A Night of Burns
A story of Elfhame
© 2026 by Walter Reimer
Blame assigned to  EOCostello
Thumbnail by  tegerio, color by  Major Matt Mason


Prologue


When I look back on the circumstances of what we in Elfhame have taken to calling [The Siege of the Sheaf of Arrows], I’m further convinced that the Lady Fuma, the skunk-goddess of the Mephitist Church, has a very wicked sense of humor. No one, not even in the clearest hindsight, expected sheep.

Now, some of you sharp lads out there are no doubt saying, “Hang on, Westersloe, what’s all this about Elfhamian sheep? Frogs, yes, but you’ve been pretty schtum on sheep. What gives?”

Well, there is a pretty good reason for that, and like a lot of things in the Vale, it ties into the disaster that was Skull Forest.

But first, you must go back thousands and thousands of years. Back, even, before there were any sort of records (reliable or not) of Elfhame. When the roe-does first took notice of the Stars, it was probable that our kind didn’t wear a stitch of clothing. Which would have been something of a problem when the usual Elfhamian weather came into play.

My guess is Figuring Out Clothing was one of the first items on the to-do list, probably right after fire. To a certain extent, the cultivation of flax for the making of linen was taken up, but that would have gotten you only so far. Warmer stuff was needed.

Enter the Elfhamian sheep. There were, and still are, quite a lot of grasslands in the Vale proper, as well as in some of the bordering areas, like Glenallid and the Widdershins Country. The sheep would generally graze in higher elevations during the brief summers in Elfhame, and then move down into the valleys to wait out the winter.

Some bright spark – it was probably a doe, to be honest – no doubt got a hold of some wool that had been caught on a bramble-bush and thought to themselves: “Hello, this can be spun.” Having figured this out, the question was then how to get a reliable supply of the stuff.

The does being smarter, and the roebucks being a bit more foolhardy (or up for the sport), it fell on us to try to tame the Elfhamian sheep. There are any number of surviving songs and folktales indicating how well that went. “Modest success” is about the most charitable way of putting it, since any number of roebucks isn’t going to be able to beat any number of winter-hardened feral ewes and rams. It took a fair bit of winkling away lambs to build the flocks, and even there, general opinion was that one would be surprised how vigorous and bloodthirsty lambs could be.

By the time of the Winesack, there were some modest herds of sheep being tended to in the lower parts of the Vale, near the [Strangers’ River]. This was enough to keep the looms busy, and roebucks clothed in tweeds (and does clothed in their own fashion). There was also enough for making cheese, which for greedyguts was pretty vital. You’ll find many of our kind like a bit of toasted cheese with their porter.

The Skull Forest battle, as I’ve told you, was a major disaster. Most of the able-bodied bucks had perished, and that included the shepherds and weavers. The roebucks that were left behind were the old and the lame, and, increasingly, the dispirited. The looms fell silent and gathered dust, and the sheep went over the rails and started to become feral again.

So yes, that’s why you didn’t hear anything about Elfhamian sheep from me. Simply put, when I was growing up, the specimens that were around were roaming free. Certainly, there were enough used clothes about to allow the does to mend and patch as necessary, but it did rather accentuate the depressed feeling in the Vale, going about like that.

Things did, I’m glad to say, turn around. I had a paw in both things that made that go. One of them, of course, was the Regeneration when I became Master of Elfhame, and wiped the slate clean of all the accumulated arrearages of dues and the like. The [Tears of the Trees] that I sold, aside from necessary tools and seeds and the like, also bought some slightly better clothing. Though, of course, the bucks sadly observed that there was nothing like Elfhame-make for tweed.

The other event, surprisingly, was the advent of the ex-Prisoners from the Gray Horde. As it turned out, many of them preferred woolens and tweeds, as we did, and there were one or two that had been shepherds in their native land. Along with weaver-bucks from Licksburg, this at least solved one part of the equation. The flax growers, thank goodness, also followed through. As my mother always said, clean linen is important.

The other part of the equation, however, was getting the sheep back, and that was an issue. Having achieved a taste of freedom, the sheep weren’t in the mood for going back to their pens and expressed themselves rather vigorously on that point. There was one very large, very old, and very tough ram in particular who quickly was christened [“Killer Diller”]. He took positive pleasure in charging unwary wolves, and almost invariably, he came out better in the bargain.

There was a years-long battle, in which the Wolves took the lead in replicating what the roebucks had done thousands of years before. Gradually, and at the cost of quite a few healing spells and lengthy periods of recouperation, the ex-Prisoners had managed to build up a decent sized flock.

Which was kept on their side of the [Strangers’ River], as I made it quite clear that if any of them had a notion of having mutton- or lamb-chops, the necessary actions to prepare that weren’t going to happen anywhere near our cervine kind, thank you very much. Shearing wool was one thing; butchery, another.

The ex-Prisoners shrugged this decree of mine off, and placidly (and completely) abided by it. And to give them their full due, the clack of loom-shuttles could be busily heard on both sides of the river. Before long, wolf and roe alike were probably as well dressed as they’d ever been, either in the Vale or back in the Grand Duchy.

I should note that cheese-making didn’t fall under my decree, and there were quite a few fawns (and not a few wolf-pups) that were starting to develop a definite partiality toward oat bread with a large wedge of melted Elfhamian on it.

Which didn’t worry me nearly as much as the fact that those self-same pups and (roebuck) fawns were starting to see how fast they could ride the sheep. I banned the practice of trying to climb Mount Humbert on sheep-back, but I don’t think that ruling of mine was taking hold.

Still, shortly before the events I’m about to relate, the local Weavers’ Guild (we actually had one, much to my surprise) had presented me with a new tweed jacket, and a glengarry and a kilt in what was purported to be Glenallid tartan. Something in which mint green featured prominently. A point I could see as I inspected myself in a mirror I’d brought into my study, one winter’s day.




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