Gisilbert the ax-smith watched the sword fall, knowing it would end his life and unable to do anything to prevent it. The bandits had caught him and his wagon in the Prussian forests, laughing at his attempts to trade. They weren't Prussians: all of them had the look of Germans, no doubt fled from deserved execution to prey on honest travelers in this remote land.
Two, he could have handled. Even three, for none had much skill with their stolen weapons, but six men were too many for him to fight alone, and now he lay helpless as a sword stained red with his blood swung to end his time in the world.
Metal scraped on metal, a blur of motion, a high-pitched growl. The sword arced away, and the bandit fell from the ax-smith's sight, screaming. There were other screams now, the sounds of men dying, shrieks of mortal agony that never quite drowned out the growl.
The ax-smith tried to turn, to rise enough to see what twist of fate had spared him. All he achieved was a low groan.
A child's voice, pure and hesitant, speaking the heathen Prussian tongue. "Still be. Help you I."
Gisilbert was unfamiliar with the tongue, but the words seemed odd in the child's voice, as though the youngling spoke rarely if at all.
The tales he had heard of this land sprang to his mind: that the heathens would burn a man who had nothing to offer in trade, that a strange pale demon roamed the forests and killed those with ill-intent, that a smith with good weapons – and the ax-smith's weapons were more than merely good – would be welcomed with amber and silver. He'd come here in the aftermath of plague, hoping that the strangeness of the Prussians would be enough to drive the grief for his wife and children from his soul, for what man could be at peace when he had buried all he loved?
The Prussians disliked priests and monks, to be sure, but a skilled smith ought to be welcomed there.
A dirt-smeared face swam into his field of vision: small, belonging to a child of no more than four years of age, too thin to be truly healthy but with traces of baby fat in the roundness of his cheeks. The child wore a hood of rough-tanned leather, and a tunic of the same material, both as dirty as the young one's face, and both liberally splashed with drying blood.
"Help you," the child said. "Hurt you be."
Aye, he'd been hurt all right: ribs broken for sure, and possibly worse. Breathing hurt, and everything ached.
"Where..." It was hard to speak at all, harder to remember the Prussian he knew in order to ask. "Where father?"
The child shook his head. "No father. Just I." He bent, small hands gently running over the ax-smith's body.
Even that light touch was enough that the ax-smith had to choke back a scream when the boy's hands found his broken bones.
The child frowned, expression distant. The ax-smith felt rather than heard him singing something, a crooning thing, like a lullaby.
His pain faded as the boy's brows drew together. Without it, darkness closed in, and Gisilbert drifted to a place where he walked once more with his family.
#
He woke from the dreams to a place that made no sense to his eyes. He lay on furs, and flickering light showed stone walls scored with... tally marks? But none of the marks was more than three feet above the brushed-earth floor, and while they were clearly grouped, the manner of grouping was strange to him.
Gisilbert turned his head towards the source of the light, blinking. The child, still wrapped in his crude leather garments, nursed a fire with an assurance at odds with his size, pausing to check the progress of whatever was in the pot that sat atop the small fire. It smelled like rabbit.
The fire lit a portion of the space where he lay, but showed nothing the ax-smith could consider familiar. This wasn't a home: it looked like some heathen tomb, but there were rough-fired clay pots set neatly near the fire, and every instinct told him this was the child's home. Or what passed for it.
The child used a wooden spoon to ladle some of the pot's contents into a smaller bowl, and brought the bowl over to his guest. "Food," he said. "You eat, yes?"
His hood fell too low for Gisilbert to see his eyes as more than dark smudges under pale brows, and the skin he could see was liberally coated with dirt, but under the dirt it seemed too pale.
To Gisilbert's surprise he found he could roll to his side and lever himself up to feed himself with a crudely carved spoon. It was rabbit he'd smelled, and the child made a passable stew: bland, but with ample meat and warm to his stomach.
The first bite roused his stomach to hunger he'd not realized he felt, and he ate as fast as his weakened body would allow, falling back to the furs with a sigh when he was done, his eyes drifting closed and sleep once more claiming him.
#
For how long he drifted in and out of sleep, Gisilbert could not say. Whenever he woke, the child was there, helping him to eat, cleaning his body, tending his wounds, always gentle but rarely speaking. Sometimes he heard the youngling crooning songs, and there were times when he heard the peeping of a small bird as well, though he never saw it.
It was not until the day the child tried to help him to stand that he realized the young one could not be a real child. He had strength far beyond that of a normal child, and when, in a clumsy movement, Gisilbert pulled his hood back, the child's hair was stark silver-white.
"You... you are the one they call the forest demon..." he whispered. "But you are no demon." No demon would care for him as the child had done. "What are you, child?"
The child looked up, and yes, even in the dim firelight Gisilbert could see that his eyes were red, the deep red of the setting sun. "Not know," he said. "Not a peoples. Not demon. Just I."
"And you've done all this yourself?" Gisilbert wasn't really asking: the child clearly lived in this old tomb, and had made it his.
"Yes." No boasting colored that: it was a simple statement of fact.
"How long have you lived here?" Questions served to distract him from the difficulty of walking: he'd grown so weak while he lay ill.
The child shrugged his free shoulder. "Long time. Mark for winter, make I. Hands of hands of hands of hands marks."
Gisilbert swallowed. If the child had made all the tally marks – their placement made sense now, they were only as high as the child could reach – he must be ancient, thousands of years old. "What happened to your parents?"
The child only shrugged. "No parents, ever."
#
As Gisilbert grew stronger he understood why the child hadn't brought his cart into the ancient tomb: the entrance was too small. Gisilbert himself had to bend to navigate the narrow tunnel.
The cart was safe enough: the tunnel entrance opened to a small clearing surrounded by thick brambles, so thick Gisilbert doubted anyone would bother to investigate. Thorns strong enough to punch through leather would have that effect.
Still, the child was firm about no fires outside, for fear the Prussians would investigate and catch him. Gisilbert had to swallow nausea when he learned that their priests would burn the child in sacrifice to their gods if they caught him. Small wonder the little one was so skittish, so careful to keep his skin covered in dirt and his hood pulled low to hide those remarkable eyes.
And yet... despite the treatment he'd suffered and with no way to know if Gisilbert would view him as the demon he refused to be, the little one hadn't hesitated to help him, and if caring for his much larger guest gave him trouble, he hid it too well for Gisilbert to see.
That left but one means of thanks open to him: bringing his small forge into the old tomb where he could stoke it to the proper heat and forge the child a knife suitable for his hands, as well as some pots and other tools. And, of course, an ax. Not one of his best axes, for the child had no need of intricate inlays or decorative etching, but a sturdy tool that would be well-balanced on the stout oak branch he whittled to size, and whose blade would last for years if cared for.
He expected the little one to have no idea how to respond to the first gift in his long life: he did not expect the stricken look he received, much less the way the child turned and fled the ancient tomb.