GOLDEN LANCES CUT broad paths to the forest floor, where broad-leaved ferns and berry bushes grew thick among knotted, ancient roots. Though the trees were old and tangled and stooped with long centuries, they had a nobility about them, a grace of life and quiet that seemed blasphemous to disturb, save the birdsong that filtered down from those gigantic boughs.

A shout shattered the calm and strangled the music. Then another, gnarled and thick with animal fear. Cautiously, the first brave souls took up their song again, but it was thin this time, fearful. Where once tranquil songs of easy joy had filled the ancient canopy, now tunes of warning and wariness bathed the forest, for a man was coming, and where men tread, beasts grow wary.

He emerged slowly from the gloaming depths carrying a great black burden. He was tall and lean. Whipcord muscle cut hard shadows upon his nearly naked flesh. But for a loin cloth and his plain sandals, he wore nothing to mark him as more than a savage out of the dim memory of man, for that is precisely what he was. His hair was a mane of coarse black that hung loosely about his head, and his eyes flashed like cold steel when he passed through pools of sun, as did the golden ring upon his finger. In shadow, it seemed to glow of its own power, though faintly. The man’s lips were working, gnawing over mumbled words, and though those killer’s eyes seemed to see little of the world around him, he yet slid through across the forest floor with a panther’s grace, making no sound at all, save the senseless mumbling.

“Get out of my head,” he hissed, shifting the carcass he carried on his back. Though no man standing by could have heard the answer, the young savage suddenly clenched his eyes shut as if whipped, and shouted, “Leave me alone!”

The voices had returned, as they always did, but this time they writhed with a new fury. He moaned like a dying man deep in his throat. He might have thrown his head back and howled, had he not been carrying the dead boar over his shoulders. Its blood had long since dried to his back, but he was a mile yet from the cave he had taken up in some days ago. The voices had driven him out in the dark morn, half-conscious and fevered, hollow with gnawing hunger. His plan to starve them out had failed. Nine days he had waited, drinking nothing but water from the spring that trickled in the back of the cave.

Nine days. He awakened with a fashioned spear in his hands, the tip dripping blood and a carcass at his feet.

You cannot deny the stars! A wasp’s hum in his ears, behind his eyes. The voices seemed to emanate from his very flesh itself, as if the hateful madness crawled just beneath the skin. He cried out again, shaking his head wildly. The boar slid from his shoulders, and he sank to his knees.

“I am not mad,” he panted, clutching the sides of his skull. “I am not mad. Not mad.”

Then what are you?

“I am the last son of the Oron.”

The ring grew warm on his finger, livid. He desired nothing more than to tear it away and throw it off into the woods. Let some other fool find it. Yet, it would not come away. It was as much a part of him now as his eyes were, welded by some fell sorcery to the flesh of his finger itself.

I could cut it away, he thought sullenly. Cut it away, and throw the cursed finger into a river. But he knew he could not. It would not let him.

Not even the dead escape destiny, cub. Stand! The command was a flogging lash, a white-hot nail driven between his eyes, spoken with the uncompromising certitude of kings and generals, of men who knew only obedience. He was up on his feet before he knew it, and hated himself for his weakness.

The young savage had been a reiver, a thief. Exiled from his home, Ulrem had come to the continent hunting for treasure, fame, and purpose. Only then might he have returned home welcome, a man worthy of a name among his people.

Home. He hung his head, and the forest grew quiet around him. He spied through foggy memory a distant cairn by the wave-swept shore: a warning to any who might draw near those gruesomely silent isles that jut up from the waves like a great white rock. There was no going home, now. No warm hearth, or garlanded roads, or song of return. Not for him. Never again.

The last son of the Oron shall be no wolf! the voices laughed, quoting the ancient verse, galling him.

“Be silent.” Anger laced his voice now, fury piqued at the jibe. In answer, a surge of hunger boiled up in him, making his very jaw ache, rebelling against his denial. He growled low in his throat and knelt to shoulder the boar again. The cave was near. Though the voices called for blood, to tear meat from his kill, he would not indulge them. No more than he must.

