So this is the Merriver we have heard so much about, Tric reflects as he regards the imposing human. The weaponry, is it to assassinate Gweddry? Start a rebellion? He has filled his head with so many ominous possibilities that it is actually rather unnerving to stand before the woman herself now. “Yes, uh, as Sir Anyc said, we heard tales of horse lords fighting orcs near our forest. This is the first we’ve heard of this, and we wonder if you, as the commander here, have more strategic-level information you can share with us about this. Has this been going on long? Have you been doing a great deal of fighting over there? Have you needed to hire extra troops to do this?” he adds. “Or have you only been using knights and horsemen for these sorties?” Merriver takes his words at face value and tells him and Heppa about the recent actions. Unfortunately, this is all at the same level of detail they have already heard from Terwaen and Anyc, who it turns out are quite well-informed on the matter.
Tric may be interested in playing politics among the humans, but Heppa’s thoughts are entirely on this new orc threat facing Estbryn Forest. It is not news that orcs can be active in the Estmark Hills; some did try to assassinate High Lord Volas when she and Tric were just infants. However, this sounds like some other group. She wonders where they are coming from and why this seems to have happened so suddenly. Heppa pulls out her map book and opens it up as she begins asking about how the Great River factors into the matter. Merriver steps over to a side table and motions for them to accompany her. There she unrolls a vellum scroll, her travel battle map, and joins Heppa in a discussion of the terrain.
There are orcs north of the Great River that Merriver believes are sending across advance scouting parties. “We think that the orcs might be after something, but we have not been able to catch and interrogate any,” she shares. “So far this summer, the orcs have only caused problems in the far east farmsteads and villages of Estmark Province. There might be issues even farther east than that. If that’s where the orcs are amassing, that will be a problem. Right now, we do not have a charge to go beyond Wesnoth’s borders. We cannot go hunt down that threat and stamp it out; all we can do is defend the line.”
Heppa jots down the numbers and details about the orc forces that Merriver shares. High Lord Volas will be interested in those if he does not already know about this matter. The problem seems to have cropped up shortly after she and Tric left home early in summer. Either the orcs had not crossed the Great River until then, or they were far enough east to avoid Wesnoth’s notice. Or maybe the elvish scouts were handling them, and news of that never reached two distracted young elves. Another possibility occurs to Heppa based on what she learned in Wesmere. The Great Forest has been having problems with undead, ones significant enough for Lord Ardonath to leave Lintanir in search of allies to join the fight there. “It’s possible the orcs are fleeing undead currently active near the Great Forest,” Heppa shares, always eager to get out news of undead threats to anybody who will listen. “Of course, it’s also possible the orcs have an alliance with them. Orcs have allied with necromantic forces in the past.” Then again, so have humans…
Turning from the archivist back to the herald, Merriver asks, “So what troops can your forest bring to bear for us to put into the field together?” Now that she knows which clump of trees their forest is, she sees that they clearly have a stake in this matter; the orcs could jeopardize their settlements, too. It is possible that this fellow is not in a position to make a deal on behalf of his lord, but there is no harm in broaching the topic.
“Well, this is all happening within the borders of Wesnoth, right?” Tric says, pointing at one of the maps that shows Estbryn Forest within the borders of Estmark Province. “That makes it Wesnoth’s responsibility.”
Merriver frowns at his dismissal of her call for aid. So the elves do not want to leave the cover of their forest. That is frustrating, but Merriver will not back down. ”I will take this fight as far as I need to, regardless of what hampers me,” she tells Tric, “with your help or without.”
Tric hears the conviction in Merriver’s voice. Clearly she is not afraid to pursue the orcs, she just is not allowed to cross the border. In what looks to be an unconscious gesture, she smooths her tabard, and Tric presses on quickly, “We’ve primarily been encountering undead forces. Orcs are a new, worrying development, yes, but I am curious how well you would be equipped to adjust to an undead necromantic force. I understand your paladins are well-versed in such fighting, but they are few in number and swords are only so good. Do you have forces that have maces or slings?” Or other dishonorable weapons? “We saw in your armory that you have lots of swords, but we didn’t see any of these other types of weapons. What can you bring to bear?” Against the forces I care about.
