After the elves were freed, Arven hadn't expected them to split up willingly. But half, including Diavla, were crazy enough to trust the human and go with him to a human city. Arven thought it very likely that they would immediately be sold back into slavery, collars or no collars. Diavla was the sort to cling to hope, though.

Arven had more sense than that. So, when the elves separated on the tenth of Dunvar, he ended up in charge of the group leaving the road, which meant he was taking care of the three most inept at woodcraft, unfortunately.

Rillik was a kid, barely two-thirds the height he would have as an adult. He would work hard if supervised, and he probably would get a lot more motivated once they were running out of food. So, there was some hope, then. He wouldn't have his adult strength for years to come, however.

Brallik was a lazy, formerly pudgy man, who was already wheezing even though they had barely started. The three months of captivity had not done any of them any favors, but at least Arven and Varga had attempted to exercise a bit. Brallik would probably sit and complain every day no matter what plan they came up with. Arven could only hope that hunger would motivate Brallik to work harder, eventually.

Then, there was Sheema. An astounding beauty and talented Healer, Sheema was a bit…soft. She certainly wasn't physically strong at all, and wouldn't be able to do most tasks. Her valuable abilities had enabled her to live a somewhat pampered existence in the temple, back home. She was short, weak, and delicate. Arven wasn't sure how much strength of character she would show now that she was so far out of her element, with so many unfamiliar physical tasks to do.

If I weren't with them, a single small bush cat might do them all in. I really wish Varga hadn't changed her mind at the last minute. This would be a lot easier with at least one other skilled scout to share the load.

Varga had dithered, but in the end she had decided to throw her lot in with Diavla, Kervan, and Orvan, who were taking the huge risk of working with Tom Walker.

I can't believe they're going to go close to a human city, and trust Tom not to fetch guards and capture them. We're probably worth ten or twenty gold each, he guessed, absently touching his neck where a slave collar had chafed for three months. That's a lot of temptation for a human who doesn't even know us.

As they walked, Arven carefully left very subtle blazes on trees indicating their direction. You basically had to know to search and know exactly what they looked like, to have any hope of noticing them. They generally weren't visible from ground level, either; Arven climbed trees to place them.

“How far do we want to travel from the road?” Sheema asked.

Arven had been thinking about it. “Well, we're four days away from each of the human cities, Rivermarch to the north and Middleton in the south. Tom didn't know about any other cities in the area, so if we go east for four days, that should put us well away from human settlements, and hopefully not too close to the far side of this forest. Maybe we'll go a bit farther than that.”

“What if we run into humans in the woods?” Brallik asked.

“We avoid them if we can, and don't let them see us. If we can't avoid it, we can try to run, but…” Arven trailed off, looking at the others. None of them looked ready to outrun a pursuit. “We'll probably have to fight,” he concluded, reluctantly.

“I'll help,” Rillik said, a bit too eagerly.

Thinking it over some more, Arven decided, “I'll have to leave you all pretty often and scout ahead. If it's just me, I've got a better chance of either slipping away unnoticed or outrunning pursuit. If I'm spotted, I'll lead them away from the rest of you, and join up with you later once I lose them.”

He looked at the Healer. “Sheema? Can you tell which of the local plants are safe to eat?”

Sheema paused, as if trying to figure out how to word her response. “Yes, but it's slow. Let me gather samples as we walk, and then I can sit down in a good spot and check them all. It will take a little while.”

“That's fine,” Arven reassured her, quietly relieved that he would have at least some help in keeping them all alive.

As they walked, Arven did his best to remember the terrain. This would be easier if we had quill and ink, he mused. Like most elves, Arven had an innate advantage with his water-sense. A moment of concentration was enough to tell him which way and how far it was to all the nearby streams, ponds, and so forth. They didn't have a particular destination, of course. Just…away from the humans.

They had to take breaks often. Even Arven needed them sometimes, and the others needed more. Each time they stopped and looked around, the forest that had seemed very alien at first was slowly growing more familiar, as they passed the same sorts of plants again and again.

I'll have to set snares, he mused, thinking about food again. A pity we don't have any nets with us. They were from a fishing village, so Arven was used to getting a net easily when he wanted one.

The chill was hard on them. It never got this cold in Kilder Vald. Arven started looking for a place to spend the night while there was still a fair bit of light left. The night was clear, so the most important aspect of their camp was making sure it blocked the wind.

He anchored their shelter with a large boulder and an old tree, and strung one of their sheets of coarse fabric between them. Much as they could have used the warmth, Arven insisted that they not light a fire the first night, simply eating cold rations instead. Using the axe he had liberated from the ironworks wagon, Arven cut a fair number of stakes and drove them into the ground supported by rocks, as a deterrent to curious animals.

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Meanwhile, Sheema did as she had promised, and asked the spirits for guidance about which berries and nuts were safe to eat. She fell silent for a quarter hour, then stirred. She sorted a few in her hands before she spoke.

“These are poisonous,” she reported, showing a bright red berry. “These are safe,” she continued, revealing a different berry, so dark a blue that it looked black, especially in the fading light. Finally, she held up a tree nut. “These…are not safe without some kind of cooking, but I'm not sure. There's a way to make them safe, I just don't know what it is.”

“Well, we can collect those black berries as we walk tomorrow,” Arven summarized. “That will help. And tomorrow night we can risk a fire, so we'll try washing and cooking those nuts and then you can ask the spirits again.”

