Wildheart – Chapter 1

His eyes swept across the forest floor, seeking those familiar patterns on the game trail that betrayed the recent passage of a deer. They weren’t easy to spot, and it became even trickier to do it this far into the forest, where the trees had grown taller and the canopy blocked a lot of sunlight from reaching the dark soil below. All he could see were spots of bright sunlight that still managed to shine through, wavering slowly as the wind grazed the treetops above. In the strange dancing pattern, seeing a leaf cracked by a hoof, or a twig displaced by the passing prey would be nearly impossible for the untrained eye. But his eye was nothing if not trained. He had been the Forest Warden for Lord Thalon for ten years now, and he made a decent living for himself keeping poachers away from the lord’s weald and bringing game meat to the lord’s table. And occasionally, to his own. But since the passing of his wife, he had focused much more on his lord’s needs than his own. Not out of some blind loyalty, but, as he was very aware, to give his life some sense of purpose. He never tried the family thing again since, but as long as his arms could pull on his longbow, and his eyes and mind were sharp enough to guide him through the woods, he didn’t need more than his occupation to remain healthy and sane.

A small sound of cracking drew the warden’s attention ahead, and he crouched down and held his breath, approaching the crest of a small elevation with the quiet footsteps of a stalking cat. And yonder ahead, his gaze found his quarry, grazing lazily in the narrow long clearing before him. It was a magnificent buck in size, with a shine to its golden-brown coat and a slender muscular build. It was a young adult male, judging by its relatively small antlers, who had already shed its winter weight and thicker coat. Had life been different and he and the beast had not crossed paths, it would likely grow to become a majestic animal, able to strut proudly across the woodlands and duel other bucks for territory and more. The hunter silently reached into his quiver and felt for the fletching of his arrows; a familiar sensation tickled the padding of his digits and he pulled out one of the projectiles, in a slow fluid motion, with the smoothness and precision of a movement performed a thousand times before. The deer was perhaps a little under twenty paces away. That was further than he would like it. Not for a matter of accuracy, as he could hit a target that size from even greater distances comfortably. But because that gave the creature too much of a head start if the arrow was to wound it but not kill it. And in those dense woods, twenty paces was more than enough distance for him to lose sight of the creature once it left the clearing, mayhap never to find it again. No, he needed to get closer, make sure his arrow would fly true and that he would be able to chase the wounded beast if needed, and put a second arrow on it before it disappeared, or track it to where it would collapse and end its misery.

As he forged forward with the same silent careful steps, the deer lifted its head from grazing to stare fixedly towards the northeast. It wasn’t the direction the hunter approached from, but he still stood perfectly still, as the beast seemed alerted by some unexpected forestalled noise. The warden himself had heard nothing, but beasts had sharper ears than humans, he knew, so he waited. Waited for the buck to lower its guard. As he stood still, he slowly nocked the drawn arrow on the string of his bow, holding it diagonally and giving it a light testing tug to feel the familiar resistance of the weapon when drawn, trying to pull back. Slowly the deer seemed to calm down and take two steps forward before returning to quietly nibble on some of the bushes hugging the treeline of the clearing. It was the warden's chance to move closer, though as he had crested the small elevation before the clearing, each step now also took him down the slope. He had to be surefooted like a goat to avoid slipping and scaring away the buck, or else the whole morning of stalking would be utterly ruined.

And just as he was reaching the bottom of the gentle slope, and raising his bow, ready to draw on it and fire, the beast raised its head again, turning to the same side as it had done before. But that time, while its ears were still sticking out in alert, it turned around, instead of going straight back to grazing, and in its turning, its eyes fell on the hunter. He had a heartbeat to decide to stay perfectly still and hope the animal wouldn’t notice him, or to draw on the bow and fire, knowing the sudden movement would alert it, but give him a headstart on the shot. And he decided on the latter. But even as he raised the weapon and drew in a matter of a couple of seconds, the buck was already pushing itself into the air with its powerful hind legs, to hop over the bushes and dart out. He loosened the arrow and it flew across the air, passing really close to the beast’s neck but missing by less than a fist before the projectile continued its trajectory way past it. Even as the hunter scrambled for a second shot, it was too late, the deer was gone and out of sight, fleeing north, of all directions.

