The law of the woods

.oOo.

– "Stop scowling! You're sound and safe!"

The kid was screaming in pain while extracting herself from the bramble where she had to throw herself in order to escape the wild boar. The thick bushes intertwined under the foliage, protecting the old loner's wallow.

– "I've told you before! Aim at the heart! You're allowed only one arrow! The law of the forests requires swift killing! Otherwise the beast may rob the hunter's life..."

The warrior, catching his breath, removed the stake out of the game dying at his feet. Without him, the wild boar would have gutted his granddaughter...

Still in shock, the girl, with her trembling hands, pulled out the last thorns that had lacerated her skin. With ruffled hair and a pugnacious glow in her gaze, she picked up her bow. Feverishly, with a beating heart, the kid searched for her arrow. At last she found it, broken in the beast's shoulder and exclaimed triumphantly:

– "I knew it! I got it!

The grandfather sighed resignedly, but his gaze gleamed with pride: the girl had mastered her fear. Yet her lack of practice had almost cost her life...

–"Since you are the one who killed, come and pay your respect to the game!

Both knelt at the boar's side. Anguished palpitations still shook the large carcass. The graceful teenager pulled a long knife from her weapon belt and took a deep breath, her face stern. The grandfather kept a close watch, clenching his strong grip on the old male's head, which raucous breath was fading into pathetic squeaks of terror. Bera invoked the law and asked the wild boar for forgiveness, stabbing it with a not-so-firm hand. With her bloodied hand, she soon dried a tear on the edge of her hazel eyes.

The warrior breathlessly hoisted the carcass on his stocky shoulders, under the girl's aghast look. Sometimes her grandfather, warden of the forest laws, wise of the bear-clan, seemed like a giant to her larger, when he took her on some hunt through the western dales of the Greenwood. The hunter set out with an august step. Bera seized their weapons and trotted in the footsteps of the colossus, whose pepper-and-salt hair disappeared under the pelt of his burden.

Autumn set branches ablaze with gold and purple. The flavescent foliage sown the annual ransom of their lost vitality, lining the mushrooms-colonized stumps and the trunks felled by the storm. The spoils collected in previous years, these layers of patiently decayed leaves, would preserve the roots from the cold: the grandfather, a tireless loremaster, chanted his old yarns for the teenager. Bera picked mushrooms with large brown corollas, looking at the assent of her grandfather, stiff under the weight of his game. Above their heads, the disheveled trunks swayed, whispering their season song in the fresh and clear sky.

As the warrior was approaching a clearing, he froze, watching. The prairie was pricked with thistles and groves of holly.

At once, Bera was by his side, her dart ready, alert to the slightest noise.

The grandfather delicately hid the wild boar between the roots of an oak tree and seized the weapons his granddaughter was handing to him. With a glance he inset silence and with gesture showed north. Bera reassured herself: that was just a deer grazing in the tall grass.

The two hunters hid behind the trunks bordering the prairie. The game lay down in the grasses.

Then the duo, conversing by signs, took reference marks and set up their approach plan. Armed with their bows and arrows, they crawled, slowly, lying in the ground or on their elbows and knees. Only a few blue butterflies lingered in the quiet air. When they were thirty steps away from their target, Bera risked a head above the thistles. Nothing. The animal may have fled or lay hidden in the grasses. Stubborn, the girl resumed her crawling, risking from time to time a stealthy look.

Twenty steps further, still nothing! Bera got up completely, and saw the deer, curled up in a grassy hollow, apparently drowsy and turning his back. She armed slowly, the target at her mercy. She had conquered!

But the grandfather's hand rested on her shoulder, postponing the killing. Bera turned to him, angry. The hazel eyes, accusatory, met the serene gaze of the sage. She breathed a sigh of renunciation, lowering her bow. The alerted deer leaped suddenly and disappeared into the meadow, before its frightened cavalcade died out in the far woods.

The duo was walking at dusk, bringing the wild boar back to the village.

– "I had it indeed! I lost my game today!"

Her arms laden with her harvest of ceps and girolles, the sulky teenager advanced reluctantly.

– "Indeed today you won a game! We didn't need this deer, since this huge boar will provide for the village needs for several days! But the exercise was excellent for you! Besides, the deer was of childbearing age, and you know the law - better young antler or old venison than parents in fair season! This deer will be returned to you in due time!

