Stephen Conwell's small cabin has just the things a lone man would need to live by himself, and nothing more. Max is exhausted from helping drag the stag over, so while taking a rest, he looks around. Stephen leaves the door open as he goes inside and gets supplies to bandage his wounds.
"I never did thank you for saving me."
"It wasn't a problem. I was passing through when I heard the commotion. After seeing the needleleafs, I couldn't help but want to try fighting them again. Now that I'm prepared, armed, and ready, that is."
Stephen nods and takes off his shirt. He looks at the bite on his upper arm. He takes a swig of something in a bottle, then pours some of it over the wound, hissing at the sting.
"Need any help with that?" Max asks while watching from the side.
"No, I am alright. Thank you, though."
Max looks over at the stag. "After you fix yourself up, are you going to work on the stag?"
Stephen opens a jar containing some green paste and rubs it on his wound. He then lays some of the bandage across it like a pad before wrapping it around his arm. "That's right, we can't just leave it there like that. The meat will go bad, and it will just attract more predators.
Max unslings the three rabbits he caught and holds them up for Stephen to see. "Would you mind showing me how to work on these? I'll help you with the deer if you do."
Finishing up his arm, Stephen stands up and limps back in with the supplies. "Sounds like a plan, let me just bandage my leg first. I will be back shortly." Stephen closes the door to the cabin before taking his pants off and repeating the same thing he did with his arm, now to his leg.
Max sits outside the cabin and takes out his tomahawk. He runs his hands over it and closely examines it. Doesn’t appear to have taken much, if any, damage. He turns it over and does the same on the other side. The blade is still just about as sharp. It sure killed the needleleaf faster than a rock.
He put the tomahawk away before taking the other out and going through the same motions. I think the handle could be a bit thicker, and maybe the head a bit heavier. It feels good when swinging it as it is, though. Max puts this one away as well before pulling the dagger out from behind him.
Now you, on the other hand. I feel like you are all wrong. The long, thin blade might be good for piercing chainmail, but against animals or needleleafs; I feel the wound is too small. I could slash with it. Following his train of thought, Max goes through a couple of swiping motions.
The handle feels slick, being made of some sort of — what is that... chain? And the pommel is almost smaller than the handle at its thickest, making my hands easily able to slide off the back. The cross guards' long rectangular bits are barely rounded, so when I stab it in, it bites into my hand a little. It isn't unusable, but I think I might need to get something better.
Max sheaths the dagger seemingly right on cue as Stephen opens the door to the cabin and limps out. Max stands and follows him to the side of the cabin that holds part of an outdoor work area, where they left the stag.
"Let me see the hare, we will start with them since they are easier," Stephen says, holding his hand out.
Max obediently hands over the rabbits and moves closer to the butcher block. Stephen hangs two of them from a peg above the table and lays the one rabbit on the table. He moves to the side and brings two buckets over, handing one of them to Max. "There is a well over there. Go fill this up for me."
He points a little way off, and Max spots the well between the couple of trees in the distance. He watches as Max heads over and starts to figure out how the well works to fill the bucket.
For how savage he was when killing the needleleafs, he really doesn't seem to have any issues with being given chores, huh? I figured him for the more stubborn, argumentative type.
Max figures out how the well works quickly enough and fills the bucket with water before bringing it back to the butcher block.
"Alright, so, we have this bucket here," Stephen motions to the empty bucket he put beside the table, "that is for the rubbish. Now everyone has their own way of doing things, and this is just the way I like to."
"If you wet the fur," he grabs the rabbit and dips both ends into the bucket of water Max brought over, "I find it keeps the fur from coming off and getting onto the meat. Now you find the bottom of the rib cage, here," he points to the spot on the rabbit showing it to Max before pinching it pulling the skin up away from the bone.
"Then lift it like so and make a small cut here, but be careful, if you cut too deep, you'll cut the guts. Then you stick your fingers into the cut you just made and use them to hold the skin away from the guts."
Max turns a little green at first, watching the way the man sticks his fingers into the rabbit's stomach cavity.
