“If the Reverent fades to the Nightside before he knows the shade of the Oak Unbent I will make of you a shade to guide him to The One Beyond.”

-Est, First of the Last of the Nords

For the seven days of the waning phase of the Leaffall Moon, Fend Spikeson had heard no other words. Reverent Chandler moaned and ground his teeth in feverish delirium while Fend hauled the foot-chopped reverent along the course of the Mud River, against its current, as it plunged in its sinking, seeping manner Helward, down into the bowels of the soul-drinking earth.

This was all Est had to say.

No, not exactly all.

He also said:

“Lose me a reverent and I’ll lose ye a head.”

Furthermore, when feeling mild mannered and salubrious, Est was fond of musing about his affinity for Fend as a Trek companion:

“Last blasted Trek of the Nords, with nothing but a nursemaid for a warband. What have the Cumberbands done to lay this curse upon my brow? If it cannot cleave and rend it should at least be soft and fair for the pushing!”

Threats and degradation were all that Fend could expect. His was the curse of Soul Shivering, physically, constitutionally, incapable of taking human life—even Mud life.

As a boy Fend had been unable to strike his brothers back when they did strike him. For this he was most reviled.

As a youth, when it came to pass that Reverent Arbor demanded of Fend the Wolf Quest among their four-legged soulsakes, sneers of derision and snarls of sour-wishing mirth had followed him out of camp.

Having hid in a cave rather than follow the wolf pack and take a pelt for his war coif, he had befriended a maimed old wolf that had gone there to die, returning with the Pet Accursed. For it was against the Nord code to domesticate, to break, to harness, the wild spirit of any animal—lest the notion infect their own souls. It was said that this had been the downfall of the Muds and Mudders, that they had once been full men, that the Mud Combs had once been their teeming dens.

On his hated return only Reverent Arbor stood for his manhood, preventing him from being castrated, blinded, and sent down the Mud River, tied to a plank raft, painted with mud curses, to be certain the papas treated him right, with the proper rite.

But all one needed was the blessing of a Reverent and the ire of men must subside into the sorrowful pit from which it had welled up.

Reverent Arbor declared that Fend would be a Wuxx, a healer of warriors, to learn under the tutelage of the shield maidens, who accompanied warbands as body tenders, and as a push cushion for the chiefs. Hence Fend, named after the fang-throat blessing, and sire-named Spikeson after the thistle spike that had maimed the old wolf—which became Reverent Arbor’s constant companion—was hated by each and every war chief and band leader. For, when the Reverent sent a warband forth on a particularly hazardous trek, on which he did not wish to risk any of the shield maidens, who kept him company when they were not on the trail, the chiefs of these warbands found themselves without a push cushion for the night.

Their hate was palpable.

But Est, warrior of the savage Cumbermen, most easterly of the Nords, and, like them, no more, hated him the hardest.

Fend was accursed of men and shunned of women, who found him repellent, who would have sooner lain with reeking, cursing Cull. It was said that his lack of beard, his inability to grow thick hair on his chest and back, indicated that he had been meant by Farseer, seated and lustful on his vulture throne, as a companion, But, discovering this deceit, Frigia had cast him down to earth before he had fully formed as a woman, and was therefore something in between.

Secretly this galled Fend, who was as strong as any man his size and age, and who was possessed of the yearning for women, and therefore knew himself to have been meant for manhood.

He was, though, grateful to Reverent Arbor for making such an exception of him, sparing his life, and giving him a chance to prove his worth, if but a slim chance.

Fend’s two knives, one short and thin for skinning and scalping, one long, broad and thick for cleaving and dismembering, rode snuggly on his hips, one to each side.

His moose-hide trek socks cut softly into the fresh snow that blew down from Nordhome.

The harness on his back creaked with Reverent Chandler’s welcome weight, as the old man moaned softly in his ear, his hands lashed softly across Fend’s chest with otter fur bands, and they treaded the Eye of Hyrex, the great gaping columns of hollow steel that the Reverent’s said once formed a gateway to the All-Seeing Eye of the East, where dwelled the Fire Giant, slain by the Nords in the Olden Times.

He tapped Reverent Chandler on the thighs as he had promised to do, when they paused in the socket of the shattered eye, far beneath its once skyward swept brow—now gone with the winds of the ages.

Est stopped before them, looking down toward the banks of the Mud, where it was not yet a river of mud, but an icy torrent of glacial melt, where the Oak Unbent had ever loomed on the hillock above the rapids since the Time of Their Fathers, surrounded by the wide sweeping lodges of their people, of Broodhome—which stood no more, the lodges but smoldering skeletons, the great oak looming over all with its attendant vultures and ravens more numerous than in times past, more numerous even then at The Cawing of the Crows, when the eyes of captive Muds were fed to the emissaries of The One Beyond, Farseer on His Vulture throne.

Broodhome was no more. On the trek south they had known that—other than Reverent Arbor—they were the last of the men. But here, at Broodhome, there had still been hope, a handful of young girls and some boys, looked over by the old maids and shield maidens.

Now, all was lost.

Their race, their tribe, their link to Eternity was dead.

Reverent Chandler stirred and looked, resting his chin on Fend’s broad shoulder, his stumps in hip slings, rocking out before his bearer.

The old man then spoke his first word since Fend had made his tragic acquaintance, in a voice hoarse in many ways, “Gone.”

He then laid his head down and sobbed, as Est lead them through the Eye of Hyrex, growling like a bear under his beard, unlimbering his great sword from the back sheath beneath the melt wood back shield, layered seven times and covered in stretched Mudder skin, in seven leathery layers of black.

Fend wanted to retch, but did not.

He wanted to cry, but instead looked into sky, up the rapid river, to the Frost Giant’s big toe, two generations from grinding the ancient tree under its icy heel.

Reverent Arbor then whispered hoarsely, “Good Boy, but keep it from him. It would not do to have the last of our killers dismayed by the realization that Fate had long ago set her Giant to Crushing out the life of our Kind. There is purpose yet, Boy. Get me down there to the Oak Unbent!”

The elder seer’s enthusiasm, despite the horrible nature of his condition, lit a spark in Fend’s soul, and he hurried as fast as he might as Reverent Chandler’s stumps rocked in their slings with the motion of his tread, and the old man groaned softly in his ear, grinding his old worn teeth to crumbs with the effort to bear his maiming with a Reverent’s detachment.