A few days after the orc’s raid, Carmul had mostly returned to their everyday life. Though a lot of people were dragging their feet and had a cloud hanging over their face, with winter fast approaching, they couldn’t afford to stay down and coop inside their house. This was especially true for the people who held vital positions in the village and helped to keep Carmul running, like the village’s smithy.

  Built away from where most of the population live, the smithy was built with stone instead of the usual seasoned wood and had a well close to it. For a place that houses an occupation that regularly deals with fire, it had to be built to prevent the flame inside from spreading to neighbouring buildings and so that in the unfortunate incident a fire does break out, it can be quickly contained and taken care of.

  Not only that, due to the numerous dangerous items the place has, it’s also even more secure than most buildings. In a tight knit community like Carmul, rather than to prevent theft, this was done so that mischievous children won’t pull dangerous pranks with the items inside.

  A bell attached behind the door is a simple yet effective solution for security. It rings every time the door is opened and closed to alert the people inside the building of a new guest. And when it does, the smith’s wife pops her head out from the backdoor to greet the newly arrived guests.

  “Alise,” the smith’s wife called out to the woman holding her shop’s door open.

  “Morning,” the woman said in reply.

  The woman had a splint holding one of her arms in position. With what happened to the village just a few nights back, it wasn’t hard to figure what happened to her, but at least she was fortunate enough to get away with just that much.

  Though rather than the injured arm, what catches the smithy’s wife’s attention is what the woman has on her other hand. It was one of the tools that the village’s smith had to work with in a farming village—a sickle. That and the two long tools behind the woman, a hoe and a rake, each peeking from behind her shoulders.

  “Came to get those done again this year?”

  The woman nodded and made her way inside the shop. Behind her, the two tools are hopping along, following close behind her and making dull thuds as it hits the stone floor below.

  Intrigued by the tools that seem as if they are following the woman out of their own free will, the smithy’s wife leaned slightly sideways to take a peek at what’s going on behind the woman and found a boy holding one of the two tools in each hand.

  That large hoe and rake might not weigh much, but for a small boy like Alise’s son, it must have taken a considerable effort to bring just one of those things to the smith, let alone two of them. He must have moved each one of them a step at a time, treating them as if a walking stick and hopping them along on the ground.

  “Why’d you have the boy bring the heavier tools? Them shafts’ gonna be scuffed now.” the smithy’s wife complained to Alise.

  “Oh, uh…” the woman stammered before raising the sickle in her hand. “Though it might be dangerous for him to carry this.”

  The smithy’s wife then made a face that clearly shows she’s judging the other woman before easing up after a quick while. “Well, I guess it is the only thing you got with a blade,” she said before going over to the boy following close behind his mother. “I’ll take these,” she said as she grabbed both the hoe and the rake. After grouping the two in one hand, she then extends her other hand towards Alise.

  The mother hands over the scythe in her hand. “Thank you.”

  “Hm.” the smithy’s wife replied with low enthusiasm. “Got anything else you need work on? I can help carry them if you want.”

  “Oh, no. Besides, I wouldn’t want to disturb your work.”

  The smithy's wife then juts her jaw towards one side of the room. When alise turns to face the direction she pointed at, she found a work bench there alongside a few racks with nothing hanging on the pole.

  “Got nothing to work on.”

  The smithy’s wife is actually the village’s leather worker, and everyone in the village wears and uses something or a lot of things she made out of the hide provided by the hunters or the livestock the village keeps, so she would normally be drowning in work as much as the smith is during this time of year.

  Unfortunately, the recent attack took out most of the village’s hunters, leaving only the unskilled and inexperienced, and a lot of the village weren’t able to recover a lot of the livestock that they set loose. Without the hunters to gather materials for her to work on, she’s left with idle hands and the village has to make do with what battered anything on hand.

  “Without leather, I’m just the smithy’s wife now,” she said with a hint of spite. “Cursed monsters,” she then muttered under her breath as she recalled the orcs that left the village in this state.

  Having overheard the woman’s whisper, Alise cast downwards gaze and her face quickly turned somber, which prompted her son to peek his face into her sight from behind her. The one joy she still had in her life.

  The leatherworker woman then noticed the look on Alise’s face and quickly apologized. “I’ve heard that you got it worse, but I can’t help but…”

  Alise replied with a smile. “It’s ok. Everyone’s got it rough,” she said as she brought her hand to her boy’s head to lightly pat it.

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  The other woman returned her smile. “Boy, you better take care of your mother, you hear?” she then said to Gale who’s still being patted by his mother. “Listen to what she says, yeah?”

  The boy turned to look up at her, but offered no response. Instead, his mother answered for him.

  “He will. He’s a good boy,” she said as she moved her hand from his head to his cheek to cup it in her hand. Her face then softened as she recalled what a knight had told her.

  The day after the orcs’ raid, Alise woke up in her own bed. The last thing she recalled was being violently thrown from the wagon she’s riding in with her son in her arms and the sharp pain she felt stabbing her arm attested to the fact.

  That day, she was visited by a knight and a priest that came from town to help the village and the man who’s been taking care of Gale, Robert, a retired soldier.

