Where were his parents? Why hadn’t they come for him? Were they angry because he could not stop the horses?
Many of his family’s household goods were spilled on the ground, strung out in a line from the broken wheel to where the wagon had finally stopped. Perhaps if he gathered everything together by the wagon, they wouldn’t be mad at him anymore.
He picked up the basket his mother had used to hold tubers for peeling. The memory of her sitting by the table and recently by the campfire, reaching into the basket for beans to break or for turnips or tubers to peel while she told him stories, brought tears to his eyes. He was sniffling when he saw movement, and he whirled around and crouched in fear.
His tears in the morning light gave a sparkle to the woods and the stranger standing a few feet away, staring down at him. At first he thought it might be one of the creatures that attacked the caravan, but the face—what he could see of it through his tears—had a shape similar to his own and that of his parents. The stranger’s forehead was wider and his chin narrower, though. The skin of the creature was pale brown, like that of the people in the caravan. To the child, that made him human.
He stood tall and straight, more slender than the men of the caravan. He wore armor that gleamed metallically, though it was no metal the child knew. The breastplate, tall pointed helm, tasses, greaves, and gauntlets seemed to change color as the elf moved, blending with the background, and were trimmed in tiny designs; Cald knew nothing of magic runes.
Large pointed ears framed the stranger’s black hair, cropped short over his wide forehead. His narrowed eyes above the small straight nose were dark, with the depth of a lifetime that stretched back through millennia. To a child of not quite four years, those eyes were filled with the kindness he sought.
He gave no credence to the elf’s mouth, which was set in a cruel, implacable line. The stranger looked away, searching the forest with a quick, practiced gaze, but his mouth softened as he looked back at the child.
Cald knew he had been found at last. He dropped the basket and dashed forward, grasping the slender man around the knees.
“My mama, my papa,” he sobbed. “I want my mama.”
In later years he would understand the meaning of the actions and conversations that followed, but though he had never forgotten a moment of that first meeting, the meaning had passed over the head of the small child that day. He had been unable to understand the language of the elves, but some of the words had stayed with him, imprinted on his mind because of his fear. The elves, with their love of stories, had made a pleasing tale of so strange an incident. Like all children, he loved to listen to stories about himself and the constant retelling had kept every incident fresh in his mind.
A second elf had walked up behind the first and also stared at him. Cald had shrunk from the newcomer. He lacked the height and the casual assurance of the first. His eyes, as dark and large in his face as the eyes of the first elf, radiated hostility. The new arrival threw darting glances into the forest and jerked his gaze back to stare at the boy. His right hand moved restlessly from his sheathed knife to his sword and back, as if he dared not let his fingers stray far from either one.
“It’s a human,” the second said, his voice filled with disgust.
Cald could not understand the words, but the tone was obvious; this second stranger did not like him, or thought he had done something wrong. He took a tighter hold on the first stranger’s leg and hid his face.
“A very small one, and it’s dirty,” replied the first. He placed his hands on Cald’s shoulders, pushed the child back a step, and knelt to get a better look at the tear- and soil-smudged face.
“It’s a human!” the second elf repeated.
The first looked up at his companion. “Relcan, I recognize the racial features. I agree it’s a human, probably from that wagon, and likely brought into the forest by the harnessed beasts we found this morning. We can assume they were pulling the wrecked wagon, and that the child was in it.”
Carefully watched over because of his breath-rasp, Cald had been more shocked at being alone for most of a day and a night than a healthy, adventurous youngster would have been. When the kneeling elf looked up at his companion, Cald pressed closer to the slender knees, seeking a reassuring touch.
“By the order of King Tieslin and your own instructions, Prince Eyrmin, we are to kill all humans invading Sielwode—” Relcan said, taking one quick step forward as if he were ready to deal the death blow.
The expression on the face of the prince sent him back a rapid pace.
Several other elves appeared and joined the first two. Eyrmin rose, and Cald, not willing to let the elf get far away, hugged his leg with one small arm. He looked from one elf to the other as the newcomers reported. Most had been searching along the eaves of the forest for other intruders. They had found none.
A final elf appeared, taller than the rest. While the others had walked, trotted, or run with the grace inherent in the elven race, this late arrival stumbled twice as he ducked under low-hanging bows. When he stopped, he seemed to have trouble deciding where to put his feet and hands. His breathing was heavier than the rest, as if he had made a long run. His haste seemed to worry the prince.
“Danger, Saelvam?” Eyrmin asked.
The tall, awkward elf shook his head.
“The beasts were doubtless a part of a caravan of human settlers,” the tall warrior said, his eyes moving from the prince’s face to the child and back again. His face was filled with sympathy for the youngster. “Human and gnoll bodies litter the ground just this side of a group of nerseberry bushes where a hundred or more gnolls waited in ambush. The tracks show the surviving humanoids took the wagons, all but this one.” He pointed to the wreck.
“Any living humans?” the prince asked, glancing down at Cald, who still clung to him.
“None.”
“Then you’ll have to kill it,” Relcan insisted, his eyes darting toward the tall elf as if looking for confirmation. The other warrior averted his eyes and shifted his attention to some distant point, disassociating himself from the prince’s second-in-command.
The others shifted and frowned, and some sidled away. None wanted to be thought squeamish. They were warriors and used to killing. Prince Eyrmin noticed them, and his eyes sparkled with the humor of the situation. He called to two who were slipping away around a tree.
“Hialmair, Ursrien, would one of you accept the honor or ridding Sielwode of this human menace? The lights of Tallamai may lighten the path of a warrior who dares to fight such a dangerous foe.”
Ursrien looked away, but Hialmair, whose bearing showed him a brave and successful fighter, turned an unwavering gaze on his prince.
“May no song ever tell of a time when I shirked my duty to my prince, but I must forego this honor. My sword is too long and my bow too large for the foe.”
When he saw Eyrmin’s lips twitch in a half-hidden smile, Hialmair followed Ursrien into the wood and out of sight.
The other warriors were quickly disappearing, but the prince called to Saelvam. Because his height drew attention and he had been closer to Eyrmin and Relcan, he had been more cautious in his effort to escape.
“Saelvam,” the prince called. “I have a task for you.”
Saelvam paused, sighed, and returned, his chin on his chest, his slow place showing his reluctance. He tried to keep his hands from their accustomed resting places on the hilt of his sword and the string of his bow, but did not seem to find a place for them.
When the tall warrior stood at the prince’s side, Eyrmin disengaged Cald’s arm from around his leg, took the child’s hand, and put it in the palm of the other elf.
Cald, thinking he was being placed in the care of this person, looked up at him hopefully. He wondered how he could talk to these people, with their strange language, and how he could tell them he was hungry and cold.