This axe was handed to me from my father and to him from his, stretching back years beyond count Herrig. Forged in great halls of the King Under The Mountain by men from across the Western sea, wood carved by ancient elves with keen bright eyes…
“…it’s had it’s handle changed a few times mind, quite a few new heads too of course.” Herrig finished his father’s old joke aloud with a wry smile. He turned over the battered old axe in his hands, it’s dull sheen catching the light of the moon. But the woodman’s smile soon faded.
Herrig found he struggled to sleep away from the forest. Here at the foot of the mountains with only rock overhead, there was no rustle of leaves nor creaking of old oak, nothing scurried here, only stone and whistling wind.
Whenever sleep did chance to take him, it took Herrig often to the same place, the same wasteland. A great emptiness of thorns and hard packed earth, with dry dead stumps of trees stretching out in all directions. The grave of a forest once teeming and ancient.
Herrig had never seen the East Bight with waking eyes; but his father had often spoken of it, pride ringing in his voice. The endless Mirkwood of sorcery and peril, the foe they were shackled to, it could be beaten back. They’d bested it once before.
Running his hand along the rough blade, Herrig wondered if this axe had wrought some of that emptiness. And how many trees had he himself silenced with it? The woodman could not look upon oak or ash without seeing in them sturdy beams, planks to split, arrow shafts for the carving. Strange how only after his worst deed was he able to look back upon the death he and his folk idly made in a new light.
Herrig rose stiffly, stepping out from under the overhang and out from dream and memories. He raised his arms and felt the shudder of the axe handle as he sunk it into the hard ground. With an effort he pried it and turned up a little earth. Reaching into his food pack, he gently placed a beechnut into the small hole he’d made and patted it down softly. As he poured a little of his water-skin over it Herrig shut his eyes and tried to picture in ages to come that seed growing and spreading out across the vales becoming a great new forest.
