Character Q&A Phawkes (Patreon)

One reader asked Phawkes:

"Hey Phawkes, what was the most satisfying hunt you ever went on? Excluding Beddigan, of course.”

Answer:

Ah, the hunt!

What better way to spend one’s days than to taste the fear of hunted prey upon the wind? To measure the bounding strides of tracked game as it flees in terror, until, at last exhausted, it pauses to rest beside a pool, to drink one final sip as one’s finger caresses the trigger, ever so lightly…

Such things keep one up at night, not only the memories of hunts past, but the sweet anticipation of the hunts to come. No opiate-addled lotus eater ever dreamed such divine dreams as hunter on the eve of the hunt! There is nothing like it in the world… nothing!

So you ask which hunt burns strongest in my recollection? So many… so many…

And yet…

I recall it was the rainy season in ancient Charrth, city of drowned gods. Most of the hunstmen had retired to the embassy’s parlor, spending their days sipping brandy and gnawing at the stubs of the sweet-odored cigarellos favored by the locals. The stench of them turned my stomach, soured as it was already by the lack of willing guides and the cowardice of my countrymen.

No one would venture into the jungle while the rains fell. It seemed an unspoken law. Though I begged, threatened, and cajoled, none of the Charrtheans would dare the brooding jungle to show me the game paths. I offered outrageous bribes. Quite liberal was I with my father’s coin, yet, to no avail. None would agree to accompany me into the forest until the rains abated.

I threatened to go alone, though the superstitious folk of Charrth warned me repeatedly that I would never find my way out again, should I enter that dark and trackless wilderness while the sun hid its face. “What use is the sun, once the canopy covers the sky?” I argued, “Surely no rain could reach the forest floor through so thick a blanket of leaves!”

It was not the rain they feared, the Charr-folk insisted, but the thing that stalked the depths of that dripping wood.

If they thought to discourage me, they had gone about it in the worst possible way…

Eleven days later, I had found a guide whose vices I could exploit. By the dawn of day twelve, I had poured enough liquor down his throat that I was able to convince him that the incessant patter of rain on his hat was nothing more than the drumming of an invisible minstrel I had hired to accompany us into the forest.

He came to his senses on day fourteen, when the bottle ran dry, and ran screaming from the camp, in the general direction of the path back to the city. I told myself that I had no further need for him, for I had already picked up the track of the thing that hunted hunters.

What it was, I’ll never know. Demon, devil, or monster unknown to science… I followed its three-toed tracks down many a path, finding now and again the remains of a orang-outang or ele-phant which had suffered to offer itself up for the beast’s supper. In ever-widening circles it led me, until, at last, I realized that it could only be toying with me. My fever tonic spent, I fought the delirium spread by the ever-present biting flies, aware that the thing was only waiting for me to make a misstep… to lower my guard for a moment, and then I would become the prey.

I must thank the beast for that, for teaching me what it felt like to be stalked. Never before had I felt that little quiver of fear in my fever-wracked bowels. I decided that I did not care for the sensation at all, and I resolved to be rid of it with all haste.

I laid my trap atop some nameless cataract, deep in the jungle. There, amidst the roaring of waters that crashed into the green abyss below, I fell to my knees and wept in despair. I assuaged my pride with the knowledge that it was only a ruse, yet, I will admit that my crocodile’s tears sprang all too easily to my red and sleepless eyes.

It came to me then, certain that I had no strength left to resist. Green-eyed and slavering, the demon stepped from the shadow of the forest like a nightmare incarnate. I put two .303 calibre balls into its skull before it closed the gap between us. It paid them no heed at all, but came on, howling like a flayed rat. Those great, three-toed hindclaws churned the mud beneath it as it loped toward me, half-erect. Its foreclaws reached toward me, eager to end my life, its long jaws trailing spittle.

And then it reached the leaf-covered slope of unstable mud that lay between us.

I relish still the sound of its shriek as the slope gave way beneath those three-toed claws, and the abyss opened to receive it. The crack of bones on the rocks at the base of the waterfall proved most satisfying as well.

In my fevered state, it took me two more days to make the descent to the cataract’s base, and nearly a third to hack the head from the creature’s broken body. I lost track of the days that followed as I made my way back, in the direction of the city.

I awoke to sunlight, streaming in through the windows of the embassy’s infirmary. A month had passed, they told me, since my disappearance. I had stumbled, they said, delirious, from the jungle, alone and naked, clutching only a broken longknife in my right hand, and a single tuft of blood-red hair in my left.

I considered shooting the man who had brought me back, for, he claimed, he had discarded that tuft of hair, after he and three of his fellows had managed to pry it from my fist. Still, my compassionate nature proved the better of me, and I let him live, with my grudging thanks for bringing me back alive, from that, the finest of hunts.