On the Hunt
Jake closed his left eye as he drew his bow. The buck they had been tracking for several hours was drinking from a small pond, and he was waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He judged the four-pointer to be six or seven years old, quite an achievement for any large animal living this close to Little Rock Ridge.
Any moment now, the buck would raise its head and two arrows would fly out of the trees, instantly ending the beast’s life. Jake’s best friend and favourite hunting partner, Ellie, was a remarkable shot for someone who had only learned to hunt three years ago, and they had hunted together so often they had their timing down to a science.
Jake held his breath and pulled back on his bowstring, an almost imperceptible twitch of the animal’s back leg tipping him off that the buck was about to raise its head. Just as his bowstring touched his chin, a loud beeping started several feet behind him, where he had recently placed his hunting bag.
The buck bolted for the trees. Jake now understood why it had only taken them a few hours to track it down; a partially lame back leg slowed the animal’s escape considerably. Under usual circumstances, they would easily have felled the beast before it found the safety of the treeline, but if the satellite phone rings during a hunt, it’s more important than dinner.
Jake turned around, hooked his bag with the end of his bow, and retrieved the phone.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Raiders,” came the response.
“How many?”
“Forty or so.”
“Only forty? That’s odd. What kind of weaponry?”
“Hunting rifles, a few autos, and a whole lot of rope.”
“How long until they’re at Base Point?”
“Two and a half, maybe three hours.”
“We’re on our way back.”
“How far out are you?”
“About two and a half, maybe three hours at a jog.”
“Hurry then.”
“We will. Danny, before you go, something about this doesn’t add up. Keep an eye out for a secondary force approaching from a different angle. Keep me updated.”
Jake ended the call and turned to look at Ellie. They both instantly took off north, heading for home. They had been running for a few minutes when Jake stopped, confusing Ellie.
“Tired already?” she said with a laugh.
“No. I’m just trying to make a decision,” he replied.
“Well, make it. No time to waste, lives at stake.”
“That’s why it’s important I make the right choice. Just give me a second.”
Jake stood with his eyes closed, muttering to himself, tilting his head from side to side and raising an eyebrow occasionally. Ellie knew what Jake was doing but did not understand why he would be doing it now. They should be running.
“Why are you visualising a climb?” she asked.
“Trying to figure out if you can free climb it,” he said, pointing at her.
“And why would you need to know that?”
“Because I’m convinced that, in about thirty minutes, the sat phone will ring. Scouts will have spotted another, much larger raiding force approaching on foot. I think the smaller force is headed for the Horn,” Jake explained.
“You think the rope is for rappelling down to the bridge network?” asked Ellie.
“Exactly. If I’m right and we head straight for Base Point, by the time we get the call it’ll be too late to reach the Horn first. If we start now, we—or at least I—can climb the Crack and beat them there.”
“I guess if you are wrong, the worst that happens is we’re a little late to the party,” joked Ellie.
Jake looked at her with a serious expression.
“The worst that happens is that you fall and die,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I was trying not to think about that,” said Ellie, rolling her eyes.
“It’s all I can think about,” retorted Jake.
Ellie stood in silence for a moment.
“I’ve free climbed Home Route a bunch of times. It’s only half the height of the Crack, but it’s much harder climbing. I reckon I can do it,” she said with a grimace.
Without another word, they took off once more through the trees.
Another hour passed before the phone rang once more. Jake had been right. A force roughly three times the size of the first was headed for Base Point on foot.
By the time Jake and Ellie reached the bottom of the Crack, they were already exhausted, hungry, and thirsty. Jake leant against the rock face as he stripped down.
“Why, hello there,” said Ellie in a suggestive voice as he removed his shirt.
“Shut up and strip. You lead. That way there’s a tiny chance I might be able to save you if you fall,” he said.
“If I fall, I’m making sure you fall with me. Don’t worry,” she replied in kind before stripping down to her underwear.
They quickly bundled their hunting clothes and bags together, then hid them within a craggy outcrop, grabbed their weapons, slung on their quivers, tightened the straps, and Ellie began to climb.
As the name suggests, the Crack is a large fissure in the rock, splitting the almost vertical slab in two. As climbs go, it’s not that challenging, but climbing without a rope is always dangerous. You must remain focused at all times, for a single slip can mean your death.
