"Okay, enough piano playing!" said Eliza after they had played the old instrument for about half an hour. Nero was glad, because he was starting to get bored.
"Let's play some chess now, what do you think?"
Eliza asked with a grin.
Nero sighed, "If we absolutely have to. It's not like we can do anything else."
Eliza pouted, "It's important to always train your mind."
She grabbed Nero and rubbed his head wildly with her fist, "Especially when you have a brain as big as yours!"
Nero struggled wildly to free himself from his sister's grip, "Stop it! Cut it out!"
"All right, you don't have to yell like that," his sister said, laughing. Nero stroked his head, "I wasn't yelling..." he muttered to himself.
Eliza leaned forward, "Yes, you did. And like a girl, too."
Nero showed incredible restraint not to yell again, "Weren't we going to play chess?" he asked angrily.
Eliza took two steps back, "But of course. Follow me, Your Excellency!"
They stepped out of the room and went into the room across the hall. The room was empty, like all the rooms in the much too large house. Only a single chessboard lay on the floor in the middle, the pieces scattered wildly around it.
The family's motto was, 'If you already have a big house, you have to use it!'
That's why they had a separate room for just about everything. They had a chess room, a piano room, a dressing room, a bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen, and everything else.
The house was actually much too big for the small family. In hindsight, it would have been smarter to sell it and get something smaller, but Nero didn't know that at the time. He doesn't know exactly why his mother wanted to hold on to the house so desperately, but at the time, he believed her when she said it was just because of the insulation and warmth.
The chessboard was homemade, of course. It had taken Eliza and her mother almost a month to carve all the pieces, as Nero was still too young to help. The quality of the pieces and the board was therefore rather poor, but that was enough for the children.
The two children sat down across from each other. Nero was white, and Eliza was black.
They played for almost 10 minutes in their first round, and in the end, Eliza won. They set up their pieces and played again.
Their pieces flew across the board, and at first, Eliza was leading, but then Nero started to gain the upper hand. Ultimately, Nero emerged as the winner of the second round. And again they set up their pieces and started to play. For almost two hours, the two played against each other.
Nero won twice and Eliza five times.
"Well done, little brother. It's getting harder and more challenging to play against you every time. Eventually, I won't stand a chance, it's like you were born to move your pieces," Eliza said jokingly.
"Then she sighed, "Unfortunately, you can't earn money playing chess." She looked at her little brother, a child so full of talent and intelligence, but he was born into the wrong family. In another family, with more opportunities, he could have grown up to be great.
She shook her head to get rid of the thoughts and looked out the window. "It will be dark soon. If we want to hunt today, we should leave immediately!"
With that, the two went downstairs and started putting on their winter clothes again.
"Are you going out again?" her mother asked from the kitchen. Something was wrong with her voice, but Nero couldn't quite put his finger on it. Eliza also frowned. "Yes, Mom, but are you okay?"
Her mother stepped out of the kitchen with a friendly smile. "Of course, my angel, don't worry. Take good care of yourselves out there."
She first hugged Eliza and kissed her on the forehead, then Nero, "Take care of your brother, Eliza. And go to Herald and give him this." With that, she handed them a sealed letter, "A little thanks. But don't open it, keep it sealed! Do you understand?"
Eliza took the letter. "We will, we promise!"
"I love you both more than anything else!" said their mother, hugging her children tightly once more. "I will always be with you!"
"We love you too, Mom," said the two children, but Nero was getting impatient.
"Can we finally go now?" he asked his sister, who gave him a headbutt. "Stop being so impatient all of the time."
She smiled at her mother, "See you later, Mom!"
"See you later," said her mother in the same cheerful voice as always.
—
The two children had been walking for quite a while when Nero suddenly stopped. "We forgot to give Herald the letter!"
Eliza stopped and briefly looked back at Mr. Herald's house, "Let's do that when we go home. " She said after a moment's hesitation and continued walking. Nero just shrugged his shoulders and followed her without any objections. Later, Nero would wonder what would have happened if they had made a different decision then. If they had gone immediately to Mr. Herald and handed him the letter. He wondered if anything would have changed.
They continued walking and turned onto the main road. Suddenly, several dozen soldiers appeared in front of them. They had torches in their hands and moved quickly and purposefully.
Immediately, Eliza and Nero moved aside and bowed slightly. They watched as the guardians of the law marched past them and turned the next corner.
"I wonder where they're going?" asked Nero to Eliza, but she just shrugged, "There was probably a murder somewhere again, like the one at Mr. Ruz's, remember?"
