Durham Keep stood on a hill like a lighthouse, warning travelers of the maelstrom that was the Iron Forest beyond to the north. Small copses of trees dotted the rolling hills, the normal everyday trees Heden had grown up with. Forests that weren’t alive and thinking and malevolent. The kinds of forests a man could walk through without fear of being killed in an instant by something that considered you an enemy combatant in an endless war you’d never heard of.

Even though the Wode started a mile beyond the keep, the trees dominated the small walled city. Each rose three hundred feet or more, the stark line of them looking more like a cliff, or a giant wall of water about to wash the keep and its people into the green sea that was the smooth hills.

The keep itself was a motte and bailey built on a large hill. A stone wall in the old Golish style with no mortar surrounded the keep and a few dozen wooden buildings. Together, the keep, the buildings, the wall made a town. A small one. But the keep was, to Heden’s practiced eye, easily defensible. The Gol built small fortresses with massive underground warrens that could hold thousands of people and were incredibly difficult to siege. Though it was three thousand years old and looked like it could fall apart at any minute it would probably stand another thousand years and outlast this Age of Men.

There was a crowd of people waiting to get into the keep. Farmers whose houses and fields dotted the landscape for miles around. They formed a rough and winding line, their livestock milling around them. Packing them all into the town would make life there uncomfortable. They were anxious but controlled. No one was shouting. A squad of guards posted at the gate kept people from flooding in, but they didn’t appear to be turning anyone away. Just noting everyone who passed through. Probably checking to make sure they knew them.

“They work normally during the day,” The woman in black next to him said. “Then gather their families and spend the night in the Keep. Some come early. They’re expecting a siege.”

“Yeah,” Heden said, looking into the forest. “We had to do the same thing when I was a boy.” Heden studied the land around the keep. He and the woodsman stood at the edge of a copse of trees, Heden surveying the Keep and its surroundings. His companion dressed all in loose black leather, leaning on her bow.

“Sieged by who?”

The woodsman shifted her weight. “Don’t know,” she said. “Heard tell of urmen. Could be. Could be thyrs. Probably urmen.”

“What would urmen want with the place?”

She didn’t answer. It was a rhetorical question.

They were silent for many moments. A hawk cried in the clear air.

“I’ve got to go in there,” Heden said. The woman nodded. He looked at her and did not look away.

“Are you joking?” she asked, slinging her bow over her back. “No. Those people are all going to die and you know it.”

Heden shrugged. “That hill the keep’s on?” he asked.

She grunted assent.

“It’s a mound. Man-made. Probably warrens under the town and stretching out under the forest. Maybe even under us, here. If they’ve stored food and have a couple of wells…,” he left the statement hanging.

She frowned and looked at the keep.

“If it’s a siege, they could use someone like you,” he said.

She crossed her arms and thought, not taking her eyes of the keep. Then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Stupid. Stop being so sentimental. I can be more help out here anyway. Pick off the urq commanders. Slip away whenever I want. If they had good scouts, they’d be doing the same,” she said, nodding to the Keep.

Heden agreed. She could make a difference out here and leverage her greatest strength; her mobility.

“Urmen, you said. Have you gone into the forest?” he asked. In a sense, they were surrounded by forests. But the keep marked the boundary between normal human forests, and the Wode.

“That meat grinder?” She said. “I liked you better when you weren’t asking stupid questions.”

Heden was silent. Then he picked up his pack, turned and extended his hand to her. She took it. They looked at each other.

“I don’t know your name,” Heden said.

Her pale cheeks turned slowly pink while Heden held her hand, but she didn’t look away.

“Probably for the best,” she said, her voice rough. She didn’t let go of his hand. “I’d like to forget the last sixteen hours, if you don’t mind.”

Heden pulled his hand away and nodded. He turned and headed toward the keep.

“I know what you mean,” he said, without turning around.

On to Chapter Seventeen!

Chapter 16