The Roamer

“That was my last view of him—in a strong light, dominating, yet in complete accord with his surroundings—with the life of the forests and with the life of men…He was protected by his isolation, alone of his own superior kind, in close touch with Nature, that keeps faith on such easy terms with her lovers.”  --Joseph Conrad

“Thou art going the way to thy greatness: now must the gentlest in thee become the hardest.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

PART I

Chapter One

The trees had shed their leaves by this time of the season.  The red sun glared down on the boy from between a screen of slim black birch trunks, shafts of empty light cutting through the crystalline autumn air.  The world was dying as it did each year, gently crossing into the sleep of winter.  Snow would come soon, already the boy could taste it on the breeze.  The birds had been awake now for a few hours before sunrise, and chattered to each other from the bare black branches.  As long as they continued to sing, this moment of peace would last, this too short, too long quiet time of gut twisting expectation between the shouting of hurried preparation and the coming storm…

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Had the argument gone differently, the boy would not have been here, now, waiting.  The older youths were recruited whether they wanted or not: around the council fire last night war spears, heavier and shorter than their hunting counterparts, had been shoved into hands floating below faces both terrified and eager, and there were many more of the former.  The boy’s tribe was not a warrior tribe; they were hunters, but it was just this fact that had brought this danger.  Osrin, the war chieftain of the tribe, who had both a sword and a war axe, and even an iron helmet, had shouted encouragement and brave words at the youths gingerly holding the spears; through his grizzled beard he bellowed, spittle flying, and shook his naked sword at them.  The flames crackled to his roars, and spat angry sparks into the night, rising up to join their brother stars among the night clouds.  No one had seemed to give the boy any notice, perhaps he was too small to be seen among the gangly youths of twelve and fourteen summers around him, perhaps he was standing too deep in the shadows.  The boy had crossed the circle of firelight to where one of Osrin’s warriors still held a few undistributed war-spears, and had seized one thick, fire-hardened oak shaft.  The warrior, a tall silent man with a scar that twisted the corner of his mouth into the parody of a smile, shook his head and wordlessly shoved the boy out of the firelight with a force that sent the child stumbling.  Osrin paused in his exhortations to take in the sight of the stumbling boy, then returned to his speeches.  Rage flooded the boy’s blood…he, more than anyone here, had a right to go with the warriors.  Scar-face had no right to shove him.  He would join the war-party, even if the first life he had to take was Scar-face’s.
            He turned from the council fires and plunged into the night, into the chaos of a camp tearing apart shelters and gathering everything they could carry on their backs and the backs of their dogs.  His people were used to moving from one hunting ground to another, but it was only done a few times a year, and not over the course of a single dark autumn night.  He found his way through the gradually more unfamiliar camp to his shelter, saplings tied into a dome and shingled with bark in the manner of his tribe, and pushed through the deerskin doorway.  This shelter still stood, and what was inside remained unpacked, for there was no one now to pack or to dismantle the dome.  Lying stretched beside the stones of the firepit was what the boy had come back for.  He seized it and trotted back through the night to the twinkling light of the council fires.

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This was the second year the boy’s tribe faced the raiders.  The raiders had appeared in the middle of the afternoon last winter, just as the first snows had fallen.  The tribe had built their winter shelters and placed their meats in the storage holes, dried and spiced to protect the winter feast.  First two men appeared, then five, then ten and more, and still they flooded into the center of the winter camp, these ragged bags of bones dressed in scraps of metal and leather, and where bare skin showed they had covered it in bright paints.  The boy’s fellow well-fed tribesmen at first could not figure out why these strange men were here, but their weapons were of steel and iron, and so it was one of Osrin’s most trusted warriors, the boy’s father, who first approached the one who appeared to be their chief.  This chief returned his greeting by striking the boy’s father on his bare head with an axe, and the boy’s father fell dead. 
            The boy was not at the camp when this happened, nor were his brother nor Osrin and most of his warriors, as they were out setting the traps that would bring some fresh meat to their winter fare of pemmican.  They were not there to witness the rage of the starving raiders, whose hunger for food had brought them to this camp, but whose other hungers were awakened during the carnage, and satisfied.  Most of those tribesmen healthy enough to fight had also been healthy enough to lay traps, so they did not witness the tragedy as it unfolded, but they did return that evening to scenes that broke every heart.  The boy found his father where he had fallen, and his mother where she huddled naked and bleeding crimson trails into the pure white snow.  Although her breath still wreathed her head in the winter air and her body shivered in response to the icy wind, her eyes were empty, and the boy knew that he was truly an orphan…within the week her soul indeed fled that tortured body to wherever her mind had already gone.
            Terrible oaths of vengeance had been sworn, and before the last glow of the sun had faded behind the western mountains the warriors and young men and women of the tribe had taken up spear and leather shield and followed the tracks of the raiders.  The tribesmen found them encamped not far away, on the banks of the river, but the rage of the hunters broke against the desperate swords and knives of the battle-hardened raiders.  The boy had not gone with the war-party, but had remained at the camp, into which the surviving tribesmen stumbled individually and in pairs over the course of the next morning.  The boy was there at the camp when his brother was carried in, and he carefully washed the gaping and horrible wounds every day, sitting up with his brother day and night in their parent’s shelter until his brother at last succumbed to the chills and sweats and screaming, dying two days after their mother.
            That winter had been very hard, as the tribe stayed only a step ahead of starvation with the meat from the one storage pit the raiders had not found.

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This autumn night, as Osrin came to the end of his vows and aphorisms, the boy stepped once more into the circle of firelight holding the sword his father, as a warrior, had never had the chance to draw from its sheath.  The blade was naked, the rawhide sheath eaten during that nightmarish winter, and the firelight danced along an edge freshly honed by the boy each night since his brother’s death, soothing himself to the steady scrape of stone on steel.  Osrin considered the boy a long time, then nodded and picked up from one of the fire-pit’s stones a wooden bowl of crushed berries.  The old warrior, laced with scars and wounds still not healed from last year, stood in front of the boy and carefully dragged four red-stained fingers across the boy’s face, leaving four crimson stripes.
            Scar-face was moved to speak in the silence.  “Osrin, he is the last to carry the seed of his family.  For the sake of his clan, we cannot risk him.”
            Osrin nodded.  “And because of that, he has the right to fight with us.”  The matter was settled.

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They were not to fight for vengeance this morning.  Osrin had been very clear about this.  The tribe had given most of their young men and women to the raiders’ blades last winter, leaving the war chief only a handful of warriors, adults, and these yearlings to slow the raiders, spotted yesterday by hunting tribesmen, long enough to allow the rest of the tribe to escape into the mountains.  Regardless of how this day’s battle went, the raiders were unlikely to be deterred from chasing the tribe into the mountains, so strict instructions were given to fight as hard as possible when battle was joined, but when the horn was blown thrice they were to make their way to safety, and then to return to the tribe’s mountain enclave before nightfall to defend those narrow corridors between boulders that promised the safety a burrow provides a rabbit.  The boy, however, had lost interest in the welfare of the tribe, and crouched now in the ferns within the ragged line of hidden spears for his own purposes.
            Aryn.
            Through the cloud of fear and rage that shrouded the boy where he lay as still as possible, the boy frowned to himself.  For a moment, he thought he had heard the breeze whispering his name.  He wondered why a wind spirit would choose now to speak with him.
            Aryn!
            There it was again, but this time the boy was fairly sure it was hissed from a human throat, not a spirit.  He glanced quickly to his right, then to his left.  There, lying behind a mossy fallen log, was Tryon Blackfeather, a youth only a couple winters older than Aryn himself and with whom Aryn had occasionally played Jax and Old Man Willow in happier times.  Tryon grinned nervously through a thick layer of black paint and released his grip on his spear long enough to present Aryn with extended index and middle finger, the hunter sign for luck.  Aryn felt obliged to force a smile himself and return the sign, but he did not feel honest in doing so.
            The birds fell silent…

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Aryn was not sure when the battle began, or when he was expected to join in.  A sudden crashing of undergrowth, a war scream, a hoarse cry, the unexpected ting of metal on wood, and a shriek all exploded the silence a few yards to his right, but he could not see what was happening from his prone position.  More sounds, mostly grunts and the panting of effort, a few war screams and surprisingly few cries of pain followed the initial sounds, all to Aryn’s right.  The boy glanced left and saw Tryon on his feet, his fearsome mask solid with concentration as he stared towards the disturbances, his war spear held across his body as he danced from foot to foot, obviously unsure of whether to hold his place or rush to the fray.  Now Aryn could hear footsteps crunching over the leaves from all directions, with no indications of whether it was friend or foe, where they were coming from or where they were headed.  The boy lay still, closing his eyes and pushing his nose into the damp musty scent of dead leaves.  It was not cowardice that froze him to the ground, for he felt nothing now.  It was a lifetime of the hunt that told him his prey would soon come if he remained patient, and trusted to his hearing and not to the confusion of dancing sunlight in a morning forest.
            Denying himself sight, he separated the sounds of footsteps crashing through the undergrowth.  There was a light patter of steps crossing behind him…probably Tryon unable to restrain himself…there were a number of heavy footfalls in front also clustering towards the fighting…and then he picked out with absolute certainty the swift stride of a runner just in front of him, stride long, moving quickly around the fighting and headed in the general direction of the fleeing tribe half a mile away.  Aryn lay now right in the path of these running footsteps.
            The boy gripped the leather wrapped hilt of the sword he lay upon, opened his eyes and raised his head.  He saw a flash of dark brown boots, tanned legs churning beneath a bearskin skirt, a muscular body daubed in bright and fearsome colors, a wild mane of hair and long beard.  Not one of his.  A raider.
            Aryn glimpsed all this in a moment, and in the next moment leapt from the ground in a shower of leaves, driving the sword point first with all the power his small body could muster.  The boy watched the raider’s eyes between mane and beard flash wide with surprise, then the sword point crashed into the raider’s belly, and Aryn was pushing hard with all the fury and grief of the past year, his feet churning in the moist earth.  The bright steel sank deeper into the raider’s flesh, found some resistance, but was pushed harder and deeper.  The raider let out a rancid gust of breath, showed bright white teeth to Aryn, and managed to grip the boy’s shoulder with a painful, desperate strength.  The man stared into Aryn’s eyes and seemed to be trying to speak.  A plea?  An apology?  Aryn only stared at the dying raider with a mix of fascination, horror, and a grim joy.  The boy noted with little interest the axe the raider raised with his other arm, the notched edge aimed for the boy’s scalp.  Less in order to defend himself and more to assuage the grief of lost family, the boy shoved again on the sword and twisted the grip, trying to bring the blade around in the man’s body.  The axe fell to the ground, the raider groaned and toppled over, dragging the sword from the boy’s grasp.
            The reality of his surroundings came crashing back to Aryn, snapping him out of the reverie of his kill.  Now a sense of danger fluttered at the base of his spine, and in desperation he clawed at the body of the raider, trying to turn the corpse over to retrieve the sword he felt was his only chance for survival.  The grip was slippery with blood, and the body arranged in such a way that the boy could not get the blade free.  Something slammed into his back and sent him sprawling over the corpse, crushing the breath from him.  The weight squirmed off of his back and he rolled away into the ferns, glancing up to see the two men locked in struggle who had fallen on him now rolling through the leaves next to Aryn’s victim.  Aryn recognized one of the men from his tribe and with a yowl he snatched his hunting knife from his belt and leapt on the pair.  He identified a patch of lighter skin as being the man not of his tribe, and stabbed it with his knife, once, twice, and again.  The raider screeched, made a complicated movement with his elbows that caused the tribesman to go suddenly still, then twisted and flung Aryn from his back.  The boy hit the ground hard, but sprang back to his feet just in time to feel an arc of fire slash through the left side of his face.  The world disappeared in a curtain of crimson.  He gasped in pain and fear, felt the ground tilt and wobble beneath him, and began stumbling backwards to regain his balance and to escape the terrible pain and the raider who caused it.  He felt a branch catch his foot, he spun weightless, and the loamy smelling earth crashed into him.