The grandfather, under his bloody charge, glanced at the girl. The teenager, always looking straight ahead while straddling the ferns, seemed elsewhere. She finally replied:

– ... "I have to tell you something, Grandpa!

... You don't tell anyone, do you? … Remember how I used to run away any time when I was a little girl?"

A snarky growl answered her.

– ... "Well, once, I got lost, I don't really know where any more... But I recall it was on the edge of a nice little welling. It was spring, and the sun through the leaves made like shining strings of bells. I remember it well, I was lying on the soft moss on the bank, and the white harebell tickled my face. It smelled good like rising sap and the trees around the spring made like a large crown of flowering branches under the blue sky. And I soaked my feet in the fresh stream, and the sun lit plenty of beautiful smiles on the water just for me!"

The grandfather frowned: this memory rather looked like a dream! But the older the hunter, the more dreams set out to overshadow memories... Therefore the old gruff hunter refrained from interrupting the girl.

– ... "and then there's something nasty, something evil, that popped up from the woods and grabbed me!"

This time the grandfather interrupted:

– "What did you do then?"

– "Well, I screamed, here! I struggled!

– "Now that's good! And what was the evil thing?"

– "I don't know... But in my head I called it a "Gorgûn"! It was horrible, very big and strong – well, not as strong as you, Grandpa – and all dark with big sharp teeth and long, horrible hands!

– "And there was no one to help you! How did you get away with it?"

– "Well, then came that big lynx out of the woods! It grabbed the Gorgûn and twisted its neck! Like that, snap!

– "A lynx!"

– "Yes, and a huge one, like those coming down the mountains in winter, with white coat. And that was weird, since it was late spring..."

– "Is that all you think is weird about this story?

–"Don't make fun of me, Grandpa! Then it sat on its big paws and looked at me with its piercing eyes, like you did with the deer! ... Looked like saying "Don't you think it's time to become reasonable?" So I ran along the creek, fast and long, and I arrived at the village!

–"Hum... Is that the time you were so scared? If I remember correctly, you didn't run away afterwards!

–"Exactly! I mean, I got lost again after that, but not on purpose, right? But what I mean is that maybe, today, I gave back what the great lynx gave me?

The grandfather paused, turning under his burden, and said to the teenager, whom he contemplated in a new light:

– ... You mean that deer we spared would have paid off your life-debt? ... I'm glad to believe it, Bera, my daughter's daughter!

The girl stopped. Her grandfather had just put words on what her childhood heart might have kept hidden for years. She nodded and resumed her feline walk through the woods.

–"Grandpa, you know for earlier? ... The wild boar? ... Thank you for saving me... and then for my debt too! I feel so light now! »

.oOo.

A few stingy rays braided the green lace with pale gold. The young woman slowly sniffed, her face close to the ground. The fumes intersected in the moist darkness of the great forest. Every fleeting odour told her about an animal's earthly preoccupations – the dumb squirrel piling its reserves and forgetting its hiding places, the hunting marten sown in an ash tree because the so-called squirrel jumps from one tree to another in order to reach its refuge, the pregnant fox worrying to find a den, the grumbling badger being driven away by its female, the sow paving the way to its phalanx of piglets... The air roared with the ballet of insects, the most voracious of which attacking the huntress. In the heat of summer, the little people of the undergrowth were busy, scraping, digging, stocking, hunting, preparing homes and pantry in anticipation of the lean season. And Bera's clan was subject to this forests law. The young woman smiled at the thought of Arduyr, her grandfather, repeating their lesson to the clan's little ones: "No one escapes the law of the forests! It is like rain, which chases everyone and first wets the backs of the most powerful. Neither hunter nor animal can escape it! When the hunter denies the law, his entire clan is endangered!"

There! A shred of velvet, fallen from an antler!

She had been following the trail since dawn: a male, four years old, with a soft stride and great caution. He certainly had stopped there: grazed leaves, and a little further, an eaten bark! Tenacity had paid off: Bera's game had joined a trail. The leaves were packed, the low branches revealed its size, the trail led to the watering point, hidden in a wooded combe behind groves of hazelnut trees. A gully gleefully jumped from mossy stones to collapsed trunks. Some freshness lingered there in the singing of thrushes.