“North. Why did it have to go north,” the man spoke to himself as he lowered his bow and began to walk, aiming to recover his fired arrow.

Maybe he could follow the beast, but it was unlikely that it would stop running before crossing into the Deepwoods. And there, the warden knew very well – better than most, even – he could not pursue it. A part of him wondered, not without a certain grudge, what had alerted the animal twice. His ears had grown sharp to the different sounds of the woods, and he couldn’t hear anything that he would decide was abnormal. Perhaps there was a boar nearby, and the deer heard it stomping the undergrowth before he did. Or perhaps a wolf. Though he didn’t expect to run into a wolf around those parts. Their hunting grounds didn’t seem to extend there.

As he mused on those things and more, he spotted his arrow in the distance. It had flown far without finding a tree trunk to bury itself into, and he was lucky to spot the white of the fletching barely peeking off a low bush. And as he came close to it, he frowned. A southbound wind blew from the north and carried with it the smell of smoke. It was faint, but it was there, without a doubt. And nobody had cause to be making a fire in those woods if not the warden. There was only one other explanation for that; poachers.

He was alone, and confronting them could be dangerous. Many men hunted without permission in the lord’s weald. Some were locals, unable to find game in communal parts of the woodlands and found themselves heading deeper until they wandered into the lord’s domain. When the warden ran into those, he was supposed to bring them to justice, where the lord could decide their fate, but more often than not he was willing to believe – or act as if he believed – they just got lost and wandered there by accident. But locals would not come that close to the Deepwoods. They knew the danger in that.

The second type of poacher was the most dangerous. Rowdy nomad men who lived their lives without working the land. Hunting game for food and trade, and supplementing whatever they lacked with occasional acts of banditry. There had been more of those lately, especially since the war was over. Some men who formed the levies of the lord never really went home, either because they didn’t want to or because they were abandoned by their lord and didn’t know how to. Some simply gained a liking for violence after tasting it. And a few were men who were never a part of the armies but were displaced for one reason or another. He had been a part of his own lord’s retinue during the war, and he saw and did things that would remain with him for however many springs he had left, and in that he could partially understand the heart of those men. However, in truth, their motives did not matter. Regardless of the path they took to find themselves living like that, a life of roving and roughing it in the wilderness had a way to make men like beasts, and they would lash out and attack if they felt threatened. And the hunter could not blame the men for their lot in life more than he could blame any wolf that snapped jaws at him. Wolf or man, he’d sooner strike down than be struck.

Without any way to know who waited for him in the woods, he still knew what his duty demanded of him, and while there would be no witness to know if he flinched away from it, he would. And that he could not abide. The arrow was returned to his quiver and he forged on knowing that danger may wait for him ahead. He felt the cold touch of fear on his spine, and he welcomed it. Having fought in the war himself, he only met a handful of truly fearless men, and he had shared enough campfire meals with them to know that he should not envy them. Any man who lost their ability to fear had also lost much more along the way, and for them, he only felt pity. Most did not live to see the day they marched back home, either. Fear was useful, if one could avoid being ruled by it, it could keep one alive, and remind one to plan ahead, think through and be humble. And as he came closer and closer to the edge of the Deepwoods in his search for the poachers' camp, that dread only grew. There were things much scarier than bandits and poachers.