Chapter Two

They named themselves Tamaziaghat, but most of the People of the tribes that hunted and fished these mountains, coasts, and forests called them the Roamers.  They were mysterious men and women, and the People knew far more myths and tales of Roamers than they knew fact.  Many People had personally met Roamers, for they were said to have no homes of their own, and when they tired of sleeping in dens curled up with bears or hanging from the ceilings of caves with the bats, they would seek the company of humans, and were always given a bowl of human food and a sleeping mat next to the fire.  It was said among the People that the Roamers knew the languages of not only the animals and birds, but the plants and stars as well, and held long conversations with them.  A few others swore that the Roamers were not wholly human, but that they were such friends of the forest because they were parented by both animals and humans.  Still others asserted that they were neither human nor animal, but were forest spirits that dressed as humans when it pleased them to come mingle among the People, and that such costumes were discarded as soon as these spirits walked away from the camps.
            Such mythological theories of the origins of the Roamers were easily disputed by those tribes and clans whose sons and daughters became Tamaziaghat themselves, and there were many who answered that silent call.  Sometimes a Roamer’s visit to a camp ended with the choosing of an apprentice, and the youth who accepted this position would be fare-welled by a tearful but proud family, who knew that though they would not see their son or daughter for many years, their child would eventually return if successful.  Although by its very nature the details of indoctrination were a closely held secret, the training to become a Roamer was known to be extremely difficult, long, and dangerous, and just as many potential Roamers were injured or even killed as simply quit.  It was considered a great honor to be the parent of a child chosen by the Tamaziaghat to enter their secret order, even if they did not make it through the years of instruction.  Those who did return to their tribes without having completed the Roamer training were uniformly silent about their experiences, and no one dared question them about it.  And those who returned for a visit as recognized Tamaziaghat were changed in so many ways that their parents would peer at their own child over the cooking fires, as if they had not loved and raised this person for fifteen long winters.
            The People needed the Tamaziaghat, though if questioned would not be able to say what exactly they needed them for.  The Roamers were the bridge that stood between the People of the tribes and the people of the forest, the birds, animals, rocks, and trees.  They passed between the two worlds easily, and kept open that door that allowed both Peoples to live together in balance.  The Roamers were also the keepers of the Peoples’ memories, and their occasional visits to the tribes were times when many songs were sung of the past deeds of mighty men and women, of the spirits and gods, and even of the Ancient Days.  Roamers were considered benevolent beings who were often known to come to the aid of someone in their deepest distress, a drowning child or a hunter lost and injured among the rocks, but they were not always around, and these acts of rescue were not why the People needed the Roamers.  More than needing the Roamers themselves, the People needed to know that there were Roamers, that there were those to represent humans at the councils of the wolves or the elk, to read the stars for the benefit of the People, or to greet the sun on behalf of all the tribes.

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There was a horrible taste in the boy’s mouth, and the awareness that the frosty cold of the ground had migrated into his joints and muscles.  Then the pain made itself known, a sharp, world-consuming ache that throbbed out from his head and through his limbs.  Aryn was nauseous from the pain, but was afraid to vomit for fear that the violent movements would somehow increase the pain to a level he would not be able to endure without slipping into madness.  He attempted to open his eyes, and felt the lids of his right eye slide open, but he could see only darkness.  Was he blind?  Panic briefly overwhelmed the pain, providing the strength to lift one hand to his face.  Through his right eye he could make out the darker shape of his hand against the background darkness…it must be nighttime.  He felt his face, and decided he could not open his left eye because of the curtain of caked blood that had dried in a ghoulish mask to that side.  He slid the hand slowly down his neck and body as far as he could reach, searching with delicate fingers for any other blood, wounds, or broken bones.  The search revealed nothing of concern; even the family seed that Scar-face had seemed so concerned about last night was safe.
            Lying quietly on the icy ground, Aryn wondered if he was safe.  He did not know the outcome of the fight, but knew that those of his own tribesmen who had survived would be miles away in the mountains by now.  But he did not know whether any of the raiders remained, even ones whom, like himself, had been wounded and were now awake.  Analyzing the many layers of pain that wracked his frame, Aryn realized that a burning thirst was one of the prominent causes, and knew this to be dangerous.  With a momentary pang of sadness, he remembered a clear brook that trickled through the meadow less than a mile to the south of where the tribesmen had established their defensive line, and felt that if he could get to his feet he must be able to make it there.
            Above all, Aryn knew, he needed to be silent.  Until he could be sure that there were no more raiders among the wounded, he could not risk letting anyone know he was alive.  He decided to get to his feet in stages, and would take all night doing so if needed.  Gritting his teeth against the unbidden moan caused by the movement, Aryn managed to get his elbows to his sides, then pushed upwards, attempting to rise to a sitting position.  The wave of pain this caused was followed by a cloak of deep silence, and the boy fell back unconscious.
            A lifetime later, Aryn awoke and tried to rise again, this time abandoning any attempt at silence and allowing himself to groan and thrash.  Once in a sitting position he rested, fighting off the faintness that enveloped him by concentrating on his bright pain, and on the chirping crickets, and on the night smells brought by the icy breeze between the trees.  When he felt ready, he pulled his knees to his chest in preparation to stand.
            “Stay there, boy.  Just sit still.”
            Through the pulsing pain, Aryn felt fear.  A raider.  He should have maintained his silence in rising.  Aryn forced every muscle to freeze, trying to think through the pain what his next plan should be.  He knew the raider would kill him, but did not know how death would come.  If by spear, perhaps he could try to grab the shaft.  If by sword, he could try to roll out of the way…
            “What were you trying to do, boy?”  The voice was from behind his left shoulder, and was soft, with a lilting cadence Aryn could not identify.  There was no threat in the voice, no sympathy, merely a detached curiosity; it was not the voice Aryn expected from a raider, but he did not know what a raider’s voice was supposed to sound like.  The boy remained silent, frozen, trying to better understand where the speaker was located and anticipate what was about to happen.
            He did not hear footsteps, but when the voice next came again it was from his right, and before him.  “I don’t think you’re mute.  Answer me.  What are you trying to do?”
            Aryn opened his right eye and slowly raised his chin towards the voice.  Through the pain and gloom of night, he saw what could only be a spirit: the outline of a man’s body beneath a wolf’s head.  Of more immediate interest was the clear shape of a lance held casually in the spirit-man’s right hand, the long steel blade of which gleamed in the starlight.  As far as he knew, being stabbed by a spirit ended the same way as being stabbed by a raider.  Unwilling to answer these taunts, Aryn mustered what little spittle he could from his parched mouth and spat at the lance-wielder, following it with a hiss.
            The insult did not seem to affect the wolf-spirit.  It considered the boy for long moments, then stepped silently closer to him.  The head of the lance swung casually closer as he did so, and Aryn took his opportunity, thrashing out with his arms in a desperate attempt to seize the shaft and therefore control the sharp point.  Somehow his palm slapped the wood shaft and he gripped it with all his might, trying to pull the weapon down and to his side, panic allowing him to remain conscious through the surge of hot pain.
            The spirit did not react to this activity, merely watched calmly as Aryn slumped exhausted over the lance shaft, still gripping the wood where it met the steel head, forming a bridge over the carpet of dead leaves between the battered boy and the spirit.  “Are you trying to fight me, boy?” the spirit asked with the same placid curiosity.  “You’re missing half your face, and you still fight?”  Without releasing its own grip on the lance, the spirit stepped closer, and crouched to look into Aryn’s eyes.  “Consider me defeated then.  Now, what do you want?”
            Now that the figure was this close to Aryn, the boy could see that it was not a wolf-spirit, but was instead a man wearing a wolf pelt as a sort of hood.  Most of the man’s face was still deeply shadowed by the overhanging wolf’s muzzle, but bright blue eyes, like chips of ice, glittered in the darkness.  They were not the eyes of a man about to kill him.  Aryn forced open his cracked lips and pushed the word through his swollen throat: “Water.”
            The wolf-hooded man gently but firmly pried Aryn’s fingers from the lance, then placed it on the ground himself.  He produced a full bladder and placed it to Aryn’s parched lips.  The boy dragged greedily at the musty tasting water, which seemed to vanish as soon as it entered his mouth, and nearly wept when the wolf-hooded man pulled the bladder away.  “You can’t have too much right now,” the hooded man said. “You’ll just vomit it back up.”
            The water, now sitting in his gut like hot lead, did indeed make the boy feel sick, and the nausea caused a fresh assault of the pain and a crushing weariness.  He closed his eye, feeling himself sinking into the deep silence again, and heard as if from a long way off, “Do you want to live?”  The question was delivered in an honest tone, without any hint of presupposition for the answer, and deserved a response.
            “Yes,” the boy managed, before the dark once again swept him away from the cold nighttime forest.

