The Last Ring-bearer - Kirill Yeskov [152]
…Back then he still walked upright and with shoulders squared (the right one was not yet higher than the left one), while his face was yet free of a badly healed purple scar; he was handsome, brave, and lucky, with his bottle-green Royal Forester uniform fitting him like a glove – in other words, a serious threat to womankind. The local peasants disliked him, which he considered normal: villeins only like accommodating foresters, whereas Runcorn took his service with all the seriousness of youth. Being a King's man, he could disregard the local landlords; he quickly put their courts, which used to visit the royal forests like their own larder under his predecessor, in their place. Everybody knew the story of Eggy the Chicken Hawk's band that had wandered into their country once – Runcorn did away with those guys all by himself, not deigning to wait for the sheriff's men to pry their behinds off the benches of the Three Pint Tavern. To sum it up, the neighbors treated the young forester with cautious respect but not much sympathy, which he did not care much for anyway. He was used to being by himself since he was a child, and socialized with the Forest way more than with his peers. The Forest was everything to him: playmate, interlocutor, mentor, eventually becoming his Home. Some people even claimed that he had in him the blood of the woodwoses – forest demons from the ominous Druadan Dell. Well, people in remote forest villages say all sorts of things during chilly fall evenings, when only the feeble light of a splinter keeps the ancient evils from getting out of the dark corners…
To top it all off, at one point Runcorn stopped showing up at village festivities (to acute disappointment of all eligible maidens in the vicinity) and instead hung out at a tumbledown shack at the edge of Druadan, where an old medicine woman from the far north (maybe as far as Angmar) had settled some time before with her granddaughter Lianica. Manwe only knows what such an eligible bachelor saw in that puny freckled girl; many supposed that witchcraft was involved – the old woman certainly knew some spells and could heal with herbs and laying of hands, which was her livelihood. Lianica was known to talk to birds and beasts in their language and could have a ferret and a mouse sit together in the palm of her hand. This rumor may have owed to the fact that she avoided people (as opposed to forest animals) so much that she was originally thought to be dumb. The local beauties, when someone would mention the forester's strange choice, only snorted: "Whatever. Maybe they'll make a good couple."
It did look like they would have, but it was not to be. One day the girl ran into the young landlord, out with his company to hunt and 'improve the serfs' blood line a bit;' those exploits of his have even caused some of his neighboring landlords to grumble: "Really, young sir, this propensity of yours to screw everything that moves…" It was a routine matter, nothing to get excited about, really. Who'd've thought that the fool girl would drown herself, as if something precious had been taken away from her? No, guys, it really is true that all northerners are nuts.
Runcorn buried Lianica alone – the old woman could not bear the loss of her granddaughter and passed away two days later without regaining consciousness. The neighbors came to the cemetery mostly to check whether the forester would put a black-feathered arrow on the grave, signifying an oath of vengeance. But no, he did not risk that. Nor was that a surprise; sure, he's the King's man, but the King is far, while the landlord's company (eighteen thugs, gallows material all) is right here.