After nearly half an hour of slow cautious walking, he reached that threshold. It was clearly demarked if one knew what to look for. There was a type of vine that grew thick and heavy down the trees in that primaeval part of the forest. Sometimes, it could hang between the branches of two different trees as it spread out across the canopy, eventually branching out and hanging heavily to swing with the wind. But as he reached the old oak tree, he spotted a trio of those vines, wrapped together like an ugly braid, or three snakes wrestling each other, forming one thick line that wrapped high around the trunk of the oak and then reaching towards the next tree, and from that to one after that, and the one after that. That happened in both directions, forming a very well-delimited perimeter for anyone with an eye for it. It was easy to miss for others though, as it hung above the line of sight and most forest dwellers tended to look down more than up. The faded green and greyish-brown colour of the vines allowed them to mingle and disappear into the canopy and branches. One could even see them and make nothing of them, confusing them for naturally occurring parts of the vegetation. But one would need to know very little about the woods to make that mistake. And it might end up being the last mistake one would ever make. Vines did not grow in trios, and intelligent hands had braided them together.

The hunter considered turning back. If the poachers had inadvertently ventured past that point, as he thought they had considering how the smell of smoke became more intense as he approached the threshold, then they were already doomed. And he would be in danger himself if he crossed. But just as he was about to turn back, his trained eyes spotted the unusual arrangement of leaves right in the middle of what should've been an otherwise clear game trail. It was just a couple of paces past the threshold, but he still had to take a deep breath before crossing it. He hesitated for a moment, holding his breath before venturing forth in a large stride as if going slower might cause him to give up on crossing. Nothing happened as he crossed it. He held his breath for a second longer, standing still. But there was no change in the sounds of the forest, no sudden gush of cold wind, no chill down his spine or whispered words in the wind. That lack of reaction was, in a way, eerier than if something had happened, he reckoned. As he approached the leaves and pushed them aside gently with his foot, he was not surprised to see a hole, just wide enough that small human feet, or more likely, a deer’s, could sink through. A layer of very frail twigs had been used to support the cover of leaves that hid the hole, though any weight on top of it would likely cause them to crack. Within the hole properly, along its walls, there were sharpened sticks placed so that the pointed ends faced upwards for them to sink into flesh and stop any poor beast’s desperate attempts to free itself, leading only to further damage. He grunted and looked around for anything big enough that he could place over the trap to prevent an animal from falling into it, and he found a rock. It fit snuggly over the opening. The warden knew he had to find the trappers then and stop them. If they were hunting there, the consequences might be their own, but leaving traps around that could be stepped on long after they left could bring damning reprisals to the village folk living on the lord’s land. He reckoned they couldn’t be far; they would want to come to check on that trap at least a couple of times a day. And if they were used to the woods, they knew they ought to camp on high ground.

There was a visible elevation a little ahead of the trap, leading to what seemed to be a clearing judging by how brighter the trees looked in the distance. If he was a waging man, he would’ve wagered that was where he would find his new quarry. Before he approached, another arrow was nocked on the string of his bow, and then, holding it in place with one hand looping through the bow’s hilt and arrow shaft, he used his free hand to grasp on the bone hilt of his hunting knife and wiggle it on the scabbard. It was oiled and ready to be drawn. With a deep breath and a long sigh, he began to climb the incline, moving even slower than before. He wasn’t even halfway when he noticed how quieter the woods had gotten. A usual sign of another hunter if he ever knew one. And just a little further he heard distant laughter and the sound of wood being splintered.

He laid eyes on them as he reached the edge of the tree line on top of the hillock. Their camp was little more than two open tents, a campfire and two piles of wood; small dried branches in one, and larger ones, cut down to pieces by axe or another. Laying against these piles, he saw three crude knapsacks of cloth and leather and a small bow beside a quiver of arrows. He could only see two of the poachers, as one stood shirtless by an old stump, using an axe to break down wood, and the other sat down by the fire, back against a fallen log, eating what seemed to be an old piece of bread by breaking it down with his fingers. Three knapsacks, two men. That wasn’t good. The third one was likely out there, setting traps. If he was bloodthirsty, he could take out the woodcutter with a single arrow, and he would likely have time to reload and fire again before the sitting companion had time to get up and charge him. It would be the safest approach and would see them both dead before their companion could return and he was even more outnumbered. No one would cry for three dead poachers. But those were still men, and until he knew they were dangerous, killing them would just be murder. Besides, he didn’t want to shed blood in the Deepwoods if he could avoid it. Purely out of superstition, even he knew. And then he knew he was going to do something stupid.

