C1 Chapter 1

They were men of hard faces and few words who made their way through the pickwood bushes shaded by some elder trees. Shepherds visited these copses now and again when bad weather was brewing or the opportunity arose to pick a few berries. Not that a handful of berries could fill you up, but in a land where every bite was hard to come by, anything that brought a little sweetness to the day was a treasure.

Later they said that magical powers had led the Ramsmen to this place, and many believed this to be the truth. It is entirely possible, though, that it was nothing but a lucky stroke of fate that they were around this very day: once the grass was grazed, the herds were always moved to a different place, and no one but the Ramsmen themselves knew the routes and the sequence in which the different pastures were visited.

A boy was wandering about the bushes, stopping here and there as if he listened to a quiet voice, and did not take any notice of the men. Judging by his size he could hardly be more than four harvests old. His weatherproof travel garb was stretched tightly over several layers of underclothes so that he appeared to be slightly chubby. The clothing showed scratches and odd discolouring, and seemed to have gone through some stress, but it was not in need of repair, and hardly dirty. The leather was smooth and of a quality rarely found even in this part of the land, which had a long tradition in the tanning of hides. On the leathery chest, barely hidden by two small hands, rested a mighty amulet whose band had gotten caught somewhere between neck and collar.

Roddick was the eldest of the Ramsmen. It was he whom the eyes of the men sought when the group faced a decision, and he who spoke the first word. Roddick crouched down before the child and looked at the amulet. All he saw was a simple wooden disk, thicker in the middle and covered all over with fine carvings. Although the child had apparently sucked on the wood for a while, he could see no traces of wear, save for a few spit stains. Whatever wood this was, it must be very hard. And it did not come from around here.

The Ramsmen were people of the land. Roddick, who knew every plant and every animal in the area, weighed the wood gently in his hand. It was too heavy for its size, the tint unfamiliar and the grain foreign. His gaze did not find the familiar rings of a transversely cut piece of wood. Instead, it followed beautiful swirls that wound around several eyes of rest. The carvings were rich, if simple, but not of the kind made by people sitting by the fire in the evening when the day’s work was done. Nearly all Ramsmen wore a pendant around the neck, and Roddick himself did too. He had cut his from the heel bone of a Mulch, the first beast he had slain by himself. He called it his amulet, even believed a little in his talisman. But it was by no means a real amulet. To create a real amulet, one needed magical powers. Only the village’s Reeve owned a true amulet and openly wore it upon his jerkin as a sign of his powers. He who owned an amulet was of high standing and destined to rule over the people. Always it was a master of magic, though he would rarely have to prove his powers. Perhaps even Esara, who was known to have mysterious powers, called an amulet her own. But if she did, she kept it secret, like she did so many other things.

Even more puzzling than the disk itself was the woven band it hung from. Roddick could make out eight carefully greased cords, braided in a complicated pattern to form a skein. They ended in a star-shaped knot in front of the wood, their soft points reaching over the upper edge like a protective hand. Roddick had heard of the skilful way the Water-Men artfully knotted string into figurines. He had never seen any such thing, though, nor did he understand the reason behind it. Art, however, does not develop without purpose, even if that purpose takes time to become apparent. The knot looked like an open blossom with eight curved petals encompassing a small, hemispherical butte.

Roddick lifted the knot’s star-shaped petals a little and discovered beneath a single, almost invisible string that ran from the butte into the wooden disk. It looked as though one could tear the wood with one sharp pull from its band. He carefully tugged at the string to test its resilience. It moved a little and cut into the skin of his fingertips. Roddick understood neither the wood nor the band, and neither had he ever seen a plant which, when spun into a thread, produced an unbreakable string. In his hands lay something that was not of his world.

He took the wooden disc gently from the boy’s hands and hid it under the child’s shirt. Finding a child in the wilderness was unusual enough and would cause a lot of excitement in the village. Roddick saw no reason to fan the flames with the mystery of a strange amulet. The Ramsmen followed Roddick because he knew what to do, and his wise words could convince even those in doubt and those who wavered. But now, the leader of the Ramsmen made sure not to let even one word slip. Sometimes, the most important things in life were better left unnoticed.

The men who had found the boy were no men of big words, and they brought the child into their village. He did not resist. Only his gaze seemed to be tethered to a point somewhere in the far distance.

There was a saying in Earthland that rumors were the only thing faster than the wind, and so the men were not surprised to find that they were already expected when they returned home. The last light of the evening sun shone upon their families, who had gathered in small groups in front of their houses and watched them arrive. The wind had abated and readied itself, like every evening, to blow back down from the hills to the valley from which it had risen during the day.

Roddick let the boy ride on his shoulders and walked down the wide, heavily trodden path that led to the center of the village and connected the well with the village square. The villagers stepped out from the shadows of their huts and followed Roddick and his Ramsmen on their way to the Judgment Tree, where the other half of the village population had already assembled under the lead of the Reeve.

Roddick walked slowly towards the great tree whose massive outer branches were so heavy they had come to rest on the ground. The cattle were banned from this place and driven off with kicks and bats if they accidentally found themselves beneath it, for the village square with its Tree of the Court was a holy place and a public place, where decisions were made that determined the future of the whole village.

Roddick walked the last steps alone. The other Ramsmen stood back in reverence, as did the villagers. Roddick knew that a boy of four was already too old to touch the heart of a woman who had to tend to a new infant every year, and too young to help any family with the work. They would have to talk for a long time this evening, for no family found it easy to feed another hungry mouth. To add a fifth to four children meant less milk, less bread and less cheese for every one of the four others. And often, there were not four children, but eight or even ten. But Roddick was convinced the village, under the leadership of the Reeve, would find a solution in the end.

On the way down into the vale the boy had stopped listening out, and was now looking around in interest. His eyes glinted from beneath his fair hair and rested for a moment on a bony middle-aged woman who did not stand with the others on the village square but seemed to be almost invisible in the shadow of a house. The moment Roddick handed over the child to the Reeve, she walked out into the brownish-yellow light of the evening sun.

“Give him to me; I will take care of him.”

A murmur rose from the group, of relief and disapproval at once. The arrival of a child of foreign blood was no matter for rash decisions. Everyone knew that rashness was an important decision’s worst enemy. Did not custom demand to let the Ramsmen speak first and to hear all the details and circumstances of their discovery? Did not tradition command that they consider and discuss? The villagers looked at the woman who now stood calmly by the Reeve, and not all looks were friendly. When strange things happened to the village, even the mundane became a public affair that concerned everybody and had to be discussed by all. And besides – who had ever heard of a truth-teller raising a child?

The Reeve raised his hand and the murmur died down. His eyes met with the truth-teller’s, pierced the child, passed over Roddick the Ramsman and wandered over the group of villagers, until his glance returned to the boy and finally came to rest. It was he, the Reeve, who was responsible for giving everyone the place which by tradition and the magical order of this land was his to be.

