Borka’s band occupies the North Fort

Borka’s band occupies the North Fort through a concealed entrance and a climbing rope, establishing a rival stronghold inside the fortress split by the lightning strike. The seizure is more than a tactical move: it gives physical shape to Matt and Borka’s old clan hostility, while the competing names for the keep expose how each side claims the place as its own. The ensuing standoff also belongs to a wider story that questions possession itself, as Ronia and Birk learn to see the forest and its animals as more than property or resources.

The Seizure and Its Method

Ronia first learns of the occupation from Birk Borkason, who tells her that he, Borka, Undis, and twelve robbers moved into the northern side the previous night. The news turns an unfamiliar meeting into a territorial confrontation. Ronia calls the newcomers dirty devils and threatens to have Matt drive them out; Birk counters that the men in Matt’s side are the ones his people call dirty devils. The insult is reciprocal, and neither clan’s name for the other settles who belongs where.

Birk makes the capture’s new claim explicit: the North Fort is no longer to be called that, but Borka’s Keep. The rename converts occupation into a declaration of authority. Ronia is enraged by the change, which she hears as an affront to Matt as much as an act of robbery. In the divided fortress, a name is itself a contest over who may define the place.

When Matt asks how Borka’s band entered, Borka explains that they used a climber as a “little monkey,” sending him up the steep wall with a long, strong rope. Birk secured it above so the others could follow, after which they walked into the keep and organized a robbers’ den. The entrance was not a breach in the obvious defenses but an old small door on the north side, once used by the maids to reach the pigsty. Borka points out that Matt had failed to remember it, though both men had known the fortress since childhood.

A Fortress Made of Memory and Feud

The old door makes the occupation personal as well as practical. Borka recalls that he and Matt used to catch rats near the pigsty as boys, until Matt’s father discovered them and boxed Borka’s ears. Matt answers that his father did many good things, including keeping Borka’s clan in its place. Borka’s recollection supplies the other side of that family history: he says Matt’s father taught him to regard every member of Matt’s clan as an enemy, alive or dead. Before that lesson, he says, neither boy had fully understood that their families belonged to opposing clans.

The capture therefore rests on a childhood landscape that both men remember differently. The forgotten service door gives Borka’s men access; the remembered violence gives the rivalry its inherited meaning. Matt and Borka’s dispute is not simply about who can occupy a fortress, but about a division taught and repeated until childhood companions become enemies. The two sides’ reciprocal accusations continue that inheritance, even as their shared memories expose how it began.

The Keep Under Siege

Borka’s band does not remain in its former den. As autumn comes, the Sheriff’s men find the cave where the robbers had lived, empty of both people and loot; with no sign of Borka, they leave Borka’s Wood. The Robbers’ Walk becomes unexpectedly free of robbers, although travelers cannot understand where the highwaymen have gone. The change in one territory’s security follows from the band’s move into the fortress, even while Matt’s own forest remains a place the Sheriff’s men prefer not to enter.

Matt spends much of his time trying to discover what Borka’s men are doing in the North Fort and how to reach them. He scouts the northern wood with one or two of his men, but the keep gives little away: it seems silent and deserted. Its occupants have made a long rope ladder to climb the rock face, and Matt sees it lowered only once. He rushes toward it and begins climbing, followed by his men, but arrows rain from the loopholes. Little-Snip is hit in the thigh and has to stay in bed for two days. The ladder, initially the means by which Borka’s band entered, becomes a guarded and dangerous route, turning Matt’s attempted counterattack into a costly failure.

The occupation thus produces a tense stalemate rather than an immediate battle for the northern side. Matt wants to force the newcomers out; Borka’s men keep watch and restrict access. During this interval, little robbery takes place, and the two bands have other things to think about. The fortress holds the feud in suspension: its walls make the rivalry visible, but they also keep each side from resolving it by a straightforward assault.

Possession Beyond the Walls

The argument over the fortress echoes in Ronia and Birk’s dispute over the woods. Ronia objects when she finds Birk watching the fox cubs she has followed since their birth, and tells him to leave her cubs and her woods. Birk rejects both claims. The foxes belong to themselves, he says, and the wood also belongs to wolves, bears, elk, wild horses, birds, insects, wild harpies, gray dwarfs, Rumphobs, and Murktrolls. His catalogue widens the question raised by the renamed keep: being familiar with a place, or living in it, does not mean that it belongs exclusively to one person or clan.

The spring scene gives that principle a quieter form. Ronia and Birk sit together while blackbirds and cuckoos call, fox cubs scamper near their den, squirrels move through the treetops, hares vanish into the bushes, and a pregnant snake lies in the sun. Neither they nor the snake disturb one another. Spring, the narration observes, is for everyone. Their later dealings with horses continue the same lesson: Ronia wants to ride but recognizes that a horse should not simply be taken from the woods where it belongs. The story places the clan’s claim to a fortress beside a broader, less possessive understanding of the forest.

From Rival Occupation to Shared Rule

The feud’s later settlement changes the meaning of the two bands’ division. In the wild beasts’ match, Matt and Borka fight under a rough code that permits breaking, tearing, biting, scratching, and kicking, but forbids a kick between the legs; a fighter who uses it loses at once. Matt wins, bloodied and with his shirt in rags, and the robbers accept him as chief. He tells Borka that they are brothers from then on, that Borka may keep a chieftain’s name and continue with his own men, but that Matt is the mightiest chief and his word now carries greater weight.

The conclusion does not erase the earlier occupation or make the two men’s authority equal. Instead, the story replaces the armed standoff with a hierarchy accepted through a contest governed by the robbers’ own rules. That evening Matt holds a feast in the stone hall for both his own robbers and Borka’s. The North Fort’s division has become part of a larger shared order: the bands remain distinguishable, but the old rivalry no longer dictates that they must meet only as enemies.