“Hey there, friends,” he called from a distance, at least thirty paces away from them, “are you lost?”

The two turned, surprised. If they were that far into the woods, they were likely not the bandit type, preferring to go unseen by travellers than to harass them, the hunter reckoned. He was betting on it at least. The shirtless man placed the axe on his shoulder and turned to him scratching his matted messy brown hair that matched his overgrown beard.

“What’s it to you?” he shouted back defiantly.

That was not a good start. The hand with which he had waved now went back to the string of his bow, but he kept the weapon low, though an arrow was already nocked in place.

“I’m the warden of these woods. You are not permitted to be here.”

The two poachers exchanged a glance for a couple of long seconds before they laughed off the warning. The sitting man tossed his bread on the grass and began to get up, holding onto a small hatchet as he did so. The hunter half drew and raised his bow at the man with the axe, aiming square for his torso. That put some pause on the two poachers. They knew they could rush him down, and probably one of them would make it before he could nock, draw and loosen a second arrow. But that first would be fired, and it could very well spell death.

“Easy there, warden… Let’s not shed blood without need.”

“Wise words. Why don’t you put down your weapons, in that case?” the hunter said without lowering his bow, keeping it half-drawn.

“These? These are tools,” the man in the back said, with a gesture to his hatchet, but he didn’t attempt to hide his insincerity.

“So is this,” the warden said in turn.

Then there was silence. The sound of the forest around them and the rustling wind seemed to grow louder in the absence of words. There was no confident smirk on the two other men, and their posture slightly shifted. The axe cutter dropped it from his shoulder to hold it with both hands. The one with the hatchet shifted to face sideways towards the hunter as if to offer a smaller target for the arrow and gripped tighter on the handle. The axeman was closer, but with them both standing, his friend had a decent chance to close the gap before the hunter could reload. He even tried to take one step forward, but the warden moved his bow towards him, shifting his aim and the message was clear. If he finished that step, he’d be the one shot down. Each of the three men on that clearing was now imagining a handful of different scenarios, and trying to anticipate what the next one would do. In that, hunting men was very different from hunting beasts, the hunter knew. Men overthought things. He also knew that there would be no leaving that place without death.

Stillness reigned among them, and the hunter read every twitch of muscle and glance of eyes between his counterparts as he was sure they did to him. And then, in less than a heartbeat, everything changed. The man in the back sprung into motion, not charging but throwing his hatchet, which caught the hunter by surprise. He whirled himself aside, barely dodging it, and in the same motion, he finished the draw of his bow. His fingers uncurled and the arrow flew, loose, across the air, to land square in the chest of the man with the axe, who had begun to charge with a scream as soon as the hatchet was tossed. The arrow struck his shirtless chest right on the left side of his ribcage. The hunter knew it missed the heart, but not by much, and the man’s scream was cut short as his breath deflated and he fell to his knees, dropping the axe. He was still alive but wouldn’t be for long.

The poacher who threw the hatchet was now disarmed, and instead of advancing, he was running back towards the tent. The warden saw that mistake for what it was, pulling three arrows from his quiver and sticking them on the ground in front of him. That was not the time to be accurate. His arrows were broadheads, good for hunting, but they lacked the precise flight of a war arrow. As he took the first one off the ground, drawing and loosening it in a smooth fast gesture, his target had ducked by the tent, and the projectile went high overhead. By the time he was firing the second one, the man was standing up, drawing a short rusty sword from its scabbard. The second arrow grazed his arm and disappeared as it pierced the flap of the tent, but with no more than a cut, he charged forward with a scream. The hunter took a beat longer to fire, and that time he struck the man on his waist just above the left thigh. He screamed and dropped to one knee, before insistently trying to stand up. But by then, it was the hunter’s turn to charge forward, closing the gap between them. Unable to move properly, the poacher slashed forward with his sword once, then twice, and finally tried for a lunge, as his adversary stepped back with each blow, remaining out of range. The lunge sent him forward and the warden dodged to the left, bringing his hand with the hunting knife up and sinking it into the man’s stomach. The poacher still tried two wild swings at that awkward angle, but his arm was easily pushed aside, and eventually, the pain made him drop the sword.