When she arrived, one scurried in the thickets, another madly took flight, the last one rolled in a ball until further notice ... Bera watched carefully - all of them complied with the law. The huntress found a flat stone, drank long drafts in the pure stream, with the taste of peat and fresh mint.

Then she resumed the trail, and patiently followed the signs. Finally, she recognized a den... that was empty.

Bera chose a beautiful oak tree that would give her ample visibility and prepared her gear. She climbed up the trunk and stowed herself at more than a pole high1.. The big game, naturally daytime, was very sensitive to odours. In the absence of wind, it was necessary to reduce her olfactory footprint at all costs.

Bera began her lookout.

Slowly, time passed. The rodents were busy, watching the intruder on her perch and mocking her appearance as a big puffed squirrel.

Very slowly, time passed. The birds stopped to make a small chat, gloating endlessly about the disloyalty of the cuckoo.

So slowly, time passed. The fox showed up, her belly distended. She had found no den. There was that hollow stump up there near the ash tree, but it smelled like an old grumpy badger... The young female passed, forth and back, worried about that diffuse smell, that devious scent – man!

Startling wake up! Noisy gallop on the leaves! Low light, it was late!

Bera turned, embarrassed, unstrapped to lean over and see better, pulled out an arrow, leaned to aim...

As in a daydream, the pursuit was heading towards her. A Lynx, unrolling its supple and powerful stride, chased a deer, which leaped randomly, its eyes panicked. Bera lowered his weapon. A lynx, with a light coat... not so big, but still... The game passed under her like a ghost cavalcade. The huntress twisted her neck to follow them as far as she could, and then the race was lost in a combe of fir trees. The silence of the evening fell on the forest, as the sun was falling behind the mountains.

Bera called herself names – She got sleepy!?

She was detaching the strap when she saw it from the corner of her eye - the lynx was looking at her, hidden under a low branch!

Surprised, she fell, held back at mid-fall by her harness.

.oOo.

– "Usually, asking for advice is fishing for pity! the grandfather teased. You dreamed of the lynx, and then it showed up?"

The old hunter looked at the young woman, squinting his eyes, like when, as a child, she told him nonsense. Usually, he was that kind of dreamer...

Comfortably seated in front of a good fire, Arduyr oversaw the young men who were preparing a newly shot wild boar. Stiff and clumsy at his side, Bera was still holding her ribs, all bruised by her fall:

– "I thought of it in my dream, it was slow to come. And finally it woke me up!

– "Ah, you fell asleep in the tree! And you fell! Then you have your answer... Be glad this lesson isn't more painful! That's too bad! A head injury might have brought in some wisdom...

But a great tenderness sweetened the grandfather's mocking gaze. He spread a balm he had made on the painful ribs of the huntress and made her lean on the hides. Both let themselves be lulled by the conversations around the fire, enjoying the hunters' fellowship around the meal, free and proud people under the forest shelter. Above them rustled the protective vault of the trees, dominated by the glittering vault of the world.

The young men, guided by the elders, skinned the wild boar. The company laughed a little when the youngest fainted while the beast was being emptied and its guts fell softly into the wooden bucket. But that was part of the training, they had to go through it! The boy was put back on his feet with a sip of mead.

The hunting chief was Bera's uncle. It was said that when he warmed up a little, his colossus build, black hair and long beard seemed even more impressive. But when he was really angry or felt his clan was in danger, then he would enter into an uncontrollable fury and really put on a bear skin to fight their enemies.2

That evening, the young people of the clan saw their hunting chief cut out the beast's testicles himself, roast them immediately on the fire, and delight in them for a long time, alone. No elder even dared to mention any sharing, yet sharing was a law of the forests...

The clan leader was generally avoided for questioning, for he showed little patience. So was one usually got around Arduyr, hardly less gruff but more talkative, although he tended to pontificate recently. After the meal, he was asked to explain this ritual. Arduyr looked at the clan leader, who nodded in a dark mood.

