Chapter 50: One Quiet Afternoon
Personal System Calendar: Year 00012, Day 1-14, Month X: The Imperium
Imperial Calendar: Year 6857, 1st to 14th day of the 10th Month
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Coming to a Close
Everything that is good would eventually run its course and would give way to something quieter.
The Millhaven delegation had been in Maya Village for a week, and that entire week had been well spent on both sides. The formal diplomatic sessions had concluded two days prior after the delegation's arrival — the enhanced trade arrangements, the mutual security commitments, the protocols for future visits and communications, all of it structured and recorded and sealed in the way that agreements between allied territories needed to be sealed. The commerce had been conducted. The relationships that had been forged have been greatly tested and it had held its weight more than any just what was written or was agreed orally beforehand. What remained now was the final day of the delegation's visit before they were forced back to their own territory, and the particular quality that these last days had been beautiful, with the right people who wanted to spend them to simply be present before the current present would become a thing of the past.
Earl Hugo Millhaven had pulled August away from the residual social obligations of the visit with the easy authority of a man who had decided that one more formal gathering was not what either of them needed and that enjoying the afternoon sun together was a much better use of the time remaining he had in this place. They had climbed to the ramparts of Zone One's walls together, two people separated by decades of age and completely different circumstances of life, were now watching at the same view together.
The afternoon light that came from the western horizon at the angle that these late-season afternoons produced, which was low and direct, the kind of light that would hit someone's face and would have made everything look like it was made of something divine rather than just a mere moment in time. The forest before them stretched in every direction beyond the walls that secured the lives of Maya Village's inhabitants, it was enormous and unbothered by the things that occurred around it or even within it, it was going about its normal routine whatever the Great Forest of Lonelywood went about in such a lazy afternoon when it was not actively trying to kill anyone unprepared within it.
Someone had already prepared wine ahead of their arrival. Neither of them asked who had done it.
Hugo took the first sip and looked out over the treeline for a long moment before he said anything.
"Boy, you sure do have a beautiful sight to behold here."
"I agree with you, Lord Hugo." August who looked out at the same view. "It is one of the reasons I work toward being strong enough to protect all of this. And everyone in it. This place is home to me regardless of what happens around it."
Hugo made a small sound that was not quite an acknowledgement and not quite a disagreement either, it was the sound of a man processing something that was simultaneously obvious and still affecting to hear said plainly. He took another sip of the wine.
"I can already see a very bright future ahead for the people under this village," he said. "And I suspect the prosperity you build here will influence everyone around you, whether they are prepared for it or not." He glanced sideways at August's direction. "I am genuinely glad I made friends with you before you grew too large for Millhaven's friendship to be worth offering."
August was too honest and modest for a comfortable acceptance of such an assessment. "I cannot say with any certainty what lies ahead, Lord Hugo. I only want to keep things as they are for as long as possible."
Hugo looked at him with the specific expression of someone who had been an earl long enough to know that the people who built the most durable things were usually the ones who replied exactly like that.
"You know," he said, with the warmth of someone deciding to be direct about something, "you are allowed to take a compliment from time to time. What I am saying to you is: you have done well. In all of this. You have done very well."
"Technically speaking," August said, and there was a brief laugh in it that he did not quite suppress, "this isn't my effort alone. This is a community-wide achievement. Every person inside these walls contributed to what it is."
Hugo stared at him for a moment.
"Haaaa...You brat. I was giving you a compliment."
"I heard the compliment."
"You deflected it immediately."
"I acknowledged it first."
"Oh, never mind." Hugo turned back to the view, but his expression had shifted from mild exasperation into something considerably warmer, the kind of warmth that came from finding someone genuinely amusing rather than performing amusement. "Never mind entirely. Have your way about it."
They stood there for a while longer with the wine and the afternoon light, and neither of them needed to fill the silence any longer because the view in front of them was doing that adequately on its own.
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The Past Week
Looking back over the entirety of the visit, it had been a proper one by every measure that it could be held in regards to such visits.
