Borka’s Keep

Borka’s Keep is the name Borka gives the northern half of the ancient fortress on Matt’s Mountain after moving in with his family and twelve robbers. The lightning-split stronghold begins as a territorial challenge to Matt, but its walls and routes also make possible the relationship between Ronia and Birk. Its meaning changes from a rival robber den into a home Birk can return to, even as the young pair’s attachment draws them toward life beyond its walls.

Setting and Naming

The fortress had already been divided by lightning: the ancient structure on Matt’s Mountain was cleft from its highest battlements to the deepest dungeon vault, with a chasm separating the halves. The northern side therefore had a physical boundary before Borka’s band claimed it. Their occupation turns that damage into a new political border within the old family stronghold.

Birk tells Ronia that he lives there because his family moved in the previous night. When she asks who else has come, he names Borka, Undis, himself, and their twelve robbers. Ronia is stunned by the news and calls the inhabitants dirty devils; Birk counters that they are decent Borka robbers and that Matt’s side is described in the same hostile terms. The exchange shows how each clan’s home is also a point of view: from either half, the people across the divide are the rogues.

Birk insists that the northern fort is no longer the north fort but Borka’s Keep. Naming it is part of claiming it. Ronia hears the new name as an intolerable insult to Matt’s authority, while Birk treats it as a settled fact and tells her to remember it. The fortress’s division is thus not merely architectural: its halves acquire competing identities through the people who occupy and name them.

Occupation and the Route In

When Matt asks how Borka’s band entered, Borka explains that they had a little monkey who could climb the steepest walls with a long, strong rope trailing behind him. The monkey was Birk. He tied the rope securely at the top so the others could climb after him; once inside, they walked straight into the keep and organized a robber den. The account makes Birk’s agility the practical means by which his family’s claim became real.

Borka also recalls a less obvious route connected with the fortress’s earlier domestic life. In the days when it was more of a gentleman’s home, the maids had a small door to go out and feed the pigs. Matt is challenged to remember where the old pigsty stood, because as boys he and Borka caught rats there together before Matt’s father found them and boxed Borka’s ears. A forgotten service entrance and a childhood memory unsettle Matt’s assumption that he knows every way into the building where he has lived all his life.

The exchange exposes the history beneath the feud. Borka says Matt’s father taught him to regard every member of Matt’s clan as an enemy, alive or dead; before that, Borka had scarcely recognized that the boys belonged to different clans, and he doubts Matt had either. Matt answers that he understands the division now, and demands that Borka leave or face the death of one of his robbers. Borka refuses: he has made a home in Borka’s Keep and intends to stay.

A Stronghold on the Brink of Battle

The confrontation could have turned the divided fortress into a battlefield. Matt’s robbers wanted to stretch their bows immediately, and Borka’s men were armed too. But both leaders recognize that a battle at Hell’s Gap could end badly for everyone. They separate after one last exchange of insults rather than risk a fight whose consequences neither side can control.

The encounter leaves Matt and his robbers looking less like conquerors than they had intended. Noddle-Pete silently surveys them and smiles at the collision between Matt’s bluster and the failure to drive Borka out. The pause does not resolve the competing claims: Matt still regards the place as Matt’s Fort, while Borka declares that the northern half is his home. For a time, the fortress holds two rival robber groups in one structure, separated by the chasm and by the history each side tells about the other.

A Home That Complicates the Feud

The Keep’s role changes as Ronia’s loyalties become personal. While she is with Noddle-Pete, she realizes that she has opened a way into Borka’s Keep. Matt might recognize that the route gives him a means of reaching Borka, but Ronia is glad he has not worked it out. She no longer wants the Borka robbers thrown out: they must be allowed to stay for Birk’s sake. She decides that nobody should enter by the way she has opened and keeps the route secret from Noddle-Pete, whose knowing expression makes him seem capable of discovering anyone’s secrets.

That decision reverses the meaning of access. The routes into the fortress first enable Borka’s occupation and then offer Matt a possible way to attack it; in Ronia’s hands, withholding the route becomes a way to protect Birk and prevent another assault. The stronghold’s architecture remains the same, but Ronia’s understanding of what should happen there has changed: she no longer treats the Borka family’s presence as something to undo.

Even so, the Keep is not the only place the pair can imagine living. Ronia and Birk choose Bear’s Cave, high above the river between two rocky cliffs, as a refuge. Birk says that when winter comes Ronia will have to return to Matt’s Fort, while he could go back to Borka’s Keep but would still be without her and would not even be allowed to see her. He therefore plans to stay in the cave, accepting the prospect of winter there. The Keep remains his family home, but the conflict between the clans makes it feel incompatible with the closeness he wants.

Return and Continuing Significance

The separation does not remain permanent. At Wolf’s Neck, Birk tells Matt that he wants to go home to Borka’s Keep first and see how things are with Undis and Borka. He thanks Matt for allowing him to visit Matt’s Fort and see Ronia whenever he likes. Matt admits that granting this will not be easy for him, but agrees. The exchange makes a new kind of passage possible: Birk can belong to his family at the Keep and still maintain access to Ronia across the divide.

Birk had planned to spend the winter in Bear’s Cave, but is glad to warm himself by the fire at home in Borka’s Keep. He understands that he must live there, and Ronia agrees, because otherwise the enmity in the fortress on Matt’s Mountain would grow worse. He tells Ronia that Undis and Borka were extraordinarily glad when he came home, a response he had not expected. Ronia accepts the arrangement until spring, and the news also pleases Matt.

Borka’s Keep therefore remains both a stronghold in an inherited feud and a home whose claims cannot be reduced to that feud. Its naming and occupation sharpen the division between the clans; its entrances turn knowledge of the fortress into a tactical advantage; and its return as Birk’s home offers a practical alternative to escalating hostility. The story does not erase the boundary between the two sides, but it allows that boundary to be crossed through negotiated visits and personal ties.