Elowen
Icome out of the tree line when I see my home. The south wall has given at the base, the wattle split open in a long diagonal tear, and it's settled on its broken side. The thatch over the west corner is gone entirely, and the pale morning sky shows through the gap where the roof used to be.
Inside is worse. The north wall and the main beam are holding, but the jars are across the floor, a mosaic of ceramic shards and dried herbs and rendered fat pooled.
The worktable is still upright. The single chair is on its side, and the window above the preparation shelf is gone — frame and all — leaving a ragged-edged hole.
My papers are all over. That's the part that stops me.
I have three years worth of notes. Transcribed journal entries, pressed specimens, observations on soil composition, moisture variation, and how certain root systems respond to prolonged wildspont exposure.
I keep them in a box beneath the worktable, sealed to avoid them getting damp.
But the lid is off, contents out and distributed across the floor like someone has worked through the pile methodically and discarded what they didn't need.
The earliest notes are furthest away. The most recent — the last two months — are missing.
I crouch and turn one page over. Then another. The wax seal on the cloth wrapping has been cut cleanly. Claws don't cut cleanly. I breathe through my nose and stand, and exit at the broken door.
There are six, maybe seven, of them waiting outside. Duskmire faces I know — the miller, two women from the market stalls, and a boy who once brought me his sister with a broken wrist.
"You brought this here." The miller's voice comes out certain. "Before you went into that forest, we had beast sightings same as always. Now they're pulling down houses."
One of the market women crosses her arms. "The Black Stag of Mournhold. That elf lord. Everyone says it — if you hadn't gone with him—"
"She didn't go back with anyone," the boy says,, and then flinches when the woman clips him around the head.
I don't answer. Orrik comes through the back of the small crowd with his shoulders set as though he's been walking fast for longer than he should have to.
His eyes latch onto mine first, and his relief is brief and real.
He puts his broad hand at my arm and steers me off the main path, to a gap between the cottage and the old fence that nobody uses.
"Let them talk," he states, low. "They'll talk regardless."
We stop near the exposed roots. I can see where something raked a long gouge through the bark — four marks, deep and parallel.
"Malrec's been in the village square three times this week," Orrik delivers things fast when he has been sitting on them long enough that the weight has become uncomfortable.
"Each time he talks about the forest and what's coming out of it.
He doesn't name anyone, but he names the region.
The estate. The territory." He works his jaw for a moment.
"People are scared. Scared people need somewhere to put it.
He's just making sure the place is obvious. "
"Why would he push that?"
Orrik shakes his head. "Don't know. He's never been warm on dark elf authority. But this is — it's deliberate, Wen. By the time he's done you'd swear no one had told you anything at all. Whatever he's after, it isn't just fear."
I open my mouth to answer him, but screaming starts in the distance. It's coming from the village square — not one voice but several, overlapping and climbing, the specific pitch that means now, not soon.
Orrik and I run the length of the fence and around the mill corner when the sound of impact reaches us, something massive and wet.
We stop as we see the square. A beast. Enormous like all the ones before.
Not a grevhault — the limbs too short and too many at the front, the body low and dense with a kind of bulk that suggests the original animal was already large before the magic got to it.
It has overturned the grain cart at the center and two men are down near the fountain, one motionless, one trying to crawl away on one arm.
I'm about to move toward them, but Draekir bolts past us, so fast I feel the wind from him before my eyes see him. His bow is already in hand, already nocking, and soldiers follow. He glances back at me as if to say stay put.
The first arrow takes the beast through the lower jaw, pinning it closed, and it swings its head, losing two seconds of momentum that it doesn't get back.
Draekir is on its left, placing himself between the beast and the men at the fountain.
Sprinting to draw its attention away from the crawling man and toward the open end of the square where no one stands.
The beast follows. It commits to him fully, those cracked shoulders rolling as it builds speed across the cobblestones. He doesn't move until it's almost on him. Then he drops one knee to the ground, loosens his arrow and rolls clear of the radius as the beast goes sideways.
The soldiers hit it before it stops moving. Two spears at the base. A third into the exposed joint at the shoulder, leveraging, finishing what the arrows started.
It's down, and the square goes very quiet for a split second. Draekir straightens and sweeps a glance across the square, checking the injured, the frozen, and the ones clustered near the well. He finds the crawling man, and grabs the nearest soldier pointing for them to move to the man.
I stop moving to help, and glance at Orrik.
His hands are frozen, which is not a thing Orrik does when he's afraid — when he's afraid he holds his arms crossed and his weight forward.
His hands are at his sides. His face has the look of a man recalibrating something he thought he already understood.
He watches as the injured man is pulled upright, and glances at Draekir shocked.
Orrik was seven years old the last time a dark elf lord took soldiers through this village. He told me once, briefly, what that looked like. I remember the particular care with which he said briefly, like the word itself was load-bearing.
He is not seeing what he expected to see. Around us, the people who had their arms crossed, now in awe of Draekir's soldiers helping.
Draekir circles, looking for something or someone.
He finds me and holds for one second longer than he should.
I think he located what he was looking for.
The village isn't the reason he's here. The thought is quiet and total at the same time.
He spent the night with me. And then tried to escape, but here he is, bloodied at the shoulder, standing in a square full of people who have been fed a story about why he's the danger.
He would burn the whole thing down. The reputation, the political calculation, every carefully maintained inch of the distance he tries to keep between his fear and anything that can reach it, if it meant it would save me. At least, that's what it looks like to me.