Chapter Twenty-Eight: Reply from Heyshem
The slate hummed at midnight and the runes bled cool light across the wood. You set the staff beside it and watch as strokes formed, deliberate and spare. Heyshem’s voice—short, tempered like hammered steel—came through the carved characters.
He begins with a name you know from old fireside lists: Bearsbane. Long ago, he writes, there was a hunter by that name who did not merely fell a wolf or boar but slew an ancient, terrible bear that once stalked the northern marches. That bear, Heyshem says, was not an ordinary beast but a living emblem of a rival power—the Bear Riders—kinsmen who once fought the old king. In the old quarrel the Bear Riders sided against the crown, and, by some blooded turn, Bearsbane’s blade ended not only that beast but also the king’s brother, a scion who bore the boar device. The deed birthed legend and a wound that never truly healed.
Heyshem’s runes tighten as the warning comes: the boar sigil is not a merchant’s whim or a pleasant brand. It belongs to lines that still claim scionship—the bear-riding houses and families who style themselves with boar heraldry in memory and defiance. They remember Bearsbane with hatred and the hope that the old balance might one day return. Across generations the boar mark has been carried by those who claim descent from the king’s brother, a lineage that kept bitterness and ambition like heirlooms.
“You have roused old eyes,” Heyshem’s message reads bluntly. “By invoking the old name—by befalling upon the boar and speaking of Boarsbane—you risked more than a tavern quarrel. Those scions keep watch for men who echo the past; they prize their sigils and strike hard at those who mock or threaten their memory. If the men now using the crowned boar are tied to those houses, they will not parley. They move as if defending a right, not a profit.”
Stolen story; please report.
He gives commands: pull the Huntsmen’s net tighter. Send three swift riders along the river roads and the western tracks toward the plains; two more should shadow coastal caravans and report any merchants bearing the boar-star mark. Cut all nonessential correspondence and use only slates sealed by blood when you must; avoid public proclamations of title or revenge. If the Hall can provide discreet shelter for defectors, ready it. Heyshem will muster watchers along the old hunting-routes and call favored cousins and horsemen to shadow suspected houses.
He adds a cold counsel that sits like iron: do not wear his name where scions may see you. “Boarsbane is a blade and a story,” he writes. “You have done well to strike where it needed striking; temper pride with sense. Let the Hall and your kin move like the roots—quiet, patient, and unseen. If a scion moves against you, meet them with more than blade; meet them with a plan that cuts the root.”
The final rune softens. Heyshem promises riders—three by the moon’s half—and a reserve of kin to hold Three Pines should the scions stir. He bids you watch for heralds: a crowned boar upon wax, a junk-mark on crate seals, or a served wine stamped with a boar charm. “If they are the same who burn and bind,” he writes, “they will show their mark and expect obedience. We will not bend. We will bind their lines in witness.”
When the slate goes dark you sit very still, the Hall’s torches flickering low. The mystery has shifted: it is no longer only cult and contraband but a history writ in blood and heraldry—a feud that crossed from legend into the marrow of the present. Your brother’s words leave you with two truths: you are not merely chasing thieves, and the name you carry can draw swords from old tombs. You fold the staff close and plan a cooler path—one that keeps your eyes on the boar’s trail but your shoulder from the scion’s blade.