The Canal. It was called The Canal locally, but it was actually a part of the mighty River Veneturahn that spanned the entire main continent of Gahrus. All of Lohnocuse (and many other cities built up along its banks) got their water from the River Veneturahn. It came to wells and holding tanks and water pumps and monumental ornamental fountains by a series of waterworks. Aqueducts were visible no matter where in the city you went. They were bridges water walked on, that ran narrow overhead where tall, towering arcs curving held the tracks up. The pillars of the arcs in the aqueducts stood to either side of the streets, often adorned with climbing ivy reaching towards the sun at the moisture it sensed high above.

Tahmry’s “house” wasn’t much of one. He lived alone (not counting Kiirin) and not in a real house. Like has been said, not all the houses in Lohnocuse were inhabited yet. On the top of one of the empty houses was another structure. It was like a large shed, built of the same material as the house , and situated on the roof of the main building. It was large enough for Tahmry’s purposes. There was the hammock he slept in, the old, decrepit chest of drawers where he kept all his little trinkets. He had some mildly moth-eaten curtains and carpets in there, and some quietly dusty old pillows. There was a wide ledge, comfortable to sit on, in front of a wide window. The window faced northeast, and out of it could be seen a low-flying bird’s eye view of the city, the rushing foam of the canal, and the heavy steel girding of the east gate into the city. From the window, you could see the rolling hills the city was built on. You could see the people in the street from up there, but they couldn’t see you, like watching a hive of ants. Tahmry like to sit there in the evening when the people of Lohnocuse were walking through the streets, interacting with each other, going home for dinner. He liked to watch them and try to guess about them: the grey Fiielrin with the violet feathers, what do you suppose his life is like? What might it be like to be him? What’s he himself like? Tahmry loved to guess. From this window, you could see the fortress castle of the Baron, towering over the other buildings in the city like a protective father among his many children. The window was even high enough to see the closest edges of the forest in the east and the marshes to the south, only a few metres from encroaching on the city. It was like they were reminding anyone who could see that the world was much larger than Lohnocuse would ever be, and dangerous, and the city was not invulnerable.

The needle pricked Tahmry’s fingers repeatedly as he worked clumsily on the red leather. He’d done a solid job cutting the red leather with his knife into pieces that met his needs, but the sewing bit was escaping him. Making his piece of red leather into a bag or satchel of sorts would be a job that would take him a while. He sat in front of the wide window where the streaks of the sunset were filtering through, adding themselves to the light of the candle-lamp he’d lit to give himself light to work by.

If Tahmry had bothered to turn around and survey the view, he’d have been witness to the scene at the east gate.


Some men shoved the gate open, straining against it’s wrought-metal weight. They squeezed into the city. There were three of them. Two of them were carrying the third, who didn’t seem to be conscious. All three had been badly wounded by something: blood ran from gashes under the tattered remnants of their uniforms and left red, clotting footprints on the ground where they stepped. All three were strong men, muscular, young. By their uniforms, they were soldiers.

“...strangest thing I’ve ever seen. Horrible.” The first said.

“I know, I know. What were they?” This was the second.

“I wish I knew.”

“They just came from nowhere, all of them together...”

“Their eyes, their teeth...”

“Did you hear baying? Did they bay like hunting hounds?”

“I thought I was imagining it...that I felt so much like a hunted hare that my mind thought it heard the hounds...”

“And the cries of the dogs’ masters.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see the masters?”

“No. Did you?”

The second shook his head.

“I think if we had, we might not have gotten away. If those were the hounds, the hunters may well have paralysed us.”

“May well. May well...”

“Did you see if anyone else escaped? Any of the other guards or anyone we were guarding?”

“No. It’s like the whole caravan was swallowed up by those hunters and hounds...if you can really call them hounds. They’re no dog I’ve ever seen.”

The first and second soldiers hefted the third to the ground as gently as they could. The first knelt beside him, tapping his face.

“Wake up. Wake up. You can’t go to sleep, we have to find you a doctor. You can make it just a little further...”

The second touched the third’s face.

“No, he can’t. He didn’t even make it this far. He’s dead.”

The second closed the third’s eyes.

The two live men walked away into the night of the city, leaving two sets of bloody footprints.


The two men had scarcely left, the body of the dead man not even cold when a dark figure approached the corpse. The being faced no one, even if there had been anyone there to face. A deep, dark hood hid any features he might have. The cloak was long and black and pattern-less, fully enfolding the wearer in it’s darkness more complete than night. The cloak obliterated the body underneath and left no form discernable. From the gathered dark of the cloak’s folds, a shadow hand reached out, clutching a note produced from somewhere beneath the garment, and a six-inch thin metal spike. The shadow crouched and ran the note through with the spike. Then the shadow secured the note to the dead mans chest, spearing the spike through his chest.

Silent as the grave, silent as a shade, silent as he’d come, The Shadow Man faded into the night.