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[i]Five Days after Origin[/i]

In the pale light of cold dawn, Cerys moved among her people, touching hands and exchanging the occasional encouraging word. They were hungry, many of them sick or wounded, the women violated, the children still wide-eyed with shock. The vicious attack by Drathan slavers had taken them all by surprise, had shaken even her strongest. Where she walked, eyes deep set in pale faces turned up to look at her, hungry for hope and reassurance, and her steps were trailed by prayers.

They had been struck just after dawn, after most of the tribe’s hunters gone on their daily quest to provide food for their kin. Many of these had been ambushed by parties far outnumbering their own so that even when the great war drums sounded the call to return home, few but the wise men and women were left to protect the old, the young, and the expectant mothers. Scores of her people had been taken as slaves and those left were in no condition to pursue the attackers.

Worst of all, Cerys, reborn in shadow, Chosen of the Wanderer, could do nothing for them. She had not the skill to mend their wounds, the medicines to cure their fevers, the food to warm their gaunt bellies. She was as hopeless as the weakest of her followers, and the realization shook her burgeoning belief in her own power. It seemed that the priestess’s first lesson as Voice of the Wanderer would be one of humility.

And so, Cerys roused her people for the last leg of a journey that had begun four days prior, an easy trek made long and arduous by the failing strength of her people. They climbed carefully down the western slope of one of the great Godsfang Mountains, following an ancient path to the largest tribe of the Arakkai. Cerys’s acolytes, Ilys and Ariadne each assisted the wounded and in her own arms, the priestess held a child, a small girl who had tucked her soft face against Cerys’s neck to sleep. In this fashion, Cerys and her followers entered the tribe of Eranor Blackwater to seek shelter and a place among his people.

In the center of their village, the chief himself awaited their parlay, having had several hours notice of the party’s slow descent into his territory. He was garbed as if for a feast, his shoulders adorned by a heavy bearskin that hung over the dark iron of his breastplate, his fingers gilded with rings of silver. The Blackwater tribe was the most prosperous of the Arakkai people, and its lord did not mean to let the desperate newcomers forget it.

Fighting to control her fury, the priestess handed her sleeping burden to the child’s mother, the girl too drained to make a protest, and fell to one knee before Chief Eranor. Behind her, Ilys clenched her teeth and looked away, but made no protest.

“Before you stand the remnants of the tribe of Manon the Swordsinger,” Cerys began, keeping her voice low and differential. “Of these, there are fifty warriors, many wounded, three servants of The Wanderer, a tanner, a blacksmith and his apprentice, and a number of children, elders, and expectant mothers. We humbly ask a place in your clan as fallen allies, to lay down our own clan name in exchange for a place here.”

The priestess watched Eranor Blackwater calculate the addition of resources to his people, saw the glaze of ambition cloud his eyes. He would take their land, their sacred places, their strength. He would name himself Uniter and march on the other clans of the Arakkai. It was as Cerys had hoped, but still, she despised the eager blindness with which he invited unknown danger into his midst.

“I don't know your face,” he said, no doubt thinking himself clever for not answering her request right away.

Cerys swallowed but answered with no pride. [color=9e0b0f]“I am but a servant, Chief Blackwater, a simple priestess to the Wanderer.”[/color]

The big man nodded and spread his hands wide. “Welcome, people of the Blackwater,” he said, the feral gleam never leaving his eye.

With a silent affirmation from their priestess-leader, the Unbroken dissolved into the bigger tribe.