Weasels and Martens

Overview

Weasels and martens are one family of small, long-bodied hunters that the peoples mostly name as one: the weasel, the stoat, the polecat, and the marten. They hunt mice and rats in the hedges and walls, which is a service, and kill hens and raid stores, which is not. A stoat's white winter pelt trims a lord's collar; a marten in the store-hollow is the oldest nuisance a grove has.

Appearance

All of them are long, low, and supple, with short legs, small round ears, and a bounding run that arches the back.

The weasel is the smallest, no longer than a hand, red-brown above and white below. The stoat is half again its size, the same colours, with a black tip to its tail, and in the cold country it turns white in winter but for that black tip. The polecat is the size of a small cat, dark brown with a pale masked face, and stinks. The marten is the largest and the climber: cat-sized, rich chocolate-brown with a cream bib at the throat, a bushy tail, and the habit of running along branches.

Habitat and Range

They live throughout the farmed and wooded country of the Cradle web, from the hedges of the Confluence Basins to the deep woods of the Elderweald, where the marten lives in the canopy; and on the far side in the walls and terraces of the Leeward Folds. Stoats go highest, into the mountain pastures.

Behaviour and Temperament

They hunt alone, mostly at dusk and by night, and are fearless for their size: a weasel follows a mouse down its own burrow, and a stoat takes a hare many times its weight. They kill more than they eat when they find a hen-house open. Martens take squirrels, birds, eggs, honey, and fruit, and break into stores to get at them. All are curious and will stand up on their hind legs to look at a passer-by.

Life Cycle

Most bear one litter a year in spring, in a hole in a wall, a bank, or a hollow tree. The young hunt with their mother by summer. Few live past three or four years.

Uses and Dangers

Winter stoat pelts, white with black tail-tips, are sewn into the collars and hems of lords' robes in the Basins and the Headwater towns, and marten fur is the finest of the forest. Farmers credit them, grudgingly, with keeping down rats. Their cost is hens killed in a night, eggs sucked, and stores broken into.

Lore and Belief

A grove's tellers say the marten has been robbing the store-hollow since the first store-hollow was grown, and that a grove without a marten has nothing worth stealing. Halflings say a weasel in the wall means the wall is sound and dry. Basin Humans hold it bad luck to meet a weasel on the road at the start of a journey.

Marten fur is worth its weight in silver in the Human towns, and trappers who poach it from grove ground are hunted out of the forest by the Wood Elves in turn.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Animals