The woodland thinned gradually and gave way to open plains before the village came into view. Bareborough Peaks was a working settlement, the kind built around the land it depended on rather than any particular notion of grandeur. Fields stretched out on the approach, tended and organized, and the forest of Loark sat dark and heavy at the settlement's eastern edge like a wall that had always been there. Timber and agriculture. That was what kept this place alive. They even had reforesters who followed the loggers, replanting what had been taken, and in recent years had begun cultivating whole stands of managed trees to harvest in time. It was patient, practical work.
It was also, Brina thought as they rode in, exactly the kind of place a displaced Bearowl would circle.
The villagers came out when they saw who was returning. Neighbors calling to neighbors, recognizing faces in the group behind the knights, and then seeing the state of them. The covered shapes on the borrowed cart. The grief moved through the crowd quickly and quietly the way it always does in small places where everyone knows everyone else.
Chief Ron found Brina before she had fully dismounted. He was a broad man with a weathered face and the look of someone who had been carrying something heavy for several days without showing it.
"Sir knight. I am Chief Ron of Bareborough Peaks. Thank you for coming."
"Brina Feldwyn, chief. I was dispatched to assess the sighting." She kept her voice even. "We encountered the merchants at dawn when the screaming started. We managed to drive the beast off and wound it, but it is not dead. I do not expect that will be the last we see of it, which is why we came here rather than turning back. Reinforcements have been sent for. Until they arrive we are what you have."
Ron's expression tightened. "Most unfortunate. I had hoped to avoid panic by keeping the report quiet. As you can see, the result of that decision is standing in front of us."
It was not quite an apology and not quite an excuse. Brina let it sit without comment. There was a more pressing matter.
"Chief, I need to speak with the man who made the original sighting. Grok. While we talk I would ask that your village guards show my companions around the perimeter. I want them looking at your defenses while there is still daylight."
"I will arrange it. And I will send for Grok."
She thanked him, handed off her horse, and waited.
Her squad dispersed with one of the village guards, Sophia already asking about the wall construction before they had gone ten paces. Elena had her eyes on the eastern treeline and had not stopped watching it since they rode in. Good. That was exactly the right instinct.
Grok arrived in chains.
Brina looked at the two guards walking him over, then at the man himself. He was unkempt in the way of someone who had stopped being given reasons to care about it. Hollow-eyed. Shoulders drawn in. He moved with the shuffling caution of a person who had learned that moving freely got him hurt.
"Why is he in chains?" she asked the guards flatly.
"Sir, he attacks people. He's not right in the head. We chain him for everyone's safety."
Brina looked at Grok a moment longer. He wasn't meeting her eyes. He was staring at the ground and his jaw was working slightly, like he was chewing on words he had already said too many times to too many people who hadn't listened.
"Leave him here with me. You can go."
The senior guard took a half-step forward. "Sir, we really shouldn't…"
"I am a knight of Helwind and I am telling you I am capable of handling one chained farmer. Leave us."
They left, though not without a shared look between them that Brina ignored entirely.
She waited until they were out of earshot, then turned to Grok and kept her voice plain and unhurried.
"Good day. I have been sent here to look into what you reported. I am not here to decide whether you are telling the truth, I am here to listen. Can you tell me where you saw it, and what you think drove it out of the forest?"
Grok did not answer immediately. His head stayed down and he shivered slightly at something, maybe the question, maybe a memory attached to it. Brina waited. She did not rush him.
When he finally spoke his voice was low and careful, like a man who had been interrupted and dismissed enough times that he had learned to choose his words precisely before spending them.
"I went into the edge of the woods to gather kindling. Evening, before the dark came fully in." He paused. "There were two of them."
Brina kept her face still. "Two."
"The other one was bigger. Much bigger. They were at one of the village cattle, the one that went missing that week. I held myself still and did not breathe right until they moved on. Then I came back and told the village what I saw." He stopped again, and something darker moved across his face. "They said I was drunk. I do drink after a long day's work, always have, and they used that against me. The chief had me kept quiet. When I wouldn't stay quiet they arrested me and I fought back because what else was I supposed to do, I was telling the truth and they were locking me up for it."
"And the second time you saw them?"
His eyes finally came up and met hers. "There were more. The second time there were more than two. They are moving closer to the village. They have been moving closer for days and no one wanted to hear it." He looked at her without blinking. "And now you have injured one of them. Sir, I say this plainly. Injured animals do not forgive and they do not forget. They will come here. Tonight, tomorrow, I cannot say when. But they will come."
The silence between them lasted several seconds.
"Sir, I am sober. I know what I saw. The chief knew it too by the end and he made me keep my mouth shut anyway." Grok looked back at the ground. "You should send these people somewhere safe and call for more help than you have. What is coming is not one beast. It is a family of them."
Brina stood up slowly. The anger was there, sitting flat and hot behind her ribs, directed squarely at the withheld information that had sent her squad out here with half the picture. A juvenile. One sighting. That was what the orders had said. Not this.
She looked toward the eastern treeline where Elena was still watching from across the village.
There was a great deal to do and very little time to do it in.