Chapter 1241: The Search for Liam Dunn (Part One)
A large canvas tent sat atop a hill overlooking the River Luath, its peaked roof snapping gently in the cold winter wind. Inside, a brazier glowed in the center of the space, doing its best to fight back the chill that seeped through the heavy fabric walls. The tent wasn’t a military command post, despite the rings of smaller tents that clustered around it, covering the hillside in round tents that had popped up in the hours before sunset like mushrooms bursting forth from the earth.
Rather, this was Baron Loghlan Dunn’s personal traveling quarters, the place where he and his wife had slept and taken their als for the past week as they’d slowly moved south along the route their son would have taken to co ho from Lothian.
A small wooden table dominated the center of the tent, the sa table where they’d shared their morning porridge and evening stew. Now, instead of plates and cups, it was covered with a detailed map of Dunn Barony and the surrounding lands. Small wooden markers dotted the parchnt, each one representing another hamlet that had been raided by the demons that plagued the western reaches of Lothian March this winter.
Baron Loghlan Dunn stood over the map, his weathered hands braced against the table’s edge as his gray eyes tracked the pattern of destruction. He was a man in his mid-fifties, with the broad shoulders and calloused hands of soone who still worked alongside his people when the harvest ca in, or the herds needed tending.
His once dark hair was now a dark shade of gray, and he wore it tied back with a simple leather cord. His travel-stained tunic and breeches were well-made from wool produced and dyed in his own barony, but cut in a style that emphasized comfort on horseback over creating any kind of impressive, courtly appearance.
Across from him, his wife Mairwen sat in one of their camp chairs, a stack of scout reports in her lap and a piece of charcoal in her hand. She was perhaps five years younger than her husband, with auburn hair that she’d braided back from a face marked by both laugh lines and worry. Her green eyes scanned each report with the careful attention to detail that had made her Loghlan’s most trusted advisor in matters of the barony, even if the eastern lords would have raised their eyebrows at a woman so involved in her husband’s governance.
"Another set of tracks leading southwest," Mairwen said, setting aside one report and reaching for the next. She stood and leaned over the map, placing a new marker near the western edge of their territory. "The scouts lost them after about five miles, but the direction is clear enough."
Loghlan grunted in acknowledgnt, his eyes following the pattern she’d just extended. Most of the markers showing demon tracks or the trails of stolen herds pointed in a similar direction, toward the wilderness that separated Dunn lands from the Vale of Mists southwest.
"They’re not scattering," he observed, his voice rough from a week of shouting orders and breathing cold air. "Every raid, every stolen herd, they’re taking them all in the sa general direction."
"Here," Mairwen said, tapping a spot on the map with one slender finger. "Many of the tracks seem to be pointing toward this area. It’s one of the villages the demons abandoned this sumr that Liam said was too difficult to reach to lay claim to with the number of n we could spare."
The path from the places where scouts had lost the trail to the village Mairwen ntioned wasn’t direct. If one extended the lines on the map straight in their direction of travel, they would have landed in half a dozen different spots. But Loghlan’s wife saw more than just the direction of the tracks; she saw the hills the tracks bent to avoid, the streams they followed, and the turns they made...
It wasn’t much, but it was enough to tell her about how the demons who had stolen many of their herds thought. With each new report, she gained a better understanding of these new demon raiders, and that understanding suggested sothing that few would believe.
These demons, for all that they’d attacked ruthlessly, cared more about keeping every head of sheep and cattle they’d pilfered than they did about finding chances to slaughter more humans or reaching their destination as quickly as possible. They avoided treacherous fords in favor of shallow crossings, and they detoured around steep paths where livestock might falter in favor of gentler, easier routes across the land.
When Mairwen finally looked up at her husband, hope and fear were warring in her expression.
"If the demons took Liam... if they’re taking people now, not just livestock... they may have taken him to the sa place," she concluded tentatively. "To wherever they’ve established their new... lair? Nest? Whatever you want to call it."
"This whole business of demons taking people is very strange," Loghlan said, shaking his head and scowling at the map. It wasn’t that he disagreed with his wife’s conclusion, far from it. Loghlan prided himself on his keen mind and his ability to balance the many different competing priorities within his barony as he worked to secure a brighter future for his family and their people. Logic, planning, and the managent of the treasury were all things that he excelled at, and he felt no sha in saying it.
But when it ca to the understanding of a person’s heart, or the pulsing, collective heart of a hamlet, village, or any other group of people, Loghlan’s capabilities paled in comparison to those of his wife. Loghlan often said that he could manage his domain and lead his people, but it was Mairwen who truly understood them, and those very sa gifts allowed her to understand the movents of demons as well.
But understanding their enemy was only the beginning. Actually using that understanding to defeat them, or, more importantly, to find his missing son, was an order of magnitude more difficult...
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