Dark Oak

by Sannox, Jacob

  Rowan looked up at him, an eyebrow raised slightly.

  He recognised the look and nodded.

  ‘Aye, I know. It’s too far and there would be nothing to sustain us on the road. That and we’d like as not run into Devised forces before our own.’ He began to stroke the back of her palm.

  ‘Others wish to strike out north and head for Stragglers’ Drift.’

  Before she could object, he continued.

  ‘I know; it’s hundreds of miles. Walking would become a lifetime’s work, but at least we’d have a chance of sustaining ourselves.’

  Rowan stared at him unblinking then eventually croaked, her voice being dry,

  ‘And you?’

  Lynch sighed and looked back at his men over his shoulder.

  ‘We lost a lot of people in the forest on the way to the Hinterland and we’d lose more heading north, no doubt. But travelling south would be folly, if you’ll forgive the pun.’ She did not laugh and he blushed, feeling foolish.

  ‘I’m inclined to head towards Oystercatcher Bay. There was a plan to land behind the palisade there, and there’s a very good chance that there is a substantial camp now. If we can reach lands held by the Combined People then we are saved, at least for the time being. It is this course of action I intend to recommend. Garrick seems to agree, though he says he has no clear idea where your people will go from there.’

  Rowan was not interested in discussing the future of her people, nor was she particularly interested in discussing anything. She nodded and looked over to where Callum and Declan were sleeping beside Acorna. They had many days hence stopped approaching her, knowing full well that tears came more readily than words. Just looking at them caused a pain in her chest and her breath to shorten. She heard Bracken’s laugh from somewhere in the back of her mind and she snorted back tears, but they threatened to come again immediately.

  Lynch’s fingers grasped her hand, and he grunted as he moved to crouch over her. He hooked his arm under hers, wrapping it around her and held her tight to him. She let the sobs come, shaking her entire body as they did so. She buried her face in his chest then pulled back with a cry as she did so, immediately imagining how she had forced Bracken’s face against her own torso as the waters threatened to carry her whole family away. He held her tighter and the scent of his sweat filled her nose, almost floral and under other circumstances, pleasing. She collapsed into him as he tried to soothe her. Though she felt hard of heart, it was difficult not to be comforted by his presence and she wondered briefly what Morrick would think if he could see her. Somewhere in her heart she knew that he would understand that she was grieving and in pain, probably be grateful to the Taynish sea captain.

  But in her present state, she hoped he would be jealous, hoping that wherever he was, Morrick would somehow know that another man’s hands were on her; that he’d feel it. She stretched upwards and planted a kiss on his neck with her dry, cracked lips. He froze where he was and she did it again.

  ‘Ma’am?’ he whispered.

  She whispered into his neck.

  ‘Do you understand why I did what I did to my baby?’ she whispered.

  ‘I do ma’am. Tragedy it is, but your sons owe you their lives.’ He tried to pull back, but she held him.

  ‘And do you think my husband will understand?’

  He faltered.

  ‘I do ma’am. He will understand that, but not this…you are grieving, Rowan.’

  She held him still, but made no move to kiss him again or to speak. After a time, feeling his breath on her brow, she pushed him gently away.

  He was confused and returned to his seat beside her, looking about to see if anyone had witnessed what had passed between them. All were sleeping or otherwise engaged and his shoulders relaxed a little. He sighed and probed his wound with his fingers lightly, dabbing at it. They jerked back quickly at a flash of pain.

  ‘I’ll leave you to rest, Rowan. We can talk more about what to do afterwards…I figured with your family not yet whole…’ he instantly regretted his choice of words, ‘that is to say, with your husband still off at war, you might be less inclined to flee to the Isles than are many of those who travel with us.’

  She practically growled back at him.

  ‘I have no husband.’

  ‘Rowan…’

  ‘I married a good, strong man, but am wed to a coward, a collaborator and a traitor to the rightful cause,’ she said, ‘a man who should have been looking after his family, not off trying to kill better men - such as you.’

  She closed her eyes and made a token attempt at rolling away, though she barely turned except for her head. Lynch remained for a while, sitting back on his haunches and bracing himself against the trunk of the tree.

  ‘Where will you go, Rowan?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ she said without opening her eyes.

  ‘What of your sons?’ he said and she could hear disappointment in his voice.

  Tears threatened again and she said nothing.

  Lynch planted a hand on her shoulder – she appreciated the weight of it – then he went back to his men.

  Callum woke her in the morning with a handful of fruit and a water skin. She came to with a scowl on her face, but when she saw the concern in his eyes she softened a little as her heart stirred. She had been so filled with remorse about Bracken she’d forgotten that there were two babies she had managed to save in the river. She drew up her knees and Callum dropped the berries into her pooled skirt. He offered a weak smile and walked away.

  ‘Callum…’ Rowan called and he came back to her. She cupped his hand in both of hers.

  ‘Thank you for all you’ve done. You’ve become a man in the last few days. I appreciate all you’ve done, but your sister…’

  She stopped as his mouth dropped open a little and his lip began to quiver. He tensed it, trying to remain composed. Rowan dropped his hand and held both of hers up palms outward.

