ALTDORF (The Forest Knights Book 1)

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

 GISSLER HOVERED at the edge of the trees looking at the small hovel in the distance. An aged man struggled across the muddy courtyard carrying a bucket of slop, each jerky step causing a foul splash down his leg. Finally, with a Herculean effort he upended the bucket into a pigpen’s trough, and a half dozen dirty sows squealed with delight.

The man was gaunt, a fact even the full grey beard and baggy russet clothes could not conceal. Gissler recognized the man as his brother only on some primal, spiritual level, for there was nothing left of the proud older boy he had looked up to as a child. Hugo was only five years older than Gissler, but the bent, misshapen figure shuffling about the pigpen looked to be in his sixties. Gissler could not remember even his father looking as old, or broken, as his brother did now.

 The Gisslers had been a family with stature. Being stewards of land for three generations had given them a position of respect within the community and the right to a share of the land’s crops and animals. His father always talked about the peasant class as those people. He knew the Gisslers did not have any blue blood, but in his heart he felt they were much closer to the noble class than that of peasants.

 He had been wrong. When King Albrecht rewarded a French count the estate, the Gisslers were unceremoniously forced to leave the land they had faithfully managed for more than fifty years. It must have been a devastating transition for his father to learn to rut in the mud as just another peasant, Gissler thought, and upon seeing the sorry living conditions of his elder brother, one that his father could not have survived.

 “You come to talk with my papa?”

 Gissler whirled at the sound of the voice to see a small girl no older than seven years old. Dirty bare feet stuck out the bottom of her grey, threadbare dress, which may have been pale blue at one time. She had a small mountain flower pinned in her hair and a few more clutched in one tiny hand. In the other she cupped a baby bird close to her chest.

 “He is just over there, if you want to talk to him,” she said pointing with her chin.

 “What is your name?” Gissler asked, surprised at the little girl’s fearlessness.

 “Sara,” she said.

 She had her father’s large brown eyes. They were the eyes Gissler remembered from his boyhood.

 “Actually, I came to see you,” Gissler said.

 Sara’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to see me? I am just a kid.”

 Gissler laughed and the sound made Sara smile.

 “A friend of your father’s asked me to give him something, but I am in a hurry. I was hoping you could give it to him for me. Would you do that?”

 Sara shrugged. “I guess so. But I have to put this bird back in his nest first. I saved him from a cat, you know.”

 “Fair enough. I will help you and then you help me. Agreed?”

 “You said you were in a hurry.”

 “I make time for worthy causes. And I can think of no purpose higher right now than returning your friend to his home.”

 With only a slight hesitation, she led Gissler to the bird’s tree and pointed out the nest. He asked about her family and learned her mother and brother died and she never had any grandparents. Only a papa.

 After the bird was tucked safely back in its nest, Gissler hung the coin purse that he had won at the tourney around Sara’s neck.

 “Take this to your father right away,” he said. “I think he may be waiting for it.”

 She promised she would and started walking back towards the cabin.  Then she turned abruptly. She ran back and handed Gissler one of the little white flowers she still held in her hand.

 “Here. Take this. It will protect you from the bad elves.”

 Without a moment’s pause, she was off again running full speed towards the house.

 Hugo looked up in alarm at the sound of his daughter’s calls. She ran up to him and he listened to her words stumble over one another in an excited recounting of the man she had met in the forest. His eyes went wide when he opened the purse. He looked up and scanned the woods, searching for any sign of the man.

 A soft wind stirred the trees, but nothing more.