Robert stood before the gathering of village men in the field of grass. Nearly all men from Sonder village, except for the sick or infirm. They brandished crude weapons: clubs, dirks, pitchforks, and even a spear or two. All were armed with their yew or ash longbows and a quiver of arrows. Every third man carried a pack of supplies and torches in case they were needed.
One could mistake the gathering for a muster for war if the war were against the rats scurrying in their homes.
Robert, who was already twice the size of the tallest amongst them, was sitting on the back of 'Bull', his trusty warhorse. Bull was now in the last stages of his life, but he still had energy left. Anna, his lovely wife, was mounted atop a smaller pony that, oddly enough, matched her small figure well.
Despite pleading with her to stay in the keep for safety, he was secretly happy to have her along. They would need her wits to find their son if they wished to see him again.
"Stupid child, when we find him, he is getting a whooping." Robert thought angrily, though he knew it was rash anger talking. Could he really blame the kid? Not once in his six years had they permitted him to leave the keep, not even to the village right below.
Robert smiled at a memory of him doing something similar when he was Edwin's age.
"Any questions?" Robert asked the small gathering, who all seemed very displeased at having been dragged away from their daily chores. "No? Good, who finds my boy is exempt from taxation this year." Now the peasants gained a gleam in their eye.
Six men headed off towards the north following the direction of the Sonder, while the other six, Anna, and Robert headed south to comb through the overgrown forest. East across the river lay the hamlet of Sir Issac Barfoot, a good man, knight, and also Anna's father. He would find Edwin if he crossed that way. To the west lay the lands of the Eversley's, another small house but good people. Robert knew they would return his boy if they found him.
Robert fixed his focus on the task ahead. Time was against them. Edwin had wandered off last night at some point; it had been too dark to safely search the woods now, which meant he had been gone for many hours by now.
Bull, Roberts's longest companion, led the group through the unending shrubbery and thickets. Anna whispered a prayer to their god; fat bags had formed under her eyes from a night of twisting and turning.
"This is my fault," Robert spoke to his wife, drawing his horse back beside her pony, "To save money, I never hired a new gate guard. With the war over, I thought it would be unnecessary." Englebert was the former gate guard; he was long dead now; an arrow had caught him in the eye during the battle of Ashton Medow's during the rebellion.
Anna took Robert's hand in hers; it was a comforting gesture; she didn't blame her husband. "Children are prone to be curious, though I think after we find Edwin, we should hire a new one." Anna's words were full of hope that they would find their son. Like Robert, she blamed his leaving on how cooped up they kept their son.
Yet Robert and Anna agreed that Edwin would be punished for this whole situation.
Robert sent two of the men away, to follow the riverbank, Jamie and Michael. They were called, "Follow the bank of the river, if you see any sign of Edwin, return to me immediately." Neither man needed to be told twice; clutching their bows, they went off quickly.
The rest of the group continued. Robert Dismounted with Anna; the shrubbery had become particularly thick as the trees grew closer together. He would need to be on the ground to avoid getting whacked by branches and to be able to search for any signs of passage.
A serf by the name of Arnald found the first indications of human presence. "Lord, over here," Arnald beckoned Robert over. "There," Arnald pointed to an imprint on the dirt. "This footstep is small, I'd reckon it's your son."
Robert saw Anna's eyes light up; they had finally found a clue after an hour in this forest.
"Lord, there are more footsteps over here; it's a single pair." Robert's heart dropped at the mention of the extra pair.
From the looks of the prints, whoever left them had been following closely behind Edwin. The second pair was too grouped together and predictable to be chasing Edwin, whose footsteps betrayed no sense of a struggle. Now on edge, the group took out their weapons. Robert held his one-handed Warhammer in his right hand. He was unarmored, but he was trained in the ways of war since birth; it helped that, unlike most peasants, he was experienced in battle.
"Why do we arm ourselves? Surely nobody would harm our boy." Anna asked, fear creeping into her voice.
"Poachers, I fear that is who is in these woods." Robert ensured he was in front of Anna as they moved deeper into the woods.
Two more pairs of footprints were found, heightening the tension greatly. After a few more minutes, they came across a huge, overturned oak, the massive stump uprooted from the grounds, likely from a fall storm. Arnald, proving to have a keen eye, spotted an indent in the ground, as if Edwin was hiding from something. Likely, the two other people, for their pairs of steps, were on the opposite side of the trunk.
Robert looked around for any other sign of where his boy had gone.
"There," His eyes caught sight of a clearing in the woods, he didn't wait for others to catch up with him, he took off toward the clearing.
Three tents surrounded a dead fire; it was disorganized, no professional band, these people. But Edwin had been here. Next to a knocked-over stool, a small knife, no war knife, not the one he had gifted to Edwin, but it was the one used for food. A thing of rabbits, a day dead now, was bunched up on the floor, dropped in a hurry by the look of it.
He had attempted to escape, running towards the forest, but he was heading east, towards the river.