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He was stumbling through a bright cave, whose walls were burning hot, and the floor was a single mass of writhing snakes.  The bearded raider he had killed was chasing him, his father’s sword still hanging from his belly, and the hilt banged against the searing walls every time the pair rounded a corner in the labyrinthine cave.  Aryn was screaming, his legs could not churn through the snakes fast enough, and the raider roared through his beard matted with blood.  The boy was helpless, he could not raise his arms to defend himself as the raider at last reached him and wrapped the boy in a tight embrace with hairy arms and began to shake him till his teeth rattled, and the boy cried out and looked down at the raider’s arms wrapped so tightly about him and they were cords of rough grass rope, and the world rattled and shook around him as he was being dragged backwards through a morning forest on the wooden frame he was tied to.  Aryn tried to twist his head to see who was pulling him, and though he was tied too tightly to the stakes of the stretcher, he knew he would have seen the back of a wolf pelt hood.

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Aryn was with his father, mother, and brother in a meadow not far from the tribe’s summer camp.  The heat from the sun drenching the long grasses was tempered by a cool breeze coming from the snow-covered peaks that rose above the rolling hills of forests in the distance.  Insects hummed and danced on the breeze, and the family was gathering amaranth tubers for the tribal feast in a few days.  When they had gathered enough, they would set the tubers out to dry on the flat rocks on the banks of the river the tribe had camped near, then the boys would grind the tubers into the flour their mother would use to bake the flat breads she was so famous for, using the secret seasonings she promised her boys she would reveal to them when they became men and built their own shelters.  As they wandered the meadow, Aryn’s mother picked wildflowers and wove them into her long hair, singing softly old songs of love and of hunting grounds in distant lands.  Aryn and his brother flung stones as far as they could and bickered about whose stone flew farther, while their father laughed and declined the position of judge.
            A cloud passed before the sun, and its shadow seemed chiller than it should have been on this summer day.  “Why didn’t you save me?  Why did you let me die?”  Aryn’s brother asked.
            Aryn turned to face his brother, saw again the pale skin, darting eyes, the festering puncture just below his left collarbone and the vicious gash on his side that caused a flap of flesh to hang against his hip, revealing the glistening organs nestled within.  Tenderly, Aryn reached out and closed the flap, running a finger along the seam as if his touch could seal the wound, but the flap fell open again.  “I’m so sorry, Nisa,” Aryn said.  “I tried, I promise, I did.”
            “You could have done more!  Why would you let me die in such pain and sickness?”  But Aryn turned slowly from his brother, peering through the quickly gathering darkness in the meadow for his parents.  They were not where they had been standing, but holes in the sea of grass remained where he had last seen them.  He walked to the nearest, as the wind from the mountains grew to a roar and rippled through the meadow.  There lay his father, brains and blood spilled into the greenery, watching his approaching son with hate in his eyes.  “You weren’t there, son.  When I needed you, you weren’t there.”  Aryn did not answer, but continued walking to the next spot of disturbed grass, the one he dreaded the most.  There lay his mother, naked and ravaged, but she was grinning up at him with madness in her eyes.  “Aryn,” she said in a sickly sweet tone, though she spoke strangely, for there was something in her mouth.  “I have something of yours, my dear,” and she opened her mouth to reveal a bare eyeball sitting on her bloody tongue.
            Aryn had no chance to stop the vomit that rose through his throat and he rolled over from where he lay and was sick.  As he passed the bile from his stomach through his mouth and nose, he noted blearily that he had been lying on a bed, and that somehow a wooden bowl lay on the floor beside the bed in just the right place.  He concentrated on filling the bowl rather than allow any of the vomit to fall outside of it, and at last fell back onto a bed of rabbit skins, trying to calm his heaving stomach.
            Eyes closed, he first took a survey of himself.  The pain in his head still throbbed, and his limbs felt stiff and sore, but the pain was not as all consuming as it had seemed during the night.  He felt hot, but as he lay there a tingle of chill sprung awake at the base of his spine and began to spread through his body.  He began to shiver.
            He opened his eyes to search for some kind of blanket in this strange bed, and noted with concern that he was still opening only his right eye.  He touched the left side of his face and found a bandage.  At his feet at the end of the bed was a bearskin, and Aryn pulled the heavy pelt over him, trying in vain to quell the violent shivering that rattled his small frame.
            Waiting for sleep to reclaim him, Aryn took in his surroundings.  He lay in a bed made of a heavy wooden frame and a thin mattress covered with stitched together rabbit skins.  The bed was against one wall of an oval shaped room whose walls seemed to be made of tree trunks that rose and arched to meet at the center, with wattle and daub between the tree trunks, as if long ago someone had tied together a circle of living saplings and allowed them over the years to grow and swell together.  At one end of the oval was a bearskin curtain, around whose edges daylight shone to indicate this was a door to the outside, and at the opposite end was a stone fireplace, chimney rising up between two tree trunks, in which a large fire danced.  The gloom of the room was ameliorated by sunshine streaming in through a series of openings between the tree trunks higher up the walls, near where the trunks began to arch to meet; a number of clay oil lamps, currently not lit, indicated that the inhabitants were not reliant on the windows for light.
            The fireplace, the bed, and the other heavy furniture that lined the walls told of a more permanent residence than what Aryn’s tribe ever built; the hunting tribes sometimes had beds and tables, but made as light as possible, and able to be taken apart in pieces, so that a man or dog would be able to move it with the rest of the family’s belongings three or four times a year depending on the seasons and the hunting.  Aryn’s tribe never stayed so long in one hunting ground that the land had difficulty supporting them with deer, elk, fish, and the wild plants they foraged, but there were other tribes, mostly in the lowlands, who had settled down to raise the plants they ate, and these people had built unmovable homes of stone and heavy wood.  It was with these permanent communities that the hunting tribes traded meat and skins for steel and cloth, and Aryn had accompanied his tribesmen on these trading visits enough times that he was able to identify many of the items in the room he now lay in: to his left was a small loom, directly across the room from his bed was a table upon which were thin sheets of what Aryn knew was paper that he had seen others drawing many small, strange shapes on, and near the fireplace was a lathe.  Many more items cluttered the room, but Aryn’s shivering was relaxing as drowsiness set in, and satisfying himself that he had been brought to one of the farming communities, the boy slipped back into his dreams.
            When a raging thirst woke the boy again the sunlight no longer flooded into the room, and the oil lamps had been lit.  Smells of roast meat filled the room, causing hunger to rival thirst in Aryn’s waking moments.  He saw a tall man with his back to Aryn bending over an iron pot nestled in the coals of the fireplace, long grey hair spilling down the back of his doeskin tunic.  Aryn gave no indication that he was awake yet, but the same voice he had heard from beneath the wolf pelt hood that awful night after the battle said, “You woke in time for supper.  How are you feeling?”
            The soft, calm voice and the long grey hair sparked a feeling of recognition in the boy, but it wasn’t until the man turned from the fireplace and strode to the bedside that Aryn finally remembered where he had seen the man before.  It was Torell Beardancer, the Roamer who visited Aryn’s tribe a few times a year, who would sing the old songs around their feasting fires and who had once, years ago, whittled for Aryn a wooden spin toy when he had lain sick with the childhood pox.  Shocked by the recognition of the familiar long nose and small, tight mouth over ice blue eyes, Aryn forgot for a moment even his thirst, but Torell was handing him a wooden bowl of water, and the boy drank deeply before whispering through tortured throat, “I feel much better, thank you.”
            Shyness halted any further speech from the boy, but the Roamer did not seem to notice, as he calmly began unwinding the bandage from around Aryn’s head.  Torell explained as he worked, “I’ll change the poultice on your wound, but you’ve passed through the fever now.  In another day you’ll be walking.”
            Aryn did not dare bring his hand to his face while the bandage was being removed, but he needed to know.  “My wound?”
            Torell had removed the wad of crushed herbs, an operation that caused a sting of pain, and was peering carefully at the left eye that Aryn could still not see from.  “Yes.  You’ve lost your eye.  I had to remove what was left of it, and stitch the cut across your face.  You’re healing well, though, and I don’t think you are in danger of infection.”
            Aryn stared in disbelief.  He could not possibly have lost his eye.  The raider had cut him, it was true, but it was only a cut, a scratch that would heal within a few days.  He was only a boy, he was too young to be missing parts of himself!  Aryn raged silently to himself, repeating all of these arguments and more, while Torell brought another bowl of water and began gently bathing the side of his face, then applying another poultice and rewrapping the bandage.  The boy simmered in rage, and suddenly realized that he hated this man, this Roamer, who had taken his eye, who had told him this disgusting lie that he was missing his eye.  It was not true; he was only hurt, and when he was healed he would remove this bandage and show this man his good left eye, then spit on him for terrifying a child like this.
            If Torell noticed any of this cold rage directed at him, he showed no sign of it, merely gathered the bowls and discarded poultice wad, threw the latter in the fire and the bowls onto the table.  He then busied himself at the iron pot in the fireplace, and returned to the bed a few minutes later with a wooden trencher of steaming goose meat, wild onions, and boiled cattail tubers.  Aryn’s initial vow not to taste any food offered by this hateful man crumbled the moment he smelled the food, and he had nearly devoured his entire portion before Torell had even sat down at the table with his own trencher.
            The food had softened Aryn’s fury, and he resolved to ignore the matter of his eye, missing or not, for as long as possible.  He sought for any other subject, and decided to find out more about his host, who sat at his table, eating silently and staring into the fire.  “Your name is Torell Beardancer, isn’t it?” Aryn asked, falling back on pleasantries to avoid any more talk of wounds or eyes.
            The grey haired man nodded, but offered no further conversation.
            Aryn tried again.  “You’re a Roamer, aren’t you?  I remember listening to you sing the songs around our feast fires when you visited our tribe.”
            Torell shrugged.  “Most likely.  I visit a lot of tribes.”
            “We are known to the People as the North Wind tribe.  Last time you came was this spring, when we were camped near the Salmon Falls.”
            Torell chewed on a chunk of goose and squinted at Aryn with the first hint of interest.  “You’re the son of Gyrit Steelshaft and Laani Windjumper,” he at last pronounced.  It was not a question.
            Aryn experienced another pang at the sound of his parents’ names.  “Yes,” he acknowledged, turning his head to watch the coals in the fireplace.
            Finished with his meal, Torell set the pot on the hearth to cool, gathered the utensils, and ducked out of the bearskin curtain that served as a door.  He returned minutes later with the clean bowls and spoons, during which time Aryn had had an opportunity to ponder on his own future.  “What will happen to me now?” he asked.
            Torell produced a leather pouch and began filling a pipe.  “You will stay here in my home until you are able to travel, then you will return to your tribe.  I know what happened to Gyrit and Laani, so your clan will raise you.”
            Aryn did feel a pang of homesickness for the shelters of his aunts and uncles, but could not imagine returning to the North Wind.  The tribe for him had become a painful reminder of what was not there: his parents and brother.  In the past year, he had found himself going to great lengths to avoid his clan, for as much as he loved them, they brought more painful memories than they had created happier ones.  And it had not only been his lost parents; after the first raid, there had seemed to be holes in all of the clans of the tribe, ghosts of slaughtered childhood friends and elders who had always been so kind to the children.  The wandering life that the hunters led was always one accompanied by the deaths of loved ones, through accidents or sickness or lean years when the tribe had been unable to hunt or forage enough food to care for their weaker tribesmen, but these had always been mourned and accepted as the natural cycle of the world, and their dead joined the spirits that would always be among them at their fires, guiding their arrows, or in their shelters as they slept.  What had happened last winter was a maelstrom of rage and fear and cruelty.  The raiders had taken more than lives and the winter’s food, they had taken the spirit of the tribe from them, and Aryn did not feel capable of the strength it would take to return their daily lives to what they had led before the terrible brutality.
            But that was the way of things.  Orphans were taken in by their clan, or by the tribe in the event of a catastrophe.  Aryn knew that even in the best case the tribe would be an even more sad place to spend the next few years; he remembered the night Torell had met him at the battlefield there had been dark, lifeless shapes scattered across the forest floor, still mounds of flesh and bone devoid of breath or soul.  It was impossible to believe that all of the corpses were those of raiders.  Aryn would return to a once proud tribe now broken and huddled in mountain hiding, trapped in their own fear, the hunters now the hunted.  For a boy raised to wander the forests in freedom, fearing only the everyday dangers the forest could present the careless, such a life seemed to be a death of its own.  He had to believe that something would change, that years from now these dark days would be nothing more than sad songs to sing to the next generation of the North Wind.
            The Roamer sat on a folded deer hide, resting against a triangular frame with a wicker back, one hand tucked into his belt and the other supporting the long pipe he smoked quietly as he stared into the fire.  Aryn watched the firelight dance along the long features, the half-closed eyes, highlight the long grey hair.  Thoughts of his tribe, his wound, the battle, and his lost parents crowded into the boy’s mind at once, making him suddenly very sleepy and unable to concentrate on one.  He felt his own eyelid droop, and the warmth of the fire in that small room wrapped him as in a blanket.  He wanted nothing more now than to stretch out and sleep, and he lay down.  Torell stopped puffing his pipe long enough to say; “I will be leaving tonight, I don’t know for how long, but I will be back at least by tomorrow night.  There is an outhouse down the hill as you leave the door, fresh water from a spring up the hill behind my home, and food in a storage pit near the spring: look for a large, flat stone between two willows.  Do not try wandering too far until your strength returns and you learn how to manage with only one…” but here the Roamer stopped speaking, perhaps aware of Aryn’s opinions of his own wound.  If Torell said anything else after that, the boy was no longer awake to hear it.

