Three new pups wasn't really that long a commitment to these woods, to the place the pups were born and now wriggled helpless against their mother's belly. Heriwulf knew they would be pulling themselves up onto their legs in the space of a month, less most likely. Well, the middle-born might be a bit slower due to the difficulty of his birth. He had nearly been lost, and Heriwulf was sweating while he held back interfering; Eathwaru, a capable apprentice, needed to act without him stepping in every minute to second-guess her. She may not have realized how close they'd come to losing that pup, that she'd just barely saved him. It might make him a little slower to find his legs. But even at worst, he and his brother and sister would be weaned in two months, and more than capable of travel. Even free to part from Cwoen, their mother, in maybe one more. None of this tied the Woodmen to their current place and circumstances, no more than had Brunan's pups born in the autumn.
Still, Heriwulf's thoughts had been brought back, more and more, to the business that had brought them so far from the Vales, and which had then waited so long. Somewhere in the Lone-lands, Radagast was presumably making preparations for something, but his silence was growing maddening. When they'd left Woodland Hall, it was to be for a few months: across the mountains, assist him if he required it, then back. The Eglain had changed that; apparently, he needed the Woodmen at a distance, and for some time, while he earned their trust, learned the history of whatever had brought him here, and readied for whatever action he would take. He'd even offered that the clan could return to the Vales without him, but most had chosen to stay, in case he needed assistance, or return escort. And because this land was gentle, welcoming, compared to the poisoned Mirkwood against which his clan fought a battle of inches every day.
Now, they had not merely a camp, not merely a lodge, but a stockaded village, with livestock -- cows, sheep, goats, chickens, even an ox, though no pigs, for their Beorning members would not brook any keeping of animals for meat -- and now crop-land, with vegetables at their dinner table, and the first wheat coming in within a month. They had friends in the nearby towns, and in the nearby woods as well. They had taken two of these friends into the clan as full members, and Heriwulf was now wedded to one of those, with babies due in a few months. They were, remarkably, settled.
Why, then, was Heriwulf's mind wandering back to the Vales more and more? Or to the Lone-lands, which he had not seen, save at a great remove from hilltops, since they'd crossed it to find these woods, hounded hence by Radagast that their number not spook the Eglain? Or to Radagast's purpose in the west, which once had been their purpose?
Indeed, could they even be said to have a purpose, now?
Recent losses had certainly been part of what tugged his thoughts in such uneasy directions. Particularly galling, because they were particularly preventable. But you cannot help a person who will not be helped. The knife had been bloodied many years ago. The wound simply took a while to reach its inevitable conclusion. Not so particularly preventable after all, then. Or was he telling himself that to assuage guilt that he hadn't found any way to prevent it?
Day would follow day. There might come one when Radagast finally spoke to them of his purpose, his need. Perhaps they would be called at last to aid him. Perhaps merely to guide his steps back to Rhosgobel. Perhaps he would simply say that he had no further need of them, and that they were free to do as they saw fit. Then again, none of these might happen. Perhaps he had already left and neglected to tell them.
Any travel, or call to battle, or really, any word from Radagast, would be catastrophic just now, with Leohna heavy with children, barely able to walk around the stockade, deeming the small hike to Pickthorn too far even with her riding in a cart. Clearly, he realized, the sense of being committed that the birthing of pups had evoked was really about his own pups.
It was not, not at all, a regret. It might at times be a source of fear -- she kept asking 'what if' questions, reflections of her own fears, that dredged up his own darkest memories of his first wife and child -- but never a regret. He would have had it go no other way. If the wizard had some spell that could change how it had all turned out, he would not ask for it to be spoken.
No, more than that. It wasn't even the question, 'what will happen when the call came?', that haunted him. It wasn't whether they would, when it was done, start planning how to cross the mountains and go back to the Vales. Whether Leohna would want to stay -- if she did, he certainly would as well, and probably Eathwaru as well -- or if she wanted to go to the Vales, how they would make the journey with children. The thousand other questions of what might mark the end of this endeavor in Eriador. Whether it even would have an end.
It was something deeper that he couldn't put his finger on. Some sense that he was waiting for something, but he couldn't say what. Marking days, of which, at his age, he could not hope to have too many more of. Not using them to some purpose; just letting them go by. Never seeing more than one objective ahead -- build a lodge, make friends with the neighbors, secure a food supply when they lost their hunter, strengthen the blood of their pack, raise pups, make ready for battle, broaden their ability to survive with beehives and sheep pens and tilled acres, help wolves of the Chetwood, raise more pups… and then what?
Then what?
The pups mewled as they wriggled about looking for their mother, who had stepped away. She would be back in moments; she was never very far or for very long. Any second now they would be warm again, and full of milk. That was as far as they could think ahead, could want. They knew exactly what they were waiting for. How Heriwulf envied them that.
