“Do you think he’s still alive in there?” asked Ingo, pointing to the doctor’s tent.

  “He’s alive,” answered Hesio. “But they won’t let me see him." Hesio looked worried. Perhaps to distract himself as much as Ingo he said: "Come with me, I’ll show you the whetstone I told you about.”

  Ingo’s first days in the Republican camp were a disorienting blend of discovery, guilt and growing dread as he understood what they were capable of. He followed Hesio wherever he went, observing everything. Guilt followed his excitement like a shadow that never left – a shame at being so enthralled by the arts of his enemy. And yet, what wonders they possessed!

  The everyday instruments these people used were so specialised that, at first, it seemed a joke. Why did anyone need to remove the skin from a potato? And which craftsman, capable of such delicate and ingenious work as a 'peeler,' had turned their talents to the purpose of wasting both time and food?

  The Hallin had a saying:

  The good clansman

  Builds his own house

  Cooks his own meat

  Stitches his own cloak

  Stands on his own feet

  But these apostates lived by the opposite creed. There was a man called a ‘cooper,’ who made only buckets. Ingo almost laughed out loud when he learned this. How could a person dedicate their whole life to making buckets? They lived like insects, each toiling with their own tools and labouring over their own small corner of industry. And yet, together, they worked with alarming speed.

  “Here it is,” said Hesio, and they stopped near a makeshift smith's tent. Damaged armour was stacked outside and a man sat in front of a stone wheel with a sword in his hand. He pressed a rectangle of metal on the ground with his foot and the wheel began to spin. He held the blade against it and Ingo jumped back as sparks flew off.

  “What's he doing?” whispered Ingo to Hesio.

  “Look.”

  The man held the sword aloft. He swung it against a pole. The previously dull blade now gleamed as though it were brand new and it left a deep cut.

  “He sharpened it so fast!” Ingo exclaimed as the soldier took another blade and started over.

  He thought of his father sitting by their roundhouse, running a stone up and down his longsword until the sun went down. How many afternoons had Heridan passed, doing something these people could accomplish in a moment? With the thought of his father, his face fell.

  “Something the matter, lad?”

  Ingo flashed a look of frustration. Of course something was wrong! He was far from home among an enemy force. He swung like a pendulum between excitement and sorrow, awe and anger.

  Hesio looked down.

  “I know. Let’s go back to our tent.”

  As they walked, Hesio talked.

  “We’ll be taking you back when it's safe to travel the river again, but they sent a boat of soldiers that way recently and it didn’t return. Can the sleepers swim?”

  “I don’t know,” Ingo admitted. There were plenty of other things that could kill a crew on the river.

  “Did you speak to the advocate again?”

  “I have yet to be summoned for an audience with his greatness,” Ingo mocked.

  The way these apostates talked of their superiors made him wonder if they had substituted their human rulers for the gods they had spurned. He had posed this theory already to Hesio, who had spluttered in anger.

  “Don’t make fun.” Hesio’s voice carried a warning. “People talk like he’s high and mighty because he is. He’s Advocate of the Institute and a general in the Republican Army. And right now, he’s your peoples’ best friend.”

  “He had you bring me here!"

  “Not you specifically. He wanted anyone from the central or southern clans. Do you know what for?”

  Ingo opened his mouth to spit back a reply, but found he had none. What did the general want with him? They had not tortured him for the location of his clan or the number of their warriors. They had not put weapons in his hands and demanded he fight for them. They had fed him peeled vegetables and shown him their tools. He closed his mouth. Hesio crouched in front of Ingo, gesturing to the ground. Ingo sat.

  “He wants to understand your people. He wants to help you.”

  “We didn’t ask for his help and we don’t need it.”

  “Well, that is half true. You did not ask for it.” Before Ingo could ask him to clarify, he continued: “Play your cards right and you’ll return with something to show for your time among us.”

  Ingo withdrew to the edge of the camp, to a spot which he had adopted as his own. From a high vantage it offered a broad view of all activity – and escape routes. The guards moved around the perimeter with never a moment of inattention. He watched the leather clad warriors and their families, too. They were not prisoners. The adults came and went at will, returning from the forest to speak with the red soldiers. The children feasted and played. He had not asked anyone who they were and perhaps he did not want to know.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  “The advocate will see you.” A soldier appeared behind him.

  Finally, thought Ingo, and he followed to the leader’s tent.

  Kostalyn Demetos sat on a cushion in the centre of the room, surrounded by trinkets and tools. Ingo recognised one. It was the small metal box he’d seen Hesio use to light a fire.

  The tall, white-haired man gestured to some cushions and Ingo sat.

  “Thank you for coming, Ingo,” said Demetos, as though he had a choice. The man waved his hand over the objects in front of him.

  “What do you see here?”

  Ingo inspected the assortment more closely. Now that he looked again, some did not appear so alien after all. He spotted a bow-drill – the first item any craftsman of the Hallin clan learned to make. They were prized as sweeteners in trade deals with Scursditch and were frequently offered to the Sullin before winter. The small, polished board had a hole in it just big enough for a wooden bolt to pass through. A stringed bow could be attached that made the bolt spin, resulting in sparks from the flint bowl beneath it. Many of the items combined stone with wood or metal in a similar way.

  “Are they all fire making tools?” he asked.

  The advocate beamed. His eyes bored into Ingo like the drill of the wooden tool. Ingo shifted on his cushion.

  “Extrapolation,” he replied. “It’s an important skill. Only one comes from your forest, but you recognise the pattern.”

  “I’ve seen the box before, too,” Ingo admitted, nodding at the item directly in front of him.

  “Of course. Although this one is a little different from Gavan and Hesio’s.”

