Heriwulf

Ljota didn't sleep. After Hildegund left, the skin-changer only stretched out her long legs and stared at her bedroom ceiling in the dark. She hadn't felt like starting a fire when she came in, and she certainly wasn't going to bother with it now.

There is something about having a litter of pups that lifts the spirits. Perhaps that's true for everyone, but if so, it may be more true for someone like Heriwulf, who spends so much of his life's energy on the care of hounds that their spirits influence his. In the past he'd always found this cheering up to be welcome, for he tended to be a serious and sometimes dour fellow, his eyes fixed on the pragmatic needs of the day, his heart darkened by the tragedies he'd seen and endured, his outlook tending towards the pessimistic. Or so people told him.

It only took one time making the long hike from Staddle to the lodge, carrying two bales of hay, for Heriwulf to conclude that there had to be another way. Bales of hay don't weigh very much; surely carrying two over the few miles through the Chetwood would be no great hardship, particularly if he had the whole day to do it, two bales at a time over several journeys?

The Woodmen have dwelled in the Vales of the Anduin, between the Misty Mountains and the great forest, since time out of memory. Even their oldest tales do not speak of where they came from before, only that they were kin to the other Men that dwelled in those Vales, like the horse-riders farther north. It can be inferred that they used to dwell mostly within the forest itself, if only because of the name in the common tongue, "Woodmen", that other peoples call them by. But long ago the forest became hostile.

After a few weeks of being the nominal Chieftain of his tiny clan, Heriwulf still hadn't had a moment when the weight of that position fell upon him suddenly, startlingly, uncomfortably. On the contrary, he'd settled into that position quite easily, because it had really had very little effect on anything.

After the moot, and after her little bit of extra chat with Ljota that followed, Hildegund made her way back to her hut. She mulled over some things as she limped along, not hiding it so much now that there was no one to see.

She wished that Home-Wright's joke about bride-price hadn't happened, or that it hadn't hit her so hard. It was still hard for her to think around the memories it had brought up. But nobody knew, and it wasn't anything but a jest. It had kept her from being able to say or ask some things with Snow-Hair and Ljota, but there would likely be other opportunities for those. And perhaps her thoughts hadn't really mattered, anyway. That seemed likely.

Surely the bottom is going to drop out from under me, Heriwulf kept thinking. There would be some moment where the enormity of recent events, of what had happened at the clan moot, would leave him shaking with realizations and perhaps horror at the consequences. The responsibility that was his now. The impossibility of how it had come to pass. The collision between regret for his mistakes and expectations for his future actions.

He had come prepared: his three hounds, well-trained, fierce, and utterly loyal, were in place; his spear was strong and its iron point and cross-brace sharp; his position was well-chosen with both the advantage of height and several options for retreat and advance. Still, staring down a wolf charging at you is never a time to feel comfortable, no matter how much subtle lore of bird and beast your ancestors were taught by Radagast the Brown, no matter how many times you had faced wolves, no matter how many you had tamed and turned into members of your clan.

After so much struggle, so much passion, so many revelations, so much disaster, and still in the midst of so much uncertainty, the last thing Heriwulf should have been thinking about was the only thing on his mind: the question of a chieftain for the clan. (He'd given up trying to find smaller names for 'clan', or even 'chieftain'. There simply weren't any.)

After making the best of the night in the clan-lodge she could – and being glad of the rain that had kept her there, for all it made their upcoming trip less pleasant, since it was what helped her sleep – Hildegund rose at the first hint of light coming past the clouds.