The hunter shoved him down, pulling the knife and kneeling on his chest. Instinctively he counted his ribs, and then stabbed him in the heart. Death was near-instant. The hands that were trying to push him away dropped to the side and the man let out a final grunt and then a dry inhaling wheeze. And then he was gone. His friend still gurgled on the floor, not too far. The ranger stood up to walk towards him, slowly now, and heavy of breath. There was a distant bird call as he lifted him from the ground by the chin, plucking his arrow from his chest first, tossing it away and then bringing down his knife just an inch above where the arrow had hit. The blade grazed against bone but still found his heart. And then he was gone too.

As the second body dropped, he allowed himself to fall down, resting his back against the pile of firewood and catching his breath, while wiping the knife on the pants of the dead woodcutter. He would leave their bodies there, hoping that the Deepwoods inhabitants would find them and decide the transgressions were all punished. And then, as he rested, his head turned back to the knapsacks. Three of them. His friend was unlikely to take kindly to the death of his two companions, but now at least it was just one. Yet it was clear that it was better for the hunter to find him than to be found by him. With a deep sigh, he pushed himself up, sheathed his knife, and began the process of recovering the bow he had dropped on the soft grass, and finding his missing arrows. He recovered three of the four he fired before he gave up on the search. One of them had gone wide off the hillock and could be anywhere. It belonged to the woods now.

It wouldn’t be easy to track the third man, and perhaps he shouldn’t given where he found himself, but he was aware that he could get shot in the back at any second until he dealt with it. So, he began to walk around the camp in increasingly wide circles, searching for signs of traps or a trail. Hours went by and with no signs to be found, he gave up on the search. Yet, just as he started to turn back towards the south to use the remaining hours of sunlight to make it back home, he heard something. Faint and distant, but it seemed like a scream. And so he took off running towards it. He did so almost by instinct, but after a moment, he lost track of where he was going. Then he heard voices again, that time it sounded more aggressive, a shout of anger. He ran further.

He happened upon a ravine and following it, where the slopes to either side leaned back down into the ground, there was a stream. Just beyond the water, he spotted them both. The man was another poacher, a crossbow in hand, with bolts attached to his belt. The weapon wasn’t loaded though, and he carried a single-edged short blade right next to the bag of bolts. He stood there, looking down at her. She was no human, that much was clear to him. She had antlers sprouting from her hair which cascaded down her head and to her shoulders, changing colour along its length from bright yellow, to burnt red and dark orange; colours of the forest at fall. Her dress was short, ending at her knees, but the sides were cut open, and exposed the light fuzz of fur growing across her thighs, light brown and spotted, like a doe’s. And like a doe’s were her ears, sticking near perpendicular to her head, long, fuzzy and rounded. Her arms were of tanned skin marked by tattoos or markings that seemed to be shaped like tree roots. She wore some sort of leather armour on her chest, tied behind her neck, with an open back. He was so stunned by the sight of such a creature that it took him a moment to realize why she was on the floor. A wooden stake stuck to a branch was impaled across the soft part of her shin. Her sword had fallen out of her reach and she couldn’t move or get up to reach it. She was caught in a boar trap, designed to hit the short creature in the flank. The poacher looked at her with a sneer of confusion and excitement. The hunter nocked another arrow and began to approach.

“Release me,” she demanded with a painful grunt as she tried once again, uselessly, to lift her leg out of the trap, but the pain stopped her before she could slide her flesh more than an inch across the stake.

She cried out in anguish and he recognized the scream he heard before, that brought him there.

“Now, now… Why don’t you answer my question and tell me what you are, pretty thing?”

