“My people, we lived deep in the forest. We didn’t know Avlym existed… but we knew outsiders.” Guy’s expression noticeably darkened, his fingers idly fiddle with the pendant around his neck. “The men you call the colony, they’ve been hunting us for years.”
I say nothing.
“My father… they told us to start giving them our supplies, but he refused. We were deep in the forest and most of us lived above ground in the trees, we outnumbered the men that came that day and yes, they had armour, but any of our greatest fighters would have taken the lot of them.
So, my father refused their demands, and they never came back. We almost forgot all about them, they were just tales whispered to the wind on dull evenings. The Halpians who had threatened us and my dad, the defiant king who saw them off.” I have no idea what a Halpian is but he’s finally talking, and quickly, so I let him continue.
“It was a few months later that people started getting anxious, whilst before my father’s rule over the forest had been undisputed, now there were rumours of foreigners stealing our prey and invading our land. On several occasions, hunters would return to their partners bloodied. Sometimes they would be carrying a beaten body back to lay at the feet of my father accompanied with tales of fierce battles with strange men.
The Halpians, we thought they were trying to pick us off one by one, making good on their threats for us refusing to provide for them, and perhaps they were. The encounters grew more and more frequent, each week resulting in more casualties. For months they were just light injuries, a small payment for the foreign bodies that were presented at the foot of my father’s throne. They made their warnings, but none of us felt any real threat.
We underestimated how many of them they were, they started flooding the forest, not daring to take on the kingdom in its entirety, but ready to hunt in packs to take down our fighters and hunters. The death toll started rising, on both sides, and then the unthinkable happened, they slaughtered one of my family.
My uncle, my dad’s younger brother, never returned from one of his hunts, tracks were found leading far away from the kingdom, but the treads and blood splatters disappeared quickly come rainfall. My dad and uncle had been the closest pair I’d ever known, it was my uncle who had helped him take the throne.
Our people used to be ruled by King Nylian, a dictator who used the power of the forest gods to instil fear and spread distrust among us, he would have all threats to his reign assassinated before they could properly develop.
Until my father.
He was young and the best hunter in the kingdom and people were starting to notice, so as was Nylian’s style, he ordered a small group to follow my father into the trees one day. They would have killed him as well, if my uncle hadn’t stalked the lot of them from a distance and alerted my father before they could strike. Between the two of them they dismantled all of Nylian’s men.
Without his fiercest warriors to protect him, nobody stepped up for Nylian when my ancestors returned to our home to challenge the king for his throne.
There was a duel, my father won.
My father reigned for years, good years, our people finally knew happiness, and his little brother stood by his side, until that incident. Nobody could stop my father then. He left his throne to hunt down the men that had murdered his kin, and for months that’s exactly what he did. He roamed the forest day and night, hunting every last foreigner that strayed too close to our home.” Guy finally looked me in the eye, my anger dissipating at the genuine sadness in his eyes, I could guess what had happened to my father, “I’m so sorry Dale. When Bennie said how your father had died, I realised what must’ve happened. We didn’t know about Avlym, and my father wasn’t a cruel man. I am so sorry.”
At some point during Guy’s story, I don’t remember when, I must’ve moved because I find myself sat against the log outside Edwyn’s den. We stay like that for a long time, neither of us saying anything, an emptiness has begun to come over me.
“Your father, where is he now? Why did you come to Avlym?” I need to know everything, I can’t move on if I don’t have my head wrapped around the whole story.
Guy sighed, and clear emotion floods him.
“Eventually the Halpians must’ve realised that they couldn’t pick off our warriors with my dad roaming the forest anymore, so they came in force. Clearly, we weren’t going to provide them with anything, and they couldn’t get near my father whilst he was hunting, nobody could move through the trees more stealthily than him, so they attacked us in the only other way they could. They took our home.” Guy’s voice quivered with that last part. “They decided they weren’t going to get anything from us, and they couldn’t live with the knowledge of the threat that we posed to them. So, one day they sent an army, a group of a couple hundred soldiers all clad in armour marched into our home in the middle of the night.”
A single tear rolls down Guy’s cheek.
“They set fire to everything, they couldn’t reach us in the trees, so they just set the entire place alight. We tried to jump down to escape and that was when the slaughter began, men, women, children. Everyone. My people lost everything that night. My parents woke me to the flames and immediately joined the fight. I watched as my parents each took down half a dozen men with them, until they were overwhelmed next to each other.”
With