“True, swords are not the best weapon against bone, but we have been training militias near where the orcish incursions were,” Merriver tells him. “Some of their weapons are perfect for crushing bones.”
“So you’re arming them, right? I saw some of your swords were from Untdunben,” Tric says. “Is that where your militia are getting weapons from, as well? We’ve met Garbor. His smiths do excellent work.”
“Oh, good, you’ve got crushing weapons!” Heppa cheers, caught up in her own concerns. “Part of the undead problem is that they aren’t dispatched properly. You have to put them down, or they can get back up again.” She shares what she knows about bone breaking, some theories she has about the plague touch, the importance of cleaning wounds caused by necrophages, and the dangers of throwing artifacts into fires. “Those maces you have from Untdunben would be really good for smashing bones,” she adds guilelessly.
Heppa is looking down at the table, flipping through her papers to consult her notes as she rattles off all this advice. She does not see Merriver’s hand move to the hilt of her sword, but Tric does. Merriver looks up from the papers on the table and glares at Tric. “So you’re the one who has been poking around Untdunben, interfering with my supply lines,” she says levelly. The control in her voice is somehow more threatening than an angry growl. “You would undermine all my work to keep Wesnoth safe? We should take this matter outside.”
Tric blanches. Merriver is owning up to the weapon smuggling, which is good, but he is not prepared for a sword fight. Trying to diffuse the situation, he says, “I’m honored you would find me potentially a worthy opponent. Please, let me apologize for any confusion that may have occurred. We were investigating the dwarvish mines because they were polluting our water. Because they were manufacturing these weapons, for what end we did not know. But they were being shipped by underground routes, which seemed unusual to us elves, given that the people moving the weapons were not dwarves but humans hired for that purpose. So we informed the nearest Wesnoth human authority, the captain of the guard in South Tower, about what we saw. Would you have done any different if you had seen what we did?”
“We didn’t know the nature of the information, we just shared it,” Heppa adds. That is what they do as emissaries. It is up to the recipients to decide how to act on the information.
“We were trying to help Wesnoth,” Tric continues. “If someone is arming an army, I would think the leaders of Wesnoth would want to know that. Imagine that your neighbor was building up an army, say, north of the Ford of Abez—which is not properly part of Wesnoth—and they were getting a massive shipment of weapons from Knalga. If you found out about this, would you tell someone else in Wesnoth? Would you do nothing and let events pass you by? Wouldn’t you be concerned? For yourself—which we are—but also for your neighbors? We were just trying to be helpful.” That is a lie, of course. His original reason for telling Mhaev about this was just to stir the pot and see what floated up. Things have gotten a good deal more complicated since then, partly because he unwittingly dragged his sister in the mix. Growing more desperate, he continues, “Imagine what it looked like from the outside without the information about the orcs. Someone is building up a massive army using foreign weapons right next to our forest at a time when the relationship between the king and the horse lords is maybe a bit frayed.”
Tric is trying to dig his way out of a rough situation, and Heppa can see how taxed he is. Sweat drips from his brow as the torrent of words pours forth, words that do not seem to appease Merriver. His voice cracks as his throat dries out from all the hurried explanations. Heppa pulls a bottle from her poultice pouch and hands it to him, encouraging him to drink the refreshing beverage. Tric swipes it from her hand, and while he chugs it down, Heppa tries to smooth things over. “Dame Merriver, what my cousin says is true. When we came across the information, we did not really know the politics of your lands, how the Horse Plains are self-sufficient but Wesnoth is draining all these resources off of you to defend the borders. We didn’t mean any harm. We really were trying to be helpful.” Heppa’s words echo Tric’s, but she actually means them. “We were just trying to share the information where it would be useful.”