It was a difficult night. Sheema and Rillik curled up together for warmth, but Brallik and Arven were not invited. Arven didn't blame her a bit. He couldn't go completely without sleep, so he had to pressure Brallik into keeping watch for part of the night.

Morning came, and after a cold breakfast, the little group packed up and continued their journey east. This time, they had a couple of small baskets at the ready, and collected the black berries steadily. When they found a particularly thick bramble of them, they stopped and ate their fill, and saved as much as they could carry for later.

Arven thought they made good progress on their second day, and this time they had a fire. Brallik took a couple of tries to get Orvan's cooking instructions right, but eventually produced a decent porridge made with human-grown grains. Hot food, and enough of it, was something Arven was very grateful for. He set out snares again, hoping for better results.

As he sat up on watch that night, Arven looked around and brooded a bit. He really, really could have used Varga's help here. His instincts with animals were not as good as hers. Something was nagging at him and he couldn't figure out what. Were there too many animals? Too few? Were they too shy? Too aggressive? What was normal in this land, anyway?

He shook his head. I'll have plenty of time to get used to this forest, he reminded himself. We might be stuck living here for the rest of our lives, if we can avoid capture that long.

The third day passed in much the same way, as did the fourth. Their supplies of food steadily dwindled. They inspected every body of water they came near, hoping for fish, but they only found a few tiny ones. Arven managed to catch a squirrel with one snare. It was a bare scrap of meat, but at least it was fresh.

The night of the fourteenth of Dunvar, the sky was clouded over and threatening rain. Arven didn't like the look of it, and put more effort into their shelter that night. They were fortunate that he had, as the skies opened during the night in an impressive downpour that extinguished their fire quickly, and would have completely soaked them and all their gear, but for his preparations.

The next morning, the rain showed no signs of slowing. It was thick enough to blind water-sense, and they hunkered down in place to wait out the storm. Staying completely dry was impossible, and it was a long, tedious, miserable day. Sheema called upon the spirits of Healing to keep them from getting sick in the cold and wet.

“They must be close to Rivermarch, by now,” Brallik commented.

“Yes.” Arven couldn't help but wonder what would happen to his friends when they got to the human city. Would Tom betray them? Would he try to do well by them, but get overruled, by a noble simply taking them without asking? Would they be thrown into a dungeon? Auctioned off again? There were many possibilities, most of them unpleasant.

Tom might not even wait to reach the city before he pressures Diavla to share his bed, he brooded. He did his best to damp down his useless, frustrated anger at the thought. He tried to find something positive in the bleak prospect. If that happens, I only hope that Diavla gets enough influence over him to protect the others.

“Arven?” Rillik called quietly. He raised an eyebrow at the boy, who asked, “Will you teach me to hunt better?”

Hunt animals, or humans? Arven almost asked. He decided not to borrow trouble. The boy was full of rage. Channeling that into gaining skill was better than nothing. “Definitely.” He started to lecture the boy on the basics. It was a way to pass the time.

The rain continued through most of the night, and finally broke the next morning.

On the sixth day, Arven led them up the biggest hill they had yet found. The others got worn out well shy of the summit, so Arven pushed on alone, and climbed a tree to get the highest possible view. He needed to know the lay of the land.

The good news was that the forest was vast; he couldn't see an end to it. The bad news was, to the southeast he could see smoke from multiple fires, and the barest hint that there might be a large clearing. It was still at least a day away, but Arven assumed that a human town or settlement lay in that direction.

He climbed back down and returned to the others, then reported what he had seen. “We're too close. We'll have to go northeast for a couple of days.”

“What if there are humans that way, too?” Brallik demanded.

“Then we'll keep moving until we find a spot as far away from humans as possible,” Arven snapped back in annoyance. “Unless you'd rather walk into town wearing a hat and try to pass as human?” That shut Brallik up, at least for the moment.

For the next two days, they traveled northeast. That evening, they made camp close to a small stream. Everyone was tired. It would take a while for them to get healthy again, but they were getting there.

“All right,” Arven declared. “I'm going to call this good enough. We're far enough from the humans, so tomorrow, I'll scout this area to find the best place to build a proper shelter.”

“Our new home?” Sheema asked.

“Spirits willing.”

“Finally,” Brallik sighed.

“We're all going to have to work hard at survival,” Arven cautioned them. “We don't have a lot of supplies. The nights are getting colder. We need to harvest what we can, and I'll keep trying to bag some game. I think we can make a good try here, but if things get bad…if we run out of food and start starving…I might have to try to sneak into a human town and steal some food.”

“Can I help?” Rillik asked.

“It's a last resort, Rillik, and no. It will take all my skill and the well-wishes of the spirits besides to manage such a thing. I won't be able to do it often or it will alert the humans and they'll know we're in here somewhere and hunt us.”

“Let us not borrow trouble. We know there is game in these woods,” Sheema placated him. “I'm confident that you will provide, Arven.”

“I'd feel a lot better about our chances if I had a bow, but I'll do what I can.”

“Then, maybe we should steal a bow,” Brallik suggested.

By ‘we’ you mean me, Brallik. You're happy to volunteer someone else for the dangerous work. Arven kept that in his soul and not his tongue. Besides, he kind of had a point.

“Are we really going to be able to survive here?” Rillik asked.

“If humans can do it, we can do it,” Arven told him. That stirred the boy's hate and pride, and he nodded grimly, resolute.

I will work with these broken tools, and somehow, I will protect them, Arven vowed silently. His thoughts turned to the other four elves, who might well be in the human city by now. Wherever you are, Diavla, I hope you at least have warmth and food.

I hope you have a chance to be happy.