For the stranger, such a place had yet to be found. To commence the acceptance of the foreign child into the village community by breaking custom and tradition meant disregarding order, and on top of that, it was a bad omen for the future. The Reeve therefore hesitated to give in to Esara’s wish. But he was also a clever man and knew that sometimes something became desirable only when someone else desired it as well. So with a clear voice he asked into the night: “Is there anyone aside from Esara the truth-teller who lays claim to this child?”

Before anyone could even open their mouth, Esara said calmly and resolutely: “No, there is no one in this village who will lay claim to this boy. The ken of Today and Tomorrow and the band that weaves them together is mine. ”

Never before had anyone heard Esara speak like this, and never before had Esara been as highly visible as she was now, here under the Holy Tree. Her presence seemed to fill half the village square, where normally she’d rather keep out of the spotlight. And if sometimes she stood in the bright light of day, the eyes of the villagers would avoid her, for that which you cannot see cannot scare you.

Esara looked at Roddick and said sternly: “Put the boy down, Roddick, he is old enough to stand.” She took the boy by the hands, broke through the ring of villagers, which opened only grudgingly, and walked with him to her hut at the edge of the village. She left behind her pensive faces. The sun had long settled before all words had been spoken and the village square regained its nocturnal calm.

So it came to be that the foundling grew up in the care of Esara the truth-teller. Yet the dark clouds that would overshadow his entire life were not driven away by decent food and a safe place to sleep. “The strange attracts the strange, and strange things will come of this,” the old wives of the village prophesied, and knew that good things came rarely from afar. Esara herself, too, had one day appeared out of nowhere like the boy, without past and without roots.

First of all, Esara peeled the boy’s travel clothes off and threw a nettle shirt that was far too large over his head, gave him food and put him to sleep. For a long time she held the amulet in her hand and hearkened. The wood was as still as a tight-lipped mouth. The moon had wandered a fair stretch when she finally said: “It is time you found some sleep, too.”

She wrapped the amulet in the boy’s clothes, put the bundle down in a corner of the hut and asked the whisper-willows’ roots to watch over it. That very same night the runic bones rattled on the pentagonal stone slab of prophecy, as Esara attempted, with the only light coming from the dying embers from the fireplace, to look into the future. She smiled at the thought that many of the unlearned believed that the future lay in the signs that revealed themselves after every throw. No, it was not that simple. These signs only sought connection to the sky, just like those signs that seemed to hide on the stone greeted the earth. An arcanist considered where the various bones lay on the stone and which was looking at which neighbor and whether one could read the signs only when changing his own position.

Yet in this night, not only did the signs hide, but also fate itself. Esara’s curiosity was replaced by an oppressive restlessness. For her and the boy, who had quickly fallen asleep in one of the corners of the hut, there seemed to be no fate, neither in the short nor in the long run.

“This one is not good,” a child’s fair voice broke the silence, and a small hand took one of the bones. All the other stones that had lain motionless upon the slab moved suddenly.

“Stop that, Chigg,” Esara said calmly, though behind her motionless face she fought to conceal her horror. “This isn’t a toy.”

Chigg, in Esara’s dialect, meant simply child or boy . The names parents give to their young are of no importance. True names are given by life itself, sometimes casually, sometimes brutally and violently, as only life itself can.

Chigg dropped the rune bone back onto the slab, where it rolled about aimlessly for a while. Esara collected all the bones anew and scattered them beneath the child’s watchful gaze. The bones rolled and fell over the stone, unable to find the right place. They only found it when Chigg removed one of them.

“Bad bone,” he said.

Esara took it from him and returned all the runes to a little sack. It was not always easy to recognize the will of fate, and often enough she was misled. But fate completely denying her was something she had never witnessed.

Fate, too, has a master it must obey , Esara thought and shook her head pensively. “If there were no more fate, the cosmic order would be gone, and no order would mean the end of the world. There must be another reason why I cannot see the future.”

Esara was too small and unimportant to solve this riddle. Her knowledge was barely sufficient for truth-telling. The power that ruled concealed by fate was beyond her reach.

Even though Esara was feared by many villagers, she was no sorceress and as such was not part of the ruling noble class. Still, she was no mere woman of the common people, for she knew more about the web that made up the world than any other.

“Everything was different once,” she tried to remember, tugging at the veil that covered the scenes from the past. It did not give, it was woven too tightly.

In a village where everyone was considered rich whose doorstep was passed over by hunger, Chigg suffered no shortcomings, for Esara had neither husband nor children. Neither she was likely to find a man. As an outsider, she had no family in the village whose support she could secure through marriage, and opinion was divided on the matter of whether her second face was a gift or a curse. The talent was certainly not a desirable dowry. Her charm, too, was limited, even in her youth, to her eyes. There may be places on Pentamuria that would have considered her red hair evidence of royal blood and as such highly coveted. Here in Earthland, as in the Metal World whose borders were in the foothills just a few days’ journey away, the people had dark hair. Red was neither the day nor the night. It was the color of morning and evening in Earthland, the short moments of indecisiveness between today and the near future. Red also stood for the Fire Kingdom, which never brought any good tidings.

While the houses and cottages of the influential kinships were grouped around the village square, Esara’s hut stood by the edge of the village where nobody else wanted to live. The other houses formed a ring along an invisible line where the downs met the valley. They stood where the earth was still dry and the ground was even. The damper grounds were too valuable to settle on. They were used to grow onions, and lush grass grew there too, which brought the herds through the dry season. The rights to the grass were negotiated anew every year under the Tree of the Court. Only Esara’s house stood where the ground was much too damp, where the Fever Spirits lived, who brought sickness to the villagers.

Yet for Chigg, Esara’s house was the most wonderful in the entire village. The cottages were mostly built out of branches, the gaps filled with grass and clay, for good wood was sparse. The Reeve’s house alone was made entirely of wood and even had a stone foundation.

Esara’s house, on the other hand, was neither a cottage nor a real house. Upon her arrival in the village she had planted four fast-growing whisper-willows, which had formed the four cornerstones of the house and grew larger and stronger every year. The low-alder grew between these living columns, a dense, short bush, barely taller than the average man could reach. On the inside, where the light was less abundant, the twigs had died. Yet they remained as pliant as ever, which Esara had learned to use to great effect. The twigs on the outside, however, kept growing, turning the small shelter into a blossoming palace encircling a small, well-protected room in the middle. Esara called her house Grovehall.

The ground was simply flattened earth, and despite the dampness of the area always dry, for the whisper-willows and the low-alder took the water from the earth.

The more the bushes grew and the larger the house became, the more birds decided to nest there, so before long the boy was woken every morning by birdsong. And every evening, the loud screeching arguments between the birds trying to find their rightful sleeping place reminded him that it was time to go to sleep.