Chapter 3

The Roamer was indeed gone when the boy awoke just after dawn the next day.  The coals of last night’s fire kept the home an envelope of warmth Aryn did not fully appreciate until he stumbled out into the frosty air in an urgent quest for the outhouse.  He found the lean-to down the hill as promised, and business concluded also found a small stream not far from the lean-to whose water numbed his skin as he washed.  Walking back up the hill to the sound of birdsong and his own feet crunching the frozen dew, Aryn saw now that his suspicions about the house formed while inside it were confirmed on seeing it from the outside.  The home Torell had made for himself looked, if one squinted, like one enormous living tree from which a stone chimney protruded just below where the bare branches would in the spring carry a crown of leaves.  A more careful observer would see that the massive shape was actually made up of a circle of tree trunks that had been trained since saplings to knot together in the center before branching back out to form the crown, and brown wattle-and-daub had been used to fill in the spaces between the trunks.  Aryn had never seen anything like it.
            Hunger and thirst turned his footsteps up the gentle slope in search of the promised food and water.  The boy was somewhat surprised to find how weak he had become; his limbs quivered with the effort of walking, and he soon felt dizzy with exhaustion only halfway up the easy hill.  The dizziness was exasperated by the lack of depth perception that being blinded in one eye caused.  He had at first thought the use of only one eye had changed nothing in how he viewed the world, but when he reached to touch something or place his foot on a sudden rise in the ground, he would find that his target was either closer or farther than where he had planned for it to be.  The anger washed through him each time this happened, and he vowed to remove the bandage as soon as he could and prove the Roamer wrong.
            The spring water trickled from a cleft between two mossy boulders and ran through a rocky channel hidden by ferns down the hill, presumably to meet the stream Aryn had washed in this morning.  The boy availed himself of a wooden bowl sitting on one of the boulders, and having drunk his fill soon found the large flat stone between two willows.  A hefty branch and rounded boulder lying on the flat stone were used as a lever and fulcrum to allow the boy access to the cedar-lined storage pit.  He removed a loaf of flat bread, a few strips of dried fish and two boiled eggs, and breakfasted sitting next to the spring.
            He spent the bright, clear morning exploring the woodland and meadow surrounding the Roamer’s home, never going so far that he lost sight of the large mass of multiple trees that made up the strange shelter.  He no longer felt any fever, and the pain of his wound had subsided to a manageable throbbing ache that only sparked a fresh sting during moments of sudden exertion.  He was still surprised how often he needed to stop to rest, and as the sky began to darken and the clouds swell with rain in the early afternoon, he used this as an excuse to return to the home.  He had gathered blackberries during his walk, and with a few loaves of bread and some pemmican retrieved from the storage pit on his return trip, the boy made it back to the home just as the first few drops pattered on the dead leaves.
            After eating, the boy stoked the fire and lit the oil lamps to replace the sunlight the storm had wiped from the sky in order to begin exploring the Roamer’s tiny home.  But each item he reached for he missed by either reaching too far or not far enough.  With a grunt of frustration, the boy began tearing at the bandage around his head, and ignoring the sting of pain plucked the wad of poultice from where it had dried to his face.  He struggled to open his left eye, straining his facial muscles, but realized with growing terror he truly could not.  With trembling hand he touched his left jaw, then allowed his fingers to travel slowly upwards.  Concentrating on what his fingers read, he did not notice the pain caused by touching the sensitive flesh, instead he found a vicious gash, like a valley between two puffed and swollen hills of skin, starting at the center of his cheek and traveling straight upwards.  Tiny bridges of some kind of thread held the two sides of skin together at small intervals across the gash.  In mounting panic, he counted the threads as he moved up to his left eye…one, two, three, four…then his fingers crested the bone of his eye socket and found nothing but a flat patch of skin.  The gash and stitches continued across this flap of skin, up into his eyebrow and just past, but Aryn had lost any desire to count.  His fingers returned to his eye socket, now a flattened eyelid with no trace of an orb behind it.  In fury and panic he pushed at the flat lid, searching for any trace of his eye, and finding nothing pushed harder, weeping uncontrollably, till at last the excruciating pain of the search overrode his pain of loss, and he stumbled out of the home just in time to vomit into the drenching rain.
            He lay curled in the mud for a long time, crying to himself for his loss as thunder crashed over him and icy sleet slid down his neck and arms.  At last, drained of all other emotion, he picked himself up and went back into the house to mechanically busy himself with small house duties, cleaning the mud from his clothes, cleaning the iron pot used for last night’s supper, shoveling out the fireplace and restocking the wood pile from a massive woodpile he found just outside, and straightening and cleaning the clutter of the small home.  During these chores he came across a pile of leather scraps, and further investigation produced a small obsidian blade, a snarled ball of ligament, and a bone needle.
            The rain had ended hours before Torell appeared at the doorway of the tree-home, during which time Aryn had foraged the stand of wild rice he found near the stream, and which he now cooked the results of in the iron pot from last night.  The Roamer looked exhausted, and a haunted look that had not been there the night before clouded his long features.  Aryn noticed that Torell’s hands looked freshly scrubbed, but there remained crimson stains farther up his forearms, and the dark brown of fresh blood still clumped the edges of his fur lined cloak.  The Roamer wordlessly dropped three squirrels and a rabbit at the hearth; their necks were broken as in a snare, and they were not the source of the blood.  Aryn began to skin and clean the meat to add to the rice as the Roamer removed his cloak and wolf pelt hood, the Torell took a closer look at the boy.  “The eye patch looks good,” was all the Roamer said.  Aryn was grateful that the man said nothing about bandages or poultices; the boy had put that stage of his wound behind him in his mind, and did not want to return to being treated as a patient.
            They ate in silence, then as the boy cleaned the dishes the Roamer began to clean and sharpen his lance-head, using sand to scrub the steel clean.  The scrape of stone on steel reminded the boy of his father’s sword.  “Torell,” he said at last, “I want to return to where you first found me and retrieve my father’s sword.”
            The Roamer’s whetstone sang off the tip of his lance blade.  When he at last spoke, it was not what the boy expected.  “What is your name, son of Gyrit?”
            With a shock, Aryn realized he had never told the Roamer his name.  “Aryn.  Sir,” he said suddenly feeling shy, and adding the honorific for the first time.
            Torell did not seem to notice the uncomfortable tone of the boy’s voice.  “Aryn Steelshaft, I will not tell you all I saw and did since I left last night.  You are a boy.  But as much as I wish it were not so, your child’s heart must bear burdens difficult for any man’s to carry.”  The stone slid down the steel edge and rang off the tip again.  “Your father’s sword is no longer in the forest where I found you.  And your tribe, the North Wind tribe…” his voice caught in his throat, and the stone made three more passes along the lance head before he spoke again.  “The raiders followed the North Wind into the mountains.  What I saw told me that both brave and terrible deeds had been done.  What happened afterwards was not driven by the hunger of a band of warriors unable to hunt for themselves.  It was driven by hate and vengeance, spirits that once they grip a man’s heart make him no longer a man.”  Aryn stared in horror at the grey haired man as he paused in his sharpening to stare into the fire.  “I know that many families made it out of the mountains and back into the forests.  I made sure that they did.”  Aryn turned his gaze to the lance head’s blade, its fresh nicks in the edge, and remembered the dark stains the Roamer had scrubbed off with sand.  “But most of those survivors have fled to the protection of the East and West Wind tribes, and other tribes farther from these valleys.  Those who have not yet sought the protection of other tribes will remain hidden where they can to survive this winter.  But the tribe is broken, the clans scattered.”  Torell carefully placed his lance and stone on the ground and turned to face Aryn, and the pain and sadness in the Roamer’s eyes nearly matched what Aryn felt in his heart. “Aryn,” he said quietly, “There is no more North Wind for you to return to.”
            Aryn stared unseeing at the Roamer.  At last he managed to ask, “Why didn’t you leave me where you found me on the battlefield?  Why did you let me live?”
            Tears filled Torell’s eyes, but did not fall.  “Because you asked me to.”

