Chapter 1

It was the time of the blood moon as Wilhan, son of Yanceod, moved silently through the dark primeval forest. The spear in his hand was heavy as he went on his lonely way, but he was glad to be alone. He was glad that Guthram had turned back. All Guthram had done all morning was complain. The downside was that Wilhan now had to run the trap line by himself and deal with any problems that might arise. Resetting snares was no problem, but resetting heavy deadfalls was easier to do with two people. And there was always a chance of encountering a hungry bear, wildcat, or pack of wolves in the forests of the frontier. Such beasts usually avoided grown men, but at thirteen, skinny Wilhan could hardly be called a grown man.

He was not afraid to spend the night out all alone; he had the means to start a fire, and for defense, in addition to the spear, he carried his father's longsax, which, hanging from his belt, looked like a short sword. He was too thin to carry the long knife across his waist, as a true warrior of the Juxan tribe normally would. He also carried a small skinning knife and a hatchet. Any wild animals hungry enough to eat him would most likely already be dead in the baited traps, he hoped. So far that day he and Guthram had caught two rabbits and a polecat. Guthram had made Wilhan skin the polecat in case its stink gland got damaged in the process. There was a bit of a smell but nothing too bad. Guthram took that pelt and the rabbits home when he decided that he wasn't feeling well. Feeling hungry and scared was more like it, Wilhan thought.

Wilhan had hoped to eat the rabbits later that day, but that was not to be. At least he didn't have to carry them any more. The only thing Guthram carried on their outings was a bow and light pack. Guthram did leave Wilhan the entrails, though. The hearts and livers would be good roasted over a fire. He had used the rest to bait deadfalls.

Cold weather had come quickly after the harvest, and the day was crisp and clear. The early onset of winter was why they were running the long trap line a little earlier than usual. They anticipated a long hard winter, and they wanted to get as many prime pelts from the ridge and beyond as they could before snow kept them closer to home. Guthram's older brothers had stayed back at the farm with their father to chop firewood and go through their daily weapons practice. No doubt Guthram thought he would miss the wood chopping and be back in time for practice.

Guthram's father, Tobsil, had sent the two boys out to run the traps because the skies were clear; the two of them shouldn't have had any problem staying out overnight because of the weather. Tobsil had always treated Wilhan as a man, at least as far as work was concerned; and work was about all Tobsil concerned himself with, that and turning his sons into warriors. Wilhan's father had lost a considerable amount of money to Tobsil in a wager; actually it was a loan from Tobsil and a wager to another man. Wilhan wasn't sure which had come first, but the result was that Yanceod went from being a freeman and a warrior to a farmhand with a five year indenture.

Wilhan's mother had died when he was ten, before that, Yanceod had not been much of a father. He spent his time going on raids and gambling away most of his earnings. After his wife's death he gambled more heavily, trying to win enough money to support his son, or so he said.

Life on Tobsil's farm was not that bad for Wilhan, even though he had inherited the debt when his father was killed. The accident occurred when a heavy beam slipped as they were raising a new barn. Tobsil and his three oldest sons, Fexrem, Tarmiz, and Ranis, treated Wilhan fairly and with respect, even though he was usually stuck doing the jobs of the thralls, the farm slaves that Tobsil owned. Some of those jobs, such as herding, were also 'boy' jobs, and Guthram was stuck doing them too.

Guthram, who was only half a year older than Wilhan, did not like the idea of having to do menial jobs that his older brothers were exempt from, and he took it out on Wilhan by treating him like a thrall whenever he could. Usually that meant whenever the two boys were told to do a job together, Guthram would supervise or take the easier half of the task at hand.

Tobsil and the older brother's did their best to control Guthram's behavior so that it didn't go beyond being moderately irritating to Wilhan. Yanceod might have been irresponsible with money and a poor family man, but he was still a warrior proven in battle, and he was respected for that. In fact, Tobsil and his sons probably had more respect for Yanceod than Wilhan did, because Yanceod was the reason behind all of Wilhan's problems. His mother had been unhappy before her death from the fever, and Wilhan's life went downhill after that, culminating in his father getting killed by not paying attention when the big beam was being put in place.

Wilhan knew firsthand that glory from surviving a battle didn't fill your belly. Unlike Yanceod, Tobsil rarely boasted of his exploits on the battlefield. He did boast about the number of cattle and acres of grain that he had as a result of the riches he brought home from those battles; from that, Wilhan saw the real way to become successful. So even though he was not allowed to train -- it was not Tobsil's duty to train his servant for battle -- Wilhan watched and practiced on his own, and he sparred with Guthram whenever the fancy struck the older boy, which was usually by way of a sneak attack.

Tobsil was wealthy enough to own a sword, and he did, but he had not bought it. His battle axe was responsible for getting him that sword. It had convinced the original owner, a big Nwevi warrior with a knot of red hair adorning the side of his head, that he didn't need it anymore. Tobsil still remembered that fight: he blocked the overhead slash of the sword with his axe handle, brought his own shield down on the man's foot, parried the sword to the side, and then reversed the motion of the axe to catch the man under the ear. He could still remember the sound of bone and teeth shattering as the bronze axe head made its grisly way through the man's face. Tobsil was a young man then, not much older than Fexrem. He was raiding and fighting for his clan and his tribe to secure the frontier and beyond. At that age he valued the prestige of the sword as much as its usefulness in battle. He learned how to use it but carried it on his side as a backup weapon, relying instead on his axe for most close fighting; he didn't want to chance damaging the blade if he didn't have too. A broken sword was not nearly as valuable as an intact one. Plus it gave him the option of throwing his axe. Throwing a sword and then going to the axe was not as effective as a tactic, not by a long shot.