Chigg was still too young to notice how Esara was avoided by the villagers. The women hissed after her and spat thrice on the ground if their paths crossed. The men dodged out of her way. Anyone who wanted to visit did so at night, in secret, and there was every reason to do so.

Sometimes Chigg would be woken by hoarse voices, so quiet they were barely audible. The voices belonged to young girls asking for love-potions, hunters who had lost their skill with the bow, or anxious mothers, begging for a blessing upon some item or other, or else for a herb-potion to cure a child’s fever.

Esara’s knowledge was not limited to fate; she also knew of the powers of plants, metal and earthen colors. The village near the border between Earthland and Metal World was too small, too insignificant and too poor to have its own healer, so Esara’s counsel was often asked, but love and respect do not go well with fear and dread.

When Chigg was not sitting in Grovehall, he was running around or playing at any place in the village that enticed his imagination. When he was still small, he did not attract any attention, from either the adults or the other children. But after every harvest the adults began to talk more and more, asking why he was not working. And nor could the other children overlook him any longer.

Brongard was much like his father. Tall, bulky, dark; convinced of his own importance. As the Reeve’s son he led the village children, determining what should be played in the little spare time they had, what should be talked about and, in particular, how things were to be done. On this summer afternoon they were to cross the village square. The disorderly jumble of children ran noisily after Brongard until he stopped abruptly. Right there, in the middle of the square, stood the truth-teller’s child.

“Get out of my way, witch-boy,” Brongard said, calmly, as he had learned from imitating his father.

“Why should I?”

Brongard burst out laughing, for this was really an amusing question, and the other children laughed all the louder because Brongard had laughed.

“Because we are many, and you are alone. Because I am older, bigger, stronger and much cleverer than you.” And, after a carefully chosen pause: “And because you are not one of us.”

Chigg flinched, but covered it quite well.

“What does it matter if I am alone or in the herd? The great hunters are all on their own,” he replied proudly.

Brongard began to enjoy the situation.

“And you are one of the great hunters? Take a look at our hunters, or at the wild beasts in the hills – if you can survive that. They are all large, strong and dark, like us. You? Look into a mirror, if you know what that is. You have probably only ever seen yourself through muddy puddles. You are no great hunter. You are small, you are pale, you are silent. You are a lost kid, at best.” Brongard gave a loud bleat, and the other children laughed again.

Chigg stayed quiet. What could he have said? Perhaps the smithy had a mirror, because he could polish metal? The Reeve must have had one, because the Reeve had everything. He had long noticed that he looked different to the others. His hair was colored like the sun, changing its sheen all through the day. His eyes were further apart than those of the other children. They were gray, not brown, and a short, straight nose sat between them, more like a blade than a mace. Small as he was, he was faster and had greater endurance, but he simply did not have the muscle or the oxen-like strength of Brongard.

Brongard used the silence in his favor and began to attack anew. “What I see before me is weak, filthy and stupid. Why don’t you just leave? You’ve no father, no mother. You’ve no past. You have nothing; you are nothing and will always be nothing. You’re barely human. You are... you’re a...”

Brongard groped for a word that could contain all that his ten harvests of experience allowed him to feel. This truth, or what he considered to be truth, formed in his body, condensed in his head and broke out of his open mouth forcefully as a triumphant shout.

“You are a Nill!”

You are a Nill. The words rang as a hollow echo in Chigg’s ears. To denounce a human’s humanity was the worst one could to him. Perhaps neither Brongard nor Chigg really knew what a Nill was. But the words had been spoken, their power too strong for Chigg not to understand them.

These four words smashed, hammer-like, everything he had lived into little pieces. In that moment, after barely eight harvests, Chigg’s childhood ended. Ended by a boy who wasn’t even evil, just older, larger, stronger and more ruthless than the others.

Chigg stood rooted to the spot, not even moving as the other children passed him, puffing and shoving. Brongard was already a few steps away when Chigg finally turned around and yelled: “I will take the name Nill, and the whole world will bow before it!” But the shout broke after the first few words in his throat and the rest was so quiet that none could hear it. But it was the first sentence of his new life. Chigg had been the child, Nill was the man. It had happened faster than lightning could split a tree. And it happened quietly, unnoticed.

Nill stood there for a few more moments, staring after the other children with empty eyes, until he ran home, disturbed and full of anger, sadness and defiance.

“Where have you been, Chigg?”

“I’m not called Chigg, my name is Nill!”

“That is not your name.”

“Now it is.”

For Esara, her boy lost his name on that day. She never called him Chigg again, because he did not respond to it, but she never spoke the word Nill.

The children’s argument had not gone unnoticed by the adults, and some of them saw another bad omen in it. Esara knew that the time had come to let her boy help with the work in the village. She would not make a truth-teller out of him, because real truth-tellers are born, not made.

He may have been tough enough to be a hunter, but he was too small and weak, so she simply asked him what he wanted to become.

“A blacksmith!” the answer rang out.

Esara shook her head. “A blacksmith needs a lot of strength. The tools are heavy. I do not think Ambross will teach you this profession.”

“We’ll see,” Nill answered stubbornly and went to Ambross, the local smith. After lurking around the workshop long enough for the smith no longer to be able to ignore him, Ambross stopped what he was working on and asked shortly: “Huh?”

“I want to become a blacksmith.”

Ambross hesitated. He looked twice and began to laugh heartily. “You tiny tot want to learn forging?”

Still laughing, he turned back to the blank and began to forge it into shape with heavy blows from his hammer. Occasionally he shook his head, but Nill could not tell whether because he was not yet pleased with the blank’s shape or because he was still wondering about the boy’s strange wish.

A long time later he lifted the red-glowing piece of metal from the anvil and cooled it, first in a plant brew, then in a water trough. This shall be part of a fine digging-stick , he thought and looked around for another blank to use.

“You’re still here.”

“Yes, I’d like to learn how to forge things.”

Ambross was no longer laughing, but scrutinizing Nill thoughtfully.

“You are tenacious, no doubt, but I can’t make a blacksmith out of you. You’re too weak.” The words were calm and matter of fact; there was no derision in them. “But if you’re really that keen on it, you may stay until you’ve realized that there is no point in it.” His face cracked into a wide grin, making his mouth seem like a well-placed ax wound. “It’ll probably cost me a good piece of metal or two. I will show you how to engrave, and later on maybe how to make rings or bracelets. Who knows, you might have a keener interest in jewelry than in tools and weapons. Here!” He tossed a broom to Nill.

From that moment Nill worked in Ambross’ workshop. He learned quickly, understood the delicacies of forging iron, bronze and brass and knew how to engrave fine patterns with a graver. He helped his teacher with the bellows until his arms went numb and he cleaned the workshop. Whenever he had nothing else to do he would sit on a wooden block in a dark corner, watching Ambross work. So the time passed, until Nill spoke to his master: “Master Ambross, I would like to make a weapon.”

