Ch 28: Churlish

“You can’t trust the trees.”

• Old Drakthic Saying from the Elven Conquest

They entered the forest on the main path. While the trees had been cut back at one point, they now grew over it, creating a canopy that shrouded the path in shadow. There was something unsettling about the woods. Solomon felt as if there were things watching him from the edges of the path just out of view, and the intertwining branches seemed to create menacing figures in the shade.

They walked for just about a half hour before Colm stopped.

“Let me just check a trap over here.”

Solomon nodded and watched Colm disappear briefly off the main trail. He waited, scanning the forest. He wasn’t used to the sounds of woods. The chirping of birds, the rustling of things in the brush, and buzz of insect wings. It set him on edge, but he kept calm. His eyes scanned the far end of the path and for a moment he thought he saw something run quickly along the ground.

Colm emerged from the woods with a fox in his hand. It was dead, but there were no obvious marks on it. A broken neck, Solomon guessed, to better preserve the fur. Once he was out of the woods he calmly tied the fox to a loop on his pack.

“Well done,” remarked Solomon.

Colm nodded. “A lucky day so far.”

Colm started walking along the path again and after just a few minutes they reached a break in the path.

“The first logging camp is here.”

Solomon nodded and followed him as they walked down the side path until it opened up into a clearing filled with several structures. He carefully inspected each of them. The tools had been cleared out, and the buildings themselves were in rough shape after not being in use for so long. He could still see a number of stumps a short distance from the clearing where the logging had taken place, but now there were young trees all around them.

“The logging here ended before the mining did, right?” asked Solomon.

“Aye. Loggers pulled out. Weren’t making enough profit, they said.”

Solomon nodded. Like the mining, the main reason that logging had stopped was that the profit simply wasn’t there, but unlike the mine there hadn’t been a terrible accident and rumors of a curse to speed things along. The logging in Moonfallow had stopped being sufficiently profitable for two reasons. The first was that the logging of the living forests of the elves created far more profit and so became the focus, and the other was the trees in these woods were too high quality. The richest wanted only living wood, and the poorest mostly relied on cheaper wood, which left a much smaller market for high quality normal wood. What market was left was served better in areas other than Moonfallow, so it was the first to be culled. Now that the living forests were nearly completely cut down and there were many more merchants and men of wealth without titles, Solomon believed that logging could be profitable in Moonfallow again.

Once he was satisfied he approached Colm, his eyes still scanning the woods. His feelings of unease had been steadily increasing.

“Let’s head straight for the mine next. I’ll still pay you as if you showed me the other sites.”

“Works for me,” Colm replied and they walked back to the main path. From there on it was primarily a straight walk for another half hour. Solomon saw a few other branching paths, and they needed to cut around a few areas where debris and overgrowth had cut things off, using smaller trails to move around them. Solomon was tiring and could feel his shirt clinging to him from sweat, but Colm maintained the same steady pace at which he’d started.