The fire had faded to a few embers, so the Wise asked it to be revived. For such dark matters would not be evoked in the dark. Silence fell around the creaking fireplace, and the clan came closer. In front of the tense faces on which the flames cast fierce reflections, the grandfather explained at length that the Skinchanger had submitted to the animal kingdom, and forbade himself, as a token of this agreement, to consume the meat of the large and small beasts, birds, or any other living in the woods.3 Arduyr did not say what a terrible crime had once forced the chief of the bear clan to suffer such a curse.

The huge, shaggy Skinchanger kept his eyes down on his wooden bowl, meticulously cleaning his black beard after his pagan agapes. His low, deaf voice rumbled:

– "We have forgotten what lapse or mistake or crime my ancestors may have committed in the past, which imposes that animal part on my lineage" he said. "But my family has been carrying this burden since our clan descended from the north."

And he slipped a painful look towards Bera.

The warrior, the only woman among all these men on the hunt, was also the closest relative of the Skinchanger.

– "But then, why eat wild boar today?" asked the young woman.

The grandfather resumed, forcing his broken voice to obey him:

– "Once a year, our leader departs from his vow because he must honor the law of the clan and agree to absorb the meat gained in sharing. For that is his duty to protect men from the savagery of the animal world, by absorbing it so that we, his folk, may be exempted from it."

The camp, an island of flickering light under the living shadows of the great canopy, gathered more tightly around the fireplace, eager for heat. The nocturnal wind had risen, carrying the chimeras of a distant and menacing past. The night owls hurled their hooting afar, alerting the wild packs: the arrogant man had recklessly ventured into the heart of the great forest.

.oOo.

– "Come, Grandpa! Quick!" Bera whispered.

The lively and athletic woman descended the hill in small strides and took the old hunter by the hand. The grandfather was lingering to contemplate attentively a hornbeam decapitated by lightning, where a beautiful hive had nested. It was high day on this spring morning, and yet the industrious bees had not gone out...

– "I feel like something is coming... But where are you taking me?"

– "I've seen it!" she shouted excitedly. "You've got to see it too! That would be fair, since you have been telling me about it all these years..."

They reached the top of the escarpment. They lurked breathlessly under the shadow of a hazelnut grove, disturbing a squirrels family. A vast, sparse valley of pine trees opened before them.

The clouds rolled like anthracite omens, that a blazing sun sometimes pierced. A deer herd grazed there, the mothers hustling the young and pushing them with their snouts in order to assemble them. Large males, far from confronting each other, seemed to settle at the eastern end of the clearing. In the sweetness of spring an upheaval arose, the musk-laden air carried the rumors of a threat, the forest felt the time of a confrontation.

Then they saw him. A huge stag, with majestic and sharp antlers, seemed to exhort his fellows, scraping the floor with his hoof and blowing belligerently. The antlers of his most powerful vassals barely reached his withers. The Deer King raised his head and threw a deafening shout. The primal call, raucous and deep, seemed to resound from the depths of the ages, to awaken the life force in the heart of every inhabitant of the great forest. A smear was spreading, the animal kingdom was going to oppose it.

The two aghast humans contemplated at length this force of nature, this forest spirit embodied in indomitable vitality. His silver dress shimmered under the seraphic rays falling from the sky and shrouded with gold the crown that armed his forehead with sharp daggers.

The grandfather was first to pulled himself together:

– "I told you, something is going on! A witchcraft by Dol Guldur... Let's go back to the village, we are needed there!"

The duo ran among the thickets, while swarms of crows were taking possession of the high branches. Sliding silently between the trunks, they fell like lightning on a few scouts—dirty and fearful goblins, who fell without even seeing the danger, by the hunter's arrow or the warrior's axe.

The village was under attack. Both assailed a group of orcs, cutting their heads and limbs with the fury of a couple of angry bears. Villagers were running desperately, unarmed, caught up by evil wolves with ember eyes. Bera's anger really awoke – she rushed to the crop fields where cries and calls for help were raising. Arduyr continued on his way to the village, shooting down with cold determination, every enemy passing within his reach.

Bera caused carnage in the crops. Goblins harassed children they had caught in the middle of picking, or busy tying bundles. In an instant she shot the chief and his guard, scattering their cowardly and brawling clique. The children, gathered in good order, were armed with goblin cutlery and sent straight to the village, while Bera stormed the pens, where men had holed up.