“Now just open it up, careful not to cut yourself or the guts. You can do short little cuts or longer ones if you want, end of the day, it is all the same. Once you have it open, here comes the gross part, especially for a lad your age. You grab the guts like this and just pull them out.” Stephen pulls the majority of the organs out in one go and drops them into the rubbish bucket.
Max gags as he then sticks his hand back inside and starts pulling organs down and out from under the ribs.
“Now, most of the organs are edible, you have the kidneys, liver, and heart. Next, you take a good cleaver like this one and cut the legs off about, eh, I'd say just past the knees; leaving just the thighs on both the back and front legs.” He places the edible organs to the side, then shows Max the cleaver, ignoring the look on Max's face, before cutting the legs off at the points he showed.
"Next is the head you remove,” He spins the rabbit around and chops its head off. “Then you move back to the other end. Cut the pelt down the legs. Now, with a firm grip, pull the skin up away from the meat, and using your knife, just rub the blade against the meat, and it will easily come from the skin. Once you have it off the back legs, you can just roll down and pull it away from the meat, not even needing the knife."
With that being said, he pulls the skin completely off the rabbit and lifts the clean rabbit and puts it to the side. "I'll probably have you get some more water, and we will give it a rinse before cooking it." Finished, he turns to Max and gives him a once-over.
While Max still seems a little green around the gills, overall, he doesn't seem to be taking it especially badly. Given the way he fights, I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different.
“If you want to use the pelt, it is best to scrape it clean of anything that might still be on there, then you take some salt and heavily salt it, rubbing it in, fold it over, and roll it up tight. Leave it on an incline to let any blood drip out. We will change the salt out before we go to sleep, then again when we wake, if it is still wet. Then we can clean the salt off if it is dry, and then hang it for a day or so.”
“After that, it is good for a few moons. If you want it to last longer than that, I would say, take it to a whittawer and get them to finish it.” As he walks Max through the steps, he demonstrates it on the pelt and leaves it on an inclined shelf.
“Now the deer isn't much different. Soaking such a big thing is too big of a pain, and it doesn't have fur like the rabbit anyway, so we will skip that. We will hang it first from there and then gut it. It is important that we get it and the other rabbits as soon as we can to keep as much of the meat as good as possible.”
“You can keep the skin on it to keep it from getting dirt on the meat, and bugs from getting it, but best not to keep them that way for too long. While I hang this bad boy up, why don't you try gutting one of the rabbits?”
Max nods but doesn't move for a minute. He tries to swallow down anything trying to come up and settle his stomach before moving over to the butcher block. Max takes one of the rabbits down, lying in front of him. He gulps and takes a deep breath, his hands shaking as he feels out where the ribs are.
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He follows the instructions he is given and cuts the rabbit open just as Stephen did, only taking a little longer. After that, his face twists in disgust as he begins to scoop the innards out of the rabbit. He gags every time he has to get another handful out.
He asks Stephen's help only in finding which organs are the edible ones and listens to his brief description of each, and where they are found. His stomach is unsettled, but he manages to keep everything down and finishes gutting the rabbit. After finishing, he goes into the woods and dry heaves a couple of times before returning and starting to skin the rabbit.
The skinning process goes far smoother, and Max's stomach isn't upset by this part. It takes him a lot longer than Stephen had, but he manages to get the pelt free in one piece.
Stephen finishes gutting the now-hung deer by the time that Max finishes his rabbit. Washing his hands off in a bucket of water that seemingly appeared from nowhere to Max, Stephen heads over and hands the last rabbit to Max.
"Start on that one next. I will now get this one ready to dry. There isn't much to it, we just cut the meat into thin strips about this big." He quickly cut a strip off the cleaned rabbit. Then we will salt both sides of it and leave it out in the sun to dry. I am going to do it quickly before we lose too much daylight."
Max agrees and looks at the last rabbit with disgust before starting the process all over again. While Max works, Stephen gets another bucket of water and rinses the rabbit before methodically cutting it up into little strips. He works quickly but carefully; his hands are quite practiced. He finishes cutting the rabbit into long, thin strips.
