Sefawynn
A young skop with blond curls cut to the collar, dressed in a black sleeveless over-dress over an embroidered white undergown with knotted white rope at the waist. Steady-eyed and unimpressed by aelv theatrics; speaks boasts in alliterative half-lines as part of her craft. STD:FWH:Ch 4
Known facts
- travelling-skop-not-the-thegns-daughterIs a travelling skop only passing through Stenford, summoned back by the village for her craft; not, as the stranger initially assumes, a daughter of the local thegn.STD:FWH:Ch 4
- freed-the-stranger-on-dealCuts the stranger loose on a bargain: she will return his recovered pages and back his play before Ealstan as her contrived eelev, in exchange for his promise to leave Stenford as soon as the messengers take him in hand.STD:FWH:Ch 5
- cover-story-bind-and-banishShe drills the stranger on the script she intends to sell to Ealstan: she used his ancient name to bind him, the craeft now forces him to do her bidding, and she is banishing him. He cannot even pronounce craeft, which becomes its own ongoing joke at his expense.STD:FWH:Ch 6
- sets-off-to-rescue-her-brotherRefuses Ealstan's offered escort beyond a single guard, asks for his fastest horse and supplies, and retreats first to the founder's wēoh to meditate and gather powerful boasts before riding for Wellbury to bind, loose, or confront whatever took Wyrm.STD:FWH:Ch 8
- warns-against-the-beardCounsels John to stay clean-shaven: a beard will not save him from standing out, and the contrast at least makes the strangeness look intentional and ethereal, which will buy her enough time to escape him if she ever needs to.STD:FWH:Ch 10
- reads-cofold-bound-to-johnAt a roadside break, Sefawynn lays out a small ceramic dish with three berries and three leather straps and walks off to wash up; when she returns, the berries are gone and the straps are braided into a neat pattern. She reads it as a cofold — a landswight bound to an individual rather than a place — and decides, since it performed the task, that John's wyrd is for now a good one. She'll keep watching.STD:FWH:Ch 12
- agrees-to-bluff-the-hordamenAfter Ealstan's despair on the cliff and John's offer to try a confidence trick, Sefawynn agrees to help — playing thrael to John's aelv to sell a reverse-binding scheme she invents on the spot. She does not believe in his aelv-status, but she does believe that if the raids keep getting worse, the thegns will not hold.STD:FWH:Ch 13
- skops-boasts-no-longer-workSefawynn quietly admits to John that the skops cannot loose wights, bind them, or intimidate them — only the Hordamen skalds still manage that. She believes the skops' words used to work and have stopped, but cannot prove it. To keep eating, the skops keep selling their boasts.STD:FWH:Ch 18
- sold-bindings-on-doomed-wellbury-settlementA few years before the present, after the Bear killed her parents, Sefawynn passed through Wellbury and was hired by the midfather to perform bindings on a nearby settlement against the western danger. She did her best boasts knowing they would do nothing, took payment, and moved on with Wyrm. The settlement is now under the forest — only shadows of foundations between the great old trees remain.STD:FWH:Ch 18
- night-marks-and-shadow-sightSefawynn was born with the Night Marks — three deep blue birthmarks on her back, the sign that Woden has chosen her. The gift that comes with them is shadow-sight: she sees wights as shapes at the corner of her vision, larger shadows for stronger wights, almost always there. She lives in fear that one day she will turn her head too quickly, see one in full, and die for it — because in Weswaran lore the sight cannot be borne, and either she or the wight goes.STD:FWH:Ch 24
- spoke-the-defiance-boast-at-maelportAlone in the central square of Maelport under Woden's sky, Sefawynn shouted her hatred of Woden at the heavens in skop meter — the *I defy you* boast — and the runestone lit behind her. The hearth-wights of the city woke to her, took her boast as the leadership they had been waiting for, and turned on the Hordamen for her.STD:FWH:Ch 35
Events
- STD:FWH:Ch 4 Watches the captive in steady silence, recites two paired boasts to test him, sends Wyrm for the lord, and stays alone with him through the lord's visit.
- STD:FWH:Ch 5 Interrogates the stranger as a suspected grifter, agrees to back his play before Ealstan, cuts him loose, and promises to return his pages.
- STD:FWH:Ch 6 Walks the stranger from the side chamber through the courtyard to Ealstan's hall, mocking his accent and drilling him on the bind-and-banish cover story.
- STD:FWH:Ch 7 Pulled into the armoury, knife to the stranger's throat; watches her brother taken through the door slit and crumples to her knees afterward.
- STD:FWH:Ch 8 Pushes past the stranger, refuses Ealstan's worship of him, demands a horse and supplies, and walks out into the dark to meditate before her ride.
- STD:FWH:Ch 9 Sits on the bench at the founder's wēoh meditating before her ride, then weighs the stranger's offer of help with a flat refusal that he has not even told her his name.
- STD:FWH:Ch 10 Refuses, demolishes, and finally accepts the runian's offer of help on the walk back to Stenford; traces the courtyard runestone before mounting up at dawn.
- STD:FWH:Ch 11 Rides ahead of John, then drops back to needle him about root chicory and the impossibility of his story, pushes for more pace on Wyrm's account, and snaps at him for trying to write her name in the margin of a page.
- STD:FWH:Ch 12 Lays out a small ceramic dish of berries and braided leather as a quiet test of John's wyrd, returns from washing to read it as a cofold bound to him, and rides hard for the coast when his enhanced ears catch horns on the wind.