The welcoming feast on the first night had set the tone of the following day's event — not in the manner of formal diplomatic banquets, where the food was secondary to the symbolism and everyone ate while performing their position at the table. The Maya Village feast was the opposite of that, it was food first diplomacy later, which meant the food was genuinely excellent, because the village's hunters and foragers had spent the previous two days ensuring that the tables would demonstrate what the Great Forest's bounty actually looked like when it was handled by people who understood its preparation and its eventual consumption. The Millhaven delegation, most of whom had only eaten provisions they had brought from Millhaven for most of the journey to get here, responded to this with the authentic enthusiasm of people whose expectations had not been prepared for what arrived in front of them.
While the men enjoyed the rougher things the village could offer, the Earl's wife Countess Dianne had been thoroughly guided throughout the village by Aunt Theressa, which was the appropriate assignment that was assigned to her station. Theressa understood people in a way that good medics understood bodies — with attention to the most minute and specific details rather than the general, and without judgment about what she found as unique only to an individual. The Countess, having stayed in Millhaven for a long time, had been feeling confined within its walls for the longest. But here she had been curious, interested in everything that was new to her eyes: the food production, the school, the market structure, the way the village had organized its relationships between the different communities living inside it. She had asked questions that suggested someone who was not merely being polite but was actually paying attention to the answers. She had also spent a significant portion of two afternoons simply sitting with village women who had found the settlement through various degrees of desperation and difficulty, listening to what they had found here. Several of them had said, in their own words and their own ways, that the village had not abandoned them when they arrived with nothing, and that their lives had improved in direct proportion to what they had contributed to it. The Countess had taken this in with the expression of someone cataloguing something useful, something that she could tell her husband and help him in the management of their own domain.
On another event, Hugo had gotten himself to watch a sparring event, which he had been looking forward to in the specific way that men of a certain generation look forward to watching younger people test themselves against each other. The military exchange had drawn attendance from both sides and a sizable portion of the village's civilian population had apparently decided that watching soldiers from Millhaven and Maya Village's security forces attempt to outperform each other was excellent entertainment for this festivity. The imperial garrison had also participated, which had added a layer of complexity to the proceedings and also quite a bit of pride on all sides. No one was fighting to hurt anyone. They were fighting to learn, and the exchanges of technique and knowledge that accompanied each bout turned what could have been a performance into something with actual value.
Hugo had watched all of it with the satisfaction of a man watching an investment he took a gamble early on already pay dividends.
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The Hunting Expedition
The event that the noble members of the delegation had been most anticipating and most unprepared for was the hunting expedition that the village had prepared.
This of course doesn't include Hugo wasn't his vassal; he had his fair share of encounters within the one of the Great Forest, specifically the one that his domain borders with and the one his noble house was tasked to guard against, the Lonely Forest of Shadowfen. To be precise it was years ago when he and his army had gone inside it to chase down the creatures who had kidnapped his wife Countess Dianne and youngest son Hector, though it had only been a success because August had come to their aid. So frankly speaking, he was not the kind of man who had developed a casual relationship with such dangerous forests. He treated the Great Forest of Lonelywood with the respect it deserved, which already put him ahead of approximately half his retinue.
While the other half had already learned it through their own experiences.
The expedition had been organized in three groups, each led by Maya Village hunters who had been doing this since before most of the delegation's soldiers had held a weapon in a serious context. Three quarry types: Rabbiets for those who wanted to understand the forest's small game, Boarats for those who wanted something with actual stakes, and Moosedaer for those with the patience for a real hunt.
With the Rabbiet briefing given to them by the hunters responsible for guiding them in this hunt, it could be said to have been the most educational for the delegation members who assumed that hunting small animals was the simplest possible introduction to forest hunting. What they learned instead was that Rabbiets — these furry, skittish creatures that lived in elaborate underground burrow systems stretching for miles and foraged above ground for fallen fruits and plants — were extremely fast, possessed a danger detection range of roughly ten feet in every direction, and were capable of evasive movement at angles that made tracking an airborne arrow into a genuine test of skill rather than a formality.
