Bare feet planted firmly in the mud, his dirty fists tightly clutching his spear. He sits there waiting, camouflaged by the blackberry bush covering his brawn and the soil and sap smothered across his square jaw and angular cheekbones. His hazel pupils piercing through the white of his moonlight eyes.
“Erik” whispers a voice from behind him.
Erik props his spear against a great oak tree, he gathers his chestnut brown hair behind his head and ties it in a knot, usually flowing down to his chest but not now. Not when it could obscure his vision.
Erik cooks his head down and to the right, looks over his shoulder and gently presses his index finger to his lips. Slowly he reaches back to his spear and secures his grip upon it once more. The blackened cracked wood of the staff, seven feet in length, now ready. The sharpened steel tip crudely fastened to the end and stained a deep burgundy, this wasn’t Erik’s first time here.
He knew this place well, he knew how the dry leaves sounded as the gentle breeze dragged them across the mud, he knew the smell of the distant fires and the faint scent of heather growing on the hill to the west and he knew when to strike.
Suddenly Erik’s spear bursts through the blackberry bush he had been hiding in and he lunges forward. The steel blade instantly penetrating the heart of the deer Erik has been tracking for the last forty-five minutes, as Erik moves forward he wraps his arm around the deer’s neck and brings it down to the floor, he pulls a knife from his leather belt pouch and draws it across the deer’s jugular while muttering something under his breath and the life evaporates from the deer’s frosty eyes.