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cost you?  The leather you wear, the shiny new swords, the little bow that kills with a fingers touch?  What have they taken from you?”
    Some of the Asgal lowered their eyes but no answer came.
     
    It was some time later that they crouched in council with Perrith.   Beneath them, on the great plain, the smoke from the fires of the Ummakil had crept closer.   They could hear the sobs of Gresad's widow and children intermingled with the soothing words of comfort being were offered by the gathered women.    Rasgan laid the maps before them.
    “There are but two choices,” he said, “follow the path of the barak to the south or go quickly north into unknown lands and hope another way over the mountains can be found.”
    “There is a third way,” said Turnal.  “Fight the Asgal.   That would be my choice.”
    Perrith turned to Valhad.
    “My son, which of these would you choose?”
    Valhad looked to his father, and at the others around him, who saw in this a test of the chieftain’s heir.
    “I would go back to the Asgal,” he said, “without weapon or threat.  I would go alone and seek passage for the tribe.  If this failed I would bid you follow the barak.”
    “You would not fight?”
    “To fight is not my way. And even if it were, they have the high ground.  With the weapon that struck Gresad and Nagul they would need but a few men to hold the way.”
    Torrin had listened silently to much of the discussion, but now he spoke.
    “There is maybe a deeper problem here.  Do we know of this emblem?”   He scratched the sign of the triangle within the circle in the dirt.   All who looked upon it shook their heads or murmured that they did not.
    “Then there is a new tribe in these lands, unlike any we have known.  A tribe with weapons we have not seen before, and a tribe bearing something perhaps more dangerous still, for what did the Asgal say?  That the valley was theirs. Theirs, as if it were a spear or a tent.   But still there are more questions; why would they claim the high valley?  For the sun sinks, the darkness comes and all men must walk. Why linger there, of all places, why there?  What is their purpose?  There was a sound of much labour and many fires were smoking…”
    There was no answer, then Perrith broke the silence.
    “We will follow the barak.   Tell the tribe we walk at once.”
    “ What of Nagul?”  asked Valhad.
    “Casan has removed the arrow and dressed the wound.  She has asked that we seek the fungus called imbas which cures all poisoning of wounds or blood.  It is rare and precious medicine.  Without this no more can be done.”
     
    So the tribe walked down from the mountain and followed the tracks of the barak herd into the forest.  There were berries on the trees and a few snuffling pig-like creatures that provided a fatty meat.  They came across a single barak; an old female, lame and abandoned by the herd that gave another good meal.  They were following a deep valley with a twisting tumbling stream cutting ever deeper into bedrock.  Nagul had seemed to be recovering but now his wound oozed and stank.  Casan cleaned it with herbs and fresh water but knew that it did not bode well for him.  
    She searched every tree they passed for the healing fungus and asked all the others to do likewise, but none was found.  Throughout this time they walked in shadow with only the distant highest ridges still brightly lit by the ever-sinking sun.   And so it was that after walking and sleeping a dozen times that they came to the sea and walked out into sunlight again.  The sun hung between the distant mountain peaks of the far shore and sent forth a single shaft of red light casting huge shadows behind them as they walked towards the pulsing waves.   There it was that they found the torn bodies of the barak.

Chapter 2
     
     
    And we too must be hunters, and loose our arrows into the heart of the unbeliever.
     
    The book of Tarcen. Ch. 6 V.