Chapter 14

When I moored our little vessel for the fourth and final time at the side of the stream where my Elven friends were again waiting I wanted to scream, I wanted to jump into the Slow River and drown, I wanted to ... no, I was totally ready to give up everything. Everything. I was ready to forget the mission to get all the people safe and start a life as a simple hunter somewhere far away - and maybe even alone.

Well, of course, I would not do that. I just felt like it after shepherding all those dummy village people safely to the hands of the Elves. Or maybe they weren’t idiotic, just ignorant and without any schooling. The beginning of the journey in the forest had been hard because of the amount of food we needed to gather in order to feed all those people. It had been hard but hunting with my crossbow and snares was something I could do. I just had to do it a lot - and that was the easy part. Once the villagers noticed that I was willing to help, heal and especially be nice to them, I started getting their attention. The Man and his sons had been happy to use the women the way they wanted, but likewise the women - or even girls - had learned to use their bodies as a trade item. Once they stopped being afraid of me - well, there was a moment when I had to make a statement to all of them and make it clear to them that I already had a family, and I was very happy with it. Period. After that, the harassing stopped - for a day or two. These people had seen too much and so many bad things that a few hard words did not really scare them. That became clear when dealing with the issue called The Man.

That had happened almost immediately, once Ylva and Linnea had joined us in the village and we had brought The Man and his sons, all nicely tied up, in front of the other people - mainly because I wanted to check their reaction and use Linnea to be sure that I would not be lied to. I wanted to know if there were any ‘true followers’, meaning some people I should not fully trust. Before any of us was really able to react, the eldest girl with a kitten had buried a rusty knife to the lower stomach of ‘The Man’ - from below. The knife might have been rusty but it was still quite sharp and it was immediately clear that there was nothing I could have done to save him had I wanted to. I really would have liked to kiss the girl but decided against it as I didn’t know if she had another knife hidden somewhere.

In a way, The Man had probably been more lucky than his sons - since there was no way that we would take them with us - even if our community was in desperate need of men. The half a dozen young men who were coming with us would need to ‘man up’ quite soon. I hoped that Hakon could help with that. I really hoped so, since at the moment I could not really stomach any more of them. Back at the village it soon had become clear that neither of the sons had the same kind of ability as their father had had. One of them had an ability that reminded me of one of Linnea’s, even if in much lesser level. Which meant that his guessing had caused the death of many people.

Only after I had explained to the villagers that leaving those two men behind without any extra clothes and supplies might even be more cruel than immediately killing them, had they agreed to leave them alive. Maybe I should have felt sorry for those two, but I really couldn’t. Having seen all those shallow graves and the way the other people looked at them - no, I couldn’t pity them. However, they might have survived if they quickly learned some new skills - and if they didn’t eat the roots I had asked Agnetha to accidentally leave behind. Agnetha’s knowledge was about edible plants and mushrooms and that was probably the reason The Man had allowed her to live, as the only one of the old generation. Of course, the fact that she wasn’t at all a dominating personality had helped her.