AAA

The next morning was grey with a light rain, but the Roamer and the boy slept through much of it, as they had stayed awake through most of the night talking.  Torell had said that the other tribes were already overburdened by having to care for the North Wind refugees who sought protection among them, and since Aryn had no desire to start a new life among relative strangers, Torell had agreed to allow the boy to stay with him until they either found any survivors of his clan or found another option.  “I will do my part in these troubled days,” is the way Torell seemed to justify it to himself.
            Aryn had suggested that he become Torell’s apprentice, but the Roamer had absolutely refused.  “You are too young to begin training, even too young to understand why you are too young,” he explained.  “The Tamaziaghat path is much more than a test of your physical body; there are Swordsmasters for that.  Tamaziaghat journeys are spiritual trials and explorations for which the skills of your body are used merely to allow you to survive them.  Being a child, you would not learn what was necessary during the teachings, even if you were to live through them.”
            So Aryn was to live, at least for now, as the ward of the Roamer Torell Beardancer.  The first order of business was to create a space for the boy in the home; Torell picked out a relatively uncluttered corner, and the two rearranged the home to clear an area for a bed.  They then built the bed over the course of the next two days, Torell showing Aryn how to weave the grass ropes between the bed frames to hold the mattress, and they hung deer and bear skins from a stretched rope to create a curtain for privacy.  Torell acquainted Aryn with the area, the best fishing holes, and the location of the deadfalls and snares it would be Aryn’s chore to check, set, and move as necessary.  Aryn was still having trouble with depth perception, but Torell preached patience.  “It is a handicap,” he explained.  “You will have to work harder to overcome what many of the rest of us take for granted, but it is not impossible.  I know many one-eyed hunters whose skills with a bow or javelin far exceeds those of their peers.  You will find your own practices and methods to accomplish what you need to, but having two eyes, I cannot teach these things to you myself.”  Aryn believed Torell’s example of the one-eyed hunters, for the Roamer had never lied to him, and was not the type of person to drop a comforting word merely for kindness.
            A routine soon developed at the strange tree-home as winter deepened and pulled a blanket of snow over the land.  Aryn’s unspoken sovereignty lay within the house and surrounding area, for he took upon the duties of cooking and cleaning, checking the traps for snow-hare, and fishing through holes chopped in the ice of the stream.  Torell taught him to use the loom and the small forge and anvil behind the house, as well as the lathe and chisels, and Aryn spent many long winter nights before the fire, repairing or crafting.  Torell also began teaching him how to decipher and draw the strange small symbols on the delicate paper or on skins, and though the boy hated the task he forced himself to spend hours converting into sounds and then words the drawings he found scrawled on the many rolls of paper and skins the Roamer had stacked in a small chest.  Through this, he was introduced to concepts of mathematics, the movements of stars, the activity of the body’s organs, and the best and worst aspects of different forms of governance, but most of it was even more indecipherable than the script itself, and he did not pay too much attention to it.  He was more interested now in turning the drawings into words than in what the words themselves were trying to communicate.
            Torell was away at least as much as he was at home, and Aryn understood that it was only because of himself and the season that Torell returned to the tree-home when he did.  The Roamer had once confided to Aryn that sometimes years would pass before he saw the tree-home again, and that come spring the boy must be prepared to spend a lot of time on his own.  Aryn felt indifferent about this; he was used to the constant companionship of family or tribesmen, but the death of his family had left him with a strange desire for solitude.  When Torell was at home he was a calm, unobtrusive, almost comforting presence in the house, but Aryn also felt comfortable as sole proprietor of the tree-house when he was gone.
            Almost in direct contradiction to Torell’s warnings of solitude, the small house became quite cramped with the arrival of Lorness.  Lorness Greentree was also a Roamer, a handsome older woman with jet-black hair streaked with silver and serious brown eyes that wrinkled at the corners when she chuckled.  She had appeared one day from the woods while Aryn was behind the house mangling a scrap piece of steel at the forge (steel was very rare even at Torell’s home, and Aryn practiced by converting the same piece of steel into blades, plates, cups, and rods as the fancy took him).  She had asked about Torell from over Aryn’s shoulder, and he had smacked his thumb with the hammer in surprise.  Aryn had not seen Torell for three days at this point so expected him home soon; the lady Lorness had shrugged and passed into the house without any invitation.  Aryn had followed her in ostensibly to prepare a lunch that was pointedly for himself and not for her, but this too did not faze her.  By the time Torell returned that night, Aryn’s diffidence towards this female intruder had melted before her amusing stories and efficient help with the evening housework, and when the two Roamers embraced passionately the boy felt nothing but a warmth that poignantly reminded him of his family.
            The first time Lorness visited them that winter she stayed for four days, then the two Roamers left one morning and Torell returned to the tree-house alone the next day.  During those four days, Aryn found himself invited to spend more time outside while the two Roamers occupied the house, but the boy did not mind it, since the time that the three spent together at supper and around the fire were so peaceful and normal that he could almost believe he had never led any other life.  He felt no guilt that he was trying to replace his lost parents, for he was not doing so: Aryn loved his dead family as strongly as he ever had, and Lorness listened with kindness and interest as he regaled her with tales about his mother, father, and brother.  Everyone in the trio knew their roles, as ward, protector, and friend, and Aryn drew great comfort from these certainties.
            Lorness visited the tree-home four times that winter, and the last time she and Torell left the home the snow was melting, the sun warming, and he was gone for six days.  When he returned, the Roamer told the boy, “The fawns will be running soon.  The land is waking, and it is time I once again begin my travels.”
            Aryn nodded, have expected this.  “When will you leave?”
            Torell shrugged.  “Perhaps tomorrow.  Have you practiced with the bow and spear with your one eye?”  The boy merely nodded; the subject of his eye no longer had the emotional impact it once did.  “Good,” continued the Roamer. “A herd of deer is moving into the canyon beyond the western ridge.  You can begin there while I am gone.  Remember to take only what you need from the animals and plants in this area; I do not want you to travel more than a day’s walk from this house.  I still have a responsibility for you.”
            “Will you visit the East and West Winds?”
            “I will.”
            The boy did not know how to ask his next question, fearing the answer.  He liked the strange tree-home, he enjoyed the solitude and found healing in it, he did not want to return to the chaotic life of a hunting tribe.  “Will you be seeking a place for me?”
            “Yes.”
            Aryn’s heart fell.  “Torell, why?  I’m happy here, I can take care of myself, and you’re never here…why can’t I stay?”  The words fell from his mouth like a waterfall, unbidden, but he was glad he had spoken his heart.
            Torell laid a hand on his shoulder and his eyes were kind.  “You are still a child.  This life is not right for you, you need to be among your people.  You have done well this winter, but I have met men and women who grew alone in the forest, separated from their people and their traditions, their history.  It is not right, not for one who is not Tamaziaghat.  You belong with your pack.”  His words were kind, but his tone of voice told Aryn that further argument would be neither successful nor welcome.
            The Roamer spent the night packing a bundle of necessities; a pouch of dried meat and loaves of bread, extra tunic and leggings, tinder bundle and flint, rope, small hatchet, a yard of woven cloth, and other items were rolled into a large cloak and tied with rawhide straps.  Torell had also included a sword that Aryn had often admired where it had hung over the fireplace, rolling the sheathed blade into the center of the cloak so that the hilt protruded from one end of the bundle, ready to hand.  The two ate supper together for the last time, then Torell filled his customary pipe and regaled Aryn with a long epic about the harper Tomas, and how he lost and then won his freedom from the Queen of the earth spirits.  Aryn drifted off to sleep on the rug near the fire, and did not wake when Torell put him to bed.  In the morning the boy woke in time to watch the Roamer hang the bundle over one shoulder from a strap, pull on the wolf pelt hood, pick up his lance, and step out of the tree-home without a word.  By the time Aryn pulled himself out of bed and made it to the door, the Roamer was no where in sight.

