'Perhaps we can work together to protect both our lands,' I suggested. I knew not how this matter would best be decided, nor how to best defend Trent and Ebonreach from the Western Islanders, but I wanted to see the men take charge and formulate a plan. I wanted to feel safe again.
'Duke,’ Timoth began, his face shifting in agreement, ‘if you would send three hundred - even two hundred - of your soldiers to Haelling Cove, we can ensure that no further vessels can enter the Haelling, and devastate those who try to return across the Western Sea.'
Wiseria’s clenched his hands into fists. For some reason, he and Timoth were not seeing eye to eye, and I could sense mounting resentment between them.
'Those men are needed in Trent. There is naught worth protecting in the Reach other than Haelling Cove. The numerous townships of Trent that rely on the Haelling are my first priority. The people in those towns pay their taxes to me in trust that I will defend them.'
'The raiders will be in and out before you even receive word of an attack,' Timoth replied, his jaw set and his gaze locked. 'The best option is to prevent further incursions.'
'Trent is unstable enough without its Duke abandoning it to Western Island savagery,' Wiseria responded in an equally assertive tone. He made to leave. 'In fact, if you will excuse me, I should see to the defences of my realm.'
'Duke,' Timoth began, but I put a hand on his shoulder and spoke myself.
'Duke Wiseria, please do not leave. There is much still to discuss,' I pleaded. His features relaxed and I thought that he was going to change his mind, but then his face hardened as he responded.
'Countess Saemara, you will never know the duty of a man to his people. You did not even see that you should have courted my son instead of the Prince, who brings nothing to your realm that Wilbern could not bring threefold. I must attend to my duty now. I trust that you will consider yours,' he hissed, before departing.
As if on cue, the servants arrived from a rear door bearing trays of food. Timoth and I shared a concerned glance, one which I broke. I couldn’t bear seeing him feeling just as anguished as I was. I wished he would show some confidence. If he could tell me that Mother and Father and Kaeya were okay, I would have been able to believe him.
The tears began to fall in earnest at Timoth's silence and Wiseria's cruelty, and I wiped them on the sleeve of my riding blouse. This was not how my homecoming was meant to be. It should have been heralded by celebration and a great feast. Instead, it would be met with the razing of my hometown. My own coming of age, for which I had waited two years in a foreign city, would be overshadowed by a Western Island raid. It wasn't fair.
After no small number of minutes I calmed myself down enough to poke at my food. It was already getting cold and I forced myself to eat some. It would not stir the men of the Reach with patriotism to see me return as a mere skeleton.
'Do you think our family is okay?' I asked Timoth.
I just wanted him to say yes. He didn't even have to believe it, I just needed that thread of hope.
'Duke Wiseria said that the raiders did not capture the castle. If they were inside, they're probably okay,' he explained. The corollary was that if they were in the city at the time of the raid, they were likely dead.
I said nothing of it, contenting myself with Timoth's words. Surely the watchtower at Thorny Island would have provided them with enough warning to return to the castle even if they were in the city, though I knew from personal experience that the warning was often only a few minutes. It could take much longer than that to cross Haelling Cove to reach the castle.
'We will no longer be able to travel the rest of the journey by boat,’ Timoth said. ‘It would be too dangerous.'
'Please tell me that we do not have to take the Dreadwood Forest road,' I begged him. I could not bear to hear such bad news piled upon that which I had already accepted.
'We do not. The road we should have taken two years ago runs north of the Forest, away from the Haelling. It is our safest path home, though we must still have our wits with us, especially once we reach the eastern Reach,' Timoth explained.
The boat ride that I had been looking forward to had just vanished, but I found myself surprisingly unaffected by its loss. I did not expect to encounter highwaymen west of Helmfirth, so I agreed with Timoth. It seemed our safest path home, though I doubted Duke Wiseria would spare any men for our escort.
Despite the disagreement between Timoth and Wiseria, the latter did not deny us lodgings within his castle. It weighed on my mind that I had said nothing inappropriate yet Wiseria had still spoken with malice to me. No doubt Wilbern had been keeping him informed of his attempts at courting me.
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I knew from my previous stay at Helmfirth that Wiseria saw me as a good match for his son, and Wilbern's failure to successfully court me during our years in Hollowhold must have grated on his father's nerves. Wiseria was growing old and sought to stabilise his realm prior to his passing, despite all that he had done to damage the legitimacy of Wilbern's succession.
A servant showed me to my room. I had no ladies to attend to me, but I made my demands known to the castle's servants. A bath was prepared for me, and I was able to wash out several days' worth of dirt and sweat from my skin. Sadly, nothing could wash my riding clothes this late at night and still allow for me to wear them the following morning.
Sleeping in a bed again was a welcome comfort, but one offset by my imagination's evocation of burning farmsteads and sacked monasteries. The Reach was my home, and my sense of identity had been deeply destabilised to hear of its wounding. I’d never realised that I possessed a sense of patriotism. I supposed that I had always sought to find a good husband to bring prestige to Ebonreach, but only now was I faced with my love for my home country, particularly my hometown.
