Boundsman in the Morrasgrove
The sun cast low over the marsh, sending forward long shadows like encroaching fingers towards the boundary oaks of the Morassgrove. Their branches were woven together, like a thrust of spears, standing as a sentry guard. A lone crown warbler sang a muted song nearby—its notes thin, unfinished, and swallowed by the stillness of the trees.
Within, a rabble of Brimstone butterflies flickered through the deep shadows, their wings occasionally catching the light like coins flicked in an alehouse game. Red Shepherds stalked lazily through the heavy air. I squeezed my trusted blackthorn staff so tightly that my knuckles went white. They took me back to the forests of Dunnermere, after the battle, where those red wing-wraiths had fed overly well on the blood of the massed dead. I spat over my shoulder to ward off any evil that may have brought them.
I was in search of Hantor, my fraternal brother and fellow boundsman, a week overdue to report in. That meant someone would be sent to investigate. I volunteered immediately and left the very same morning. I owed Hantor a past debt, and that quickened my step over the day’s march. I’d been in Marshtown for too many nights besides, and I missed the cold air on my face, and the silence of the wide country.
The understory of buckthorn grasped and pulled at my clothing, as if shaped by hands long gone. Planted as a defence against the marsh’s creeping grasp, it now seemed a feeble guardian of the land. I thought of a summer when Hantor and I had pleached hedgerows under a scorching sun. Those hedges had thorns, which I cursed roundly and often. But Hantor, well, he just clicked his fingers at the emerald sky. He was oblivious to the sly, knowing smiles of the farmhands. I swear they put off jobs until they knew he’d be next round their way.
It was clear that people did not come to the Morassgrove often, and my search here was made worse by the fresh detritus and old branches that had come down in the storm three days past. If Hantor had come this way, there was no clear sign.
In truth, I knew little of the area bordering the marsh, as my bounds-march and duty were the eastern hills, and sometimes to the south of the big river. Hantor told some exaggerated and wild stories of this land, and in the silence of that grove, I could believe more than half of them.
I began to lose hope of finding him that day. Then, as I was preparing to move on—or to find a place to spend the night under the stars—I finally found a sign.
A flutter of Red Shepherds drew me beneath the tallest oak, where a hound lay broken, its limbs splayed as if it had been hurled by some angry god. The neck was twisted around horribly, and the empty sockets of its eyes stared back at me in accusation of a broken trust. The ground around the poor beast was disturbed, and likely from a struggle as far as I could make out. A struggle in which this large hound was brutally killed, and I had no great desire to meet the creature that did that.
Surely, I said to myself, this was one of Hantor’s hounds. He was kind-hearted and wouldn’t have left an animal in a state like this if he had any say in the matter. My heart felt troubled and turned to his family, fearing that their deepest fears were becoming manifest in this moment.
I drew my long dagger and my breadth caught as I stepped back from the corpse. My dread rose as a weight settled deeper with every snap of twig or crunch of rotten acorn beneath my boots.
But a cry left my lips when I spied him, my friend Hantor. He was more than half obscured, half buried under bushes and bracken. His face had caught the light; Red Shepherds drifted around lazily, and I could see that it was scratched deeply by brambles. He was not moving, and he gave no sign he knew I was there.
As I cleared away the branches that trapped him, I could see he had been covered intentionally, and not kindly. Branches had been laid to immobilise him, pinning him down awkwardly, and roughly pinching his skin. I sensed a casual disregard and haste in the way he was positioned. It was a wonder to me that he still lived.
I dropped to my knees beside him, flicking away the butterflies and crunching a few that I caught. My stomach clamped in guilt, as it might have had I drunk unknowingly from an unclean water source.
Hantor’s breath rasped fast in low bursts, each more fragile than the last.
The sour smell of sweat, sickly decay, and rot of unwashed skin rose from him sharply, and I knew that I had come to witness a man’s end, after all. By the forest signs, he must have lain here for two, or three nights.
My ill foreboding had been right all that day. Sent by the gods, no doubt, to drive me here in time to redress some of the indignity of a poor, prolonged death.
“Brother, what has done this to you?” I asked softly. I feared for a moment that those bramble scars were from the poisoned claws of a gibberknackle.
His head turned slightly towards me, his glazed eyes struggled to focus at a point above my head. I leaned in to hear his reply.
“It was just a man,” he replied. “A man, in fine clothes. Coming out of the marsh.”
The breath that he used to share this with me was his last exhale.
I sat next to him a long while after, given that my search was over.
The man I knew was steady and full of purpose. He had been with me at Dunnermere. Steadfast, when so many others had turned and fled. Now here he was, broken beneath the bracken. It struck me how much his family had needed him, and how much this land had taken from them both.
I had not heard of anyone coming out of the marsh in a long time, I thought grimly. No one came that damned way. Now they had, and Hantor was dead. There were paths, of course; Hantor would have known their first few turns and kept a guarded eye on them as he passed. It was the duty of the boundsmen to challenge and prevent passage from anyone, save by way of the small ferry. It seemed he had died for this duty.
Night had fallen hours past by the time that I had built a pyre from the fallen limbs of the oaks fresh from the storm. I found hoof fungus growing well in the feet of a few decaying trees. So the fire started brightly and was aided by the buckthorn, which caught the flames well. I stood my own sentry and vigil for the rest of that night, watching over the flames. The heat licked my face, and the breaking of the burning branches mixed with faint whispers in the air.
The fire’s warmth was gone from my skin by the time I trudged wearily back to Marshtown the next evening, while my boots were heavy with damp and chill. My news was as heavy as the western fog. My legs ached, and tears stained my cheeks like mist. Yet I would have walked another week in such a state if it kept me from my duties that day. First, a report that would summon a tracker, to go in search of Hantor's killer. And then a visit to an old wooden door, where a wife would be waiting anxiously for the first signs of a man who loved the broad wilds more than he loved her.