The Maya hunters' have told their preferred method of catching the little critters and it involved one particular plantlife, the Beriberry fruit. It was a colorful, cluster-growing fruit found on low-lying bushes throughout the forest's underbrush — it has a brilliant coloration, sweet in smell, and apparently the one thing in the world that could override a Rabbiet's survival instincts completely. They shared that the Supreme Commander, August had identified this distinct greed in the beasts when he was still a child, watching a Rabbiet stand perfectly still and ignore an arrow that passed within a foot of its ear because it was committed to the Beriberry it had located. They said that he made the fruit as a lure, paired with a strong enough trap to hold something that could otherwise sprint away from anything that concerned it, was the method. The alternative was waiting motionless for a Rabbiet to stand still long enough at range, which the hunters described as one of the possible alternatives, but the nobles later discovered that it was considerably harder than their instructions suggested. Thus they ended their instructional briefing and they began the hunt.
But the Boarat group had the most fun, which was also the most dangerous combination of qualities available in a hunting scenario.
Skitterpigs were one of the most numerous creatures that lives in the forest of Lonelywood — the Maya hunters had a saying amongst them that no matter how many Boarats were hunted in a day, there would be more to go by tomorrow — and at the common and soldier ranks they were accessible enough quarries for a mixed group of experienced soldiers and enthusiastic nobles.
But they have to warn them of the potential dangers when hunting these beasts. They were aggressive and territorial creatures and moved in groups and did not particularly back down from their position even when challenged, which was the behavioral trait that made them entertaining to hunt and occasionally made them a real problem.
The delegation of course after they first tracked the beast they were about to hunt. Learned all of this pretty quickly, in the specific way that people learned things in the field: through direct experience of a very angry Soldier Ranked Boarat who began charging towards a position it did not care whether there were numerous spears facing it or if it was surrounded by arrows.
Of course the village hunter that was assigned near that particular position acted quickly; he handled it without breaking any stride while the delegates processed what had just happened. He took three arrows from his quicker, nocked them on his bow and quickly he released them in succession, hitting the beast on its head three times; it killed the beast as the arrows hit its brain. It went down with a massive thud on the ground.
The Moosedaer group had the afternoon's most significant unexpected development.
Moosedaer were migratory creatures — they were large, rarely spotted except in the right season, and they possessed a flavor that the Maya hunters described in terms that caused visible physiological responses in people listening to the description before anyone had even eaten a single bite. The delegation members assigned to this group arrived at it highly motivated. The hunt took them northwest of the village, into terrain that the local hunters knew well but the delegation did not.
They were tracking an injured buck that had separated from the small group they had initially located, which had led them deeper into the northwestern territory than the original plan had intended. This was how most hunting stories became a legend amongst each other — with one animal going in the wrong direction or to be precise it was trying to run away from its pursuers, while everyone followed it, and lastly the setting of the story, it was a terrain that looked fairly manageable from a distance but in the end it turned out not to be.
The Tibears made themselves known without any dramatic announcement. It was fairly what was expected when they gave chase to the Moodaer buck, one moment the forest was eerily empty around them then the next moment it suddenly contained two Tibears that made it into their view, it was a male and a female, standing forty feet from the front of the group.
Tibears were solitary by inclination and powerful enough to enforce that inclination against almost anything that disagreed with its lifestyle. It was a creature where the male measured fifteen feet tall and the female were ten feet tall when standing on all fours, combined body weight somewhere in the region of fifteen tons, with the particular configuration of a tiger's speed and a bear's mass integrated into one frame. They were not pack animals. They were not territorial in the organized sense. They were simply more powerful than most other things in their vicinity and had arranged their lives accordingly, claiming space through capability rather than through any existing system of acknowledgment.
Unfortunately the ones they encountered were at the end of the mating season and had not yet departed for their winter den, which meant that they were still out here, and the two Tibears were not pleased that one hundred and fifty people had walked into the area they had occupied.
The village hunter at the front of the group raised a hand and spoke in a very calm and almost whispering manner.
"Halt. We have two Tibears up ahead. Retreat immediately and slowly, don't make any rash movements that may agitate them both. We are in their territory."
The soldiers from Millhaven were professionals. They registered what was in front of them and responded to the command without requiring further explanation. Several of them, however, were responding to it with hands that were not entirely steady, because the Tibears were looking directly at them with the complete and total attention of things that had never in their lives needed to be concerned about what looked back at them.
"Protect the lord. Form ranks and retreat. Slowly."
