Second Try for the Tracker

It had taken me two weeks to restore my weapons and supplies, during which I'd been constantly calculating ways to take down my estranged pupil, Aylon. Now, I was heading back into the forest she'd fortified, accompanied by some of the best bounty hunters in the land. None were as good as me, of course, and even the best of them would be hard pressed to beat Aylon the Bloodfeather in a fight.
They were a tough, grizzled lot, bearing weapons familiar and exotic, all eager to earn some gold and fame for their names. There was Miskel Hound-man, who'd earned a solid reputation after trailing one quarry for nearly two months across a continent. Elsa the Flaming Fury, an alchemist as well as a hunter, famous for her acids and explosives. Als Coonhert, a newcomer to this business with almost as many successful kills as myself. Others of slightly less fearsome reputations were with us as well, making our number eleven in all. The ones who had come on their own were all good fighters with enough greed for the gold I'd offered to stick around, even when things would get difficult.
Then there was Lewell Muscle-hands, or Meathead as the others had taken to calling him. The short man was indeed muscular, but he relied too much on his crossbows, and had accumulated a fair amount of fat around his edges. Lewell was a paltry bounty hunter by the best of standards, the sort of pretender I normally kill for his diminishing of our kind's reputation as a whole. Yet here he was, this overweight man already covered in sweat and breathing heavily, trailing along towards the rear of our group, determined to remain with us - all because of the personal invitation I'd sent him.
For while Lewell Muscle-hands was worthless to me, except as a shield perhaps, it was the scrawny ten year old who stayed in his shadow that I was interested in. Mif, the orphan was called, and Lewell had picked him up a couple years past to serve as a beast of burden. Even now, the kid was bowed over due to the weight of the extra bags piled on his back, though he was easily able to keep up with our pace.
Keeping young servants isn't unusual for bounty hunters - that's how a lot of our apprentices start out. Lewell was convinced he was truly something special to have been called upon by me, Edercy the Tracker, but I only needed his boy.
Who was the only person in this group I knew Aylon would avoid killing.
When you raise someone from a small child to an adult, you learn to understand how they think. Somehow, my old student had picked up a sense of honor in the years before I'd rescued her, but while I didn't understand it, I could work with it. And no matter how ruthless Aylon may be with the hunters I was bringing to her threshold, she'd ignore this boy until the last possible second. The memory of her mother's murder would see to that.

Edercy is stepping up his game. Won't be long before the next installment of this story, and Mif's proper introduction! Until then,
-Triscribe