  With his long fingers, Demetos picked up the box and flipped back the lid. After just two flicks at the tiny wheel a spark burst out and then a narrow, steady flame burned in the centre. Demetos moved the box closer to Ingo, who peered at the fire. It neither grew nor diminished but rested atop a tiny aperture in the metal like the light of a candle. He could not disguise the wonder in his face.

  “Remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “Is there really no invocation involved?” asked Ingo. Perhaps, he thought, they will reveal to me now their worship of some secret deity. Perhaps these people were not such a mystery.

  “None whatsoever. Is there any invocation involved in this?”

  Demetos pointed to the bow drill and Ingo smarted.

  “There’s no need to insult us.”

  “You think I’m insulting you?”

  Demetos leaned back and mused over Ingo’s expression before continuing in a hushed tone:

  “You don’t know how I admire this object. It is ingenious, to create something so reliable with such simple materials. It shows what our people have in common. Do you know why your people made it?”

  “In case of sleeper attacks outside the village. It's faster than flint. A bow drill can save a hunting party’s lives. Or at least, some of them.”

  The advocate smiled patiently. “I mean: why have you developed this tool while the civilised people of the West have not?”

  He gestured in a sweeping motion toward the West.

  “They live in cities of stone. They look down upon you as hopeless primitives and savages, yet they have not invented this. Why?”

  Ingo realised he had never thought that way. It wasn’t just the Westerners who saw the forest clans as primitives. Even the forest folk, on some level, suspected it might be true. They felt the stigma keenly. He had never considered that it could be the other way around.

  “They don’t have sleepers where they live. Maybe that’s why they don’t need this.”

  “No. What do the heroes and champions of Western legends do when they are lost in the darkness or stranded in ice and snow?”

  Ingo thought about the old stories that were told by the adults, and the more recent ones that came through Ada’s grandfather.

  “They can summon fire at will, through a pact with their deity.”

  “Yes!” Demetos nodded and beamed. Ingo felt proud, then instantly ashamed for valuing this man’s opinion. His father would not forget so easily who his enemies were.

  “Those priests,” Demetos continued, “are poisoning their people with every gift they give. Who will seek any new power, when power so clearly derives from heaven?”

  Ingo did not interrupt. Demetos pressed on:

  “We have ways of making fire as spectacular as the priests of Hurean, but we are in no one’s debt for it. I can use the medicine of our doctors without submitting to Farlean. I can use instruments to measure time on a cloudy night, and I pay no dues to that slippery god Sindrah. We hold power of our own. Power that rests in these two hands.”

  He held up his bony palms and it seemed to Ingo that fire might erupt from his very fingertips. He relaxed and sat back.

  “But I did not bring you here to be converted. Just to help you understand. We are more similar than you might have thought, are we not?”

  Ingo blinked, then mumbled: “We don’t take our bow drills to other people’s homes and burn them down.” His face flushed as he spoke.

  “You don’t reject priests, as we do?” Demetos needled gently at him, ignoring his insult.

  “That’s not the same,” Ingo protested. “We reject priests because we honour all the gods. You reject them because you honour none.”

  “Succinctly put. And yet, without priests to hold you back, you think for yourselves. You solve problems. Only the forest has hindered you. Consider what your people could have done, had you not been sent to live in darkness on the edge of the world. Shunned. Banished to the utter limits of your kingdom, to eke out a living among monsters in a land as hostile to human life as all the wars your ancestors fled from. Even there you survived. What do you think you could achieve with the ripe bounty of a Western harvest, or the treasures of a Southern mine?”

  Ingo had no words. Had the ancient woodland stunted their growth? How should he know, if he had not known any other home? He wanted to shut his mind to this godless man with a tongue like Sindrah, but what he said began to make sense. Perhaps it was something to think about when he was safe again at home. For now, though, he had to remind these people as much as himself that they were not friends.

  “Is that what you’re doing here, then? You came to destroy the forest, and you want me to believe that it will be good for the clans?”

  Demetos folded his arms and sat back. His eyes grew colder and he replied:

  “You’re too young to understand. Still a child, really. So, I will set things out plainly. The Sundered Republic needs this land. It needs timber, space and a substance that may seem as little more than dust to you.”

  The sudden, brutal honesty of this statement made Ingo sit up straight. His heart quickened and his attention focussed sharply.

  “These are plain facts, Ingo, not threats. And they are facts for men, not boys. The needs of nations are bigger than the desires of little people like you and me. Dombarrow is a dammed river about to flood, and your home is in its path.”

  Ingo had no response. Demetos continued:

  “Have now another plain fact – there are many in the Republic who would waste no time with you. They would not see any difference between Seveners and the other Serviles. They would not give you a chance.”

  “What is it then, this chance that you are giving us?” Ingo’s voice rasped from his dry throat.

  “The chance to direct the flow when the dam breaks. The chance to avoid being washed away.”

  Ingo stared at him.

  “And the chance for something more,” Demetos almost whispered, “if your minds can open just a crack.”

  He sat up and abruptly changed tone, speaking briskly and waving his hands:

  “But it’s too soon for that, and you are too young. I’ve tired you out and shocked you, perhaps. Go and reflect. And remember, whatever choices you make, as soon as we can travel the river safely, we’ll return you to your family.”

  Ingo felt that he had failed a test. He was sure that some possibility, on which the lives of those he loved may rest, had been pulled away from him. He opened his mouth to speak but Demetos took a little bell and rang it. A soldier entered the tent.

  “What do you mean, choices?” Ingo asked, “You haven’t asked anything of me!"

  “Please, be calm.” Demetos rose. “You’ve impressed me today, Ingo, but I know it’s too soon. We’ll speak again.”

  As the soldier ushered Ingo out, he heard Demetos command him:

  “Fetch Captain Tristor. And then tell the doctor that I want to see Gavan this afternoon, and I want him lucid.”