Chapter 2

‘Tale of An Unfortunate Adventurer’

Far inland, where the Vulsan Straits survived only in the stories of merchants, wandering priests, and caravan guards who claimed to have seen ships larger than villages, Aura learned that childhood boasts possessed an irritating talent for outliving the cubs who made them. She had once loved every account of forgotten kingdoms, ruined temples, hidden treasure, sleeping dragons, witches among standing stones, and wandering companies whose members spent their days defeating monsters and their evenings returning to taverns beneath banners heavy with glory. The old travelers who visited her village spoke most convincingly after supper, when the fire was bright, the wind was safely outside, and every hardship had already become an amusing part of the tale.

Aura listened from beside the hearth with her spotted tail wound around her feet and declared each spring that she would someday become the greatest adventurer ever to cross the northern kingdoms.

Her brothers refused to be surpassed by their younger sister and answered with promises of their own, naming the monsters they would kill, the kings they would rescue, and the wagonloads of silver they intended to drag home once the world had been given an opportunity to recognize them. Their parents tolerated these proclamations for years, assuming that time would carry them away with the other harmless vanities of cubhood. Time instead hardened them into family history.

When Aura finally became old enough to understand that dry employment, regular meals, and a roof unlikely to conceal ghosts possessed virtues poorly represented in heroic song, her mother recalled every youthful declaration with unforgiving accuracy. There existed, she observed, only one reliable method for determining whether brave words concealed brave hearts, and all three of her offspring had now reached an age at which the question could be answered. Their father agreed. If his children intended to spend another winter describing the legendary careers awaiting them, they could begin those careers somewhere beyond his table, where firewood did not gather itself and admiration was less expensive than food.

Aura attempted to explain that her ambitions had evolved, that the greatness of ancient heroes appeared perfectly secure without her assistance, and that respectable work within walking distance of home might better suit the wisdom she had recently acquired. Her brothers greeted this retreat with delight. They repeated her oldest boasts, improved the embarrassing portions through invention, and asked whether the future savior of kingdoms had become frightened of sleeping without her mother’s roof overhead. Pride completed what courage never would. Before Aura understood how thoroughly she had been cornered, packs were assembled, farewells exchanged, and the three siblings were walking north in search of a mercenary company careless enough to accept recruits with no experience beyond stories and sibling rivalry.

They found one sooner than Aura had hoped. The veterans looked over the three young snow leopards, asked whether they could carry equipment, endure orders, and keep their heads when someone nearby began losing his, then accepted their signatures before honest reflection could intervene. Aura placed her name beneath those of her brothers and watched the ink dry with the solemn dread of someone witnessing a door close from the wrong side. The company’s reputation promised honest contracts, hard discipline, and enough danger to prevent foolish creatures from remaining foolish for very long. Her brothers heard only the promise of contracts and danger. Aura heard the discipline.

The mercenaries began their education by loading them with more equipment than any childhood saga had mentioned. Packs pulled at their shoulders, bedrolls knocked against their thighs, cooking gear rattled behind them, and weapons that had appeared elegant upon village walls became inconvenient lengths of metal determined to bruise every joint within reach. The veterans explained in language considerably less polished than that of travelling storytellers that glory rarely arrived before firewood, latrine trenches, watch duty, blistered paws, and officers who regarded optimism as an illness best corrected through labor. Aura’s brothers received this instruction as a temporary indignity imposed before their natural talent could be discovered. Aura accepted it as evidence that every decision bringing her north had been a mistake.

Professional adventure resembled none of the tales recited beside the winter hearth. Most days consisted of marching beneath cold skies while carrying sufficient weight to drive an incautious recruit ankle-deep into the road, interrupted by drills, inspections, shouted corrections, and the endless maintenance of equipment that seemed to decay faster when its owner was tired. Meals arrived when circumstances allowed rather than when hunger demanded them, which meant cold stew swallowed while standing, smoked meat tasting of yesterday’s fire, and bread hard enough to survive being issued as defensive architecture. Sleep depended upon weather, watch rotations, and whether the ground beneath a blanket had retained enough water to qualify as a shallow pond. Rain found seams no tailor knew existed, frost formed inside boots, and smoke followed anyone seeking warmth. The songs had mentioned none of these things, perhaps because no singer had discovered a rhyme for waking before dawn to scrape frozen mud from someone else’s cooking pot.

Aura learned quickly because invisibility appeared to be the only available form of safety. She walked near the edge of the column where the ground had been churned least deeply, kept her equipment arranged exactly as the quartermaster demanded, gathered wood without being reminded, and answered instructions with enough clarity to avoid receiving them twice. She discovered which veterans corrected mistakes and which merely searched for excuses to shout, which officers noticed initiative and which interpreted it as insubordination, and where to stand during camp construction so that competent work would be seen without attracting further responsibility. She spoke only when speech served some purpose and complained only inside the privacy of her own thoughts. Before long, several veterans had ceased remembering that she was new. Aura regarded this as the first genuine achievement of her adventuring career.

Her brothers chose the opposite method. Each remained convinced that one spectacular demonstration would reveal the warrior concealed beneath his inexperience, and neither allowed previous humiliation to interfere with the next attempt. They volunteered first during sparring, challenged mercenaries twice their weight, ignored warnings delivered by creatures who had campaigned longer than either brother had been alive, and treated every bruise as evidence that fate feared their potential. One returned from training with purple ribs after attempting to wrestle a boar whose patience had survived several wars but not the snow leopard’s boasting. The other acquired a broken nose during sword drill, had it reset by the company physician, and broke it again before the swelling from the first injury had subsided.

Their equipment disappeared, their straps loosened, their practice blades slipped from their paws, and their evening explanations grew more elaborate as their injuries became less dignified.

The company found them invaluable. Wagers circulated after supper concerning which brother would reach the physician first, what portion of his face would require attention, and whether either might survive until the next village without provoking someone whose tolerance had already been tested by harder creatures.

The physician stopped asking what had happened and began preparing bandages whenever one of them approached. Aura washed blood from their fur, wrapped bruised joints, retrieved possessions they had left beside roads, and listened while each explained why the day’s failure had resulted from weather, equipment, treachery, poor instruction, or the unreasonable competence of his opponent. Neither considered silence among the possible remedies.

Despite everything, they remained her brothers.

Aura remembered sharing blankets through lean winters, stealing sweetcakes from their mother’s kitchen, and listening beside them while old travelers transformed hardship into glory. She pitied their injuries even when those injuries had been earned through perfect stupidity, and she protected them from ridicule whenever protection did not require lying beyond her ability.

Yet with each passing day she understood more clearly that affection could not supply judgment to creatures determined to avoid acquiring it themselves. They had entered mercenary life expecting the world to confirm their importance.

The world answered with mud, labor, and repeated blows to the face.

By the end of the first week, adventure had surrendered nearly every secret the childhood stories concealed. Aura’s shoulders ached beneath her pack, the pads of her feet burned inside damp wraps, and sleep arrived only after cold had exhausted its effort to keep her awake. No treasure had appeared, no forgotten monarch had offered gratitude, and the only ruins she encountered were abandoned sheds used to shelter animals. The nearest thing to a monster was a quartermaster capable of discovering missing equipment from half a field away. Even so, Aura continued marching.

Pride had carried her into the company, caution kept her from attracting its worst attention, and stubbornness placed one foot ahead of the other whenever courage failed to report for duty. Watching her brothers limp toward another evening fire beneath fresh bandages, she began to suspect that the rarest talent among celebrated adventurers had never been the strength required to kill monsters.

It was the judgment required to avoid dying for no reason before reaching one.