The hunter knew the look in the man’s eye. Greed. He was wondering what she was, and what he could fetch for her in the right market. The poor sod had no idea the curse he was inviting upon himself if the hunter’s guess was correct.

“Step back,” the hunter said as he moved closer, bow half-drawn again.

At first, the poacher looked at him mockingly, with the same sneer he had been using with the woman. But then he spotted the blood down the hunter’s pants and tunic. And understanding dawned on his mind. He reached for a bolt on his waist. His fingers grabbed one, but as he brought it towards his crossbow, the warden’s arrow had found him. That time the arrow struck the target through the heart. He dropped to his knees and then fell to his side. The surviving man didn’t take much time to admire his clean kill, moving across the stream and towards the woman on the ground. She looked shocked for a moment, and then roared and lunged with her arms towards him as he approached. He hopped back and stopped just out of arms reach.

“I’ll help you,” he said kneeling just out of reach to place his bow and quiver down on the ground, near the corpse of the last poacher.

She seemed sceptical of his pledge, but the gesture of putting the weapon down caused her to shift from anger to uncertainty. And then the pain shot through her leg again and she groaned and winced.

“Well, then help!” she grunted finally, impatiently.

The concession was all he needed. He moved close to study the trap. The branch that had been twisted and used to project the sharpened stake through her shin still had some pressure on it, so it was no wonder she couldn’t move. He grabbed onto it to try and reduce the shaking and pulled his knife.

“This is going to hurt.”

That was all the warning he could give her, delivered in a dry stoic voice before he started to cut into the branch. Each blow caused her to hiss between her teeth as the branch shook the stake still firmly lodged through her calf. When he finally cut through, the other half of the branch whipped forth to use the rest of the torsion energy, with a loud crack as the trap was finally, fully, undone. And then she tried to scurry away, no longer tied in place, but with the spike still pierced through her flesh, all she did was retreat half a pace and cry out in pain and exhaustion.

“Don’t… You’ll make the wound worse.”

She frowned at the unsolicited advice, but took it, ceasing to move and allowing him to grasp at her shin and turn it, before holding the wooden spike and pulling it off in one swift, and admittedly painful, movement. Her cry echoed through the forest, suppressing the wind and the stream for as long as her lungs had air. As she stopped, he had already tossed the bloody spike away and was taking the bandages kept in a pouch on his belt to wrap them around her now profusely bleeding wound.

“I s-should kill you,” she remarked as she watched him patch her leg, sitting down and pulling it so that her foot stuck in a short boot was nested on his lap.

“You should,” he said deadpan as he worked.

That response caused her frown to lessen by a visible margin, and she tilted her antler-bearing head to the side, measuring him.

“What’s your name, human?”

“I’m John. John Forester,” he responded without lifting his head from her wound. “I’m Lord Thalon’s warden. It's his weald… Beyond the threshold.”

“The woods belong to no man,” was her response, spoken matter-of-factly.

“Aye. But don’t tell the lords that.”

It had not been John’s intention to make her laugh, or even to make a joke. He was simply agreeing with her. But she still chuckled softly, before the pain reminded her that her situation wasn’t that funny. He realized that up close, she smelled faintly of pine resin, wild honey and berries. It was a strange mixture, and a subtle one, but once he caught its scent, it was harder not to focus on it. Her skin was soft, and he couldn’t ignore the fact that most of her leg was bare through the slits of her dress.

“You’re one of them, are you not?” he asked as he was done bandaging her, wiping his hands off the blood on his pants and lifting his eyes to find her face.

She looked at him with bright amber-coloured eyes, and it was hard to tell her age from her features. She had more sharply shaped eyes and acute features than most, and a long, elegant neck. As she caught his eyes with hers, he could see how her ears flattened and her tanned cheeks seemed to grow darker and redder in a faint flush. It didn’t escape his notice that she was beautiful, with her strangely sharp but oddly harmonic features.

“Of them?” she asked as she retrieved, slowly, her injured leg back from his lap.

