Adventure of Young Dave. 1

Young Dave. wakes to lanternlight and the smell of boiled herbs. Rough linen scratches his skin, and his body feels whole again.

A healer’s hut sways in the dark, small and warm. Rain ticks softly against the roof, and a basin of creek water sits beside the bed.

Young Dave. can see the big sword leaning nearby, cleaned and wrapped in cloth.

Kaelo stands by the doorway, damp-haired and watchful, with the faint glow of the creek mark still ghosting on his sleeve.

Young Dave. drags the cloth off his sword and sweeps his gaze over the hut. There is not enough wood here for a proper forge, only splinters, stool legs, and a few tied bundles of twine.

He hauls a stool apart by force, then tears at a crate lid for slats. The healer stiffens at the sound, and Kaelo shifts away from the doorway, wary of the mess.

Dave sets the scraps on the floor and works fast, hands rough and impatient. The first frame warps in his grip, the binding slips, and the wood snaps crooked before it can take shape.

He tries again with thinner pieces, shaving and lashing, but the little parts will not hold a weapon's strain. One finished head cracks apart under his own test pull, and the pile of usable scraps shrinks to kindling.

By the end, the floor is littered with splinters, two half-frames, and a useless knot of string. Outside, rain hisses harder against the roof, and the hunter captain's presence hangs beyond the door like a hand on the latch.

Young Dave. rakes the floor clean with both hands, gathering every splinter, shred of cord, and split slat he can reach. The pile is thin, dry, and mean.

He starts with a bow frame, then the wood twists out of line. A second strip cracks before he can brace it, and the string bites loose from his fingers.

Dave keeps at it anyway, shaving, tying, and testing. The first little stock splits. The second never holds its bend. The bolts pile up short, crooked, and mostly blunt.

By the end, the hut floor is worse than before, littered with useless shavings and snapped pieces. The wrapped sword lies untouched beside the cot, and the rain presses harder at the door.

Dave rakes the last loose slats toward him and tries to sort them by length, but most are warped, damp, or split right down the grain. Twine crumbs from the floor cling to his palms like lint.

He lashes one short frame anyway. The first brace bows wrong, the second snaps, and the little bundle of bolts fans apart into a crooked mess.

Kaelo steps closer from the doorway, then stops when he sees the pile. He points not at the wreckage, but at the wrapped sword beside the cot, and then at the broken stool legs.

Dave finds a narrow strip with a clean edge, and under it, a stiff thong cord still looped through the stool scrap. The rain hammers once against the door, harder than before, as if someone outside is waiting for the answer.

Dave stops wasting motion and starts cutting for keeps. He strips the good cord from the stool leg, snaps away the soft wood, and lays the harder pieces in a neat line beside the cot.

The hut answers with quiet, hard little sounds, scrape, shave, crack. In his hands, the scraps become three short crossbows, rough but sound, and a stack of sixty bolts fletched with the last clean slivers.

The rain slams the door again. The latch shudders, and a man's shadow settles briefly across the seam from outside.

Dave has the crossbows now, and the hut feels one step closer to a fight than a shelter.

Young Dave lifts the crude crossbow, draws a breath, and lets the lullaby spill out low and steady. The hut goes still around his voice, and the rain on the roof softens under it.

Outside the door, the shadow slackens, then sinks. The latch stops trembling.

A heavy thud follows from beyond the threshold, a body meeting the ground. The rain keeps falling, but nothing stands in the seam now.

Young Dave’s song ends on a cracked note, and the last of his borrowed breath leaves him with it.