The morning of her departure came grey and mild, the first properly mild morning in months, the snow retreated to thin dirty patches under the fence line and along the north side of every roof.
Freya stood in the yard behind Bertrand's house with her armor mended as well as the village smith could manage and her horse already saddled, and found, to her own surprise, that leaving felt harder than she had expected. A week was not a long time. It had been long enough for the girl, Bertrand's daughter, to attach herself to Freya's side every spare hour, long enough for Tomas to work through what felt like every question a boy his age could conceivably have about a man who killed wolves with his bare hands, most of which Freya did not have answers for. What did he eat. Did he have a sword. Was he going to stay in the forest forever. Was he sad. That last one had stopped her for a long moment before she managed a response.
She did not know if he was sad. She thought about him more than she wanted to admit, more than made sense for two days spent with a man who had not spoken more than four words to her in any language, and she had not let herself examine why that was.
Idony embraced her at the gate, quick and fierce. Bertrand shook her hand and thanked her again, the fourth or fifth time that week, for the deaths of four women he had sent into the forest, an apology she had stopped trying to refuse because refusing it only made him say it again.
She was reaching for her horse's bridle when the girl came running.
"Tomas is gone!" Her voice cracked on it, high and frightened, her small face white. "He took the pony, he left before dawn, he said he was going to find the barbarian!"
The yard went from calm to chaos in the space of a breath. Idony's hand flew to her mouth. Bertrand was already shouting for the stable boy, for anyone, his voice cracking with a fear that had nothing composed left in it. A dozen knights had not survived what Little Edelmere had done to Freya's squad. A boy on a pony would not last an hour.
"I know where his cave is," Freya said, already turning for her horse. "I can find him. I'll bring Tomas back."
"You can't go alone," Bertrand started, and then Hughe was there, appearing from the direction of the tavern with the spear already in his hand like it had never once left it, his face set.
"She won't be." He was already moving toward the stable. "I know that forest better than any of you. Fetch me a horse."
They rode out within minutes, no time wasted on argument, Bertrand's last words chasing them through the gate, bring him back, please, bring my son back.
They crossed the two hours to the tree line at a pace that left both horses lathered, the fields giving way to broken ground and then to the first dark trees of Little Edelmere, and Freya felt the change in the air the moment they crossed the threshold, the cold going different, older, the light going grey and filtered the way she remembered it.
"Slow down," Hughe said, once they were in among the trees proper, his eyes moving constantly, the spear held loose and ready across his saddle. "Rushing in here gets people killed faster than standing still does."
She hated how right he was. She slowed, and they rode on, cautious now in a way they had not allowed themselves to be crossing the open fields, watching the treeline, watching the ground for tracks, and the ten hours that followed felt longer than the three days it had taken her on foot the first time, every hour stretched thin with the knowledge of what lived in these trees.
The light was going long and orange, the sun close to the horizon, when the cave came into view.
Freya was off her horse before it had fully stopped, sprinting the last stretch, his name already in her mouth.
"Eto!"
Nothing answered her.
She ducked into the cave and the first thing she registered was the silence, wrong in a way she could not immediately place, and then she saw it. The cords where the meat had hung, empty. Not a single strip left, no fresh kill either, and scattered across the floor of the cave, more bones than she had ever seen there before, picked clean, some of them cracked open for the marrow.
She walked back out into the fading light. The fire pit near the entrance was cold, the ash gone grey and settled, no warmth left in it at all. A day, at least. Maybe two.
"Where is your friend?" Hughe had followed her in, his eyes moving over the same details hers had, the bones, the empty cords, the dead fire. "Did he leave?"
"It would appear so." Her voice came out flatter than she meant it to.
"What do we do about the boy?"
Hughe did not answer right away. He crouched by the ash, ran two fingers through it, studied the bones scattered near the wall with the particular attention of a man who had spent a great many years learning to read exactly this kind of scene. A keth. Alive in Little Edelmere through a full winter. Strong enough to kill giant wolves bare handed and drag the carcasses back whole. And now gone, the cave stripped, bones everywhere, no meat stored at all like a man planning to come back.
Something cold settled into his gut, an old feeling, one he had not felt in more years than he cared to count.
"You said he speaks Keth," Hughe said slowly.
"Barely," Freya said. "I don't know if that was because he didn't know the language well, or because it had been so long since he'd spoken to anyone at all."
Hughe studied her a long moment, the last of the light catching the grey in his hair, and did not say what he was thinking, which was that a man could lose a language the same way he could lose anything else, piece by piece, day by day, until there was nothing left of the person who used to speak it. He had seen it happen before. It never happened to men who were doing well.
Freya climbed back onto her horse, scanning the treeline like Tomas might simply appear out of it if she looked hard enough. "The sun is about to set. Maybe we should set up camp."
Hughe stared at her like she had suggested they set themselves on fire. "Camp. Here. At night."
"If we move around in the dark we're more likely to run into something we can't survive," she said. "Better to hold ground until morning."
He considered that, and hated that it made sense. "I suppose you make sense, little knight."
"I am a knight of Rostalio," she said, sharp. "Show me some respect."
"Knight of Rostalio." He said it like he was tasting something. "Right. I've met people who eat knights for breakfast, girl. It'll be a hundred years before you hear me give you the same respect I give them."
She scoffed, already turning away, and he let the silence sit a moment before he spoke again.
"People like your father."
Her eyes came back to him fast, wide, all the irritation gone out of them in an instant. "How did you..."
"I've lived a long time, girl. I know things." He met her stare without flinching. "Freya Mikaelson. Daughter of Erik Mikaelson. Erik the Red." He let that settle before he went on. "Isn't that why you're engaged to that brat Rordan?"
She did not answer.
"To be caught in the middle of business between the Detalia and the Okutake," Hughe said, shaking his head slow. "How naive you must be."
"What are you talking about?" Her voice had an edge to it now, defensive, confused. "The Okutake? Stop your nonsense."
Hughe only laughed, a short dry scoff of a sound that gave nothing away. "Let's search another hour," he said, already turning his horse toward the darkening treeline. "Then we make camp."