  Over the next few days, Rowan forced herself to push thoughts of Bracken from the forefront of her mind, but with little success. The more she tried not to think of her little lungs filling with water, the more the images intruded.

  She wondered what Morrick was doing away in the south. Whatever dangers he was facing, she knew that he did not carry the burden, nor would he ever carry the burden of knowing that he had murdered one of their children. She imagined Morrick in the river, snatching Bracken from her arms and saying to her, ‘We have to do this to save the family, Rowan,’ and then pushing the baby under the water while she screamed.

  Anger flashed and her heart rate leaped, hating him momentarily. A lie though she knew it was, the manufactured malice towards Morrick felt easier than loathing herself. So whenever an image of the killing intruded, she placed Morrick in her role.

  She took to walking hand in hand with Declan. She would have done the same for Callum, but her eldest insisted on leading the group with Garrick.

  They walked south along the creek until they cleared the forest. The company then turned west, following the line of the forest towards Oystercatcher Bay. Lynch started walking for himself, though from the tension in his face it was clear that he was still in extreme pain. For the most part he was intact, but a strip of material torn from a shirt covered his lost left eye. He took to walking on the other side of Rowan from Declan and when they made camp, the two of them stayed up talking.

  Lynch talked of all the lands he had visited, including his home at the Folly and of Stragglers’ Drift, but it was his tales of the Isles that inspired her most. She began to think that maybe she would like to settle there, building a cottage between the mountains and the bright water of the western sea.

  Whilst they were still two days from the bay, though they did not know it, Lynch first took Rowan’s hand as they walked, much to the disapproval of Acorna and others who knew her from her village.

  Morrick stumbled on as the days passed. At one point he tripped on a rock and blundered into a tree. He did not realise
for an hour that in doing so he had punctured his water skin. By morning he was without food and water.

  Morrick reached a deep gorge and, with dismay, realised that there was no way across. He sat on the edge with his legs hanging over then lay back looking up through the canopy at the grey sky.

  He thought about what Rowan would have done if she made it to the forest, but came to no clear answer. She could not know that the invasion had been a success, so where would she think to go to find refuge. Only the forest was safe and untouched by Awgren. The more he thought about safety, the more conversations he remembered about what they would do if the Devised forces ever turned against them.

  We strike out north into the forest, carrying only what we need to keep us alive. Once we get far enough away, we start a life there.

  But how would he ever find them in a forest so vast, where it was so easy to lose one’s sense of direction even if one knew in which direction one needed to be heading? He shook his head and stumbled north along the edge of the gorge thinking that all was lost and that there was little chance he would ever see his family again. What else was there to do but try to find them though? Everything he had ever done was to keep them safe or to ensure that they would all be together.

  Before the light began to fade, he gathered firewood together and used a broad piece of branch as a spade to dig out a fire-pit. He dug down first in one place then another, just inches away, so that the hole curved down to meet the first as a vent. He set about lighting the kindling by rubbing dry wood together and eventually got a fire going. There was nothing to eat and he determined that stumbling on was getting him nowhere but to the afterlife, if there was one. The next morning, he decided, he would get down to the creek and fish. Possibly he could set snares and traps for rabbits – forage for fruit, nuts and mushrooms.

  Morrick unrolled his blankets beside the fire and curled up, shouldering at the unyielding ground below him, as one might a pillow, to give himself more comfort. He lay by the firelight with the heat just bearable on his face and tried again to think what Rowan would do.

  She was impetuous, fiery, driven and so determined to succeed in everything that she attempted. They had talked of rebelling and she had been all for it, but he had placated her, reminding her that the few who had been caught attempting to start a rebellion had suffered rough justice at the hands of the overseers and their Devised commanders. They would have to make do until the time was right.

  He had stuck to this line of reasoning even when the Devised came to recruit him and when last they had spoken, he had promised her it would all be all right, that they would survive; that they would be together again. This promise echoed in his ears and he knew that come what may, if he had to wander in the dark forest for the rest of his days, he would never give up looking for his wife, two sons and the baby he had never had a chance to meet.

  Morrick lapsed into sleep. Eyes formed in the branch above him though it was so narrow it could not possibly conceal an entire face. They regarded Morrick with cold interest then travelled together, maintaining their relative position to one another until they were at crouching height on the trunk. They blinked their bark eyelids and stared. Riark looked over Morrick’s attire and recognised a military uniform similar, but not identical, to that worn by those who hacked into the forest in the north. This one carried not only a small boarding axe at his waist, but a great axe such as those the Dryad had seen hacking at the trunk of many a tree in the north.

  The Dryad emerged from the tree and stood as close to the trunk as was possible until the shards of bark dropped from its polished heartwood flesh. It then crept closer and peered into the man’s face. The hair on the man’s head was longer and he had grown yet more across his face, but the Dryad knew him. This was the man who felled so many trees in the south and directed others to do so; the man who planted new trees to replace what he felled and left offerings in the woods.