But he paused. Something had shifted in the trees around him. The birdsong had faded, and all the creaking boughs waited with a hush that made his barbarian instincts rise as suddenly as the hunger had. Ulrem’s gray eyes, long adapted to the half-light of the wild deeps, searched the trees. His cruel lips were parted, just as his father had taught him, the better to help him hear.

There. He found her, standing with one small hand on the dark trunk of a tall grandfather oak. The girl could not have been more than eight or nine summers: no older than he had been when he was exiled and sent alone over the Wolf Strait. A beam of sunlight burnished her brown hair to an autumn red, and her big eyes sparkled a vivid green. She froze like a doe when she sensed his gaze upon her.

He fell as still as the forest itself, daring not even to breathe. Nine days he had starved himself, but it had been far longer since he had seen another face. Longer still since he had seen a child. Though in many lands he would be named a rogue, something in Ulrem’s breast gave him unexpected pause. He did not want to frighten this small child, but no question of where she had come from entered his mind. He did not care for her name, or to speak with her. He wanted only to be on his way. The battle was set aside for the moment, but that did not mean it was over.

Warily, his eyes slid over the shadowed trunks of the old trees, questing for the thing that was missing. Yet he found nothing. Had she ventured so far alone?

“Who are you?” Her voice was high and fragile in the silence. He shook his head as if waking from a dream. Where was her father? Mother?

Now she took a bold step out away from the tree. Shrouded in a dark roughspun cloak, he knew her for a peasant girl. One of those who lived down in the village at the foot of the valley, perhaps, half a day’s walk from his cave. He had stayed far away from them, for he knew they would see him as nothing but a menace, and he had seen naught of them, either. Indeed, the woods had seemed a solitary world, save a fleeting glimpse of a yellow-eyed wolf on the third day. Despite his wild aspect, she did not look at him with fear. Her hazel eyes were bright as the treetops on a sunny afternoon, caught just so in a golden beam from above. Ulrem felt suddenly like a trespassing beast, a beast that had wandered too close to the huts of men. He felt exposed.

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He bared his teeth and turned his back on her.

“Wait!” the girl cried. “Who are you?”

He loped back up the way he had come, shifting the boar on his shoulders, shutting out the girl’s pitched questions. And, to his chagrin, she followed him. Ulrem was unaccustomed to the brash courage of children and realized he must stop and face her.

When he turned back, she was standing no more than ten paces from him. He noticed now that she was carrying a small basket under one arm, which swung back and forth, forgotten in her eagerness to catch him. In the other hand, she had a small green leaf, which she played back and forth between her fingers.

“You’re not one of Maaz’s bandits,” said the child. “So who are you?”

“Who is Maaz?” His voice was rough from long days of hunger. He had spoken fearsome little, except to argue with the voices that rose out of the murk of his confusion. The ring on his finger was warm, almost tight around the bone of his forefinger.

The girl stood on her tiptoes. “Did you kill that boar?”

Ulrem blinked. “Bandits?”

She nodded. “Father said they are camped up in the hills, but no one has seen them. You didn’t tell me your name.”

He sighed, recognizing the trap. “I am called Ulrem. Where is your father?” he asked uncertainly, glancing around the trees. Glancing through the trees. A man who lived with a sword in hand must learn to see through many things to the threats that lurked beyond. The true sight, his father had called it, the hawk’s eye.

“He was cutting wood,” the girl said. “I’m Temma.” She leaned forward expectantly.

Ulrem frowned. “Go back to your father, girl. He’s probably right.” He had seen no other man up in the high wood since arriving, but should a girl child be wandering unleashed so far from her father’s lot?

“Have you seen the green lady?”

“Who?”

“Sometimes I talk to her,” the girl said. “She lives in the trees.”

His muscles were beginning to ache from standing still with the weight of the old boar on his shoulders. He stepped forward towards the girl, intent on resuming his path. He had taken no more than three steps when a figure came bursting out of the woods, howling at the top of his voice. The girl shrieked when she saw him, dropping her basket and staggering backward. The attacker hauled a heavy-looking ax over his head and swung wildly. Ulrem rolled to the side, dropping the boar and pouncing over it with unthinking grace. The ring grew hot, eager for the fight.

“Get back!” Ulrem shouted at the girl. “Run!”