(Lord Millhaven was particularly interested in this hunt, especially when he heard those descriptions of the Moodaers taste. Hence why he joined this particular hunt.)
The Tibears watched them go. Each step the creatures took seemed to travel through the ground before it arrived through the air, a heaviness in the movement that communicated mass it left its impressions on the ground. The Tibears did not pursue the human invaders. They could have, yes they could have easily slaughtered all of those puny little things. But the reason they did not was not the numbers of the humans in front of them and not the weapons that the soldiers carried with them.
It was that the territory they were standing in was organized under an authority they recognized. Aetherwing's presence as Forest Guardian Beast of the northern territory was not an abstract administrative title to the beasts that lived here. It was a real and respected thing amongst the creatures that lived here. It governed a certain behavior throughout the forest in the way that such serious authority governed behavior — not through constant enforcement, but through the knowledge of what a possible enforcement looked like when it came clutching down on them from the skies above. The Tibears understood this even if they had their own domains within the larger territory and were permitted to maintain them. The Tibears also knew that under Aetherwing's direct rule were the humans who had taken root in this forest. Even in isolation the Tibears are still part of the broader forest network.
But for humans to outrightly enter into a space they claimed was where they took issue. Thankfully the humans quickly got out of it and that was an acceptable enough reason for them to not attack.
The group had managed to retreat with their bodies still intact, they were thankful enough that they had survived from that situation. Even if in all honesty they were quite stressed and afraid. from the situation they were in, some even peed their pants a bit.
Still in the end having not caught the Moosedaer buck they have chased to hunt left a bitter after taste. But their lives are more important than the venison of the animal.
The village hunter who had led the group suggested, on the walk back towards the village, that the northwestern section near the Tibear's den be declared to the village registry to become one of the danger hotspot areas within the territory. It would then be added to the list of areas where hunting parties would be properly informed of such dangers and would need additional authorization and preparation before entering it.
Everyone agreed without argument.
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Recollection in the Final Afternoon
To recall the matters of the week, Hugo made a big laugh about Bufford on the second day of their visit, it wasn't in any way that degraded Bufford's well being, because it was a laughter of a father who was proud of his children. One especially who had turned out better than their most optimistic predictions and were now too dignified to be teased about it in a public setting, but he could still tease about it in an appropriate company.
He had been thinking about the duel that happened on August's first visit to Millhaven before. Bufford, was still young and full of something that had not yet matured into actual confidence, challenging August to a bout that had been less a competition and more an education delivered directly. The look on his son's face afterward had been the beginning of the change that everyone who knew Bufford had watched happen over the subsequent years. But now, that cheeky little brat was regal, composed and respectable, as a man himself he was quite proud of how his heir turned out to be. Bufford also married Jennifer Gremory in a union that had started as a political arrangement and later it became something more than what the people who witnessed the wedding. They described it in terms that had nothing to do with the politics it began with. Because it actually became the truest definition of love, it was a communion between two parties. Of course with it came the benefits of what it started as, the revitalization of the old routes between Millhaven and the Greater Principality of Ogind and the Kingdom of Ogind were slowly opened again. It now serves 25% of the redirected routes from the main imperial highway. With it also came the revitalization of the four other settlements under Hugo's domain.
None of it would have been the same without the specific sequence of events that began with a young man from a forest village arriving at Millhaven's mountain gates and treating the Earl's heir to a lesson in humility delivered with complete respect.
Hugo raised his glass toward the forest in the manner of someone making a toast to something that could not hear it.
"To what an interesting few years it has been."
August raised his own glass. "To what comes next."
They drank with this wonderful toast in mind.
Below the walls, the village continued its late afternoon hours — with the combination of productive activity and comfortable noise that a settlement produced when it had grown large enough to have its own ambient rhythm. The fishing zone's visitors who came back from their trip to Tagkarit were now more visible in the distance because there were less leaves hanging on the trees. They were walking where the nearby river water stream perfectly caught the atmosphere of the late after afternoon sun of the season. With it also came ambient background noise of the market district's sounds which reached the walls as a pleasant blur of commerce and conversation. The school was also finishing its day, and the sound of children leaving for home after their afternoon classes carried across Zone Two in the specific register that children used when lessons were done and the rest of the day was theirs.
