Luthold repeated the details of his most recent search for a second time to Winilind, then added:
“When he came back South to the village yesterday, he must have gone too fast to check the route. He ran off the path and even stumbled into a new one. It was sheer good fortune that he made it back to us. We returned in his footsteps, and he must have passed us on the usual route then.”
“Pasha said he wanted to cross the river. Do you really think he would?”
He bit his lip and shook his head. Winilind asked:
“You said the raft was still tied to our side?”
“Tied to it, yes, but bobbing about downstream. He might have crossed without tying it off. But why? What in the gods’ names is he doing on the other side?”
Luthold had returned with Joturn and Torvald to find the clan in uproar; Sullin warriors wandering about the place, Winilind rushing in and out of the forest and his daughter sitting alone in their home weeping and berating herself. When he had asked what was wrong, Adalina had only apologised for persuading her mother to allow Oli out to play. Pasha's parents, Otmer and Beresa, had explained the rest, at least regarding her son. They had not touched upon the clan’s new guests and for now Luthold did not have the capacity to consider what the Sullin were doing here. Luthold had immediately returned to the river, but too late.
As he opened his mouth to speak again, Aimar poked his head inside their home.
“Luthold, Winilind, I heard what happened.”
“Come in, Aimar,” Luthold said.
The slender, sharp featured man entered, brushing his brown hair and blinking in the gloom. They would have valued their chief craftsman’s friendship, but Aimar appeared to consider them both too senior and his respect had never thawed into warmth. It was, Luthold assumed, because he had taught the young man his letters. He had been awed by Aimar’s sharp mind, which easily matched the dexterity of his fingers. Not until Luthold taught Ingo, briefly, did any student impress him as much.
“The elders want you at the assembly, Luthold.”
“Don’t they know my son is missing?”
Aimar nodded. “They know. Winilind is to accompany Beresa to the forbidden ford and search on the other side. Torvald will search for Ingo and Oli by the mountains and others will patrol the new path Oli used to return from the river. They want you and Heridan both at the assembly.”
“The forbidden ford?” Winilind asked as she pushed Adalina gently aside and rose swiftly to her feet. “Has Oslef allowed us to use it?”
Luthold had planned to cross there next whether he allowed it or not.
“Oslef has ordered it.” Aimar looked at Luthold. “I’m sorry, Luthold. They insist you attend assembly.”
“They’re right,” said Winilind, who was already at the door slipping a knife inside her clothes. “For Oli we need to be heard at the assembly too.”
Winilind stopped by the door and pulled their daughter close. Adalina looked up at her mother through tearful eyes. She opened her mouth and before she could apologise yet again, Winilind squeezed her arm tightly and commanded:
“Pull yourself together, Ada. Now. Go with your father to the assembly. Support him. Keep any talk of Oli polite.”
----------------------------------------
Aimar gestured in the direction of the Winter Roof and followed behind Luthold, allowing the older man to arrive in front. As they walked, the craftsman related the clan’s gossip to Luthold. News had spread fast of Oli’s disappearance and what Pasha said about it. Opinion divided, apparently, as to whether Oli’s behaviour was foolish and heroic, or foolish and dangerous.
They reached the shadow of the great meeting place. Every time Luthold set foot under the Winter Roof, the size of it impressed him. He could scarcely believe he had helped to design it. Two rows of huge wooden pillars supported a sloping, thatched roof which created the largest shelter the clan had ever built. Did they know somehow, eleven years ago, that they would stay here for so long?
The throng parted out of habit as Luthold approached, forming a passage to the centre where those speaking would sit. The elders Oslef, Joturn and Mildred waited in a triangle equidistant from each other. Oslef gestured at two upturned stumps beside him and Luthold sat down. Aimar joined him and Ada went to stand with the crowd of observers who would, if things went badly, become a crowd of whisperers. Her first assembly, Luthold mused as he watched her push into a space at the front. Scanning those others who were seated, Luthold saw Heridan opposite, close to Joturn. Otmer was there, too, talking in a low voice to Mildred. Thilo sat with his head pompously high, looking very pleased with himself for being in the circle. His wife, Lien, nursed their baby at the edge of the crowd. He registered Angmar, too before his eyes came to rest on a tall, powerfully built man with strawberry blonde braids. The same man they said had followed Heridan out of the forest. A Sullin.
Luthold’s face flushed hot when the man smiled at him, his green eyes sparkling. The visitor’s handsome aspect was marred only by the dried blood that stained his hair on one side. Beside him sat a smaller, older man with brown hair greying at the edges. Both wore swords. A cursory glance at their surroundings would have told them that was not the custom in a Hallin village, let alone an assembly. But the Sullin minded little the customs of others.
