Part 6.......

Freya stared at the tired old man slumped across the table, his hand still clenched around a pewter tankard.  His face pressed awkwardly on the hard surface, he slept the deep sleep of exhaustion.  Her father had been like an oak in terms of strength and tenacity all his life.  He had coped with the untimely death of his wife sixteen years previously; nurtured a swine herd that had swollen to number over eighty young boars; and above all raised a daughter to appreciate the finer beauties of life, as well as the virtues of hard work and determination.  Now, his pain numbed by mead, he appeared frail and vulnerable, a spent man finally broken by life’s cruelty.  Taking a blanket from next to the stove, she tiptoed across the cabin and wrapped it gently over the sleeping man’s shoulders, lightly kissing his head as she did so.

Pulling a shawl around herself, Freya slowly unbolted the heavy wooden door of the cabin and walked wearily out onto the narrow porch.  The night was clear, moonlight filtered through the high clouds catching the nightjars that swooped and dived across the smallholding, their stationary partners churring liquidly from the isolated trees that punctuated the scene.  At any other time their calls would uplift her spirits in a way no other sound could, but tonight despair and anger occupied her thoughts in equal measure.

Freya had known that something was wrong as soon as she had awoken that morning.  She always left the shutters open and would rise as soon as the first shafts of dawn light touched the opposite wall of her room.  On any normal day at this time, the hungry squealing of the sucklers would drown out almost anything the dawn chorus had to offer.  Today, silence.  Calling for her father, she had left the cabin to find the perimeter fencing of the large holding pens carefully dismantled and the herd gone.  Their frantic attempts to reassemble it had soon turned to despair as, one by one, they found the liberated animals in the surrounding forest, sprawled in pools of congealed blood, their bodies covered in deep, gaping gashes.  This in itself had seemed senseless, but the loss of the three suckling sows was a bigger blow.  They embodied the future of the stud, the culmination of years of careful breeding to produce docile, meat-laden animals.  All that hard toil had been obliterated in the space of a night.

Looking down at her prematurely worn and callused hands, Freya felt outrage surge through her.  In the past, occasional boars had been poached, particularly in winter, which had been understandable, although not particularly palatable.  This raid, on the other hand, had been completely senseless – the animals would rot where they had fallen, becoming succour for foxed and wolverines.  But what she really could not understand was that the night’s activities had clearly been carefully planned and carried out by more than one individual.  Freya scoured her memory for anyone she could remotely describe as an enemy.  No one came to mind.  She and her father had always led an unobtrusive existence, away from the gossip and petty jealousies of Crowfoot.

Freya had never wanted anything more than a contented life, happy to endure hardship in the knowledge that she was loved and needed.  Her life had never had a sense of urgency.  It pulsed with the seasons – conventional time had no significance in the wildwood.  Although she rarely ventured into Crowfoot, occasionally visiting the market, her father had always laughed knowingly and assured her of a steady stream of suitors.  Thus far none of the rough hired helps had appealed to her.

Freya wrapped the shawl more tightly around her shoulders and became submerged in the familiar scene around her.  She visualised her father’s laughing face.  Only yesterday an ebullient young boar had bowled him over in its eagerness to get to the bundle of pignut he carried.  A chill breeze brought her back to reality and she stared at the empty troughs in front of her.  No, her life had never had a sense of urgency. Until now.  One overriding thought filled her mind: she would find those who had done this.  And then she would kill them.