Most climbers would take several hours to summit the nearly five-hundred-metre Crack, even with a rope and protection to rely on. Jake and Ellie had to make the climb in an hour with nothing but their hands and feet holding them aloft. Much like her skill with a bow, Ellie was a good climber for someone with only a few years of experience. She was fearless—which is half the battle won when free soloing—and focused. She had completed her first free solo just six months after meeting Jake, but this was a new level of challenge.
Jake had been climbing these hills since before he could remember. Anyone born at Little Rock Ridge had to be able to climb or find themselves forever stuck up the side of a cliff. He was free soloing Home Route by the time he was five years old and had completed this particular climb over fifty times without falling. Never before had successfully summiting the Crack been so important.
The moment the initial raiding force had been spotted, preparations for an attack had begun. Little Rock Ridge was named by Jake’s great-grandfather, Bruce Barrow, whose future wife had laughed when he told her how he planned to build a house upon the small ridge some three hundred metres above the ground. Three generations later, five houses stood upon the ridge, housing twenty-three people.
Little Rock Ridge took its name from something Bruce said to his wife the first time she visited the newly built house. In response to her question, “But how will I get up and down?“, he said, “It’s just a little rock.”
The ridge itself was roughly two hundred metres wide and jutted out some fifty metres from the sheer rock face above, where two different rock strata had fractured apart as the giant pillar of rock known as Thor’s Anvil had been uplifted many millions of years ago.
Little Rock Ridge was about as safe a place as any place could be. Hundreds of metres above Little Rock Ridge, at the top of the sheer cliff, sheep, pigs, and cattle grazed upon the lush vegetation of the plateau, providing dairy products, meat, and materials for trade and consumption by the residents below.
The residents of Little Rock Ridge had spent years rigging up a series of rope bridges that allowed them to walk up to the plateau. The bridges connecting directly to the plateau and Little Rock Ridge could be instantly disconnected by the pull of a single rope, preventing any successful invaders from reaching the plateau. This security measure would have been taken within minutes of the first raiders being spotted.
Reconnecting the bridges was no easy task and required a two-hour climb that could be deadly even for the most experienced climbers. Jake and his younger brother, Danny, were the only people considered qualified to make the climb, and neither was available to reconnect the bridges in time to stop the raiders reaching the Horn.
The Horn is the highest part of Thor’s Anvil reachable without climbing. From there, Jake reasoned, the raiders would rappel down to the bridge network. Once on the bridges, they would head towards the summit of Thor’s Anvil, where the bridges hung directly above Little Rock Ridge, and rain bullets down upon the heads of the residents, at which point it would be all but impossible to stop them rappelling straight down to the ridge and taking everything of value.
Jake and Ellie were some fifty metres from summiting the Crack and making good time when they heard a muffled beeping from below. Ellie reached as far into the crack as she could, balled her fist, and wedged her arm tight. Then she kicked her right leg up six inches, placed the sole of her foot flat against the inside of the crack, and relaxed the rest of her body. Jake was some twenty metres below, dangling by one hand from a slight overhang as he also paused for a moment.
“Now you’re just showing off,” said Ellie as she looked down at him.
“While I’m waiting for you, I thought I’d get a few chin-ups in,” he replied, then proceeded to start doing one-armed pull-ups.
“Stop that. It’s terrifying,” said Ellie.
“Then get moving,” said Jake as he completed his fifth pull-up.
Ellie turned away and began to climb again. Jake reached up with his free hand and followed.
“When you get about ten metres from the summit, stop and I’ll climb past you. The raiders could be stood right there, and I’m a better hand-to-hand fighter than you,” he said.
“You’ll get no arguments from me. I’d rather you get shot than me,” replied Ellie.
Jake summited the Crack with Ellie right on his heels. There was no sign of the raiders, but Jake knew they could not be far away. They would have to abandon their vehicles shortly before reaching this point, for the path narrowed rapidly as the ridge climbed skyward.
Without speaking, Ellie and Jake split up, Ellie heading towards the Horn, Jake towards the ground and, he hoped, the raiders.