“All present,” announced Oslef. Mildred and Joturn nodded. “Luthold,” he said gently, “any news about your son?”
“Oli is gone,” Luthold announced. “He took my spear. He went in search of me and Ingo while I was still out with Elder Joturn. We believe he meant to bring me my spear and warn me about the column of smoke.”
He looked each member of the circle in the eye as he spoke. Not all of them met his gaze. They knew that his son could be senseless, but he wanted them to know that Oli could be uncommonly brave at times, too. Heridan looked down when Luthold turned to him. He stared at the dark hair on top of the man’s head, willing the quick-tempered warrior to look up and own his part of this. He had been the first to accuse Oli of lying, and others had taken up and spread the accusation. Instead, Thilo spoke:
“Why did Pasha run after him? That’s what I want to know. Why not raise the alarm right away? And why didn’t Oli’s family tell us about this outsider? We might not have clambered around the hoarder caves all night, when the real enemy was in the very forest!”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“None of the children should be leaving the village,” added Angmar, shaking his head. “Their ill-discipline endangers us all. They could give up our location!”
Thilo nodded vigorously and Luthold leapt to his feet, incensed.
“My son did not run into the woods to play games, and the cause of his ill-discipline were the words he heard whispered about him for telling the truth.”
Heridan, still hunched over, raised his head and met Luthold’s eyes. Luthold steeled himself to meet the familiar antagonism and swallowed when instead he saw weariness and pain.
“You care more now,” Heridan’s voice rumbled and grated like rocks rolling down scree, “than you did last night.” The blow landed and Luthold stood for moment with his mouth open, unable to find a retort.
“I’d have liked to know more about the outsider he saw,” Heridan continued. “I’d have liked to know yesterday some of the things I’ve learned today.”
Luthold was about to remind Heridan that he had dismissed the outsider as a fabrication from the start, when another voice cut in.
“Enough!” Mildred silenced them both. She glared first at Thilo. Luthold thought she looked at him as she might look at weeds that had found their way into an herb jar. “I’ll hear no more blaming of children for the failings of adults.” Then she looked from Luthold to Heridan and added, “and I’ll tolerate no quarrelling between Hallin at assembly.”
Luthold’s face grew hot and, suddenly conscious that he was still standing, he sat down. Mildred had not finished. With a series of terrible cracks, she pushed her curved back straight and gave the clan a reminder of how tall she had once been. Her silver hair, which often trailed in the mud as she stooped, now hung just below her knees. Luthold noticed Joturn’s dark eyes narrow as he leaned forward and watched with a wistful look.
“Many of us had a part in their disappearance, whether through over-indulgence or mistrust. But all of us must help to find them. There is a new threat in the forest. There is too much at stake and there is no time to argue about who is at fault. If this assembly is to continue, it will do so in a manner befitting the descendants of Rasha and Tion.”
Sometimes, when she was cackling drunk after half a jar of wine, people forgot why Mildred was ever made an elder. Sometimes she reminded them.
In the quiet that followed her intervention, Luthold heard Oslef shift, and he helped the frailest of their elders to his feet.
“We have in our midst a survivor,” began Oslef, “of Dombarrow’s first ever assault on Sevener land. He believes the apostates of the Sundered Republic want to conquer the forest. I remain unconvinced. Still, you should hear his story.”
He gestured to the fair haired Sullin man, who stood as Luthold helped Oself down.
“My name is Erlends of the Sullin,” he said, pausing for the response.
“You are welcome here, Erlends,” the seated clansfolk replied. Heridan’s voice boomed above the others. Mildred, like Luthold, pursed her lips and abstained from the chorus. Though Oslef moved his mouth, Luthold did not hear any sound.
“Thank you.” He inclined his head as though bowing, and Luthold felt there was something indulgent, even patronising in the gesture.
“As you know,” he said, “we Sullin are no strangers to conflict and loss. We bear this misfortune in the eyes of the gods as easily as we bore the prosperity before it. According to the command of Maralon, we will exact revenge. All who know the Sullin, know this to be true.”
He looked round at the faces of his audience, as though challenging them to disagree.
“But survival comes first.” At this, heads nodded in relief. “We had to abandon our fort. They came in numbers greater than we thought their city contained. They brought devices of war beyond our knowledge. Their armour is like the hide of the legendary crocodile. When we saw our disadvantage, we retreated. Most of our women and children were captured. Many of our warriors are dead.”