In an instant, the man closed with him. He had no time to pull the sword from his belt. With the instinct of a born predator, Ulrem slid into the man’s reach and under the ax head. His hands caught the attacker one by the armpit, the other by the side of the face. Off-balance and not expecting such agility, the man could not stop Ulrem from throwing him backward. He landed clean on his back and the ax bounced away out of his reach. He gasped and gagged as the air was crushed out of him. Now Ulrem tore the battered old sword from its sheath and pounced anew, sword raised for the killing blow.

“No!” Temma screamed. She threw herself between Ulrem and the man, one hand raised, her brown cloak flying like great wings around her. “No Ulrem, don’t hurt him!”

The sword in Ulrem’s hand shook violently as he fought the blood rage. Victory was at hand; hot blood and the stench of the kill. The ring sang, eager to dominate, to conquer. He strained to master it. Beneath him, the man stared up in horror, the whites around his eyes nearly blue with shock. The breath had not returned to him yet, and his lips worked futilely to form words.

The voices cohered into a single thought: Slay him. Prove your strength.

“Please!” Temma pleaded. She put a hand on his bare knee, trying to push Ulrem away. “He’s my father.”

Slowly, like a man bending a powerful bow, Ulrem rose from his fighter’s crouch. The sword fell further backward, until the rage had passed. He stepped back and stood with sword in fist, but the point hung low now, tracing small circles near the ground.

“Why did he try to kill me?”

“B—” the man managed. He sat up and forced a breath. Through gasping breaths, he snarled, “Bandit! Get away from my daughter!”

Ulrem spit on the forest floor. “I am no bandit, fool. Say it again and I shall break your head.”

The man stood on unsteady legs. Temma handed her father his ax and went to collect her fallen basket. A few feathery mushrooms had fallen out, and these she collected while her father faced Ulrem squarely, fingering the honed axehead. He was a broad-chested man, but bony in his shape. He had the look of a farmer, but half-starved and sick with fear. But Ulrem saw beyond that. A soldier’s brand stood out in pale fish flesh on his shoulder like the ghost of a memory. A conscript’s unit, branded for life. To have survived marked this farmer as no weakling. Ulrem noted how he moved to keep Temma, who was still collecting her mushrooms, between them.

“Maaz’s men said they’d be back today. For more tribute.”

“I do not know this Maaz. You should pay him.”

The man glared sullenly at Ulrem. “Pay him what? They’ve taken everything!” A protective hand curled around his daughter’s shoulders. “Next it will be the children. If you are no bandit, what is your business here?”

“My business is my own,” the younger man snapped. He sheathed the sword and squatted to shoulder the boar once again.

The farmer spoke grimly to his back. “I have seen your foolish like before, blood-mad young bastards charging towards an early grave.”

Ulrem’s eyes narrowed. He whirled, and the anger flared up in him like the rushing of great black wings that beat at his soul. His heart pumped fury to his limbs, and his hand clutched at the iron hilt at his side. The man fell back, putting himself between Ulrem and the little girl, though his face blanched white with terror. That this bony, cringing wretch would speak to him in such a way? After Ulrem had bested him so handily? He battled the impulse to punish that insult, and though he won, it was by a thin margin. The girl peered out behind her father’s leg. Her glittering eyes were what held the savage in check.

Perhaps reading his restraint as hesitation, the farmer grew a little bolder. He pointed the head of his ax at Ulrem’s chest. “There are no wars for you here, boy. We’re a peaceful folk, and the lord of High Rock’s men often forget us. But mark my words: I like not the look of you. Your black hair and crude feature mark you as an outlander, and a vagabond at that. Me and my kin hunt these woods. So do not linger.” Ulrem narrowed his eyes, hearing what the man had dared not say directly. Then the farmer shouldered his ax and reached out a hand. “Temma, come. We’re going home.”

Ulrem watched them go. The daughter led her father along by the hand, and he saw now that the man had the sort of faint limp that spoke of an old wound never fully healed. Together, they faded back into the green wood and pooling shadow, but he heard their going for a long way, the admonishing grumble of the father, and the chirping of the daughter. Only when they were truly gone, faded back into the valley from whence they came, did the young warrior return to his cave. In the gloaming hours of the evening, the boar sat uneaten, forgotten.

One hunger had faded, but another had woken.