Stephen goes around to the other side of the house and returns with a long table. He sets the table out in a sunny spot and lightly salts it. Each strip is then heavily salted and laid on the table; by the time he finishes, it is covered in rabbit strips.
Nodding at the finished task, he heads over and checks on Max. He is shocked to find that Max is just about to finish with the last rabbit, moving far faster on this one than he had the previous.
“Looks like you are just about done there.” He moves beside Max and starts to salt the rabbit pelt from the previous rabbit Max had gutted and skinned. He had asked Max to move on to the last rabbit before Max had the chance to work the pelt.
“I will let you do that pelt, then I will show you how we are going to cook these two. While they are cooking, we can start on the deer. If you don’t mind, we will each have a rabbit tonight. It took longer than I thought to bring the deer in, especially after getting hung up on the needleleafs. When you leave, I’ll give you some of the cured deer in return.”
“I don’t mind at all. I was wondering, though, do you mind if I sleep here tonight? I was going to just sleep in the woods before I caught the rabbits; I figured it would take longer to catch something. After I got them, I was going to take them to the smith I have been staying with and share them with him for letting me stay and teaching me some smithing. If you are still going to teach me to hunt, it might be better for me to stay here.”
“Won’t the smith or your parents worry about you?” Stephen asks, looking at Max, who is staring expectantly at him.
“I told the smith I might be gone for a few days. He probably won’t miss me even if I don’t return.” Shrugging, Max replies while he finishes removing the last pelt and takes the salt from where Stephen left it, and copies as he had, putting a large amount of salt and rubbing it into the skin.
“And your parents?” Stephen finds it strange that the lad is wandering the woods alone and apparently has been staying at some smith's house.
“My parents? I am separated from them at the moment. When I ended up in Briargate, all I had was my dagger. I accidentally found the smithy, and the smith thought I was up to no good and tried to shoo me away. I made a deal with him; I would help out around the smithy, and he would give me a place to sleep and some food. Later, I convinced him to let me try the forge. He taught me how to make nails, horseshoes, arrowheads, spearheads, and axe heads.” Max motions towards the tomahawks hanging on his waist.
“He gave me some of the money when the things I made were sold. I used that coin to get these clothes and gear. He ran out of business, though, since we were making things faster working together. He told me if I needed more coin, to go find someone else to bother. I originally was going to go look for some people I knew once I got some things, so I started looking for a hunter to teach me how to hunt. I figured if I could hunt, then I could survive off the land as I went looking for them, or sell what I hunted for coin.”
Max moves over to the bucket of water he saw Stephen rinse his hands in and does the same. Stephen picks up the rabbits and motions to Max to follow. They head around to the back of his cabin, where he has a small fire pit dug. “I don’t have a spare room. You are welcome to sleep on the floor if you don’t want to head back to town.”
“That is more than enough, thank you. I would just sleep out here, but without some kind of shelter, I would hate to be woken by a needleleaf. Again.” Max sighs in relief; he is really dreading having to go from the smithy to the cabin regularly.
“So do you know how to cook these?” Stephen asks as they reach the firepit, raising the rabbits.
“I can guess that we put them over the fire and cook until the meat changes color. For how long or to what color, I am not sure.” Max shrugs, following Stephen.
Stephen laughs at that reply and proceeds to walk Max through how to properly set up the fire and cook the rabbits. “Once the fire is going, what you do is on each side of the fire, put sticks deep enough in the ground that they can support the food. Make the cross near the top forming an X.” Stephen crosses his hands in an X shape as if Max might not know the shape.
“Then you get a longer stick and put it across the top, as if you are making a tent. You skewer the food on that stick above the fire. Every so often, you turn the stick so a different part of the meat is over the flames. For the hare, you will want to stick the skewer through their neck holes, then tie their back feet together and use that to hang the back of them off. They will be loose unless you shove another skewer through the thighs.”