- STD:FWH:Ch 13 Tells John the story of Friag and the Black Bear, sees through his "regular human with advantages" admission with relief rather than offence, agrees to help, and coaches him on how to play aelv-and-thrael for the Hordamen.
- STD:FWH:Ch 14 Plays cowering thrael against John's aelv lord with conviction, translates the captains' arguments, sells the bluff to the skald, and at the climax begs John not to invoke writing — *would you rather be dead? yes!* — before following Ealstan over the gunwale.
- STD:FWH:Ch 15 Increasingly uncomfortable with what John has just done in Woden's name, argues with Ealstan over whether the burning ship is a warning or an answer, and finally orders John to scuff out the English letters scorched into the ground.
- STD:FWH:Ch 16 Rides into the Preserve in a slumped, exhausted stupor and drops onto a hay pallet without a word.
- STD:FWH:Ch 17 Spins the rescue at sea into an aelv-prince story for the Preserve's children, then walks the orchard path with John and watches him sketch.
- STD:FWH:Ch 18 Hides her face from a Preserve woman she might be recognised by, then sits on a stump at the forest's edge and confesses to John that the skops can no longer loose or bind, that she once took payment from Wellbury for protections she knew would fail, and that the doomed settlement is now under those trees.
- STD:FWH:Ch 19 Sheds her delivery robe in the Wellbury storehouse and prepares to slip into the town with John and Ealstan to attempt Wyrm's rescue.
- STD:FWH:Ch 20 Crouched by the manor's open window, whispers Wealdsig's chosen objects to John through his amped hearing and quietly thanks him when his patter pries the location of Wyrm out of the reeve.
- STD:FWH:Ch 22 Crouches against the wall with her brother freshly out of the pit and Ealstan bleeding out between them; screams when the arrow hits, is pushed aside as John works on the wound, and at the end of the chapter prostrates herself to John in the courtyard dirt — *forgive me, Great One* — a reaction he finds nauseating from her in particular.
- STD:FWH:Ch 23 Will not stop bowing to John or addressing him as honored aelv, refuses the eye-roll-for-old-times he asks for; smiles in a way he has not seen before as she keeps a hand on her brother by the fire, and joins Ealstan in committing to the road onward.
- STD:FWH:Ch 24 Rides honored-aelv-ing John past every conversational opening he gives her, finally tells him about the Night Marks and the wight-shadows she has lived with all her life, and afterwards holds to the line that her gift only makes her failures as a skop more embarrassing.
- STD:FWH:Ch 25 Spots the lord-bandit's tree-of-the-world line for what it is, talks Ealstan down from a confrontation he can only lose, and declares herself a skop to the lead bandit's face — earning the party a pass on her toll and a respectful nod from a man whose road they are standing on.
- STD:FWH:Ch 26 Sitting near the fire, chatting amiably with one of Ryan's recruits.
- STD:FWH:Ch 27 By the fire, gripping her soup bowl tight; nods at John that the captives are all right.
- STD:FWH:Ch 28 Watches Ryan dismantle John; follows John into the trees with a candle and brings him back.
- STD:FWH:Ch 29 Heading off to sleep with Thokk in the tool shack as John and Ryan plan.
- STD:FWH:Ch 30 Walks beside John's horse, takes the pencil, hesitates at writing for fear of Woden; later climbs into the saddle in front of him to keep pace.
- STD:FWH:Ch 31 Joins the bait party as a skop over John's objections, telling him she has lived a life without modern healing and refuses to be useless to him; walks into Maelport hand in his at 7:15.
- STD:FWH:Ch 32 Plays refugee with Thokk when the alarm rings, follows fleeing Ulric's men back to the oceanside walls, then finds John in the alley to warn him something is wrong.
- STD:FWH:Ch 33 Climbs the wall to see the Hordamen fleet, hears Woden's thunderclap on the gates, asks the sky why their god has turned on them; breaks off from John and Ealstan to make for the Maelport runestone in the central square.
- STD:FWH:Ch 34 Glimpsed at the close of the chapter — standing alone and unarmed in the central square between the runestone and the Hordamen flood pouring past the saferoom doors.
- STD:FWH:Ch 35 Alone in the central square against the Hordamen flood, shouts her hatred of Woden at the sky in skop meter — the runestone lights behind her, the city's hearth-wights answer her, and the Hordamen around her come undone.
- STD:FWH:Ch 37 Leans against John on the Maelport dock after the Hordaman retreat, fusses about his scars, kisses him, asks to learn every kind of writing he knows, and goes up to the city at Logna's direction to check on Ealstan.
Backreferences
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 4
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 5
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 6
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 7
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 8
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 9
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 10
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 11
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 12
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 13
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 14
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 15
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 16
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 17
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 18
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 19
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 20
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 21
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 22
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 23
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 24
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 25
- factskop
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 26
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 27
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 28
- factRyan Chu
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 29
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 30
- factEalstan
- factJohn West
- factRyan Chu
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 31
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 32
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 33
- factWoden
- factMaelport Runestone
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 34
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 35
- factSefawynn
- factlandswights
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 36
- summarySTD:FWH:Ch 37
- factEalstan
- factLogna
- factWoden
- factJohn West
- factJohn West
- summarySTD:FWH:Epilogue