Ambross thought for a while and said: “Alright, I’ll give you a blank. You can choose one. Once I’m done here you can do whatever you want with it. But one blank is all you’re getting from me.”

Nill nodded. “One blank is all I need,” he said confidently.

Ambross looked up at the ceiling, where he presumed the gods of silly ideas to reside, and shook his head again. The boy never spoke much, but Ambross rather enjoyed his company. They were similar in at least one way, the huge blacksmith and the small boy: a single sentence was usually enough for them, like a well-placed strike of a hammer.

The workshop was not roomy and rather dark, cluttered and dirty. The blanks lay, sorted by size and hardness, on different piles between hammers and pliers, torn bellows, broken tools and finished objects, and on everything in the room lay a sticky, foul-smelling residue of soot, iron dust, steam and sweat. How anyone could find anything in this mess was a mystery to all but Ambross and Nill, yet there was a hidden order to things in this dark, hot place.

Still, every order leaves room for the past and the future, for forgetting and wishing. Nill had found a blank in the darkest corner of the room that did not seem to fit in with the other blanks. One of his duties was to regularly clean the iron. This piece had remained hidden for a long time, and under the layer of grime it had a peculiar pattern that Nill did not recognize from any other blank. The metal itself did not seem to be solid; rather it was layered, as the leaves that fall in autumn become a single sheet upon the ground in winter. Judging by the filth on the blank it must have spent a long time in the workshop already. Nill did not know if it was valuable in any way, but as he held it he felt as if the iron were talking to him.

Nill waited until the day the council was held, where the village’s troubles and affairs were discussed. Nobody ever wanted to miss out on this, and so Nill had always been present in the past. The children never understood much of the discussions the adults were having, but they loved the feeling of being part of something special and enjoyed the break from their monotonous daily life.

So it was that Nill had the entire day to himself. Stopping in the middle of forging something and continuing later was possible, but not risk-free, as the metal would have to be re-heated. Nill only had this one blank and did not want to risk it. He chose a medium-sized hammer, because he lacked the strength to use the larger one. As nobody was there to help him, he also had to tread the bellows to heat the iron to the temperature he needed.

Nill beat the pointed end of the blank into a short, four-sided tapered tap and drew most of the metal to the other, wider side, flattening it to a wide blade. Nill knew what a good hunting knife looked like. The weight needed to be in the handle, not the blade, or the hand holding it would tire out quickly. The spine of the blade needed to be strong and solid so as not to break when the hunter cut hollow bones to reach the marrow. And the edge had to be robust of course, or it would quickly wear down.

He forged this knife against his better judgment. The taper was short and thin, the blade long and flat, the edge thin, and to be sharpened along half the back as well.

Ambross rarely made weapons, and when he did he answered all questions with an irritated growl or with silence. While working on the weapon he would mumble words Nill could not make out.

“Master Ambross, are you saying spells to strengthen the weapons?” Nill had asked once.

“I’m no sorcerer, I’m a blacksmith,” Ambross had answered gruffly, but then he had smiled his quiet smile and muttered: “Who knows, maybe some magic is left in the old blacksmithing tradition.” A bit louder he said to Nill: “I wished the blade good luck and told it that it had been born. We smiths believe that the hammer gives soul to the weapons, making them come to life.”

Nill had tried to do the same. Every strike from the hammer was accompanied by a thought he sent to the metal. The thought was always the same.

Burn!

In Nill’s inner eye an image blossomed: bright flames, cold white light, piercing bolts of lightning and all-encompassing might. But what could such a thought do, if it dissolved in these images like a thin wisp of smoke in a morning breeze?

Nill entered the workshop the next morning immediately after Master Ambross had opened it. He gave a small bow and focused on using polite words.

“Master, I finished my apprenticeship with you yesterday and would like to thank you for all the effort you have made to teach me.”

Ambross looked down on the boy quietly. Nothing about him showed the glowing pride and happiness he felt as he answered: “Well, Nill, you were never really my apprentice. You can’t really end something you didn’t really begin, can you? Now then, don’t you want to show me what you forged yesterday?”

Nill took out his blade.

Ambross’ feelings died like a fire in an icy wind.

“What it that?” he asked coldly.

“It’s a combat dagger!”

“And what do you want to do with a combat dagger?”

“I want to become a great hero or a warrior.”

Ambross’ eyes became heavy all of a sudden. Bitter scenes from the past, memories of pain and desperation, buried deep for too long, came back to the surface. “Heroics, my boy, heroics don’t require a weapon, but heart. You wouldn’t understand yet. And when you do finally understand, it’ll be too late. You can be certain, my boy: nobody becomes a hero because he wants to.”

Ambross’ keen gaze inspected the weapon more closely. “Still, your blade is well crafted. If I’d known what you were going to do, I never would have let you choose the blank for yourself. How could I forget this piece?” Ambross seemed to look into the distance, at something that was not there. “But you chose well. The blade is hard and resilient. You made one mistake though: the weight isn’t evenly balanced. Your hand will tire quickly if you use this weapon.”

“Yes, Master Ambross, I know. That is why I would like to ask one more thing of you.”

Ambross’ left eyebrow wandered skywards.

“Give me a piece of lead, please.”

“What do you want lead for?”

“If I put a ball of lead in the handle, the handle becomes heavier, and the blade will be easier to use.”

“You’ve learned much, little one. Listen to what I’m about to tell you. Do not use wood for the handle, use bone instead. Make it thin and then wrap it tightly with wet leather. Leather bands will give you a better grip than wood or bone, and you can replace them if they wear out.”

Nill said his thanks with one last polite bow, and Ambross wished the boy good luck. He had said all that he could.

At home Esara did not ask what had happened when Nill told her that he was no longer going to the blacksmith’s. Neither did she ask when Nill stayed away for longer and longer, ranging through the hills around the village, talking with the hunters, the Ramsmen and sometimes with the animals, instead of going after regular work.

Nill learned a lot out there in the hills. After barely one harvest he knew that there were not just flowers and plants of all sorts, but also that every plant had friends, family, and foe, and that every plant adapted its characteristics to the earth and the sky, the sun, the moon, the light and the shade. He knew the right time to pick keriberries and knew why trrk-roots were the only root to be dug up in spring.

In the long evenings of the short season Nill liked to stay home and watch Esara’s attempts to catch a glimpse of the future. For her prophecies she did not just use the rune bones, twigs or knotted grass, but also a mixture of white ash and light sand which she spread out on a large, flat stone in a five-pointed wooden frame. She would sit in front of the white sand for a long while before she took the oracle twig and hastily drew a few signs in the dust.