  The Dryad loomed in closer, for he had no breath to wake the sleeping man. The soft, clammy features of the dirty face awoke something akin to nausea in the Dryad and he drew back. He dissipated back into the tree and flowed out through the roots, seeking westward to where he had heard the call of others. The woodcutter’s people had left the forest, but still he wished to watch their progress and learn what he could.

  Less than thirty miles apart, Rowan and Morrick slept soundly.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Even after a thousand years Riark was still learning what it meant to be Dryad. He stormed through the heart of the forest in a form which he found increasingly hard to leave. The more his thought was bent upon the interlopers, the more he came to resemble them. Initially he posited that this effect was due to an exertion of his will, as, after all, much of his life since he had become a Dryad was to do with mental intent or desire of the soul, rather than physical cause and effect. However, he now believed it be a form of defence.

  For the first time in his long existence, Dryads were dying in considerable numbers - so many Mother Trees had been felled since he had executed Ashrider.

  Riark stood tall and proud in the shape of a man, the wooden flesh of his body grew and wrapped around him as it does around an old oak, thickening the trunk. This time, however, the wood formed into an approximation of armour. He was disgusted by this approximation of man’s work and with a thought the wooden armour merged once more with his torso and reappeared as soft brown bark.

  Mount Greenwood stood in the heart of the forest. No man had ever set foot upon its slopes, but it was the tallest mountain on the continent and was clearly visible from both the Hinterland and the seas to the east and west. He was the first king of the Dryads to take a home at all, but he didn’t build it nor did he feel that he was betraying his nature in forming it.

  Mount Greenwood was not made of rock. He had begun the work when he was but a sapling, experimenting with growing his Mother Tree, faster than nature would usually allow. He had wrapped himself, round and around the trunk, extending the branches and thrusting roots down broader and deeper than had been attempted before. When the limits of the growth of the tree had been extended and the roots extended thick and broad from centuries of burrowing, he directed them upwards and out into the open air, arcing upward and inward until they took on the shape of a mountain, a thrusting peak scratching at the sky like an eagle’s talon. He dwelt within the roots to sculpt them or direct them as an artist would a brush. He dwelt within his Mother Tree and looked up at the construct from below, assessing if he had allowed enough breaks in the sinew to allow light through.

  Riark approached the root wall of his home and passed through it. By now the up thrust roots were as thick as any tree and did not open to the light for a hundred foot, but any Dryad could walk through them. Inside, he marched up a spiralling root towards the upper branches of his Mother Tree, and once there, took his seat nestled in a crook of the elm. As soon as he touched the bark, a calmness settled in him. He waited for the others to arrive.

  As the week passed he sat and listened to the reports from all over the forest as his subjects arrived, emerging through the ends of roots or walking in through the main wall.

  He heard of the continued efforts to build the road in the north, of the refugees in the south and of the woodcutter who had been found sleeping, alone, amongst the trees. Riark knew him well and pondered his presence after such a long absence.

  Nayr was the third to arrive. She was stern and stiff in her movements, all cat-like grace, all femininity seemed gone.

  ‘Riark,’ she said, bowing low. Riark noted with interest that she too had chosen the human form and there was the hint of an armoured breastplate upon her.

  He sank into the trunk of his Mother Tree and emerged on the ground beside her. They entwined roots and he knew her mind.

  ‘They make further incursions,’she said to him.

  Night was closing in, and she looked up into the underside of the mountain and out at the stars that gleamed, lending the scene an
eldritch quality.

  ‘Some sixty of our kind have been destroyed in the forest. They now draw deeper into the forest and our losses will number even greater day by day. The elder amongst us have accepted their loss but with so many human losses in the war against Awgren, we have many new folk. They retain many of their former instincts and want to fight to survive. We have not been able to prevent all killing. The forces there are taking note and deploying troops.’

  ‘But as of yet no burning.’ Riark mused. ‘Troops without fire are nothing to be feared.’

  ‘No burning,’ she agreed, ‘but the work on the road is well underway and they have begun separate stretches in four other locations. I hear tell also, that camps in the clearings are being gradually turned into permanent dwellings. It is my belief that we will cede much of our territory as they expand, that the forest will be first split and then diminish into separate woods as the centuries pass.’

  Riark settled back against the tree and drew nutrients up from the ground. They replenished him, and he closed his eyes. They dissipated into his face, ceasing all vision.

  ‘I have reports from the south also. Weeks ago, a party of sailors travelled through the woods. They re-entered with people fleeing from the Hinterland. The Naiads assisted a few of their number; the family of the woodcutter in those parts,’ he said.

  ‘The woodcutter?’ asked Nayr, frowning, though without his eyes Riark did not see.

  ‘I hear distaste in your voice.’

  ‘He was a hewer of trees.’

  ‘As is a cuckoo. As is the beaver. Not all are as equipped to live in harmony as are we. He respects the forest and takes only what is needed. He replants saplings to sustain the woods near his home. Have you seen his works?’