“The men of the plains are our brothers!” declared one. “We should stand with them!”
“Death to the iron soldiers!” shouted another.
One particularly tall fellow with bronze skin and yellow hair stood and addressed his chief.
“The gods are punishing the grasslanders for their pride,” he intoned. “Great Chief, will we leave our forest and fight alongside our plains brothers?”
Voyarunta leaned back in his blanket-draped chair. His penetrating blue eyes were fixed on Egrin. “I do not think Twice-Strike came here to rouse the Dom-shu against his own people, Turanaki.”
“No indeed, Great Chief!” Egrin said quickly. “I came to warn the Dom-shu of this peril. No one knows where the host of lizard-men will strike next. It could be the Great Green!”
The blond warrior, Turanaki, made a sound of disgust. “They will not come here! The forest would swallow them. There are richer takings in the west!”
As the foresters debated the merits of aiding the plainsmen in ravaging the Eastern Hundred, Egrin finally realized just how much hostility they felt for Ergoth. Anger held for generations now blazed forth.
Voyarunta silenced them after a time. The chief looked beyond Egrin to where Tol leaned against the doorpost with Miya and Kiya.
“Son of My Life, what say you?”
Tol paused, allowing an interval of silence to pass to dampen the echoes of the heated argument, then he said slowly, “For twenty years, the Dom-shu and Ergoth have had peace. In that time, have the Ergothians ever broken their word to the Dom-shu?”
His gaze traveled around the room. No one spoke because all knew the answer.
“Has trade with the empire enriched the Dom-shu?”
Another question with an obvious answer.
Tol came forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with his old friend. Egrin was still the taller one, but age had begun to whittle down his frame.
“The emperor now reigning is a cruel man, and he never forgets an insult, however slight. If you go to war against the empire, Ackal V will not rest until he has laid waste to the forest. He will kill not only you who fight, but your children, the old ones-all who bear the name Dom-shu.”
Turanaki opened his mouth to speak, but Tol went on, raising his voice. “It may cost the emperor the life of every Rider in his hordes, it may swallow all the gold in the imperial coffers, but he will not stop. He will drown you in the blood of his own warriors if no other means of vengeance remains to him.” Tol shrugged his broad shoulders. “This you should know.”
“We would not be warriors if we lived in fear of what others might do to us!” Turanaki exclaimed.
Egrin ignored the hotheaded forester and addressed Voyarunta.
“Great Chief, I did not come here to incite you against the empire, but to warn you, as a friend and neighbor. I also came to ask Lord Tolandruth to return home.”
Miya drew in a breath sharply, but Kiya nodded with satisfaction. She had guessed as much.
Voyarunta pondered what he’d heard. No one, not even the fiery Turanaki, interrupted the chief’s cogitations.
“The Dom-shu will keep to their forest,” Voyarunta said at last. “As for the Son of My Life, he will do as the gods guide him.”
“I will listen for their counsel,” Tol said, giving the expected answer. Under his breath, he added, “Though I doubt they will speak to me.”
He picked up the bearskin and took his leave of the chief. Miya and Kiya followed. Egrin departed more slowly, as dignity demanded. It would not do to appear to be fleeing the unfriendly climate.
Outside, the cool air was balm to the old warrior’s sweat-drenched brow. Fog was rising in the clearing, and the glimmer of firelight from the surrounding huts looked like amber stars in the mist. Arriving at the sod hut, Egrin found Kiya sitting on the split log that served as a stoop. She barred his entry.
“Husband’s gone to bed. Don’t wake him.” She cut off his protests, saying, “He sleeps so little and so poorly, rest is a treasure to him.”
Giving in, Egrin seated himself next to her. He asked how she had fared over the past six years of Tol’s exile.
Kiya was a formidable woman. She had grown up in a tribe that trained her to fight and suffer without complaint. So when she did not reply right away, Egrin did not press her. He adjusted his position slightly so he could rest his back against the hut, and waited. She would answer in her own time.
The story was a painful one. Miya, Tol, and Kiya had departed Daltigoth in the depth of winter and in the teeth of a snowstorm. Miya was ill with milk fever, and the newborn Eli was no more than a mewling newt wrapped in furs. Tol had sustained terrible injuries at the hands of Nazramin’s personal gang of thugs, the Wolves. Kiya managed to bring them all across the snowy land to the Great Green. Once they reached the Dom-shu village, she’d slept for two days and nights.
Tol was shamed by the beating, and grieved the loss of Valaran, now consort to the new emperor. He remained indoors for many days, but as winter grudgingly relinquished its hold on the forest, so too did Tol emerge slowly from the white silence of his despair. He hobbled around the village, loosening muscles stiff from disuse. His terrible bruises turned yellow and faded. Unwilling to live on the charity of the chief, Tol sought a home of his own. The repair of an empty hut gave him purpose, and once it was done, the sisters and Eli joined him there.
His injuries healed, Tol took up a stone axe and cut firewood. Every swing of the axe made his arms and back sing with pain, but he would not stop. Each blow was a strike against Nazramin. Every cord split were Wolves’ heads cleaved by his sword. After he had killed his enemies many times over, the silent rage in him began to pall. It was too bitter a flavor to nourish Tol. He had purged the fury in his heart by this regimen, while he built his body up even stronger than before, and for a noble reason: bettering the lives of the forest folk.
The Dom-shu had always fed their fires on windfall limbs or punk wood, neither of which burned very hot or long. Tol introduced them to hardwood, cut green, dried, then split. Heat was no longer a rare luxury for the Dom-shu. Cold retreated from the village. Disease, fostered by poorly cooked food and damp living conditions, was greatly lessened by the simple introduction of good firewood.
Tol also planted wild onions, strawberries, and rabbit-cabbage in a small but neat garden plot beside his hut. The tribesmen, who normally hunted game or combed the forest for berries, roots, and nuts, were puzzled by the grasslander scratching the raw earth, but before long, Tol was gathering food not ten paces from his hut. The Dom-shu had thought farming something that could be done only on broad, open spaces. Tol showed them they could grow food in the forest.
Younger Dom-shu men sought his knowledge of war, but this Tol would not share. They already knew how to defend their homes. To know more would only tempt them to fight beyond the forest, and that was the path to destruction.
One warrior tried to goad Tol into fighting, hoping to make his own reputation by besting the grasslander champion. Tol endured his many insults in silence rather than kill the fool. Unhappily, the warrior would not give up. In the village square, he made the mistake of tormenting young Eli, injuring the boy in the process, and the foresters finally glimpsed the warrior Tol had been. He slew the foolish challenger with a single blow of his axe. No one ever challenged Tol again.
When Kiya finished her tale, Egrin weighed what he’d heard against the memory of the man he’d known.
“Is he happy here?” he asked.
“He is calm. He is not happy.”
Tol did not sleep well, Kiya explained, but often roamed the woods alone at night. No Dom-shu would ever do such a thing; they feared the spirits who walked abroad by night. And Tol sometimes stayed away two or three days. He would never say where he went during these extended absences.