Nill began to imitate her, and before long he too would draw unsteady pictures in the sand with a twig. He did not realize that Esara was not drawing at all, but rather that her spirit took control of her in those moments. During these silent moments of immersion Esara did not know what she was doing, and the meaning of the symbols that she drew was forgotten soon after. The strength of the symbols however was strong enough to make a connection between Esara and the stars above.

Nill took great care to make sure Esara did not notice what he did. Even though he had never been forbidden from doing anything, he felt that she would not be happy if she saw him using her precious ash sand. White sand was very expensive in Earthland, where the world was clad in brown and red. The earth had to be washed for a long time until it released what little sand it hid. After that, it took even longer for the red or brown sand to lose its color in the sour Kamander solution to finally show the white it needed for the runes to find an anchor.

There came a time when Nill dreamed. They were terrible dreams from which he woke screaming, and they were peaceful dreams which made him smile in his sleep. Every morning, when Esara had left Grovehall, Nill sat down before the Stone of Prophecy and drew his dreams. On one of those mornings he just could not get it right. He scratched lines into the sand, brushed them away again and began anew. Over and over again, for so long that he all but forgot the time.

“What are you doing?” Esara’s voice was quiet, but it came through the silence like a whip. Nill started so badly that part of the ash flew from the stone plate. “Do you not know that it is one of the worst possible crimes to draw pictures or symbols? The Reeve alone may do that, and even he only does it in secret. If you want to make pictures, carve them out of wood, like Cramas Clumpfoot does.” Esara’s voice had become so quiet that Nill could barely hear her.

“But you do it, I’ve seen you,” Nill whispered hoarsely.

“Yes, I do it. Or, more precisely, it happens to me. There once was a time when I was allowed to, and I still know how.”

Esara began to chuckle. It turned into a mad cackle and Nill started for a second time as he saw his care-mother’s face change. The eyes grew smaller, the mouth opened in a gape as if it wanted to say something. But as quickly as it had come it was gone, and Esara looked as she always had done.

“But I want to draw pictures! I have to. Do you understand? I have to draw this forest here,” Nill objected.

“You don’t know any forests. There are no forests in Earthland, only shrubs and bushes. How are you going to know a forest? Nobody can draw something they’ve never seen,” Esara said.

“I saw this forest in my dream. It’s the forest I dream of, but I can’t draw it.”

“Well, why not?” Esara asked.

“It has to be there. All of it.”

“You’ll never be able to draw all of it. Do the most important parts.”

“What’s the most important?”

“Whatever you can draw in the shortest time possible.”

Nill brushed his previous attempts away again and scratched into the sand a forest consisting entirely of vertical lines.

“What is that?” Esara asked.

“A forest.”

“I don’t see a forest in that.”

“It’s just the trunks, I left out the rest.”

“Then the forest is missing all that is important.”

“I can’t do more in so little time.”

“You can, you just didn’t try.”

On his next try Nill drew a forest, made up of three unequal-sized vertical lines. On top of these lines he drew a circle and a pointed edge, and between them a cross, two small horizontal lines and a dot.

“Good,” Esara said. “I know this forest, and I know where it lies.”

Nill’s illustrations became simpler, and soon he found that he enjoyed drawing messages in pictures that nobody except himself and his mother could understand.

“Tell nobody, under pain of death, what you’re doing here. Promise me that, and I will show you something far more powerful and dangerous than any picture.”

Esara had red spots on her cheeks, and her eyes were shining bright. Nill had never seen his mother so serious and worked-up and did not understand what she meant. More to calm her than of his own volition he swore a solemn oath.

“If you make a picture simpler and simpler, you get symbols. Some of these symbols are immensely powerful, but I cannot show them to you, and I don’t understand them myself anymore.”

A sad shadow flitted across Esara’s face and vanished as fast as it had come.

“Every symbol, strong or weak, tells a story. They tell stories the way words cannot. Words are spoken quickly and easily overheard. Words can enchant, but symbols will burn into a human forever. Symbols do not enchant, they change. Nobody can know of what I have told you.”

“And you can make these symbols?” Nill asked.

Esara nodded. “Some of them. They did not take everything from me.”

“Who took it away from you?” Nill asked angrily, for if someone took something from Esara, they had taken it from him too, and after ten harvests Nill felt old and strong enough to defend himself, Esara and Grovehall against all evil.

Esara looked upon her boy affectionately, seeing the thin arms, the skinny body, the thin blond hair. She also saw two splinters of Ironstone in Nill’s eyes, around which a mighty will began to coalesce.

“It was a long time ago. It’s alright,” she said.

Nill learned not only the symbol script, but also the runes and other scripts that looked like knotted grass. He never understood why just one script was not enough, but it pleased him to play around with the symbols and rearrange them into new orders.

“Look here,” he said one day. “This is a wonderful grass-word, and it sounds wonderful as well.”

“Yes, but that word doesn’t exist. There is no meaning behind it.”

Nill frowned. “Then I will give it one. I just need to find out what it fits with.”

It was but a small step from the runes to truth-telling, and so Nill asked one evening: “How is it that bones know the future?”

“The bones don’t know it. The one who throws the bones is the one who knows.”

Nill took the bones and tossed them across the stone slab.

“This isn’t how it works. You have to look at the oracle-bones and listen to your inner self.”

Nill listened to his inner self, but heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears and the unsteady beating of his heart.

“There’s nothing there,” he complained, and the accusation in his voice could not be overheard.

“That is because you have no connection to the stones yet,” said Esara. “Even if body and soul know the future, neither knows that they know.”

Nill stared blankly.

“The art of truth-telling is, in essence, to touch the knowledge of the future that hides within you.”

“But I don’t know the future.”

“Yes you do,” Esara contradicted him. “The future is always preceded by messengers that show what will be tomorrow. Your spirit sees these messengers and knows what will happen. But still your spirit keeps its secrets.”

Nill stayed quiet, rather annoyed. He had a feeling that adults never gave him a clear answer when he wanted to know something.

“Do you know how the weather is going to be tomorrow?” Esara asked.

“Sure, it will be hot and dry.”

“See? You know some of the future already.”

“But everyone knows the weather of tomorrow, that isn’t important.”

Nill felt derided and his indignation showed in every line of his immature face.

“Knowing tomorrow’s weather is very important, and I did tell you that everyone knows the future.”

“But you know it better than others.”

Esara smiled. “The rune stones help me to understand myself better. Look here,” she continued. “This bone here means large-small, near-far, soon or later. This one is the Grand Regent; the sailors call it the great steersman.”

“And how does it show something that is small, far away and soon to become important?”

“It doesn’t.”

Nill shook his head.

Esara lifted a small bone slab. “This one here shows good and evil, useful and destructive. And that one there is of particular importance.” The bone Esara was pointing at had so many surfaces it looked almost like a ball. On every face there was a dark symbol, burned into the bone. “It holds your family, your friends and your enemies.”

“Well I don’t need that one then, I don’t have any family. I only have you.” Nill swallowed hard.