“The Fair Folk.”

“Oh yes. Your people call us that, sometimes,” she confirmed.

He had never seen one of them before. Most people had not. The Fair Folk inhabited the Deepwoods which those who bordered their domain knew not to traverse. There were many stories of what happened to those who crossed. An arrow shot from seemingly nowhere finding itself stuck on a leg of a hunter in a group, forcing them to turn back. Occasionally a trespasser’s body would be found, tossed just past the threshold, sometimes hands tied, sometimes just peppered with arrows not made by human hands. But if one didn’t trespass, the Fair Folk were actually not terrible neighbours. There were hollow trees right on the edge of their domain, where people would leave gifts; bread, ale, mushrooms and berries, and sometimes pottery, baskets of flowers. In exchange, upon the next visit, the gifts would be gone, and in their place, there would be bottles of the sweetest mead one had ever tasted, medicinal herbs and the occasional knife or artefact of beautiful, strange craftsmanship.

Old wives told tales about who the Fair Folk were, but very few had ever seen one and lived to tell the tale. And John never heard a single story about what their actual villages or towns would look like. As far as he knew, they were a thing of mystery, a near-ethereal presence whenever he was close to the limit of their lands. Yet looking down at the injured woman, she looked very much flesh and blood.

“My name’s Sybil,” she said after a moment of silence.

“Sybil,” he echoed, and then his lips curled in the very faintest hint of a smile.

She dipped her head and attempted to get up, slowly now, but as she first faltered, his hand was there to support her and the Fair Folk girl was able to stand fully on her feet.

“I was on patrol, we knew a group of men-folk had entered this area… So I came here to find them and got stuck on this.”

“They are not from my people… Not Lord Thalon’s people,” John spoke with an assertive, if gentle, voice as he helped her stabilize.

“I know. You saved my life, ranger.”

“Not a ranger, just a hunter,” he corrected humbly.

“Not just. You really helped me when you could’ve walked away, back to your lands,” she insisted, “and that shall not be forgotten.”

“I want no boons,” he said deadpan again.

As she tried to take another step forward, her leg faltered and he helped her reach a tree. There, she wheeled herself to place her hands over an exposed knot in the trunk and rested her head against it. A few words were muttered, or whispered secretly, into the tree, before she turned around to rest her back against it.

“There… My people will find me now.”

“Are you sure you don’t need help?”

“No. They’ll be here soon enough. And I don’t seem to be bleeding that much, thanks to you,” she said, with a faint blush.

“Then, I should be going. Take care, Sybil.”

“You too, John Forester.”

With those words he turned around to take his bow and arrow again, tossing the quiver over his shoulder and plucking the one left on the poacher's body to find it far too bloody. Without turning back to look at Sybil, John spoke:

“There's two more of them, dead atop a hillock not far yonder.” He pointed before heading towards the stream.

“We will deal with their bodies,” Sybil assured him.

John knelt by the edge of the river, to wash his hands off the blood, and watch his own reflection in the rippling, running water. His deep brown eyes looked back at him from a seasoned face. He looked a little older than his thirty-five years, mostly because of some hair prematurely greying out on his temples. That had started during the siege, but it never stopped since. A scar on his stubble-marked chin and his long hair was tied together on the back of his head in a haphazardly arranged bundle before being allowed to fall over his back. The blood that washed off his calloused, large hands ran down and diluted itself into nothing on the stream of the river. He washed the tip of his blood-stained arrow and dried it on his shirt before sticking it back into his quiver. And then as he got up and stepped on the stream to begin his path back home, while there was still sunlight, Sybil’s voice came from behind him again.

“Wait, John,” she called, “I have a debt to you. Let me repay it.”

“No debt, Sybil. I shouldn’t be here on the Deepwoods to begin with. Just letting me leave is repayment enough, aye?”

He turned in time to see her shaking her head at his stubbornness but no other words were exchanged. Just a glance that lasted for what felt like a moment too long. And they parted without any further words.