Tales from the Ashmarch · Vol. I
The Forest Asks
His name had been forgotten years ago, even by himself, most days. He lived alone with his four birds in a hut in the Duskenwood. He chopped wood, sharpened his axe, set traps, and talked to his birds.
He had names for them, of course. They needed names. There was Stellin, Mula, Talska, and his favourite, Benni — all names borrowed from brothers in arms he'd once had. Those days were long gone now.
He rested his weary bones on a plain, homemade log chair and pulled out his pipe. The scent of cherrywood and tobacco soon filled the hut, a blend he kept to himself. The old man allowed himself a small smile and told the birds about the fox he'd seen that day — a skinny little thing with two cubs, a vixen who'd seen better days and likely wouldn't see many more. But the cubs were strong and healthy. That was that.
He hummed a tune, more noise than song. Outside, the woods went quiet.
A roar went up, then shouting. The old man sighed and walked to his bow, slinging it over one shoulder. He padded out of his hut and toward the roar.
Closer, the men's voices came clear. They'd cornered two bears — a mother and her cub. She roared and swiped at anything that moved. A big brown bear.
The old man gazed at her. "She's a beauty." He looked to the men. "You lot, not so much."
Pain rode under her roars. She was weakening, her swipes becoming fumbles, her cub crying out behind her. One of the men hefted a massive crossbow, the kind that needed a handle to wind the ratchet, the mechanism clanking slowly as he cranked a nasty steel-tipped bolt into place. The three of them laughed and joked among themselves, one still prodding the mother now and again with a long spear.
Shaking his head, the old man fitted an arrow to his bow, aiming for the throat, clean and quick. Three armed men against one lone mother and her child — the least he could do was even the odds fast and be done with it. "You lot never learn," he muttered.
He was ready to fire when the man holding the crossbow let out a shocked "Bugger me." The weapon had gone off early, sending its bolt down the line he'd been laughingly aiming along. It hit the cub with such force it buried itself half up the shaft in its side. The little cub, barely two summers old, made a sound no animal should have been able to make.
The man who'd loosed the shot looked to the others, his mouth still open.
Then the men erupted in laughter.
"See that, Bill!" said the shooter. "Didn't even need to aim, and I hit the little bugger."
"Damn right," said another of the three, still relieving himself against a nearby tree.
The old man's lips tightened. He lowered the arrow from the throat, settling it instead on the same spot the bolt had taken the cub — a wound a man could live with a while yet, and feel every part of living it.
The old man loosed his arrow. The shaft found its mark, and a howl went up. Bill still hadn't understood what was happening before the second arrow found him too, this time in the leg.
Something went out of the mother's tiredness, and she charged the man who'd shot her cub. He was closest to her. A single swipe saw half his throat gone in an instant. The third man got his trousers up in time to grab a spear, hurling it half in panic and half in aim. It caught her, and she howled, but drove on regardless, catching him soon after. With nothing but his bare arms to stop her, his end came fast.
Bill was alone on the ground, crawling.
The old man stepped out from the trees and looked down at him.
"Why?" Bill asked. Then, again, more desperate, "Help me, man. For Auraeth's sake, don't let me die."
"Why," the old man repeated, not quite a question.
"The forest asked for help," he said. "That's why."
The bear had closed most of the distance between herself and Bill.
"Help me. For the love of the gods, help me."
She sat panting in front of him, and he dragged himself backward with nothing but his arms, uselessly, an inch at a time.
The old man crossed to the dead cub, worked the arrow free, and murmured a few words over it — rest now, small one; the ground remembers gentler things than this — words Bill couldn't have understood even if the pain had left him room to listen. He looked to the mother bear.
"I'm sorry, girl. He's gone."
Bill looked between the old man and the bear, disbelieving. "How the hell," he stammered, "does the forest ask for help?"
"It doesn't matter," the old man said. "You'll never hear it, no matter how loud she shouts."
He slung his bow over his shoulder, walked past the mother bear, patted her once on the flank, and disappeared back into the woods as quickly as he'd come.
Bill closed his eyes, and waited.
A story from the world of The Ashmarch,
beginning with Book One: The Trader's Reckoning.