AAA

Aryn’s days became more lonely, but the boy was content.  He took his bow and a quiver of arrows to the canyon Torell had mentioned and found the herd of deer.  He took an elderly stag; it was not a clean kill, for the first arrow landed to far to the left, in the deer’s shoulder, while the second stuck in the animal’s neck, and Aryn spent two hours and three more arrows to finally bring the stag down, finishing it with his hunting knife.  It was his first solo hunt, and with a twinge in his gut Aryn realized that this would have been his initiation ceremony were he still with his tribe.  He was too small still to carry the deer over his shoulders as his tribesmen had done, so he looped his belt around the animal’s haunches and dragged it out of the canyon, keenly aware that he was a temptation for the hungry wolves and bears waking from their long winter sleep.  Luckily the stag’s route during the blood-chase had rounded back towards the tree-home, and Aryn made the trip without incident, as exhausting as it was.  He spent the next three days smoking most of the meat over an outdoor fire and tanning the hides in a stump he filled with water and crushed acorns.
            Well supplied with meat and forage, and the tree-house in good repair after the winter’s work he had done, Aryn began his own wanderings farther from the Torell’s house, exploring the ridgeline to the north, investigating the warren of caves and tunnels, or following the stream farther than he had before.  He never met any other humans, but never went farther than he could travel between sun-up and sundown, making an overnight camp on these occasions and returning the next day, eating whatever he could gather or those small animals he could take with his throwing stick.
            It was on his return from one of these overnight trips that he found Lorness waiting at the tree-house.  Torell had been away for many weeks by now, and the bloom of spring had crowned the tree-home with a thick dome of bright green leaves.  Aryn greeted her warmly, noting that Torell’s bed had been slept in, and he wondered if she would chastise him for staying out all night, for it seemed obvious why she was there.  “Lorness, were you sent to check up on me?” the boy asked laughing.
            She laughed as well, but did not deny his accusation.  Nor did she mention his overnight absence.
            They dined outside on wild greens, nuts, and fried fish the Roamer had caught while waiting for Aryn, and talked as the blue of the evening sky blazed with orange, then deepened to night and revealed the stars washed across the heavens.  The boy carried out an oil lamp and a few of the paper rolls from Torell’s chest and allowed himself to show off for Lorness the progress he was making in turning the scratched symbols into words, reading slowly but steadily by the flickering light of the lamp.  Lorness smiled strangely at him and nodded.  “My, my, you’ve been keeping yourself busy, haven’t you?” she asked, but Aryn had no idea how to answer that.
            She asked him if he understood what he was reading, and he confessed with shame that he did not.  She then began explaining to him the ideas behind the words on the scroll, which was a natural sciences treatise on how rocks were formed, how canyons were carved by water, and how the entire world was made up of enormous plates that sat upon seas of fire.  The Roamer used fragments of well-known songs and folk tales to illustrate what she was saying, and though much of it seemed to Aryn to strain credibility, he drank it all in.  By the time he crawled into bed, his mind whirled with these new ways of seeing and understanding the world around him.
            Lorness was gone when he awoke the next morning, and it was another three weeks before Aryn saw another human, when Torell at last returned.  Aryn was fishing at a river about an hour from the tree-home, and looked up to see the Roamer slip quietly into the water from the far bank, cross with a few powerful strokes, and emerge next to the log Aryn sat on, soaking wet and with a merry twinkle in his eyes.  “Gods, but that felt good,” the Roamer said, the wolf pelt dripping down his back.  “It’s hotter than a bear’s den today!” Aryn embraced his friend.
            They walked back to the tree-home along paths Aryn had become well familiar with, as Torell told the boy tales of his travels.  Aryn was proud to show Torell how well he had taken care of his home, having just smoked it free of insects the day before.  Torell seemed to take little interest in the tree-home, but was not unkind to the boy.  The Roamer suggested that they take a walk to the ridgeline, and the two ended up sitting on a rock outcropping Aryn knew well, for from its peak one could look out over miles of rolling forest and meadow, over the three silver ribbons of water that wound down from the mountains behind them to the valley below.  Something was bothering Torell, and at last he spoke.  “I cannot send you to either the East or West Wind tribes.”
            Aryn felt his heart surge with hope.  He had been dreading the moment Torell would tell him he had to leave, and his sorrow had grown heavier as they had walked up the ridge.  He waited for the Roamer to explain.
            “The North Wind refugees have been a heavy burden on both the tribes,” Torell continued.  “The winter was very difficult for them both.  Your value as another hunter would not compensate for what the tribe would have to provide for you; they are moving to different hunting grounds almost every month, for their tribes are already too large.  But there is also the matter of raiders.”  He paused to spit.  “There are more and more bands of them, especially since the beginning of spring.  The tribes have become armed camps, and the hunters are spending more time with swords in their hands than hunting spears.”
            Aryn did not understand.  “More raiders?  Like the ones that…Like the ones I met?”  Such bands of roving warriors had been virtually unknown before the year they first attacked the North Wind.  The children had heard stories of such things from the old days, and there was always the occasional banding together of outlaws, but those were men and women from the tribes who had been exiled from their clans for various crimes, known to most of the tribesmen by name, and they never lasted long if they chose to attack the tribes.  Aryn could not imagine that so many tribesmen had become outlaws that they were a valid threat to all the tribes.
            Torell shook his head.  “I confess I don’t understand either, but I mean to find out.  I’ve discovered that these raiders are not of our People; they do not speak our tongue, dress as we do, and they use unfamiliar weapons.  I have heard many rumors that they have come here from across the Eastern Desert,” here the Roamer swept his arm to encompass the East, “But I do not know why they are here, or why they choose to survive through warfare instead of hunting or farming.”
            Aryn thought briefly of the raiders he had fought, what he had seen and heard of them.  “That doesn’t sound like the people who attacked my tribe.”
            Torell grunted.  “No, the ones who attacked you were from a hunting tribe who had been forced from their lands by these eastern warriors.  Unable to provide for themselves, they turned to banditry, and eventually, to…” but he did not need to finish.
            Aryn remembered a line from one of the scrolls he used to practice reading.  “ ‘As long as swords are forged, war will give birth to war’,” he quoted softly.  Torell looked at Aryn strangely, as if for the first time.  “That’s right,” was all the Roamer said.
            Aryn’s people were not innocent of warfare.  Each hunting tribe had among its young men and women a number of those willing to carry weapons and to fight for the tribe if necessary.  Aryn’s father had been one such warrior, and though Aryn was too young to remember his father engaged in battle, he had heard the stories of his father’s prowess with the sword Aryn later used to kill the raider.  Usually the warriors of a tribe were led and trained by a war-chief, often someone who had trained as a Swordsmaster in the arts of all manner of weapons and in fighting without weapons.  This war-chief only asserted his authority over the warriors, and only in times of conflict; the rest of the time he and his fighters were merely fellow hunters who helped bring meat to the tribe.
            What had changed since the first arrival of the raiders was the nature of warfare for the tribes.  Fights between two bands of warriors from opposing tribes had always made sense in the past: they arose from such things as quarrels over hunting grounds, divorce or inheritance disputes arising from inter-tribal marriages, or accusations of major theft between tribes.  The argument leading up to the battles was usually long-running and heated, and when the two warrior bands met it was away from either of the camps; the battles rarely lasted more than an hour, and the goal was the defeat and humiliation of the enemy, not slaughter.  Some warriors would be killed, others injured, but for the most part a warrior bested in a fight would acknowledge his defeat in combat and the matter was over.  The tribal chiefs would always step in after a battle to conclude terms, and ensure that the battles did not develop into a war, which was a luxury no hunter-gatherer community could afford. 
            To attack a camp of women and children was for any of the People an unthinkable dishonor, and to kill someone who had begged mercy was completely alien to them.  That was why the first raider attacks had been so psychologically damaging to the North Wind.  Torell had said that the raiders who attacked Aryn’s camp had once been hunters as well, until this new form of total war had been taught them by the easterners in very painful lessons.  If they had been so quickly turned from the peaceful customs of the People to become the raving murderers and rapists Aryn had seen, what about his own tribe?  Or the East, West, and South Winds?  Was the raider he had fought the future face of the People?
            But Aryn had more immediate questions.  “What is to become of me, then?”
            Torell sighed.  “I don’t know.  You seem to have made yourself quite comfortable here.  But you do need a tribe to guide your growth, a family that will be there for you more often than the occasional visit from various Roamers.  If you stay here, you are essentially raising yourself, and that is dangerous.”
            Aryn felt this to be a slight on his own abilities.  “I can take care of myself!  I’ve killed my own stag, I haven’t gotten hurt or sick, I’ve cared for your house better than you have…” he stopped himself before becoming insulting.
            Torell’s mouth quirked, nearly becoming a smile.  “I’m not questioning your skills, I’m pointing out my own inadequacies as a mentor.  I haven’t had to play the role of parent for many years.”
            Something clicked in Aryn’s mind.  “You have children?”
            His incredulous voice caused Torell to laugh out loud this time.  “Indeed, seven of them; and all managed to grow to be fine men and women despite having me as a father.  You may eventually meet some of them.”
            The idea of Torell as something more human than the wolf-hooded Roamer he had always known struck Aryn as very odd, and another question occurred to him.  “Lorness…?” he began, not knowing how to finish the question.
            Torell slapped Aryn’s back.  “No, she is not the mother of any of my children.  But this talk can wait till you are older.  In the meantime, it seems as though you are to stay here at least till next spring.”  His face became grave again.  “I can only hope that things will be better by then.”
            As they walked down from the ridge to find supper, a light rain began, cooling the oppressive air.