On the return of the hunters, Arduyr had gathered the women and children in the redoubt that commanded the great village gate. Together, armed with their bows, they prevented any attacker from approaching them. When a large orc with clanking chainmail came within reach, brandishing a torch, Arduyr adjusted his aim and made it pay for its recklessness.

Thus a few islands of resistance had spontaneously organized, allowing the warriors to gather and lead the victorious counterattack. The hordes of Dol Guldur were pursued with unparalleled ferocity. On this fateful day, fear changed sides.

The warriors returned in the middle of the night, exhausted, staring blankly, led by the Skinchanger. Bera, the last, emerged from the nocturnal shadows, a shaggy and vengeful fury, still inhabited by the ardour of fight and the hatred for wolves. She had broken the wargs' onslaught and provoked the wolf king into a duel. The monster's bloody pelisse was now hanging from the mighty warrior girl's harness.

The old hunter greeted her, his eyes admiring and his heart relieved. The woman was covered in cuts and bruises- her weapon skills and ardour had kept her from mortal wounds and luck had warded off the goblins' poisonous darts. With his gnarled arms, the grandfather surrounded his granddaughter's shoulders, which still rose and fell to the rhythm of her battle breath:

– "Now you are ready, as your mother would have liked you to discover yourself! I don't have much to teach you anymore and I think I can be very proud of it!

.oOo.

In the days that followed, the clan licked its wounds. In addition to the dead, the village had lost one of its granary, which the hordes of Dol Guldûr had set on fire. The dead were returned to the forest, while the corpses of orcs and wargs were cremated on the hill of fear. The mound was surrounded by a hedge of spears, on which the decapitated heads of the attackers were impaled.

All were busy healing, rebuilding, strengthening. But victory was bitter and would be payed for by abstinence next winter.

One morning, the grandfather was nowhere to be found. Bera searched for him until the evening, questioning the neighbors who could not inform her. The sage had probably taken on some mission to replenish the reserves. Some secret quest, for even the clan leader sternly refused to tell her more.

But the warrior woman wouldn't leave her grandfather unprotected. She looked for his smell and ventured into the night, leaning on the tenuous track.

By dawn, Bera had reached the extreme limits of the clan's lands. In front of her rose dark shoulders, projected by the evil mountain, Dol Guldûr, from where the necromancer distilled his evils to enslave the Greenwood. Coal trees, suffocating by brambles, were fading in clouds of grey spores. Filthy fungi twisted the trunks that strangled one another, haunted by skinny rodents. The dark branches stretched out disturbing networks of vines, where large hairy legs ran. Shadows seemed to pulsate under the branches, recalling childish terrors and their cohorts of "Gorgûns".

Bera blew her horn. The distant howl of the wolves ceased, but strange hissing rose in response to her challenge, evoking the rattling of a greedy mandibles. The warrior clenched her teeth, grabbed her axe and bent over the track.

But the clan leader had followed his niece into the night, silent shadow under his domain's foliage. He put his huge hand on the shoulder of the woman quivering with horror and held her firmly:

– Arduyr chose!

Daring to understand was giving up. Terror and hatred crushed Bera, ripping off the last of her childhood:

– "But why?" roared the warrior woman.

The clan leader had a hard time controlling his niece:

– "Your grandfather sacrificed himself! He knew now he was a useless mouth to feed! He knew he was shortly coming to an end."

Bera, all claws out, let out her revolt and tried to escape the Skinchanger's embrace, in order to rush to the cursed woods. But her uncle deployed his immense strength to protect her from herself:

– "I know your sorrow is immense! But would you rather impose decay and dependence, to whom roamed our woods, free in the face of any danger? He only did things when time was ripe and that's why he lived so old! Arduyr has chosen his end, for this is the privilege of humans!

Bera fell to her knees, shaken with sobs. That was the supreme law of the forest and the ultimate lesson of the wise.

.oOo.

1 Let's say fifteen feet.

2 That is precisely the meaning of Berserkr, the bear-clad dance of the norse, inhabited by the bear fury and, it is said, by his insensitivity to the pain of injuries...

3 Indeed Beorn appears to be vegetarian in The Hobbit, and surrounded by many animals he loves as his own family (ponies, etc.)

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