He put one foot on the stump he’d been sitting on and pushed his shoulders back.
“Before we came South, seeking refuge, we scouted further North. They are amassing an army at the Lawbreaker’s Pass that is too large to be meant for the Sullin alone. From where it stands it can travel only two ways. To the Godless City from whence it came, or down into Saltleaf forest.”
“They wouldn’t dare try to conquer the forest,” Thilo exclaimed. “The Western King would not stand for it! Our land is still under his protection, is it not?” Thilo looked to Luthold for confirmation of this fact and Luthold nodded.
“Brunulf the Fourth,” drawled Erlends with a mocking flourish of his hand. “King of Giftahl and High Priest of the Temple of Hurean. They say he is going on eighty years, kept alive by the clerics of Farlean. They say he sees through only one eye and never leaves the Godsroof.”
“Even so,” said Luthold, “Saltleaf Forest falls within his borders. His house will not stand for it to be swiped away.”
“Those borders are meaningless and have been for centuries,” retorted the blonde warrior.
In his heart, Luthold knew he was right. The Seveners did not see Brunulf as their king, any more than the Western traders who travelled up the river saw the Seveners as their countrymen. And yet, an invasion from the Godless City? Could even a distant and ineffectual ruler ignore such an affront?
Erlends remained standing. Luthold heard leaves rustling and the mewling of lambs from the field. He glanced around and caught Adalina’s eye in the crowd. She smiled back at him, but her hands twitched. Luthold remembered his own first assembly. They had discussed whether there was enough honey to make sweets for the feast.
Finally, Joturn stood, giving up perhaps on waiting for Erlends to seat himself.
“For a long time, we’ve been safer in Saltleaf than anywhere else, not because the forest is our friend, but because we are intimate with its hostility. They are not. Soon they’ll start waking sleepers. They’ll cross paths with a bear or hoarder and try to hunt it, or some idiot amongst them will talk to a ghoul. Let’s meet again if they're still here in the Summer.”
Most Hallin in the circle nodded in agreement. Joturn added before sitting:
“They don’t even know the paths. In the time it takes them to move an army a few miles, we could move the whole village to the Saltleaf Shores themselves.”
Erlends, still looming over them, shot back:
“Didn’t one of your lost boys see an apostate scout? Didn’t you track him, and find that he was travelling on and off the paths? They’ve acquired knowledge from somewhere. Dark knowledge. We saw evidence of it in our battle against them.”
Luthold saw Joturn move and hesitate, perhaps wondering how much to share about the outsider Oli saw. He glanced at Oslef and Mildred and then replied.
“There are other possibilities. Some more likely than a soldier from Dombarrow who knows paths that even I have never trod. He could have been nothing more than a wanderer from another clan. He could have been a Westerner.”
“It was not wanderers from another clan that burned our fort down,” Erlends growled.
Heridan looked up and asked, “Then what do you propose?”
“We place ourselves in a position of strength,” Erlends said quickly, flashing Heridan a grateful smile. “We send emissaries to the other clans and even Scursditch. Press upon them the danger we are in and urge them to join in an army ready to fight where we have the advantage. We’ll approach the Republic united, and then we’ll parlay. Peace through strength. Until we are strong enough for revenge.”
“Parlay with apostates!” Aimar spat. “Summon the Sevener Clans to form an army! I cannot decide which is the greater sacrilege.”
“Mark my words,” Erlends replied in a dangerous voice, “You can either gather to face the danger together or fall one by one as they cut through this forest like a sharp saw through dry wood. Your elder wants to wait and meet again in Summer. I say he’ll be clamouring for another meeting in two weeks. They move fast, and everywhere they move fire paves a way for them.”
Luthold was not sure if the words sounded more like a warning or a threat.
“Who will be leading this army? And who will be leading the negotiations?” he challenged. He expected evasion or scheming, and was surprised when Erlends replied flatly:
“Me.”
Luthold looked at Aimar, who rolled his eyes in disbelief. He tried to catch the gaze of a few others. Thilo fiddled with the edge of his sleeve and frowned. Angmar looked incredulous. Mildred shook her head slowly and Joturn gazed impassively into the distance.
“Unless,” added Erlends, “You have a plan? If so, pursue your path and we will pursue ours. But remember; even now we have more warriors than the rest of you put together. We could be powerful friends to the Hallin.”
He looked as though we were about to add something else but made a point of stopping short. Leaving the assembly to guess at the meaning of his missing words, he finally sat down.