In the two days after the conflict with the Sullin, Luthold watched Elder Mildred reassert her grip on the clan like a bird of prey wrapping its talons around a rodent.

  Anyone who wriggled out of line felt the immediate, sharp jab of her disapproval and the subsequent disapproval of the rest of the clan. She barely slept and she listened to everything. Wherever she went Adalina followed, sometimes softening the blows and sometimes driving them home. Mildred forbade any talk of whose loyalties had lain where. She declared that, whilst he and his wife had committed a crime, the oracle was not in doubt. It had been cast by Oslef and paid for in his blood. It had been read by Aimar as well as Luthold. There was no great assembly, no discussion of the truths that had been revealed. A few quiet conversations took place and a narrative formed. Oli’s life, it was decided, had paid for his sister’s healing all those years ago and nothing more. He and Winilind had disgraced themselves: a charge which neither of them disputed, relieved as they were to find the disgrace did not extend to their daughter.

  The morning before their departure, Luthold sat with Winilind beside him and their homehold on the floor. All around them men and women bustled past, preparing and planning. None turned to Luthold to ask his opinion. Aimar passed and studiously avoided his look. Somewhere in the distance, Heridan boomed instructions about strategic formations. Winilind touched Luthold’s thigh and pointed out Adalina in the heart of the action, walking at their elder’s side.

  “Look. She survived us. She survived our mistakes.”

  “Did we make mistakes?” Luthold asked. He expected a sharp response, but his wife let out a soft laugh and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “So long as we don’t make them again tomorrow, that’s what matters.”

  “We’ll survive this. At least, we’ll make sure that she does.”

  Adalina approached from behind Elder Mildred, where she consulted with a group of Hallin adults. Heridan was explaining:

  “They need the forest clans here. That's why they’ll stop us from leaving if they can. Without us, the Sullin are just servants to their new masters. With other clans here to control, to give them power, they would have a bigger role. They will not be able to fish the Lujin out of the sea, and they fear the Levonin. We Hallin were central to their plans.”

  “They can’t hold us by themselves, not after the number they lost in that battle,” Elder Mildred replied.

  “They will have sent word to the Republican soldiers. Every hour we delay is an extra hand on their side. We must depart now, whether we are ready or not.”

  “Someone should approach the Levonin,” Thilo announced, “and ask them to fight with us again.”

  “Someone should imagine I already thought of that,” Mildred snapped. “They’ll show us the fastest path to the forest's edge, and that is as much as we can expect. They will have struggles of their own in the months to come.”

  The adults helped each other tie what armour they had in place while their two Levonin guides, Feren and Lin, moved up and down the lines dispensing gifts among the children. Adalina stood beside Pasha as she pulled the leaves off hers and grinned at the sight of some dried sweets. She looked up, first at her parents and then at Adalina, and her round eyes shone for a moment with innocent pleasure. Then she wrapped them again and poked them into a fold of her shirt.

  “Eat them now, sweetie, before we have to march all day.” Beresa smiled and looked quizzically at her daughter. Pasha looked at Adalina and replied:

  “I still think we might find Oli, don’t you? I want to share them with him.”

  Adalina sagged and forced a smile. Her eyes blurred and she did not know whether to give Pasha some false hope before the hard day and night ahead, or whether to dash it now and save her worse disappointment in the future.

  “Pasha, haven’t you heard what everyone’s been saying? Oli’s life paid for mine, many years ago. I wish it were not so, but you won’t see him again. None of us will.”

  Pasha’s dark eyes narrowed, and she stared up at the Adalina. She pursed her lips and said: “Just because you say so doesn’t mean it’s true.” Then the girl stared resolutely ahead, fingers twitching around the pack of sweets but refusing to pull it out again.

  Adalina left Pasha and moved back to embrace her parents in the final ranks. They had gathered the wounded, elderly and less capable fighters in the rear.

  Her parents were not there. She pushed frantically back to her place near the front and found Luthold and Winilind leaning on each other with their arms around their waists. A small circle of empty space had formed around them, as though they carried an illness of some sort.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed.

  “Ah, Dear.” Luthold smiled at his wife. “We are lower in the clan now than our own daughter.”

  “You’re in no fit state for this fight, either of you! Go to the back!”

  “We’re none of us in a fit state for this, Daughter,” Winilind replied. “Whether at the back or the front. We’ll stay and see you through to the other side.”

  Adalina relented and took her place beside them. They waited for the signal to move. For a moment, it seemed like the clan was waiting for her father. One or two clansfolk even glanced their way and she thought some of them inched closer. Heridan’s voice sounded and, as one, the clan stepped forward.