“Of course you have a family. The fact that you don’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“If I don’t know them and the family doesn’t know that I exist, then I don’t have a family, because they don’t care for me.”

Esara was lost for words at this, so she simply continued explaining the various bones and their properties. “This bone is home, your house, your village and all houses, buildings and squares where people live. And it’s very important which side is up, but even more important is the way the bones lie in relation to each other.”

From that evening onwards Nill played with the oracle-bones as often as he could, and Esara let him. But one evening he startled her with the words: “Your bones aren’t good. When I’m big I will get you better ones. Every bone should come from a different animal and from a different place. Good bones should have seen the world.”

It was not Nill’s words that made Esara blanch. It was the dancing rune stones on the Stone of Prophecy. Having been tossed, they no longer came to a halt. Some just quivered on the spot, others turned in circles, and the bone for Home was slowly crawling towards the Grand Regent.

Esara took the oracle-bones away from Nill. “Never play with the symbols again,” she said harshly. “It’s far too dangerous. Never tell anyone that you have ever even touched an oracle-bone.”

“Why not?” Nill asked, entirely innocently.

“Oracle-bones lie dormant until they are called upon. They awaken in the truth-teller’s hand when they are tossed, and they find rest anew on the Stone of Prophecy, where they will say what needs to be said.”

“That’s not possible,” Nill exclaimed. “My bones always move. When I lift the bag, when I toss them and when they’ve landed on the stone. They stop when I tell them to stop.”

“Dancing bones tell you that the future is not decided yet. It isn’t wise to keep reminding fate that it has unfinished business it should be taking care of.”

Esara’s fingers were shaking as she collected the bones one at a time and dropped them back into the bag.

“But you keep reminding me of things I have to take care of.”

“That is completely different. Do you honestly believe that you’re above fate?”

“Why not? There must be something that tells fate what to do.” Nill felt very strong and bold, and nothing could have frightened him in that moment, but Esara glared angrily at him.

“Fool. Only a fool will challenge that which he doesn’t know, and an even greater fool doesn’t see who decides over his life.”

I decide over my own life , Nill thought, with all the hubris of youth, but didn’t dare say the words out loud. Esara’s face was far too serious. Instead, he decided to tackle the situation differently and asked: “Does that happen, though, that a human doesn’t have a future and it only happens much later?”

He felt like he was about to discover a great secret.

Everything about Esara’s face showed that this question distressed her, for future and fate, time and destiny are still secrets to the truth-teller, and she knew that one wrong word could change an entire life. With great effort she forced an answer.

“No, everyone has a future, but sometimes it can be several futures or fate can decide not to share the knowledge. Fate does not always want people to know its plans. Truth-tellers know this and have to accept that things happen as they do.”

But truth-tellers did not know that. Esara had lied. Sometimes it could happen that a truth-teller read the signs wrong, or that the vision was unclear and hazy, but oracle-bones that refused to come to a halt was something she had never seen in her life. All security had left her, because a future that did not exist was as the chaos before the making of the world. She tried her utmost to keep this terrible secret from Nill, and pretended the dancing bones to be little more than an annoyance. But she could not fool Nill. He had seen the gray pallor of her skin, the thin layer of shining sweat on her brow. He did not have to glance at her shaking hands to realize how disturbed she was.

It was one of those long evenings when nobody could tell when the day was over and the night began. The sun had gone down but still shone a red light into the dark blue night sky, and only rarely was one of the stars visible beyond the thin shroud of clouds.

Nill retreated along with his thoughts and fell asleep over them. Esara waited for the moon, for she had questions to ask before she went to sleep, but the moon seemed to have been caught in the clouds. It became later and later, and Esara’s last glance of the night was towards her fitfully sleeping boy.

Neither mother nor son witnessed the clouds finally break apart, upon which a pale yellow moon shone down. They could not have enjoyed the stars for long, either, because soon the mists began to waken in the flatlands and sloughs, sneaking into the village as they always did, spying into every stable and every hut that let them in.

The only place the mist could not go was Esara’s flower-house. As the fog hid the starlight, the emissions from Grovehall kept the mists away. Slowly a grayish-yellow smoke began to rise from the flattened earth, along the roots of the whisper-willows and the low-alders, more massive than the thin mist in the coolness of the night, more hectic than the quivering branches of the willows. While the damp air still caressed the animals and the scents of the evening dissolved into tiny water-beads, a foul, fusty smell broke through the earth of Esara’s house, with hints of sulfur and tar. And in the veils and swirls of this smoke, where it condensed for a few short moments, the first outline of a figure became visible.

Nill tossed and turned on the ram skins. The first fumes reached him and covered him. The smoke interrupted the deep, regular breaths of the sleeping boy and turned them into a hoarse, hasty cough, tearing at Nill’s lungs. Nill coughed and retched, screamed and leapt from his bed, his dagger held in his right fist.

He could not tell whether the smoke was surrounding the figure or was indeed part of it. Grayish-yellow streaks wafted over the mighty tusks of a huge battle-boar, its skull adorned with curved horns. The thick neck and muscular torso were mostly human, apart from two ridiculously small, red wings sprouting from the back. The hands ended in long, scythe-like claws and tore through the air like singing swords. But what made Nill’s gut cramp up were the creature’s legs. Strong, furry thighs from the hips downwards reminded him of wooly buffaloes, tapered down to giant feet that looked like they belonged to a bird of prey. The closer to the foot the fur got, the more it solidified and stuck together, forming horny scales, and below the knee it became a steely armoring. The feet were armed with rough, dark yellow talons, three pointing forwards and one backwards. A whipping tail, long enough to reach the creature’s own head, ended in a barbed point: a terrible weapon, combining the capabilities of a hook-spear and a whip. Talons and tusks, barbs and claws, strength, mass and wildness were opposed by nothing but the boy’s dagger for the protection of Grovehall and his life.

Nill thrust and his dagger sliced through the creature’s outstretched arm, merely disturbing the smoky swirls. The whip-tail with its metal barb circled through the air with a howl, passing through the walls of the hut as though they weren’t there, and wrapped itself around Nill’s chest. Nill felt icy cold and fiery heat at once. But the tail dissolved on the surface of his body, disappearing into his flesh and reforming behind him. The smoke became murkier and denser. It stopped swirling and started to drip like oil. Nill let out another scream. His battle-cry of anguish and anger with the light, penetrating sound of his young voice made the creature jerk up its head. It roared back at him. Dull, but from the depths of its body it aimed the roar at the boy. It was the sound of chaos, shaped, but not yet words. The sounds marked the beginning of feelings, while destroying all thought. The roar blasted through Nill’s head, surged down his spine, tumbled in his stomach and tore back out through his skin. Nill shook under the branding storm of a language he did not understand.