If I were a a man I might have been possessed to take up a sword and defend the land of my birth. As a woman, I could do little except embody confidence to encourage the folk of the Reach. Even if it had little effect I would do it because I loved my home.
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I awoke in the morning, refreshed and ready to face the problems of the day. No doubt we would learn more about the situation in Haelling Cove as we travelled closer to it. Our place was in the Reach's capital so we prepared with haste - scarcely had I finished wolfing down breakfast before Lilac was saddled and we faced Duke Wiseria before the gatehouse of Helmfirth castle.
'I apologise for my harsh words last night,' he began, but Timoth cut him off on both of our behalves.
'Think nothing of it, Duke. I know what it can cost a man to carry the safety of his land so close to his heart. See to your defences; I will hold nothing against you,' my brother said.
Wiseria said nothing in response, merely nodding and standing aside to permit our departure. He did not return my gaze. I briefly considered whether I should have paid more attention to Wilbern in Hollowhold but shook the thought aside. The sooner I came of age, the sooner I married Prince Alum, the sooner I could use my influence as Princess to make things right in Ebonreach. Duke Wilbern was an obstacle, not an option.
Timoth led us out of the castle. We left the two riderless horses behind in Helmfirth with the stablemaster's promise that they would find their way back to the Reach with the next willing caravan. Now our party consisted of a wounded soldier on horseback and another soldier driving the carriage. The wounded soldier was recovering quickly, but as we travelled I saw how he favoured his uninjured lege.
Our path diverged from that of our original journey when we took the north road away from the Haelling and the Dreadwood Forest. At times, we crested a knoll and I could see the trees that I thought marked the perimeter of the Dreadwood Forest, but never did we pass through it. As we straddled the diminishing northern coast of the Reach peninsula we felt safer than much of the rest of Trent and Ebonreach must have at that time.
Each day of journeying was faster than the last as we became fitter and better attuned to our steeds. The wounded soldier healed and the tediousness of the seemingly endless road transformed itself into motivation, resulting in our travelling until the last vestiges of sunlight had faded and rising before dawn. Sometimes we were lucky enough to rent rooms in inns and taverns but mostly we slept on the road.
We were delayed in a sizable town on the north coast of the Ebonreach peninsula called Iyasgorth. It was about the same size as Trackford and dwarfed most of the other towns in western Trent. Despite this, it felt more like Haelling Cove, with a large number of fishermen and farmers making their living in the city's outskirts. Woodcutters would venture to the edges of the Dreadwood Forest and return with timber, fuelling the great iron quarry for which Iyasgorth was known. The mine had made the city wealthy beyond its otherwise humble means, and I was further surprised to hear the accents of the folk of Iyasgorth resemble those of the Reach rather of Trent. Half-listened to history lessons nagged at the back of my mind, telling me that Iyasgorth was probably part of the ancient land which had belonged to Ebonreach prior to the redrawing of the internal Halivaaran boundaries. Certainly most of Iyasgorth's trade seemed to be with her western neighbours. We were well-treated by the lords of Iyasgorth but their insistence upon generosity slowed our return to the road. We bore no grudges, for when we did continue our journey we found that our dread had been subdued under a shroud of gratefulness.
Occasionally we passed other travellers, and increasingly they were humble folk from Haelling Cove who had lost their homes and fled inland to avoid the wrath of the longboat raiders. Some of them said that Father and Mother had not been seen since the raid, though never did we encounter testimony of their deaths. Perhaps they had retreated into their portals and were waiting for a relief force to arrive from Helmfirth before emerging? Or maybe they hid in the castle from fear of being caught in the city if there were another massive raid. There simply wasn't enough information to make a proper judgement. My heart slowly began to sink lower in my chest.
Eventually we reached a rotten wooden sign that marked the border between Ebonreach and Trent. It was around noon, and Timoth suggested that we should reach Trackford before dusk. I sighed as I remembered Baron Steib's drunken attempts to have me join him in communal stupor. Conversely, as Ebonreach's second largest city, we would no doubt find information regarding the invasion. I felt a terrible lurch in my stomach at the realisation, and I had to reposition myself in the saddle for support. It even occurred to me that Trackford may have been raided. While I did not expect much of the Reach to have suffered other than Haelling Cove due to its sparse population and wealth, Trackford was a populous merchant city accessible from the Haelling. The raiders would have been fools to leave it unmolested.
As such, it was not entirely surprising that we saw smoke ascending from beyond the gentle hills before we saw the city. Timoth and I shared a concerned look but no words were exchanged. We had run out of words many days earlier.
When Trackford finally entered our view I was surprised how little it had been damaged. Sure, several of the houses – particularly those near the waterfront – had been burned, but from our perspective atop the northern hills, Trackford was mostly intact. Based on what I had heard from the refugees from Haelling Cove the raiders had devastated the city. I wondered why Trackford stood.