Stephen already has all the items outside the back of his cabin. Max finds the four sticks on the ground and makes the X-shaped supports, then takes a rabbit from Stephen and ties the back legs together. He slips the skewer down through the neck and the now tied legs, and following Stephen's advice, finds a good place to skewer it through the thighs. Stephen nods and hands Max the second rabbit for him to do the same. Max repeats the process and hangs the skewer over the fire pit.
“Now, of course, I did say start the fire first, but since we were just setting it up to show you how, right now it is fine that it is unlit. Do you know how to start a fire?”
“Yes. That I do know.” Max takes his bag off and gets his tinderbox and flint & steel out. Adding tinder to the center of the pit and then some dry wood, also stored out behind the cabin.
It takes Max more than a few tries to get the flint and steel to light the tinder, but he eventually manages. He lightly blows on it to help the flame grow and moves it near the dry wood. It isn’t long until the fire is fully ablaze.
“Very good. It will take some time for those to fully cook. Every so often, we need to come back here and turn them. Let us head back to the deer and finish it while they cook.”
Max and Stephen return to the side of the cabin where the skinning, tanning, and preserving were done. Stephen instructs Max on how to do it, even though it is very similar to the rabbits; he wants to make sure Max fully grasps how. While it is harder because it is far larger and it is the first time Max tries to skin something while it is hanging, he does an adequate job.
Stephen then asks Max to salt the hide while he starts cutting the deer up. Unlike the sun-drying rabbit, Stephen drags two barrels out and places them next to the deer carcass. He then begins to make the same long, thin strips as he did with the rabbit while watching Max finish up the cleaning and salting of the hide.
When Max finishes, he calls him over and starts the next part of the project. “While the rabbit can sun dry, the deer is much larger, and we do not have enough tables to lay all the bits out, and it would just take too long. If we preserve it another way, it will last longer as well. So, what we are going to do, or I should say you are going to do, is preserve it in this barrel.” He motions to the empty barrel he has brought out and placed near them.
“First open both barrels, then what you will want to do is take some of the salt from the one and put it in the bottom of the empty barrel. Not a lot, just enough to completely cover the bottom of it.” He waits and watches as Max follows his instructions before continuing the explanation.
“Now you will take these strips and salt them. Once they have been salted, put them on the layer of salt at the bottom of the barrel. Try not to overlap them, but get as many in as you can. While you are doing that, take care to remember roughly the size of them, for that is the proper size you want to cut them to.”
While Max gets to work on the task, Stephen rinses his hands again in the dirty water before taking and emptying both the bucket, which he and Max had dunked the rabbits in, and the one they were washing their hands in out a good distance away from his cabin. He then fills the buckets with fresh water and brings them back to where Max waits, having finished the task at hand.
“Are you done?” Stephen asks the obvious and takes a look into the barrel. “Looks good. Now for the complicated part. Add salt to the top of them until they are completely covered, and you cannot see them, then add another layer of salted strips.
“That is the complicated part?” Max asks sarcastically.
“Did I say complicated? No, what I meant was tedious. Yes, the tedious part.” Stephen laughs and claps Max on the back, finding his little joke quite funny, while Max only rolls his eyes. Stephen returns to the cabin while Max works, gets them two mugs of liquid, and brings them back out to where Max is working. He places one near Max and then starts to help Max salt the strips and add them to the barrel.
“Drink up, it's tiring work, and there is a lot of it. Once we finish what is on the table, I will let you cut the next batch of strips.” Just as he says, he and Max spend the next few hours filling the barrel with salted meat. Max tastes the liquid in the mug and finds it to be a type of cider. He finds it odd but doesn’t say anything.
Every so often, either he or Stephen turns the rabbits and then continues working. Unlike the long hours at the forge hammering away at metal, this isn’t hard work, simply boring and time-consuming. By the time they finish, the rabbits are just about done as well.
They wash their hands in both buckets of clean water before heading over to the fire pit to enjoy Max’s first and second kills. Stephen also brings out some dried vegetables, and Max shares some of his bread and cheese.