Chapter Four

Aryn’s daily rhythm did not change now that he was a more permanent resident of the tree-home.  Torell remained with him for two weeks, and together they traveled for two days to a sprawling series of meadows intersected by stands of trees along countless creeks that lay in the lowlands to the south, where Torell knew of a herd of elk.  Together they took an elderly cow, and spent three days packing back what meat and hide they could carry, Aryn carrying a quarter of the weight Torell carried, but proud of his contribution.  Aryn also took another doe by himself, and together they spiced and smoked all of the deer meat and placed it in the storage pit for the winter.  Aryn fashioned himself a new pair of boots from the deerskin, and used some of the elk hide for the soles, while Torell stitched together a new pair of leggings for the cooler days to come.
            During the evenings, Torell taught Aryn how to weave using the small loom with what little wool thread remained, and promised to bring Aryn with him on his next trading visit to one of the farming communities.  “Fox fur is becoming very popular with them,” Torell told Aryn.  “Start collecting fox, and when we have enough to trade we will make the journey.”  The promise left Aryn with something to look forward to.
            Aryn continued to practice reading by the light of the oil lamps, and Torell guided the boy’s attempts to recreate the symbols to form words of his own on the backs of birch bark with a blackened stick.  The practice of writing at first frustrated Aryn, and for the first few nights he gave up in disgust, once throwing the bark into the fire and stamping outside in anger under Torell’s roars of laughter.  Although he had proven himself a generous and thoughtful man, Torell was far from a gentle teacher, seeming to view Aryn’s unsuccessful attempts as personal failure.  It was something the boy resented, but he refused to allow the Roamer the satisfaction of watching him quit.  He endured the jibes and withering comments each night, knowing that he would eventually be able to fling back the sarcasm once he managed to legibly draw his thoughts on birch, paper, or skin.
            Torell left one morning with his customary suddenness; Aryn drifted to sleep behind his bearskin curtain breathing in the smoke of the Roamer’s pipe and listening to the man’s quiet breathing, and awoke to find the tree-home all to himself.  He returned to his customary activities of checking traps, fishing, making the constant repairs to a home that was literally still growing, and exploring the surrounding countryside.  As the days became longer and hotter, he spent far less time in the tree-home, and often slept beside a campfire beneath the whirling field of stars.  With the self-confidence of childhood he gave no thought to the dangers of becoming injured or sick while alone, and knew that eventually he would receive another visit from either Torell or Lorness within a few weeks.
            But his next visit, just a few weeks after Torell left, was not from either of the Roamers.  He had returned to the tree-home one afternoon from exploring the caves that peppered the western ridgeline, where he had torn open his belt pouch on a snag of rock, and he was in the house searching for a bone needle when something caused a flutter of fear in the base of his spine.  He froze, his ears pricked for any sound that would reveal the cause of this sudden concern.  His immediate thought was that his imagination had gotten the better of him and he was about to resume his search when he realized that what had disturbed him was an unnatural silence; the normal forest chatter of bird and squirrel outside had ceased, and the feeling that something was wrong increased.  The boy crept to the door, holding his breath, then lay on the floor and lifted the corner of the bearskin to peer outside.
            In the unnatural silence, he could discern the voices of men calling to each other, carried on the warm summer breeze.  The voices were too far at first to discern what they were saying, but as they drew close enough to hear even their passage through the undergrowth, Aryn realized he still could not decipher their words.  He could distinguish the stops and articulations of separate words being spoken in a harsh, guttural tongue, but did not understand the language they were speaking.  It was not like conversing with one of the farming communities or with the any of the Makow tribal confederacy traders that occasionally made the long journey from the coast to the mountains, whose strange accents and use of odd words made them difficult to understand; this speech was unlike anything Aryn had heard come from the mouths of humans before.
            With growing dread the boy watched from beneath the curtain as the speakers emerged from the tree line on the far side of the stream at the base of the hill and knelt to drink the clear water.  They were enormous, pale skinned men, mostly of blonde hair and fair eyes, dressed in the dark brown, woolly hides of some unknown beast.  They were heavily armed, with large round shields of stretched rawhide carried across their backs, and their swords were broad, short affairs that did not appear to have sharp points; this Aryn could see because they seemed to eschew scabbards for the more expedient method of shoving the naked blades directly into their belts.  Many of them also carried longer reaching weapons on sturdy shafts, the heads of which could neither be called a proper spear nor an axe, but a strange design that incorporated both.  A few of them carried small packs with them, but could not possibly be carrying enough food for the entire group, and no other sign of tentage or other traveling accoutrement was visible from where the boy lay.
            The group gathered at the stream over the next few minutes, and after a few minutes Aryn realized that the group of nine men was the entirety of their party, and no others were expected.  A few of them had minor wounds that were a few days old, as if they had been in battle, and one walked with a severe limp and seemed unable to straighten from his hunched position; this one was helped to kneel for water by two of his comrades, but remained crouched over, and Aryn watched a thin trickle of blood run from his wheat-colored beard to drip into the clear water.  The men seemed to be in an argument now, two of the men, the loudest, were in disagreement with the rest of the group, though the wounded one remained silently crouched, dripping crimson into the stream.  Aryn wanted very badly to retreat into the house and grip one of his spears, but fear that any movement may alert them to his presence froze him to the dirt floor.
            And then during one of the men’s gesticulations, he swung his arm in the direction of the tree-home and fell silent in mid-roar, seeming to have seen the odd structure for the first time.  The other men followed his stare and they too fell silent.  As if on an unheard signal, shields were slowly drawn in front of them, the pole-arms readied, swords were drawn, and the group fanned out along the bank of the stream, leaving their wounded comrade to moan quietly to himself.  With mounting panic, Aryn watched as they began to cross the shallow stream in a ragged pyramid formation, and the lead warrior seemed to stare directly into the boy’s eyes.
            As the line of warriors approached, Aryn could hear mutterings from the warriors that followed the point man, in a tone that the boy would have described as fear if it had not been uttered by such fearsome men.  Halfway between the stream and the tree-home, the lead warrior paused, raising his sword slowly as a signal for his band to halt as well.  The lead man stared at the tree-home for many minutes, his eyes sweeping over the entirety of the woven trees, the doorway, and the crown of bright green leaves.  Then suddenly the man knelt to both knees, his weapon and shield hitting the ground with a clatter, and he bent his head down, down, down, till his forehead was pressed into the wild grass.  Without hesitation, his band did the same, and two of the men behind the leader began a strange chant, one that held for Aryn a terrifying fascination in the rhythm of the guttural sounds.  The lead warrior raised his head, clasped his hands, and began speaking to the tree-home, bellowing in a voice of both assurance and, Aryn was sure of it now, an underlying fear.
            Then without warning the lead warrior scrambled to his feet, bowed once in the direction of the tree-home, and strode back down the hill to the stream, his warriors also bowing and turning their backs.  Aryn lay in complete disbelief, watching as the men recrossed the stream to where their wounded man continued to crouch and drip.  The boy stared in horror as the lead warrior strode towards the wounded warrior without hesitation and struck him an enormous blow on the neck with his sword.  The wounded warrior received the blow without a tremor, simply moaned as an explosion of crimson blossomed in the water; the lead warrior quickly chopped once, twice more, and the head came free of the body and plunged into the stream.  The remaining warriors observed this killing in silence, then as their chief turned to reenter the forest where they had emerged, each man passed by the headless corpse, still curled up at the water’s edge, laid a hand on the body while murmuring some words, then slipped back into the trees after their leader.
            Aryn lay frozen on the dirt floor for hours, still holding open the corner of the bearskin curtain and staring at the curled corpse.  A violent shaking seized his body, but no tears; he had wept enough for himself and his family that he had no tears for this strange warrior.  He could not fully explain what had happened, how he had been spared.  Aryn’s folk did not regularly pray to gods, nor have any holy-men other than the Tamaziaghat, who were their own breed and did not dictate forms of prayer or direct belief.  The People acknowledged countless spirits, which in their world inhabited animals, trees, stones, even rain or wind.  They would at times thank such spirits, to show gratitude to the deer that filled their bellies or a sapling cut to build their shelters, or at times would supplicate a fire spirit to light damp tinder or sickness to leave the body of a loved one, but they never considered one place or spirit greater than another.  What Aryn had seen the warriors do reminded him of what he had seen at one of the farming communities, where a large stone with three holes had been an object or worship for the farmers, who would place corn, blanks of steel, or rolls of fabric into the holes in an effort to please the spirit that lived within enough that it would grant them a bountiful harvest.  The hunters had never been able to make the connection between the large boulder with holes and the success of the farmers’ crops, but they had been careful to avoid the stone just in case they accidentally angered the spirit within and thereby bring the wrath of the farmers.  The actions of the warriors before the tree-home had appeared very much like that of the farmers, but Aryn could not explain why.
            When at last the urgency of his bladder overcame the numbness in his heart, the boy slowly rose and walked to the lean-to, still staring at the headless body.  He then crossed the stream and approached the body carefully.  All life had fled from the warrior, it was merely a waxen bag of flesh and bone encased in the strange woolly fur tunic.  Aryn removed the warrior’s sword, a short, heavy chopping instrument with an almost rounded tip and a bone handle with no cross guard.  He placed this to one side, spent an hour gathering firewood from the woods on that side of the stream, then built a bed of firewood and with effort rolled the stiff corpse on to it and surrounded it with more firewood.  He returned to the stream, plucked out the head by a handful of long, pale hair, and dropped it on top of the pyre, unconsciously not looking at the face.  He then crossed the stream again to retrieve and light one of the pitch torches kept near the door, and carried the spitting torch back to the pile.
            The pyre burned for two days, and produced a thick, oily smoke that no mere wood could cause.  And as he expected, the roiling smoke produced itself another visit to the tree-home: Torell reappeared on the second day, just as the sun sank beneath the western ridge.  Aryn had not known whether the smoke would attract Roamers or more strange warriors first, so the boy had holed up in one of the rock overhangs with a bag of food and skin of water, and was therefore in a position to see the long limbed, wolf-hooded man striding past the fire without a second glance and directly up the hill to the tree-home.  The boy scrambled down from his perch to meet him.
            When Aryn was finished with his story, Torell sat quietly for so long that it was full night before he spoke.  “Aryn, you must realize how lucky you were this time.  Next time, know that you can kick out any of these mud walls separating the tree trunks and escape out the back.  Head for the caves in the ridge; from what I’m learning, these folk do not like caves or enclosed spaces, and most likely will not follow you.”
            Aryn gaped.  “Next time?” he asked incredulously.
            Torell nodded.  “From what you have described, these were most likely scouts.  They are usually found in much larger numbers.  I had not seen any indication that their travel routes would bring them here…they appear to be making directly for the coast from the Eastern Desert…but I suppose it will be only a matter of time before a full band of them crosses through here.  In that case, I very much doubt that their superstitions will stop them from investigating this house.  You must be prepared to fly, and wait for me in the caves.”
            “So I am to stay here?  By myself?”
            Torell spun on the boy with a violence Aryn had not seen before.  A grim light flashed in his blue eyes.  “Things are much worse elsewhere, boy, believe me.  If you say the word, I will deliver you tonight to one of the tribes, but expect to have war-paint on your face within the week.  And I have many commitments, to these tribes, and to this forest.  I cannot sacrifice those to stay here and wet-nurse a single orphan!”
            In hurt silence, Aryn rose to attend the cook-pot, but went to bed without eating.  In the morning, Torell was gone.