He could have sold that sword for half a dozen cows; nearly five year's income for a farm hand, and enough to start a small farm, but owning the sword was a matter of pride. When the time came to settle down on a homestead he didn't need the money the sword represented; he had been lucky in battle as far as spoils went, and he had been a skilled gambler before he gave it up. His skill was partly due to his practice of not drinking as much mead as the men he was betting against, but mostly it was due to knowing the odds and never making a bet based on what he hoped an outcome would be. He didn't play favorites, not with anything more than a token bet, anyway.

Fexrem would inherit the sword, and it was promised to him for his next raiding season, but Tobsil had all of his boys train to use it. In reality they rarely got to touch the sword, instead they trained with wooden swords. Mostly the boys trained with other weapons, though. Shield and spear was the primary combination used by most warriors at the time. If you lost your spear, you went for your axe, sword, or the shorter longsax. Battle axes were the weapon of choice for raids. When raiding, you didn't let your target have time to line up against you with shields and spears; you generally had to work close in, and sometimes bash doors down. In most cases a good axe man could take out a poorly trained swordsman, and it wasn't that difficult to get good with an axe. But if you knew how to use one, a sword had definite advantages.

Without Guthram to slow him down, Wilhan decided to jog the trap line instead of walk it. The first part of the route followed a ridge that was covered in dense dark pine forest. It then descended to the Turtel River which wound around and through a break in the ridge a few miles from the farm. Their farm creek ran to that river, and once the deep snows came they would trap the lowlands along the creek, but for now they had traps set along the ridge, its far slope, and the river.

Even though the tribe had pushed the previous residents across the Aydren River -- forty leagues south of the ridgeline -- the ridge served as the unofficial southern border of both the Elksen Clan, and of the Juxan tribe as a whole. There was still undeveloped farmland and pasture north of the ridge, so no one had moved south of there yet.

Before heading down slope to the river, where he hoped to catch mink, beaver, otter, and maybe even fox, Wilhan had caught and skinned two snared marten, and a lynx that had succumbed to a deadfall. His chosen location for cooking his lunch was a small rocky beach just downstream of his first river snare set; a slide otters used to enter the water. That snare marked the start of the long, winding route back to the farm.

When he got to the beach he saw three dugouts pulled up on the far bank just below the rapids. Their owners had decided not to wrestle them up another section of cold shallow water, and the boats were too heavy to portage without a good reason. Wilhan knew that the only reason for anyone to come upriver was to raid. This was the tribal frontier, and there were no trading towns for a long way. The Juxani had pushed the Nwevii south across the great river only a generation ago. A few generations before that, the Juxani had been forced out of the fjord lands of Werimar, the small island continent to the north, across the Blensin Straits. The Juxani were slow to colonize their southern territory because the conifer forest of the ridge was not good land for farming or raising flocks. Anyone moving past the ridge to homestead would be isolated and vulnerable.

The Juxani were not the only people moving out of Werimar. The northern coast of Aydres was a place of tribal conflict and contested borders so the Juxan kings and their clan chiefs wanted to keep their people close. There was still enough land north of the ridge to support the growing population, but the frontier north of the ridge was rapidly being settled.

There were three farms within a day's walk of the river from the place Tobsil's creek joined it, so Wilhan turned back the way he had come. He had to warn them, and going back over the ridge was faster than going upriver, not to mention that that was the direction the raiders went.

The south side of the ridge was the steep side, but the adrenalin of seeing the enemy camp took Wilhan to the top quickly. Once there, he took up a steady walking pace to let his pumping lungs and quivering legs recover. As he traveled, he tried to reason out how long it might take the raiders to walk upriver from their boats, but he gave up after realizing that he had no idea how long the boats had been there. Once he recovered from the climb he began to alternately jog and walk; but soon he was lightheaded from foregoing lunch, so he stopped to eat some of the cheese, dried meat, berries, and pounded oatmeal he had in his pack. At least he had been smart enough to refill his waterskin at the river.

He hated to do it, but he rested to let the food settle, and to regain his strength, before setting off again. It was midafternoon when he started downhill again and he still had more than two miles to go to get back to the farm. He picked up his pace, but tripped trying to go down slope too fast. His spear went flying, but the thick layer of pine needles and the soft ground underneath cushioned his fall.

When he reached the edge of Tobsil's fields he knew he was too late. The dogs were barking in their pen, and he could see black smoke coming from the longhouse they all lived in.

Earlier that day eleven men, with their long hair tied against the side of their heads in war knots, watched the farm from a distance. Their initial plan was to attack just as it was getting dark; but the dogs were penned up for some reason, and from their hiding spot in the brush next to the creek they had watched the farmer, three younger men and two farmhands go away to their tasks after they finished their lunch. It would be much easier to kill the men when they were spread out, so the leader made the decision to attack while the men were out working.

The raiders were just about to move out when a boy came to the longhouse carrying two rabbits. That held them up for a while until they saw the boy go inside. When that happened, seven of them started out under the cover of the forest for the clearing where the three younger men and the farmer had gone to chop firewood. The raiders had heard the faint sound of axe hitting wood coming from that direction before the four came in for lunch, and axes meant trouble. The remaining four raiders could take care of the women and the boy, and the two other farmhands if they returned.

The leader waited what he thought would be long enough to let the seven get to their destination. He could have waited longer, but the woman stepped into the longhouse, leaving no one outside to observe their approach. Seeing that, he set off at a run towards the house with the other three following close behind.

The farmer's wife had little time to raise a warning before she was cut down, but it was enough time for the boy to grab his father's sword and come out the door. It did him little good. The girl, who looked to be about twelve, started screaming inside the house, but she was soon tied up and gagged. Her screams started the dogs barking, and that drew the attention of the men out working.