  The priest was kind enough to heal her arm. It had left her feeling completely sluggish afterwards, and though it hadn’t completely healed, he said that it’d only take a few weeks to heal. It’s a huge relief that by the time spring rolls in, it looks like she can work the field in her late husband’s stead. If she is to provide for her son, just the small garden in their house won’t be enough after all.

  Other than that, the knight that visited her was asking her about Gale. It seems like when the soldiers arrived to help the villagers that got caught up in the caravan crash found the boy fighting the orcs by his lonesome.

  He was desperately fighting to protect his mother who was lying unconscious behind him, and the sight had brought morale to the soldiers.

  At the time, Alise was both proud and worried that the knight might take her son away from her had they known of Gale’s blessings. Fortunately, it seems like the knight was just interested and had no intention of taking him away.

  “Well,” The woman holding Alise’s tools in her hand suddenly spoke, pulling Alise out of her thoughts. “I’ll bring this out back to my husband. Come pick ‘em up in a… couple of weeks? He has quite a lot to work on right now.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  The woman then made her way towards the shop’s back door with Alice’s tools in hand. Once she left, Alise then turned to leave the shop and her son followed suit.

  The bell by the door rang when she opened the door to signal a leaving customer. When Alise walks out the door, the cool air quickly hits her skin and brings a little chill to her flesh—a sharp contrast to the slightly warm temperature inside the shop.

  It was a quick and uneventful walk home for the two. Though the blacksmith and leatherworker’s shop is at the other side of the village from where their house is, they didn’t run into a lot of people on the way back, much like on the way to. And the ones they do run into had their gaze cast down and seemed to be so preoccupied that they hadn’t bothered to offer any form of greeting to anyone they passed.

  This time of year should have been a time of celebration for the village following harvest and the waterfowl hunt at the river. The hunters would be bringing in the largest game they could find from the forest and feasts would be prepared for celebration. It should have been a merry time for the village.

  But this year, not only has the waterfowl hunt been horribly botched, the village just lost a little over a fifth of its entire population. The worst of it is how most of the casualties are the village’s hunters.

  For a village located right outside the edge of a forest, Carmul’s protein needs are dominantly fulfilled by wild game and only a small portion came from the ranch where they raise domesticated cattle. Thus, the loss of the village’s hunters was harshly felt by the village.

  Not only that, some of the cattle that were set loose had yet to be found and some had been found as nothing more than some bits of flesh stuck to damp bones. Though it’s a boon that the large portion of the village’s harvest dedicated for the lord as tax can be kept by the village, the people would likely have monotonous meals until spring rolls in next year.

  But that much the village can handle still. The heaviest blow has to be the loss of the village’s chief, Lyra. The village relied on her wisdom ever since she was appointed chief. And in these rough times, the village isn’t faring well without her to lead them forward.

  Now, everyone is staying inside their house. Where mothers usually gather to gossip, eerie silence has taken place. The bustling alehouse where the rowdiest gathers now houses depressed villagers drinking away their sorrows.

  The air around the whole village had turned heavy and somber.

  Not only the village. The forest where the kids usually go to play and forage for wild vegetables and firewood—that vivid greenery is no longer familiar, but seemed as if an alien place that houses inconceivable dangers. The river that brings life to the village also went through the same change, and it now flows with memories of blood—of slaughter.

  Most of the people that lived closest to the forest were the village’s hunters. They are now no longer around and left behind rows of empty houses, but those that had made it out still spent their nights cradling their family as they cower under the fear that the forest might once again suddenly bare their fangs at them.

  Everyone except Alise that is. Even though she survived the incident in a state worse than most, she’s one of the more optimistic ones in the village. Though she herself has to keep a cast on her arm for another couple of weeks and her son now has yet another scar on his young body, she has a bright view now that her household has one less in it.

  It’s a sinful thought—that much she knows of, and she beats herself up for it every night after her son went to bed without a father. She feels guilty for the fact that she feels the way that she does, but she can’t help but feel liberated without her husband.

  Though things were different when they were young and passionate, lately she can’t tolerate how he treated their son. And the feeling she kept pent up inside herself exploded as relief when she knew he would no longer come home.

  But although he wasn’t a good father nor a good husband, he was at least a decent man of the house. And this shows when the mother and son finally reached their house. When she pushed the front door open, it cracked and the far side dropped to the ground as the top hinge failed.

  “Oh, I need to get a new hinge,” she said as she found the broken part of the door. “Should’ve gotten some nails earlier too.”

  The house is in various states of disrepair, just like most other houses in the village due to how old the buildings are. Repairs are usually done when it absolutely can’t wait anymore since most have a tight rope around their pouch. And these repairs are usually done by the man of the house—Razh.

  Alise let out a sigh at the door that she has to drag through the ground. Not only that, the firewood their house needs, especially for the winter to come, is usually chopped by Razh too. Their neighbour has been stopping by to drop some for the mother and son, but Alise knows that it’s nothing but pity for the two that just lost the man of the house. Over time, when the feeling waned, and her neighbours became more preoccupied with their own needs, she would have to chop the firewood they use herself.

  The only thing that hadn’t deteriorated with the loss of the man of the house was probably security. With Gale around, the security of their household is guaranteed.

  Alise brings her hand onto her son’s head to pat him once again. “My gallant knight,” she said to the boy.