Chapter 12

Stonekeep and my return to Trinsic

What I had hoped would be a settlement with an inn where I could stay the night turned out to be something quite different. What I found instead was much military activity, heavily armored and armed soldiers everywhere going about their business. A closer look showed, to my astonishment, that this was nothing less than a military base, complete with a stone Keep and barracks! I looked around and found a tavern, a church, workshops and other buildings: a small military town, no less! I guessed they must have been away on patrols when I had hurried east that dark and stormy night on my way to Leafsta. And, of course, on the outward journey 5 years ago – no, now 6 years ago – we had bypassed Crossroads by travelling cross-country to the south.

But there were also a lot of ordinary folk out and about Crossroads and an air of festive expectancy. At the tavern I learned that Stonekeep was the headquarters of a sizeable defensive force, the Guard Militia of Yew, and that tonight it was holding an Open Day: I was about to experience my first ever festive event in the big wide world!

I was very shy, tongue-tied and without the social graces to engage in banter. I was especially awed by all the soldiers and the pretty girls. So I never plucked up the courage to talk to anyone. The one clumsy attempt I made to talk to a lady was a failure, In my shyness, I talked to her back and I don’t think she even heard my mumbled introduction. For long afterwards I blushed and squirmed with embarrasment when thinking of it. Shortly after my clumsy attempt at an introduction, I listened with amazement to a young gallant (whose name I forget) who tried, quite elegantly - though unsuccessfully as it turned out - to woo this lady whom he addressed as Sally Buttons.

Although I didn’t know at the time, such first experiences for a youth are typically a disappointment. I went to the tavern for the opening drink but not knowing how to order a drink I just sat, watched and listened. Then I took part in a race but came in one of the last, both times. I just watched the next event a civilian attempt at a military line-up and the following of parade orders. By then it was late, I was tired and upset by the recent events, there was no inn here that I could find, and so I camped for the night before leaving at dawn and heading south for what had by then become "home", our cottage outside Trinsic.

But what really struck me was that here, just a long day’s march west of Leafsta, was a strong military garrison based around an impressive Keep and dedicated to preserving law and order. Yet it would seem that we Leafstans had never made contact with it, clearly to our great cost and loss.

It was only the evening of the first day as I made camp on the southern borders of the Norse Forest and prepared to take my farewell of the last of my beloved yew trees that it occurred to me that I should have talked to the militiamen to see if they had any news of Leafsta, or indeed had even heard of the place! I had certainly never heard the militia mentioned in Leafsta, but at the time I was, after all, but a child.

Almost I turned back to enquire at Stonekeep, but I had been away so long and so decided against the extra time it would take - a two-day return trip, plus a dy or two or more for enquiries. I reasoned to myself that Aunt Angst, with her bardic knowledge and close kin with the ruling Fretting Family, would know, if anyone would, whether Leafstans were aware of the existence of the militia and whether the militia had known of Leafsta.

This comforting thought turned out to be but wishful thinking. Looking back, I now think it was a mistake not to have returned to enquire, to at least have found out whether they had any news of the attack on Leafsta or of any survivors.

So I returned to Delver's Croft, heavy of heart. There was little celebration that night and much speculation as to what had happened and what had become of everyone, if there were survivors from what had clearly been some kind of attack, and if so where they had gone.

These questions have haunted all three of us from that day on and have loomed largely in our thoughts, most of all for Aunt Agnes and Smaed, each in their own way. But that is another tale, or rather several tales, that one day may be told elsewhere.

Footnotes

1 The Flight Families are Coker, Fiskdotter (in whose boat they arrived), Fretting, Treefeller (since corrupted to the more Britannic-sounding name of Treefellow), Whittlerson, Husband (or Husbond) and the recently extinct mining family, Delver.

2 The etymological origins of the name Fretting is in dispute. It is known that the family was one of the original Flight Families, and all agree that the name originates from before the Flight. But beyond this, opinions divide. Most Frettings maintain fiercely that the long tradition of fretwork began in their home islands, where they were already smithers. Descendents of rival Flight Families see this as a vainglorious attempt to give the family’s smithying tradition a longer geneology. The Frettings’ disparagers argue that, although there were incontravertably ironsmiths in the Northern Isles, they were few in number, probably mostly part-time, and, given the relatively simple and functional level of smithing there, fretwork was almost certainly not practised, or at least not enough to give a family such a sur-name. This school of thought holds to the explanation that the name originally signified that the family was a fur-trapping one, referring to the beaver, still know today in our dialect as “the chewer”, the original Nordic word for “chew” and “fret” having the same etymological origin. This seemingly petty issue has led to some inflamed tempers down the years and even, it is whispered, to one death.

3. There was more than one family from each House, the largest House being the Frettings. In all it was estimated that some 200 souls made the migration west.

4. Wains in our dialect (covered wagons, strengthened and adapted to migratory travel).

5. It would appear from this account that the migrants had reached the Serpentspine Mountains and the proximity of the Chaos Hold.

6. We later learned that this is known by Britannians as The Deep Forest.

7. As chance would have it - if chance it be - the best panoramic view of the Deep Forest, can be had from the one foothill with a bare summit on which the migrant caravan's advanced party happened to first see the forest from, a hill that Anvel called “Tonsure Hill”. Some Leafstans later claimed that it was no chance that we first spied the Norse Forest from just that hill, as it was pre-destined that we would settle here having once glimpsed the expanse of the Norse Forest – not to mention its closeness to the purest ore a mining community could wish for.

8. Tonsure Hill was to exposed to view and, moreover, lacked a good millstream, to be a suitable site for the new settlement.

9. For this reason Leafstan kin claim that they are more true representatives of the Flight Families than their urbanised cousins.

10. For long Leafstans had no contact with the outside world. We were aside of the thoroughfares and long kept to ourselves, so we learned little of who our neighbors were. It took many years to build our community and to replenish our worn equipment, and when we at last began trading we took our wares north to Deepwater, saying not from where we came, but that our kin was to be found in Minoc, far to the east.

11. The Flight Families and their Minoc descendents were very status conscious, a necessity to maintain their position in Minoc. This was quite different, it is said, from the way life in the more dispersed settlements of the Northern Isles was organised.

12. I understand that this defensive architecture is an unusual arrangement – indeed the village is sometimes now called “Horseshoe” and it has so far served its purpose well. But these appear to be darkening times: dread rumors speak of the coming of an age of shadows, in which monsters will multiply and take new and more terrible form and new evil mages will arise who, if it is to be believed, will develop necrotic spells that can create undead so that they multiply. So the fortlike village is a wise precaution.