The Brutal Cooper of Whiteforge
It happened that in a village in the west of the land, in the shadow of the Count's keep, there was a man named Esmund who was a cooper, and a fine cooper he was too. The barrels he made were smoothly finished and tightly bound and not a drop leaked from them. But he was a sullen man, and a drinking man, and he did not deserve his patient wife. She was a woman from the east, a stranger to this land who had been saved from dark confinement and found her way to the village to seek her future. But she had been alone in her heart and anxious, and took Esmund the cooper to husband when he asked her for she thought in her heart that she needed a strong husband to keep her safe.
And keep her safe he did, this cooper. He kept her safe from peace, and from restful sleep. He kept her safe from making friends and from feeling safe. Ill tempered he was and jealous and when his rage was on him, which was often, he found great fault in his wife. It helped not that he was dull of wit, while her mind was as sharp as a scholar's, though she soon learned to hide her learning from her husband who took each fact unknown to him as a wrong worked on him by she herself. She would have shed tears, but she kept her eyes tightly closed and not a drop leaked from them.
In the year of the war of two wolves a hard winter came and who knows what imagined slight or fault Esmund the cooper found in his wife from the eastern lands. But she was seen out of doors only rarely and quiet she was and her arm was splinted and bandaged, and it was given out by Esmund the cooper that she had fallen on the ice and broken her arm in her own clumsiness. She was a graceful woman and fair and strange was this report to many, but who would speak against a man with so respected a trade, and who would question the way of a man with his own wife?
By chance the eastern-born wife was called to the court of the count in those days, for he sought counsel of those who knew of the lands of the east and would learn from her. And at his court also at that time was one old warrior, Elminval by name, of whom much has been said. The old man saw the woman and the injury upon her arm and he asked her what had befallen and she told him that she was clumsy and slow to learn and had mistaken her step on the ice. The old man had spent much time in the mountains of the east where this lady had spent her early years and he knew of the ice and the snow and the treachery of the paths of that place and he stroked his beard and said nothing, though he thought much and for a time departed the court of the count on some errand men knew not of.
It chanced afterward that the sworn companion of the count in those days, a son of the southern forest realm did go to seek from Esmund the cooper permission for his wife to remain a time at the count's court for her counsel was pleasing to him, but when this companion reached the house of the cooper he found the man sorely afflicted and weeping for his own arm had been broken and that most cruelly. How came this, asked the count's companion, that you have so dreadfully received such an injury? And Esmund the cooper turned from pale to whiter and looked about him and said only, and in tones of one who has learned hard lessons, that he too had slipped upon the ice and snow. The count's companion wondered how ice and snow should come so easily within the house of Esmund the cooper but he kept his own counsel and took from the cooper his permission for his wife to serve the count's court. And that lady was in later times known afar as Belka, she who served with Keydis' companions and whose wisdom was well beloved and guided many in dark times.
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