(Classes are divided into two sessions: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This division was partly due to the increase in children and other learners. Their recently established education system still had fewer classrooms available (four only, maximum of 25 learners) and couldn't handle the full student load in a single session. However, the teachers appreciated this system and would likely continue it even after expanding the facilities.
Teachers are assigned to individual sections to manage their workload effectively. So that they aren't overwhelmed by schoolwork from differing grade levels; instead, they focus primarily on one section. Teachers are also divided between morning and afternoon classes.
Currently, there are eight sections organized as follows:
- Four sections for children ages 5-12
- Two sections for young adults ages 13-18
- Two sections for adults ages 19+ seeking education
These sections are split between morning and afternoon sessions..)
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Departure
It is now the morning of the day of Millhaven's departure, it has a certain quality in its atmosphere that describes a great conclusion to this week of activities, bonding and camaraderie.
The delegation formed up with the organized efficiency of soldiers who had been billeted in a foreign settlement for a week and were aware that the quality of their departure would be the last impression they made. They were of course looking very professional about it. Their equipment was clean, they made it shine where there are metal parts attached to it. Their formation was also bearing the standard of Millhaven's military discipline. The escort's encampment in Zone Four had also been thoroughly cleared as if it was made just like nobody was even there to begin with. It was with the thoroughness of guests who understood that the condition in which they left a place said something about them.
Alphonse Bertude's patrol unit were also recalled back to the village a few days ago, they were tasked to be the ones to escort their allies back to the edge of the forest. Now they assembled at the main northern gate for the escort back to the forest's edge. He had already done this before, with the arrival escort but in reverse — and he had specifically assigned the same people he had used for the inbound journey, because familiarity with the people and route was a great resource of time and additional companionship with their allies and there was no reason to waste it.
Baron Kinsley was among those who will be departing, walking under his own power and with considerably more care than he had walked into the forest seven days ago. His recovery from the Carnivorous Flower toxin had been managed by the village healers with a competence that had impressed everyone around him and impressed him least of all, because he had spent most of the treatment period being too arrogantly uncomfortable to notice the said competence. Still he had recovered fully, which the healers had been confident he would but had not promised, because honest medicine did not make promises it could not guarantee.
He had, however, said a genuine thank you to the healer who had administered the final treatments. This was noted by everyone who had been present at that moment. Because it was not the kind of thing that had seemed likely from the Baron when he arrived at the territory's northern entrance with his particular manner intact. The forest of course had opinions about that specific manner he had arrived with and it had expressed its will through the available mechanisms (Carnivorous Flower!). It was possible that the specific correction done to him had produced a modification to this arrogant man.
Hugo said his goodbye to August at the gate with the handshake that was as firm as a solid grip — the kind that communicated something beyond the formality of farewell.
"Send a word when your child arrives," he said. "I would like to know."
"You'll be the second to know," August said.
"Who is first?"
"My wife."
August jokingly replied.
Hugo laughed, properly and without restraint, which was an expression that the formal version of him rarely permitted and which made him look considerably more like the person he actually was underneath the mask of the earl.
He let go of August's hand, he mounted his horse and he turned their direction towards the road.
Then the delegation marched and moved out into the forest road and the gates closed behind them, and Maya Village watched for a bit before it went back to being itself again without their guests. Everyone was starting their morning feeling a little bit melancholic. Except for a few who were quick to adapt to their situations and moved on to the next. Somewhere in the craftsmen district, Sibus Dino was already doing whatever Sibus was always doing in the early morning hours, which was working with the village craftsmen on something that no one had asked him to build yet and it would turn out to be exactly what they needed.
The early morning sun was still moving towards the forest's treeline. And the Great Forest of Lonelywood received its beautiful sunrays without commentary.
Some things would come and go. But the memories they left behind were more durable than most things in this world.
August stood at the closed gate for a little while longer, looking at the road that the delegation had taken. Then he turned back toward the village and walked into it.
There was work to do. There was always work to do. That had not changed since the day he woke up in the ruins of this place and started rebuilding it from nothing, and it would not change for as long as the village stood.
That is just what he had hoped for.