Esara stood with her back to the wall, paralyzed by fear, her fingers digging into the woven branches of the low-alders. Nill’s first cry had woken her. She had leapt up before she could even see anything, prepared to defend her son from anything and anyone threatening to disturb Grovehall’s peace. But at the sight of the swirling cloud whose stench settled heavily in her nose she lost all strength and determination. Esara was but a truth-teller, yet from the remains of a past life that had long sunk beyond memory an old knowledge rose. And with that knowledge came understanding.

Esara’s eyes darted around the room and came to rest on a small table, on which stood a bowl of blossoming Nightwort. Nill had brought it home two days ago from one of his wanderings.

“Drop the dagger and take the flowers!” she screamed.

But Nill did not understand. He glanced at Esara and saw her mutter words he could not hear, their sound drowned by the growls of the boar. Nill flipped the dagger so that the point faced downwards like a wildcat’s claws. He lowered his arm, stretched his wrist and the dagger vanished from his opponent’s sight, well hidden behind his body. The beast swiped at Nill with its left arm to crush his shoulder and sink its claws deep into his flesh. Nill turned, dodging the attack, and struck upwards with his dagger. The blade went through the arm, throwing up a cascade of brownish-yellow swirls. The battle-boar roared louder.

Esara’s voice was suddenly clear and bright in Nill’s mind and bypassed the disturbed air. Somewhere in a mystical center between his ears it sounded calm, decisive and urging, with no fear or desperation. “Drop your dagger, take the flowers. Focus on the flowers, forget the smoke. Remember how it was when you picked them.”

The beast’s next blow hit his shoulder and the claws sank deep into his flesh. The pain was more severe than when he had been struck with the whip, but again there were no wounds, and not a drop of blood spilled from his body.

“Remember how it was when you picked the flowers, how you carried them home, how you placed them back in their natural element, the calm water.” Esara’s voice had lost its urgency and instead sounded as monotonous as a small brook. It took Nill’s thoughts away from battle and war to peace, to beauty and love. Nill turned about, took the flowers carefully out of the water and let the beast be. He did not feel the hot-cold grasp of the paws around his throat, nor the sharp horn of the claws. A comforting warmth spread from the watery plants in his hands through his body. The pain of fire and ice dissolved, the eerie creature in the smoke became ever more translucent. The last thing Nill saw was the battle-boar’s wide open maw, the huge skull thrown back. It looked as though it wanted to shout something. Then the smoke vanished and only a faint echo remained of the roaring and howling.

Esara embraced Nill and whispered: “Come now and sleep. It was just an illusion, a vision with no power.”

Almost limply Nill let her guide him. He was numb and fell asleep instantly. Inside him, the battle still raged. All through the night he tossed about, screamed and woke with blank eyes staring at invisible pictures. Esara sat by him all night. To stop the slight beginnings of the fever she repeatedly spread a few droplets of water from the Nightwort on his brow. When Nill finally seemed calm, the sun had begun to rise.

“I had a terrible dream,” Nill said as he sat blinking on his bed. “I dreamed of a terrible creature I had to fight.”

Esara looked tired and old. Several strands had loosened from her banded hair, her hands shook slightly and her eyes were deep. It was not the lack of sleep that brought this weariness about.

“I wish it were so,” she said quietly. “Look, your knife is lying there. Exactly where you dropped it. And if you check the floor, you’ll find traces of your foe. I’ll brush them away when the sun stands higher.”

Nill looked at the floor from his bed and saw a fine yellow dust with a scattering of rough black grains.

“Sulfur and Dark-filth,” Esara answered his puzzled gaze.

“What was that creature that attacked us?” Nill asked.

Esara gave a bitter laugh. “It was a demon. I only saw the smoke and smelled the stench that heralded it, but I’ll never forget that smell.”

“Couldn’t you see it?” Nill asked.

Esara shook her head. “Sometimes only the person who is targeted by the demon can see it.”

“I don’t even know if it was really there,” Nill said. “I could make it out quite clearly, but we could not touch each other. My dagger went through it like the smoke it arrived in, and its claws did not harm me even though I felt them.”

He rubbed his shoulder, which still hurt a little.

Esara looked pensive. “Demons are creatures of the Other World. They only come when they are called or when someone sends them. Then they can exist in this world and are unstoppable.”

“But you stopped the demon. You, by yourself. You told me what to do and your voice was stronger than the demon’s roar.” Nill suddenly saw Esara through different eyes.

“I can’t remember that,” Esara said quietly. “But that wasn’t me. No, to stop a demon you have to be a powerful warlock or mage, and even then success is uncertain. Demons are companions to feelings and memories. It must have followed your chagrin, your anger or your disappointment. I should have known that the dancing runes were presaging something... but a demon! I had not expected that. Whatever you felt, the only way to banish the demon was to replace your feelings with a different memory.”

“But I wasn’t angry. Just confused. Does that mean that whenever I don’t understand something that demon is going to come?” Nill sounded uncertain.

“No, only if the feelings are very strong and have been lying dormant for a long time. And if the person is accessible for the powers of the Other World.”

Nill tried to understand what Esara was telling him. “So I’m one of the people who are...” Nill hesitated over the strange word. “Accessible?”

“I don’t know. You did not meet in this or the Other World, but somewhere betwixt. I could not see the demon, so he wasn’t here. I could not see you clearly either, a part of you had already gone. There is an old song about Mortar the Seeker. He went to the mid-realm. That’s all I know.”

“So you don’t know what it looked like? It was a beast made up of many different animals.” Nill eagerly described the demon in all detail and Esara drew defensive runes in the air, shocked.

“If I could not feel his presence here, I would agree and say it was all a dream, for the demon you just described is called Bucyngaphos. And he is no ordinary demon; he is one of their three lords. The legends say that Bucyngaphos looks different for every person. Only two things remain the same in all accounts. For one, he is always made up of different animals, for another, he always stands on the legs of a bird of prey. But you must be mistaken.”

“Why? I just told you what I saw.”

“Only the old ones in myths from the early time of this world, when here and there were still the same, have ever stood face to face with the Archdemons. Since then the worlds of humans and the Archdemons have been separated, far apart. The mightiest demons a person can still call or summon are the demons of pure emotion. There is Odioras, the Demon of Cold Hate, Irasemion, Demon of Wild Rage, and Avarangan, Lord of Blind Greed. The demons of false love, powerless fear and lust for success are terrible creatures too, but I know little of them. The Archdemons are the keepers for these beings. They are from a world that existed even before ours. No mortal may call them, no warlock summon them.”

“But he came to me. Isn’t that right?” Nill asked, feeling something akin to pride in his chest at being one of the chosen few.

“He came to take you. But why? Why?” Esara hid her head in her arms and Nill’s pride deflated as he saw his mother’s desperation.