  The path the Levonin showed them was fast. The pines, which Adalina had come to associate with the deep heart of the forest, gave way to trees more familiar. The spongy carpet of needles quickly became a blanket of leaves that crunched underfoot. But the Sullin had two whole days ahead of them and no elderly to slow their pace.

  As they neared the edge of the forest, news passed down the line that worried both the Hallin and their two Levonin guides.

  “There are trees cut down ahead," Otmer turned and said. "Silver fir, mostly."

  “We’re going no further," Feren said. "We thought the forest ended another mile from here, but something is bringing its end nearer.”

  “The silver fir?” Luthold asked. A few heads turned to him. They still looked to him for answers.

  “What does it mean?” Beresa asked.

  “It’s the softest wood, isn’t it?” her father stated. “The easiest to cut and carry. Someone is building in a hurry, but I don’t know what for.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Neither do we,” said Lin, “but those soldiers are full or tricks we don’t understand.”

  “Come with us!” Beresa urged. “Return for your kin. Bring them and we’ll cross together. Whatever happens here in the forest, we'll leave it all behind and find a new future for ourselves as Seveners together! Come with us! Our loyalties lie with the gods, not the land.”

  For a moment, it seemed to Adalina that Feren and Lin doubted their clan’s choice. The Levonin woman looked down and her plaits swung forward. The pendants in her hair swayed and glittered. Adalina conjured an image of how she thought Westerners might look – something like the townsfolk at Scursditch but richer. And she tried to imagine this woman, with her painted and decorated body, sliding through crowds in busy streets the way she slipped between the trunks and boughs. She could not make the picture work. She could barely make it work for herself. Did she really hope the Levonin would come? Or would it be better for them to die in the place they belonged more than any other Sevener?

  A bird’s call interrupted the moment of indecision. A melodious, high wail that made a tingle pass from the top of Adalina's head and down her back. She heard gasps all around her as she looked up.

  “A sea raven!” Feren exclaimed.

  They watched it pass overhead, slowing to look down on them and wail again before turning in the air and returning east. The silver-white body stood out against the sky like the scales of a fish in water. Where the light struck the bird’s feathers, it seemed to fall away again in colours, like the rainbows of the Levon falls. It beat its huge wings, easily a span of a yard or more, and cool air wafted down to her, carrying the smell of saltwater.

  “A silver crested sea raven,” Beresa breathed out the name in awe. “It’s a sign for us. The forest is saying goodbye.” Beresa looked at the Levonin woman with shining eyes and repeated herself. “The forest is saying goodbye, so come with us! Go and fetch your clan. Come now. come with us!”

  Up and down the line Hallin drew in, entreating Feren and Lin to change their mind, as though they could do so in the name of all their people. A new hope came through in everyone’s voice, but whatever the omen had meant to the Hallin, it clearly meant something different to the Levonin.

  “This is a sign,” said the woman. “But not for you who are about to leave. The forest is still alive. And it lives for us.”

  With their eyes flitting from the ground to the sky and smiles on their faces, they went back the way they had come.

  Adalina’s section of the long column reached the place where trees had been felled. Soon after, Heridan instructed them to assume their formation. From the point of the first sign of enemy presence, they were going to abandon quiet in favour of speed and surprise. Those in the centre, led by Heridan and flanked by Algar and Beresa, would form the arrowhead of the charge and the others would come out staggered, so that diagonal lines could push through and split into two walls of bodies. Then the rest of the clan would come down the middle, tailed by a group of fighters led by Finn. There was always a hope, Adalina reminded herself, that the Sullin would be waiting in the wrong place or not waiting at all.

  The plan had been Heridan’s, with a little input from Aimar. Everyone had agreed. After all, the enemy would be spread along a broad section of the forest border. Even if they guessed perfectly where the Hallin would emerge and gathered as many as possible there, the Hallin did not have to defeat them. They had only to punch through the line and escape into the West. What happened after that, no one had planned. Perhaps they will need my father after all.

  They walked through the thinning trees. Light flooded them from ahead.

  It happened so suddenly.

  A bellow went up from Heridan. His voice filled the air and resounded through the ranks. He thundered forward and the clan followed. Adalina watched the feet of the woman in front and kept her position half a pace behind. As they emerged from the forest, Otmer’s breastplate caught the light and shone like a lit brazier.