AAA

The days were growing cooler, rain becoming more frequent.  Aryn remained watchful every day and night.  He continued to wander and hunt the lands surrounding the tree-home, but did so slowly, quietly, ever alert to any sign of pale warriors.  He only saw them again that summer; near a waterfall not an hour’s walk from the tree-home he heard again the guttural words spoken by deep voices, ringing carelessly through the forest.  The boy crept slowly and carefully to the waterfall, palms sweating madly, and crouched behind a bramble bush to peer at the large, pale, bearded men.  They were gathered in the pool of the waterfall, most of them stripped naked and bathing in the chilly water, though a few remained on land, armed and watchful.  There were thirty-four of them by Aryn’s count, and watching as they washed and splashed each other in the water, he was struck by the realization that these men were just men; they had mothers and fathers, most likely brothers and sisters, perhaps even daughters and sons.  They laughed, they probably wept; they felt pain and cold and fear.  Why would they do these things to the People?  What made them think they could inflict such pain and suffering on so many?  If they were being forced from their own lands and needed food and shelter, why did they not just ask?
            Boiling anger made it difficult to retreat in silence, but Aryn made it safely back to the tree-home, where he drew the dead warrior’s chopping sword from beneath his bed and slashed through the air at imaginary warriors for hours, till his rage was worn out.  He waited all night for the bathing warriors to find the tree-home, and steeled his heart with hard maxims and vows to die fighting, but the men never appeared.  The boy at last fell asleep before a cold fireplace, the unwieldy sword across his lap.
            The green summer yielded to the cooler crimson and yellow of autumn, though Aryn began to grow concerned that he had received no visit from either Torell or Lorness in many months.  His disquiet was relieved one morning when the bearskin curtain was pulled aside to admit a gust of chilly wind, a flurry of dead leaves, and the lady Roamer.  Aryn embraced her warmly and offered her some of the duck stew he had just finished cooking.  As they ate and talked about small matters, Aryn noticed a fresh scar, still bright pink and raised, that traveled from the side of her neck, across her left collarbone and disappeared into her tunic.  He did not ask about it, nor inquire about the tribes and the pale warriors.
            Aryn was searching for his line and hook on Lorness’s suggestion that they try their luck with the trout in the larger of the three streams that ran near the tree-home when the Roamer suddenly froze where she stood waiting, the muscles standing out on her neck.  She then hissed “Stay here, stay quiet,” snatched up her spear and swordbelt, and vanished through the door.
            Aryn listened carefully for the tell-tale silence of the birds, but they seemed not to have heard whatever Lorness had.  To reassure himself, he pulled the chopping sword from under his bed and took up his previous position on the floor peering outside from under a raised corner of the door’s curtain.
            In only a few minutes Lorness returned, approaching the tree-home from the forest on the back side of the house and appearing at the door with such silent suddenness that Aryn let out a yelp.  Lorness did not ask about his strange position nor the odd sword he held, simply stepped over him and into the home to retrieve Aryn’s bow and quiver from where they hung on a peg.  She thrust them at him with this question: “Aryn, I need to know the absolute truth.  Can you hit a man in the neck with one arrow?”
            Aryn hesitated, not sure what was being asked.  “I have killed a man before…”
            Lorness grunted in impatience.  “One shot, in the neck.  Can you do it?”
            “I-I’ll try—“
            “No, don’t try.  I have another plan.  Just make sure your first arrow strikes the man nearest you, and then move to the next one. Do not waste too many arrows on a single man.”
            Aryn nodded dumbly as she seized his arm and dragged him roughly outside.  She pulled him into a thicket to the west of the tree home and indicated that he was to hide.  “Do not fire until you hear me call your name, then do not stop until you are out of arrows or you see me go down.  Then you must run to the caves and wait for Torell.  Be careful, they are fanned out, to the north and south of this hill.  Do not be seen.”
            Aryn did not feel fear for himself, but worried for the Roamer.  “Lorness, let’s just go now!  Hide, run for the caves!”
            Lorness permitted herself a small smile and touched Aryn’s cheek.  “We will, if it comes to that.  In the meantime, Torell would never forgive me if I left his home completely undefended.”  And she slipped off into the woods, away from the tree-home.
            He’ll never forgive me if you are killed, Aryn thought to himself.  He nocked an arrow and let out a deep breath.
            This was the boy’s second battle, and as in the first, he was unsure when it started.  From across the stream, in the same patch of woods the scouting party had first emerged from, Aryn heard a man bellowing in anger and pain, and then a scream.  There was a brief crashing of brush, and he watched the yellow and orange trees dance to a disturbance below them, then a third scream that devolved into a groan.  Four pale warriors, dressed in the same manner as the ones he had seen during the summer, came stumbling out of the trees to the stream’s bank; one of them immediately sprouted a spear-head from his chest, then it disappeared.  Frothy crimson grew from the stricken warrior’s beard and he pitched forward so that for an instant Aryn caught a glimpse of Lorness’s silver streaked hair before it disappeared behind the second warrior, who flung up his hands to a face pierced by the same spear.  The other two warriors went back to back, large round shields in front of them, and one swung his strange axe polearm into the trees, then dropped the weapon with a howl and withdrew a bloody arm behind the shield.
            More warriors were spilling out of the trees, in too much confusion for Aryn to count, and began running towards their comrades.  Aryn sighted down the shaft of his arrow, but could not choose a proper target: the large shields seemed to be between himself and every warrior visible.  A warrior lagging behind the others suddenly slammed the ground with his back, tried to rise and found himself pinned by a spear seeming to emanate from the forest itself.  His groan caused the others to look around in confusion, and Aryn found himself staring down the shaft at the bare back of the warrior nearest to him.  He had not yet heard Lorness’s signal, but he would get no better shot.  He loosed the arrow and nocked a second one as the man staggered forward, the shaft protruding from the center of his back.
            Like moths drawn to flame, all eyes swung to Aryn’s hiding spot, and the boy could swear every man there saw him.  He loosed a second arrow, which crashed into the edge of a shield, then nocked and fired a third, which by pure luck sailed into the thigh of another warrior.  That warrior paused for only a moment, then splashed into the stream heading for Aryn, the others following.  Aryn fired two more arrows rapidly, both met shields, and with growing horror realized that behind him he heard more crashing footsteps, from the woods above the tree-home moving rapidly towards his position.  He snatched up the quiver and slung it over his shoulder as he bolted deeper into the forest.  Behind him, the warrior with the thigh wound slumped over the near-side bank of the stream, Lorness’s thrown spear growing from his back.
            The boy tumbled down a draw, tripped and went sprawling into the ferns.  Instead of leaping to his feet and continuing to run, he lay as silently as possible, trying to quiet his ragged breathing and the thunder of his heartbeat.  He could no longer hear the footsteps behind him.  Quickly but as silently as possible he got to his feet and continued to the end of the draw, then rounded the point of the spur and crawled carefully up the backside, moving from tree to tree and using the network of deer runs to avoid making too much noise.  From the top of this spur he could see through the golden foliage to the meadow below through which the stream ran.  The warriors were gathering there, more than a dozen of them, no longer in the state of confusion they had been in while under invisible attack, but instead gathered around a human-shaped object on the ground.  He heard a joyous whoop from one, then a round of cruel laughter.  They had captured Lorness!
            Aryn’s throat tightened painfully and he emitted an animal whine.  It was all his fault!  He hadn’t followed any of her instructions; he had fired before she gave her signal, he had fled at the sound of footsteps instead of continuing to fire arrows…he had no idea how much ruin he had brought to her plan, the plan that would have saved Torell’s home and kept them both alive.  And now she was in the hands of the pale warriors, and he shuddered to think what would happen next.  A vision of his mother huddled in the snow rose unbidden to his mind, and he grit his teeth in resolve.  That would not happen to Lorness.  Never.  He would rescue her, the way he could not rescue his mother.
            He flung the bow and quiver to the ground and drew the heavy sword from his belt, then looked back at the huddle of warriors in the meadow.  Two of them were bending over the prone form now, and there was another round of guttural laughter.  Aryn choked back rage and heard a soft voice behind him ask, “What are you looking at?”
            Without thought he whipped the sword around towards the voice and found his arm stopped in mid-swing by an iron grip.  Lorness smiled gently at him.  The side of her head was matted with blood and her tunic was torn, but she was very much alive and free.  The tightness in Aryn’s throat released and he nearly whooped for joy before remembering their still very dangerous circumstances.  Instead he embraced her fiercely, then scooped up the bow and quiver and together they silently made their way back down the spur and on to the caves in the western ridge, Lorness limping considerably.
            That night, after having bound Lorness’s wounds with strips of Aryn’s tunic and mosses the boy gathered under the Roamer’s direction, they made themselves as comfortable as possible a few feet into a narrow cleft in the rocks, chilled by the cool wind that gusted out of the unseen depths of the earth to the outside world.  Aryn awoke during the night many times, at one point finding Lorness missing from where she had lain beside him.  The boy crept to the mouth of the cave and in the moonlight saw the female Roamer crouched motionless on a rock outcropping not far from the cave.  Her back was too him, so he could not see if she slept, but there was an unnatural stillness to her.  He watched for a long time, and was about to approach her when he saw her head slowly loll backwards and a strange sound issued from her: it was like the sound of the wind, a moan, a song, the cry of a wolf, all of these things and more.  The sound thrilled him, sang through his blood, brought the smells and sights of the night into sharp relief, and made him feel as if he had been asleep all these years before hearing this cry.  The song seemed to stretch on for ever, then with a growing realization Aryn found it had ended minutes ago, and that Lorness’s chin had now sank to her chest, but still the echoes of the song rang through the trees and stars.  Feeling as though he had been witness to something he should not have, Aryn crept guiltily back to the cave and lay down, trying to feign sleep though his heart still throbbed to the sound of the strange cry.
            Torell met them at the cave the next day, in answer to The Call.

AAA

“Well, at least they left the chest,” Torell said, giving the box that held his scrolls a shove with the toe of his boot.
            The warriors had actually left quite a lot of their possessions, though most of them were scattered across the dirt floor.  The weapons were gone, and anything else that was metal, including the iron cooking pot and scrap steel Aryn used to practice blacksmithing.  Inexplicably they had smashed the loom to small pieces, as if insulted by its presence.  Aryn’s curtain had been torn down and both beds overturned, but there was little damage that could not be repaired and cleaned up within a day.  Despite the fragility of the wattle-and-daub walls between the tree-trunks, the basic structure of the tree-home had been left untouched, perhaps due to some residual superstition on the part of the pale easterners.
            The two Roamers and the one-eyed boy explored the grounds surrounding the home, and found the spring unpolluted, though the storage pit had been ransacked.  At the stream, the lean-to had been kicked over, but the wood lay scattered about in the grass unbroken.  Aryn walked over to the prone form he had thought was a captured Lorness and discovered it was the body of the first warrior he had shot, the arrow still protruding from the center of what remained of his back.  Somehow he had made it across the stream with his comrades, but the toll of such a serious wound had caused him to fall.  His head lay a few feet from his body, testament to the method with which these warriors tended to their gravely wounded.  The stench of dead human soaked the chill air.  Wolves and vultures had already had their fill, and ravens now hopped madly about just beyond stone’s throw of Aryn, impatiently waiting for him to finish his inspection so they could finish their meal.  With a wave of his hand he tried to direct their attention to the other bodies left by Lorness, though they were a seething mass of shiny black wings and crimson beaks already.  The boy sighed and walked back up the hill to join the Roamers.
            It was decided that Lorness would stay with Aryn at the tree-home while she recovered from her wounds, the most serious being an ugly gash across the back of her thigh.  Torell would return when she was healed, and would settle for the winter, making journeys of no more than a day or two.  In the spring…
            “I doubt that the situation will be better in the spring,” confessed Torell.  “I will return you to a tribe if the Easterners cease harrying through these mountains, but if they have not, I will have to take you with me.”
            Aryn stared.  “As your apprentice?”
            Torell’s jaw set in anger and he said tightly, “I have told you before, you are too young.  One day you may become apprenticed to a Tamaziaghat, but it will not be me.  It would not be…right.”  His tone softened.  “I cannot risk leaving you alone at this place; they will come again, and you have twice pushed your luck beyond what any other could expect.  In the spring, you will walk with me on my travels.”
            Aryn was already looking forward to the spring.