[url=https://youtu.be/9trj-q30Xwo]The morning had hardly broken.[/url]

The boy—for he was, no matter what he attested, a boy yet—Odo, lay sprawled in bed, his wound wrapped in bandages dappled with dark red, eyes shut and dozing wistfully. 

Feana was still abed, but Wenscel had risen to breakfast with Dunlad and assist him in overseeing the day’s work. Ever since he had been old enough to stand, Dunlad had brought the lad with him on his rounds, though at first it had scarcely piqued his interest. Now, however, he finally seemed to be taking to the learning. Such things, of course, took patience—it wasn’t as if a kern’s work offered as much prospect as that of a gallocman. 

Odo had been the same way, in truth, and look where he was now. If anything, he only hoped to imbue his sons with an understanding of the gravity of their work. Doubtless it was lacking in amusement, but there was, at least in Dunlad’s mind, a certain quality, a certain satisfaction, in seeing a harvest to its completion. Watching the fruits ripen and burst, the wheat ache for the sun’s succor and die, the trees leaf and flame and wither…of course, Dunlad was no poet or philosoph, and he had never truly had a choice in it, but he thought there was a kind of simple beauty in the life of the farmer. 

Did one truly need something more if one had the earth and the wind and the stars? 

[i]Oh, come off it[/i]. 

He winced at his own thoughts. Perhaps his son had been right. Certainly it was what the gallocmen thought.

And it was with his son that his mind was occupied. As he slathered a steaming seedcake with [i]maors[/i] and green onions, he was brought back to the bedlam of the raid. 

Little good that it had done him, Dunlad had donned an old breastplate that Mochan had left, mounted his poor mare (who was obviously nonplussed by the chaos of screams and clashing iron) and hefted an old rusted polearm about, trying to cut a heroic figure to the kerns he had sworn to protect. In the end, they cowered behind their palisades—which he had helped to erect—and fortunately the fighting never came to them. They saw only the cool light of Ardghal’s spasming magics and arrows arcing through the sky, silhouetted by torch fire. 

But they witnessed the aftermath. The fields of brutalized grain, the gutted homesteads reduced to cinders, the cracked and undulant walls, the dead (pin-cushioned with fletching, limbless, spangled and spread-eagled, silently mewling in the mud), and maybe worse, the living. Maire had her work cut out for her, to be sure. He wondered if he might give her manse a visit one of these days. 

But when they brought his son to him on a litter, wincing and bleeding, notched blade still in hand, Dunlad had flown into a rage, cooled only by the palliatives of the gallocmen who, laughing, ensured him that Odo had surely been blessed by Urak’s might this night. Even Eliz, drenched in sweat, her demon’s face caked with blood, had silenced him with an acerbic remark speculating where his balls had run off to. 

“It’s nothing, father,” Odo had said with a sangfroid air, “It’ll make a scar to tell tales on.” 

“I suppose you’ll tell that tale to your mother,” Dunlad had shot back, but he already felt more the fool. He wondered how many scars his own body bore, though doubtless few of them were earned on the edge of a blade. 

Even so, he couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride as they bore the litter away towards the Unhaire homestead. Feana, he thought, would likely come close to wretching. She had always had an abhorrence of blood. And she had, of course, worried herself over him—what parent in good conscience would not? But he was surprised when collected herself shortly after, especially considering the evening of ashes. 

“Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted, you oaf?” she said, softly, while dressing the wound. 

He supposed so, in a manner of speaking at least. The wound was shallow, delivered by a Greenfeather spear to the upper thigh. 
Maire had come later that evening, smelling of medicines and herself spattered here and there with gore. 

“I hope you’ve not come out of your way,” Dunlad had warned, “We’ve made the lad up right proper, as you see, and no doubt there be others who need your help more’n him.” 

But the alchemist had had none of it, and applied a compress of bitter herbs to the cut. The boy flinched with the pain of it, but Maire assured him that it’d do him good. They had shared a look of regard and recognition, Dunlad and she; it seemed that their allegiances grew stronger and stronger each season. 

“You have my thanks,” he had offered, wearily; shortly after, he had lost himself in sleep. 

Dunlad, however, was not exactly amused with his son’s conduct before the Council. He had, it seemed, proven himself a gallocman true. But, the leader of a raid? Pure folly, and Dunlad was glad that the lad had been put in his place even before he had stated his own mind. 

Maire’s suggestion of training he could countenance, but Odo’s cavalier behavior was indicative of the typical fantasias of pubescence. After one battle, he thought himself invincible; who didn’t at that age? 

But Dunlad recalled well the death of Ioen “The Aurochs”, a bull of a man, who wielded a two-handed broad axe, was purported to fell giants, and fought in the name of Clan Aonghus for countless seasons; he had been snuffed out in a cattle raid by a lone arrow delivered from the bow of a boy of twelve endeavoring to protect his herd. As a boy, Dunlad could scarce encompass Ioen’s ignominious end. 

He scoffed, however, and knew that the boy would learn the name of humility, one day. He only hoped it wasn’t on the end of a spear. 

At the very least, Serheim had called unequivocally for peace in the tula. Eliz’s sabre rattling had brought them to their present impasse; now, she’d have to sit tight. That was what Dunlad knew how to do best, though. These past few seasons had been ones full of strife for the clan—floods, fire, war, exile, and, he knew bitterly, very near famine. 

The harvest had come close to ruin in the season of the floods, and last night’s raid had seen another field put to the torch. And although Dunlad had managed to salvage what he could, he was conscious of the fact that the snows would be hard on Clan Aonghus, weathered with bellies not nearly as full as they’d like to be. 

[i]That’s why the gods gave us mead[/i]. 

He took a swig of the stuff, finished his seedcake, and rose stiffly. 

“Come on now, Wenscel.” 

The smoke from the cookfires trailed thinly across a trackless sky. It was a glorious morning, and the kerns were already bending at their work, their bright tunics glowing brilliantly in the sunlight. The pair mounted, the boy on his chestnut bay [i]Yewlis[/i] and Dunlad on his mare [i]Ianthe[/i], and rode out to meet them. 

[hr] 

[b]Dunlad, in order to aid the training of the new gallocmen, offers his services in horsemanship[/b]. 

“I’m no military man, of course, so don’t you come expecting sparring practice,” he cautioned, “But I think if there’s anything I was meant to do, well, it’s to ride.” 

Later, away from earshot, he confided in the Chief. 

“We’re raising up kerns. Eliz, Ardghal, and their ilk aren’t exactly known for their hospitality towards the smallfolk, and there’s many o’ them who’ve never ridden in their life. They’ll already be in their care—if you can call it that—to learn the sword-ways. Let me teach them to ride. It takes a certain touch, a patience, that I’m not certain the others can give, all respect due.”