Quickly, Marl closed it and looked sharply at Sagit. “How did you know?”
“Sagacious Sagit, they call him,” the boy said, mocking over his shoulder.
The old man chuckled. “Mind your business, boy!” he said with clear affection. “Well, Lord Baron, tis a twisty tale, if you care to hear?”
* * *
A tale to pass the trail then. The meander may be discursive, but what is a destination without the journey?
Ere anon in north Swordshire lived in woods so deep and dank that trees grew beards of moss and lichen, and tales abounded of seven-foot peoples hirsute as trees, ancestral man, vestiges of ages long past, clinging like the moss itself to trees about to tumble with age.
Among these ancients so thick with hair but one affectation delighted them—belts with buckles of elaborate design, the mo