He moved as quickly as he could without making too much noise. He had gone no more than fifty metres when he heard a voice.
“Come on, move it. We need to be in position before the others reach the base of the pillar.”
Jake skidded to a halt and turned on his heel. Once he had put a little more distance between himself and the raiders, he broke into a full sprint until he reached the Horn.
“How close are they?” asked Ellie.
“Not far. Is it here?” Jake replied.
“Yep,” said Ellie, handing him a bag.
“Be right back,” said Jake with a smile.
He ran roughly fifty metres back down the ridge and took something out of the bag, fiddled with it for a moment, then ran ten metres back towards Ellie and repeated the process. Another ten metres closer, he placed a third object before running back to Ellie.
“You do realise we’re going to be stuck here, right?” she said as he slowed to a stop beside her.
“No, we won’t,” he said, removing a long coil of rope from the bag, tying it around his waist, and then throwing the rope over the top of the curving outcrop of rock that gave the Horn its name.
“Tie the other end of this around your waist and then grab on to something, just in case.”
Ellie tied the rope around her waist and found a good hold just as the raiders came into view.
“Why, hello there!” shouted Jake. “Lovely day for a stroll, wouldn’t you say?” he continued in a friendly voice.
The raiders were forced to walk only three abreast by the narrow ridge, so Jake’s timing had to be perfect.
“Put your hands up where I can see them!” shouted the lead raider.
“I have nothing in my hands except this tiny little radio transmitter,” said Jake as he raised his hands.
“There’s no calling for help, kid,” said another raider.
“Oh, we don’t need any help,” said Ellie.
Jake waved and said, “Buh-bye now,” as he triggered the explosives he had just placed.
Those closest to the explosive devices were blown out into open space. All but ten of the group immediately fell to their deaths as the rock beneath their feet disintegrated. Those who were lucky enough to still have ground beneath them fell prone in a panic. Jake almost fell off the crumbling edge himself.
As the few remaining raiders began returning to their feet, Ellie drew her bow and started to fire.
This was the first time Ellie had ever fired arrows with the intent to kill another human. The raiders had been bothering Little Rock Ridge for decades, but in the three years since Ellie joined the community, she had not been called upon to defend it. Usually, any raiders that showed up at Base Point did so in the dead of night. Once arrows began to rain down upon them as they attempted to climb Home Route, they always beat a hasty retreat.
Jake thought it was long past time they tried to use some strategy to attack the Ridge and wasn’t sure what had taken them so long. Perhaps they were unaware of the route to the Horn, or perhaps their leaders weren’t very bright. More likely, Little Rock Ridge had not been considered worth dedicating many resources to. Jake was not sure what had changed, but he didn’t like it.
By the time Jake had righted himself, drawn his bow, and nocked an arrow, only two raiders remained standing: one rushing towards Ellie, the other running away on the other side of the thirty-metre gouge in the rock created by the explosion.
Jake ignored the man rushing Ellie. He could see her hand reaching back for another arrow out of the corner of his eye and knew she would be fine.
Instead, he turned his attention to the man running back down the ridge. The man was no longer a threat and would have given no quarter to Jake or Ellie if the roles were reversed, but Jake wasn’t the kind of person to shoot someone in the back if he didn’t have to. So instead, he lowered his aim slightly and let the arrow fly.
The man stumbled and fell to the ground as the arrow struck him in the left buttock.
“Consider that a warning shot. Next time it’ll be through your neck!” shouted Jake as the man dragged himself back to his feet and continued his escape.
Jake spun around to see what had become of the raider who had been running at Ellie. The man was on his knees, an arrow through his Adam’s apple, coughing up blood.
“You know, if you were a deer or a wolf or some kind of decent beast, I’d have shot for the eye and given you a quick, painless death,” said Ellie as she walked towards him. “But scum like you don’t deserve a clean death.”
The raider’s ragged, stunted breathing made Jake feel sick. He was trying to speak, but all he could manage was:
“Puh... puh...”
Jake supposed he was trying to say “please.”
“Every animal deserves a clean death,” said Jake as he pulled a knife from the bag and slipped it under the back of the man’s skull, killing him instantly.
“Come on, Ellie. We need to get down to the Ridge,” he said as the man’s body slumped forwards.