How dare they investigate me! The level of snooping these elves have done is now plain to Merriver, and she lays into them, starting with the dabbler whose idea of a battle map is a cross between a recipe book and a love letter. “Meddler!” Merriver berates Heppa. “You don’t understand the level of commitment that the horse clans have made to this country! Wesnoth is kept safe by the blood of our horses and the blood of our people. You dilettantes in your little forests and your little castles dabble at the greater politics of Wesnoth, interfering with it though you do not understand, all because you think it would be nice. As for me and my horse, we will stay the course. Regardless of what you think you are doing here, you are not going to be able to stop us.”
While some of what Merriver rails about is projecting her other problems onto her audience, Heppa has heard this sort of criticism from her mother on a regular basis. Though most of the meddling has been Tric, Merriver is not wrong about Heppa being a dabbler. Her harsh words cause Heppa to fall into old habits. “Yes, Moth—er, Dame Merriver,” she says quietly, contritely dropping her head. Her usual approach of just leaving the room will not work here, though, because she cannot abandon Tric. So she just shuts the room out instead, staring down at her maps on the table and taking comfort from all the information on them as Merriver rips into Tric.
“And you, meddling in things you don’t understand just to get your name out in human circles…” The harsh words fade into the background, and Heppa mulls over what has been revealed in this conversation so far. In horse clan culture, their leaders lead from the front. That does not seem to be the case with city-based Wesnoth nobles. Lord Uchal sent Sir Sior to guard the prisoners on the way to the Ford of Abez, rather than oversee that himself, for example. And on a grander scale, though Heppa has heard tales of what Gweddry and Sir Owaec did during the last battle with Mal-Ravanal, she has heard nothing about King Konrad II’s role in the siege of his own city. There is a definite cultural divide centered on what it means to be a leader, and people outside the horse clans are limiting the reach of what these defenders can do. The conflict between Sir Rugg and Sir Inyc was just a microcosm of a larger systemic problem. Heppa knows from Terwaen that Merriver takes it as a slight that the king has not granted Sir Owaec an audience. But beyond that, there are clearly things Merriver wants from the king regarding the freedom to act. The horse clans need that freedom, because from their perspective, no one else is doing anything. Dame Merriver wants the horse clans to have authority commensurate with their responsibility. Heppa thinks horse lords might have more in common with elvish lords than they realize, as far as nobility goes; the responsibilities of an elvish lord explained to Tric in Wesmere include martial and magical training so that they are prepared to lead from the front. And although Heppa herself has avoided committing to a career, as a future elvish lady she too is supposed to be able to defend her lands as a sorceress or druid. It seems that not all human nobles train to be useful.
Reinvigorated by Heppa’s brew, Tric sets down the bottle and tries to calm Dame Merriver. “We incidentally discovered your transport of these weapons. We reported them as we thought Wesnoth would have appreciated. I don’t understand why you were transporting them underground, hidden from the view of other Wesnothian nobles. If you have a legal grievance, and you choose to do this underground, hidden-from-view action… Forgive me, I don’t understand horse clan culture, but is that honorable? We reported it to the local constable. If it’s aboveboard, why is it being stopped by South Tower? Ultimately, we’re just witnesses who happened to see this. Your quarrel isn’t really with us. Your quarrel is with someone else, and being mad at us doesn’t help you. We might be friends in this, I don’t know. There are things going on here that we’re not fully informed about. Your borders go around our forest, but we’re not subjects of Wesnoth. Still, we might be on the same side in all of this. I don’t understand why someone with so much strength would need to hide this. You shouldn’t have to.”
“This discussion is over,” Merriver declares, hand still on her sword.
“That’s fair,” Tric agrees. His goal was never to solve all of Wesnoth’s problems, just to get information for Terwaen.
“You have crossed lines you have no business crossing and affronted my honor. Words can only settle so much. You must match yours with your military might.”