The encounter with the demon lay over Grovehall like a shadow. On the outside, one day followed another. Esara attended to her duties and Nill wandered around in the hills. Only the evenings were awful, when they discussed the day or stared at the Stone of Prophecy, thinking of nothing but that terrible night. And when they finally went to sleep, even slumber did not grant them rest.

Esara knew that it was not good for Nill to wander around on his own all day. Thus, she often took him with her when she had to fill up her stock of fruits, roots and herbs. Nill aided her while they gathered plants and sometimes his sharp eyes found rare roots Esara had been seeking for ages. But this was no adequate activity for a boy who grew stronger and bigger by the day. He still was smaller and lighter than the other children of his age but his face had begun to lose its soft, round shapes, and the first lines were starting to dig in around his mouth.

The boy needs work , Esara thought.

The opportunity came when by chance the Reeve obtained a herd of sheep as payment for an open debt. He would sell them to the next best buyer who offered a decent price, but until then someone had to take care of them. The Reeve could have entrusted them to a shepherd, but then the animals would have been separated every evening, and so the Reeve was quite relieved when Esara made a suggestion. From that day forth Nill led the animals into the hills every day, returning before the sun had set every evening. It was one of fate’s many vagaries that Nill was to take care of the herd belonging to the very man whose son had hurt him so profoundly. But the adults tended to know little about their children.

Buyers came and went. Either they named a price too low, or they could not pay on the spot, or they offered to barter with wares the Reeve was not interested in. Four more harvests passed and nothing happened apart from the herd growing and Nill getting older. The memory of the demon faded under the sun’s glaring rays, and the nights lost their terror.

Nill sat with the animals in the hills and waited. Esara waited in Grovehall. In the evenings the villagers stood outside their houses and cottages and waited. Everyone waited. But nobody knew what they were waiting for.

Only a fool confuses waiting with faineance. The villagers went about their daily business, the hunters ranged through the bushes in the hopes of finding a few animals and the shepherds stood with a watchful eye by their herds. Nill, surrounded by his herd, looked up to the sky, as if he hoped to find something there. He studied the movement and the shape of the clouds, learned to interpret the birds’ flight, and discovered the taste with which the wind changed direction, and even its speech. The wind spoke differently to the animals, who told their stories with their ears, tails and bodies when they came to him or even argued with him. “He who looks for friends should look to the animals,” an old proverb went. But was that true for all animals?

It was a day like any other, but Nill suddenly had the feeling that he was not alone. On a flat hilltop stood an old ram. He had come from nowhere, and with the glaring sun behind him he was nothing more than a pitch-black shadow to Nill’s blinded eyes. He turned his massive neck with his great horns slowly towards Nill, eyeing him curiously. The old ram was large, defensive and tough, and he came closer with a few hesitant steps. His withers were as high as Nill’s waist and the horns reached his chest. The hind legs were bony and skinny, as with all rams, but this ram’s ribs were also visible under the half-torn spring coat. It was a mystery to Nill how an animal could be so thin despite the good spring grass everywhere. But any tidings of pity died down as soon as he looked the animal in the eye. Nill had never seen eyes like that in a ram. They were slanted like a wildcat’s, large as those of a duskflyer’s and golden-yellow like the wings of a God moth.

The ram circled around the herd, stared over to Nill, checked every single sheep and took a watching post close to the herd. This strange ram was much to Nill’s liking. It amused him to watch the ram, so he decided to let him be. It’ll be an animal that lost its herd and is looking for a new home , he thought in his youthful carelessness. But when Nill got up to take his herd to the other side of the hill to get them out of the direct sun, the ram stepped up. He was not having some stranger take over his newly-found herd. He lowered his great head, pointed his horn in his enemy’s direction and charged.

A ram is not a wild beast that lusts for man-flesh. In a hustle in the herd a few sharp blows with a stick are usually enough to restore order. As such, Nill was surprised by the sudden attack, but not concerned. He let the ram approach him, side-stepped him and gave him a mighty kick that caused him to fall over. The ram stood back up again, shook his fleece, went a few steps backwards, scratched the ground with his hooves, lowered his head and charged again. The pounding of his hooves against the hard earth beneath gave Nill enough warning to turn about, the new attack merely passing his waist. Nevertheless, Nill fell over, rolled and got up, quite disconcerted.

That was close , he thought. A blow from those horns would easily break his bones. Nill had barely stood up and the ram was ready to attack again. Nill dodged the attack with ease and kicked again, but the ram was not ready to give up and Nill began to find the whole matter tiring.

His herding staff was no great help in a fight against a ram who seemed to be determined to fight it out until the victor was irrevocably decided. Nill knew that blows from the stick would be even less effective than his kicks. He was reluctant to use it as a lance or to use his dagger instead, for the ram was not after his life. He merely saw Nill as a rival to the new herd he had found.

“I must find a way to fight that this ram understands,” Nill muttered to himself. “I must defeat him without killing him. This isn’t war, it’s just a duel.”

That was all very well, but the only victor a ram will acknowledge is one with a stronger skull and a mightier charge than himself.

His next few dodges brought Nill to the top of the hill where the grass was sparse, the ground meager and the thin earthy crust could no longer hide the white, broken stones. Nill had to search for a few moments, but then he found a rock between the cracked white stones which was large enough to serve as a weapon. He lifted it and threw it at the ram’s brow with all his might. The ram stopped, lowered his head and wanted to retreat to start a new charge, but Nill gave him no pause. He picked the stone back up and dealt another blow to the ram’s brow. Nill drove him back with every shot. The ram had no manner of opposing this tactic, but he understood it. After a series of assaults that lasted for what Nill felt to be an eternity the ram finally turned away, shaking. Nill had won, though he could barely lift his arms any more.

When Nill guided his herd back to the valley that evening the old ram followed, behind all the others, as though he had not yet given up hope. As Nill looked back at the fringe of the village the ram had disappeared into the early night. He was avoiding the village and its people. But next morning he was there. He watched the village from a hilltop calmly, waiting. From that day forth the herd had two guards, until the inevitable happened. The herd had reached a goodly size and a buyer had come who agreed with the Reeve on a price for which the herd was sold. The ram stayed and joined Nill quite naturally.

Nill was wandering again. He wandered across the meadows with his ram, practiced combat with his dagger as well as he could, collected all sorts of food he brought home to Esara. He was wandering and suddenly stopped, astonished. He sat down, leaning against the old ram who stood guard.

“I’m trapped here,” he said to himself. “I’m trapped here for my whole life. I’m the son of a truth-teller, that’s my only belonging and my only obligation. Esara can handle things without me, she doesn’t need me. I have nothing to multiply or protect, I have nothing that’s keeping me here. I have not learned much, and what I have learned is of little use. I don’t know my skills, and if I can do something that others can’t or if I’m different than others, Esara is afraid of it. What is it with me, where do I belong?”

He had no answer to any of his questions. All he knew was that the small village down there was not where he belonged.