  Some of the clan hollered prayers to Hurean and Maralon, but Adalina ran in silence. When there were no trees beside her and there was only green grass beneath her feet, she mustered the courage to look ahead to where the red tunics or wall of shields should have been. At first, she could not understand what she saw, save that she saw no soldiers. Where there should have been bodies and steel, there was a brown monochrome block. Her steps faltered. The steps of those around her slowed.

  She saw a wall.

  Impossible! Before them a solid wall of fresh cut timber rose twice the height of a grown man. Her father’s words came back to her. The softest wood. This was not a wall meant to last even a couple of years. It's a trap. How long had they been working on it? How had such a thing sprung into existence so quickly? It stretched from north to south as far as she could see. The rest of the clan poured out of the forest behind them and forced those in front to keep moving forwards. As they neared, she heard shouts from above. There were the soldiers on top of it! From their high vantage point, they strung their bows. There must have been only a couple of dozen, but what terror they struck up there where no one could reach them and stop their arrows!

  “Scale it!” shouted Heridan.

  The two carefully planned lines of Hallin dissolved into a single mass of bodies. They reached the wall amid the first arrows and the heaviest began lifting the lightest onto their shoulders. Pasha’s father, Otmer, crouched with a bloodied face, looking around for someone to throw up. She leapt at him and he made a platform in his palms for one of her feet. Knife in hand she pushed, propelled higher still by Otmer’s strength. With her left hand she grasped for the platform edge and with her right she lashed out at the unguarded legs of a soldier nearby. She saw a flicker of hesitation on his face as he retreated from her thrust and heard a voice she recognised yell:

  “Commit, soldiers, commit! The women bite as hard as the men!” Erlends was here, warning the soldiers not to hold back from attacking the Hallin women. It had not occurred to her that they might.

  She tried to pull herself higher and swing a foot onto the platform, but her grip failed and she fell back down. Otmer caught her. She grabbed him and saw blood running down her arm. Something at the top of the wall, where she had gripped the edge, had cut into her hand. She looked at the blood pumping out for a moment as though it were someone else’s, then Otmer yanked the strap on her sleeve tight around her arm and she became aware of the pain. A moment later, she became aware of the quiet. She looked up and saw a long line of soldiers with arrows notched in their bows, pointing down. None of the Hallin had made the climb. Some lay in pools of blood at the foot of the abominable construction. Others gazed behind them in dismay.

  Soldiers and Sullin warriors appeared from the woods, herding Hallin elderly and children into a semi-circular pen of shields that held them against the wall. The strongest of them were caught at what was now the back of the crowd, sandwiched between the wall and those they were meant to protect. They had utterly failed to outmanoeuvre these people, even in their own homeland. The forest had become a prison for them. What sadistic form of conquest was this, that the vanquished were not even permitted to flee? The sickness returned to her stomach and this time almost made her retch. She could smell soiled clothes in the crowd. The hated voice of Erlends called out in the quiet:

  “No more blood need be spilled here. You are all subjects of Dombarrow. You see the power and speed of their works? Their leader – our leader – has long anticipated your moves. The forest is under our protection, now.”

  There had been no plan to negotiate with Dombarrow. The negotiation – the surrender – was already complete. Erlends had hoped to improve his standing with his new masters by hastening the capitulation of the forest. He sounded angry. Perhaps he had failed.

  “Your lives under Republican rule need barely change,” he said. “Though you will not be trusted as you might have been, had you made another choice.”

  His voice grew quieter, but no other sounds challenged it, and she heard every word clearly as he added:

  “Some payment will be extracted for the lives lost in these days. And some individuals will pay for their part in this.”

  Adalina searched for her parents in the crowd. She saw them on the very edge, huddled against one another. Her mother’s head rested on her father’s chest. Whatever vindictive sentence Erlends passed against Luthold, Winilind would not let him suffer it alone. She would not hold her head low and her tongue still. Heridan, too, would pay for his betrayal.

  A murmur and a collective wail of despair went up from the crowd. How had it come to this? Had the instructions of the oracle led them to this end?

  Then, something else cut through the human voices. The high wail of the sea raven rang out again, just as before, and it passed overhead. The silver-smooth body refracted the light that fell on it, so you could not be sure if you saw the bird itself or the colours of its wake. Adalina felt the sickness in her guts pass. She felt calm. The song came a second time, and hundreds of people drew their breath in wonder. It hung in the air above them, beating its vast wings and singing its haunting tune. She thought she heard groans or cries from the wall behind her.

  Another sound came, this time from the forest they had tried to leave. A deep, rumbling roar like the rolling of drums or thunder cascading towards them. The soldiers exchanged nervous glances. The Hallin exchanged hopeful ones. After all, they had nothing now to lose.