Nero nodded, happy with that explanation.
Lost in thought, they re-entered the large forest and walked their standard route.
To avoid getting lost, they carved arrows in the trees pointing towards the village. Looking for traces, they continued to delve deeper into the forest.
It wasn't too long before they founf their first lead.
"Eliza, look here! " Nero called out to his sister.
Eliza just deftly climbed down from a tree and jumped into the snow next to him. She knelt and looked at the round tracks briefly,
"Hmm... Those are definitely deer tracks. Unfortunately, we don't have a good way to catch a deer, as they don't react to the mouse. We have to keep looking!"
"We could just follow the tracks, couldn't we?" Nero suggested in his young zeal, but Eliza shook her head,
"No. It hasn't snowed since earlier. The animal could be over a dozen hills by now. We don't know how far the tracks go. If we follow them now, and then it starts snowing, all the tracks will be covered in snow, and we could get lost. Better let's keep moving forward."
Nero nodded, following her. He trusted the instincs of his sister, she always new what was best. Every few meters, he fetched his knife and carved an arrow into the tree.
After another hour, Nero began to grow impatient, "We still haven't discovered a single trace of a predator. What if there just aren't any animals left?"
"I don't think so, we just need to look some more. " Eliza said encouragingly.
Nero continued to search the ground when he finally spotted something,
"Eliza here! There are fox tracks here again."
Relieved, Eliza sighed, but as she stepped up next to Nero her expression changed,
"Those are way too big for fox tracks. They're wolf tracks!"
Nero's eyes widened in fear, and he looked around. "What do we do now?"
"Normally, we should make a run for it as soon as possible, but it's only one track, and one of the prints is slightly less dented, meaning he's limping. This is a death sentence at this time of year, so the wolf will already be almost insane with hunger. He was probably banished from his pack some time ago because of his disability. We should try to catch him. It will be harder than our normal prey, but it will give us more meat. We can't catch him with a simple snare trap; we have to come up with a plan."
Eliza muttered to herself as she tried to come up with a plan. After a while, she sighed, "I don't have a perfect plan, but it should be enough. At least, I hope so..."
"What if the wolf is already too far away?" he asked. "Like the deer?"
"That's quite possible, but I don't think he's gotten very far with an injured leg. But if that's the case, then unfortunately, we'll have to go home empty-handed today. Come on, help me set the trap!"
Ten minutes later, the two siblings were lying in wait for their prey to fall into their trap.
They had set up a large trap that protected several escape routes. Eliza was lying in the tree with her bow taut, Nero next to her. He once again had a rope in his hand, but this time it was not for a snare trap. The mouse was lying there, and they had used almost all the rest of the powder to create a really strong scent.
Nero was incredibly tense and could hardly sit still.
They waited another half hour, listening for any sounds.It had grown dark and it was becoming increasingly difficult to see. Eliza was about to give up when they suddenly heard soft footsteps accompanied by quiet sniffling. And then they saw him. It was a large animal, but completely emaciated. He had light gray fur, but his hind leg was bent awkwardly to the side. Apparently, a fracture that had not healed well.
He approached the mouse, hunched over.
When he got close enough, he sprinted at it as best his leg would allow.
Despite his injury, the wolf was surprisingly fast, faster than they had expected.
"Now." Eliza hissed, and Nero reacted immediately. He pulled as hard as he could on the rope that stretched across the floor. The wolf stumbled and fell over the rope, staggering and falling. Eliza shot an arrow while Nero used his dagger to cut another rope.
Eliza's arrow hit the Wolf in the side and made him yelp, but he only wriggled more. So Eliza shot two more arrows, one of which missed and one of which hit the wolf in the hind leg.
Nero saw the desperate death struggle of the old animal. Pity welled up inside him as the animal struggled more and more, only to become more entangled in the net. Nero had to do something, so he jumped out of his hiding place. He ran toward the wolf, tears in his eyes. He rammed his knife into the animal's throat and immediately pulled it out again. Nero stumbled back as blood splattered onto his face. He landed on his backside and began to cry as he looked into the animal's eyes.
The wolf was old, but it didn't want to die; Nero could see it in its eyes. Eliza sat down next to her brother in the snow. She hugged him tightly and whispered, "It's good that you feel compassion for the lives of other animals, but it was either him or us. He sacrificed himself today so that we could hold out a little longer, so we have to repay him by honoring his death!"
Nero sniffed, but he understood. He closed his eyes and began to pray as the dying animal twitched one last time in front of him.