Chapter One
"The Forgoil are coming!
An old woman screamed, the villagers dropped their tools, and a general shout went up. The Forgoil are coming!
Eleven year-old Forrak peeped outside the entrance of his family's mud hut, and strained his eyes in the eastward direction. He could not yet see anyone approaching in the afternoon haze, but he knew that soon there would be a storm of hooves and metal rampaging through the village; the fair-haired bandits had come again.
For as long as he could remember, these riders from the plains had forayed into his homeland, burning crops, scattering cattle, and occasionally killing villagers. Reprisals, it was said, for his own people's raiding of the small Strawhead settlements, but Forrak knew that it was his people who had suffered the first wrong in this dispute. He had heard the tale told many times, on occasions when his family had huddled around the fire on a cold winter's night, of how in the time of his grandfather's grandfather, the Stone-lords of far-away had gifted the plains to the cruel riders of the North. The riders had driven Forrak's people back westward, beyond the dividing river, taking all the rich lands for themselves. They had even renamed the lands in accordance with their strange tongue; the Mark the plains were now called, while the river had become the Isen. Forrak's people had similarly acquired the name Dunlendings. But that was not the true name of Forrak's people: for though they had been driven back, they had clung to their ancient language, and still dreamed of the day when they might reclaim their own.
"Hide, Forrak, hide!" pleaded his elder sister, Leresta, from the interior of the hut. "Hide before it is too late!"
He looked at her. Leresta was eight summers older than he, and like him was a typical Dunlending in appearance, being brown-eyed and brown-haired, though perhaps the two of them were of heavier build than was normal for their people. Forrak loved his sister dearly; she had helped care for him ever since the death of their mother.
"But what of father?"
His sister smiled grimly. "I shall search for him. But you must hide! If the Forgoil find you, they will not be merciful."
Forrak acquiesced, and swiftly retreating into the shadows of the hut, lay down in a corner of the dirt floor, and covered himself with a pile of sacks. A small gap in the sacks allowed him to keep watch on the entrance. He had survived previous raids this way, and felt safe here : some instinct told him that he would not be found.
Before long he could hear the thud of horse hooves coming nearer. Outside there was now much screaming and shouting, some of it in the strange tongue of the Forgoil, a language of which Forrak's people knew little. Under his sacks Forrak grew afraid. Where was his father? Where was his sister? The acrid smell of smoke began to fill the air.
Suddenly two figures appeared in the entrance of the hut his father and sister. Though aware that he ought to stay quiet and hidden, Forrak almost let shout in shock, for he could see that his father had been wounded. The man still carried a heavy wooden club but his arms and face were bleeding profusely; blood stained the dark beard, and the brown eyes betrayed immense exhaustion. With an effort born of desperation, the father shoved his daughter into the hut, before painfully turning around to face the outside. Forrak watched as the club rose in preparation for a blow, only to then see it abruptly fall from his father's grasp. Before Forrak or his sister could do anything, their father toppled backwards onto the dirt floor. His face was locked in a contorted grimace, but that was not what caught his children's attention. For out of his chest stood a long cruel spear.
Forrak's whole body went rigid with shock and horror. He found himself unable to emit any sound; too stunned was he at the sight of his dead father. But then at that instant Leresta released a powerful, deafening scream. The scream seemed to bring Forrak's world crashing down around him; it entered his ears and rung around his skull in a fit of insane violence and terror. This trauma piled on trauma was too much: Forrak's mind reeled, an immense feeling of dizziness took hold, and all went black before his eyes. He sank into emptiness.
When he had come to his senses a while later, he realised that he was still huddled beneath the sacks, and that his father was still lying by the entrance with a spear in his chest. At first Forrak could not see what had become of his sister, and so he raised his head above the sacks to get a better view of the hut. Then he saw her. It was a sight that almost caused him to vomit.
Leresta was lying on her back, with her feet pointing towards the pile of sacks where Forrak was hiding. Her long hair lay in a dishevelled heap around her head and shoulders. Though she was still breathing, her pale green tunic had been viciously torn, and an ugly bruise had materialised beneath her left eye. Upon her prone body lay a strange man, whom Forrak recognised as one of the Forgoil. The raider had removed his helmet, revealing his plaited flaxen hair, and was taking his pleasure of Leresta.
Initially too stunned to act, Forrak felt a surge of hate run through him. Before he could think, he exploded out of the sack-pile, and grabbing his small knife from his belt, he leapt at the raider with bestial fury. Throwing himself at the man's back, he began to hack savagely at the chain mail shirt. Surprised in the midst of his pleasure, the raider cried out, and instinctively rolled over to his left. Forrak, falling over, lashed out again with his knife. With a ghoulish squelching sound the knife plunged directly into the man's right eye, and into his brain. The momentum of the raider's body carried it over onto its stomach, where it seemed to writhe horribly for a moment, before abruptly falling into stillness.
Turning instinctively to his quivering sister, Forrak gently caressed her cheek. But she shrank from him, an act that caused him to fall to his knees and burst into tears. He mourned his father, something horrible had been done to his sister, and he had very little idea what he should now do. For a long time he knelt weeping on the floor amid the devastation, paying no heed to the outside world. He had no idea how much later it was, when he at last felt a hand on his shoulder. On looking around, he saw it was his neighbour, Gorronef.
"Are you all right, boy?"
Forrak made no reply. The neighbour gave him a reassuring smile.
"Do not worry, young Forrak. We will give your father a funeral fit for a kinsman of the chieftain. But who is this? he added, pointing to the raider's facedown corpse. One of the Forgoil! So your father slew one of these fiends, before another cut him down? Ah, it was a great feat. Mostly our revenge comes when we raid their western borderlands, stealing their cattle, and slaughtering their women and children. Too few of the warriors of the Forgoil meet their doom. Too few."
"I did it," sobbed Forrak at last, holding up his crimson-stained knife.
Temporarily speechless, Gorronef let out a great whoop of delight. He hugged Forrak to his chest. "Well done, lad. Well done! Tell me, how did you manage it?"
Initially reluctant to answer, Forrak saw again in his mind's eye the scene of the raider and his sister. Hate surged through him again, and he found himself excitedly describing the death of the raider in macabre detail. This earned a great pat on the back from his neighbour, who promptly went back outside the hut, and called in a loud voice for everyone to come and see the dead raider. Gorronef evidently had failed to notice Leresta, who was slunk up against a wall, and quietly sobbing.
Soon the hut was filled with people talking elatedly, and congratulating Forrak. Little heed was paid at first to the dead father, still lying on the ground with a grimace on his face and a spear through his chest, but Argnut, grey-bearded chieftain of the village, ordered that the body be covered and put somewhere safe until it could be buried with honour. Leresta's silent tears had at last been perceived, and she was being comforted by the older people of the village, but the majority of the villagers entering the hut had eyes only for Forrak and the dead raider.
"Let's take a look at his face! yelled one, and he rolled the raider's corpse over with his foot. People crowded round to get a closer look. The right side of the dead face was splattered with the dried blood that had earlier oozed from the pierced eye-socket, but on the other side of the face the eye-lid was open, revealing a lifeless, staring blue eye.
"A bit young, isn't he?" was the general comment on the raider's face. And it was indeed a young face, the face of a man not long past twenty. His armour and weapons were nevertheless of the finest quality, which suggested to the onlookers that he might be someone of importance. If only the metal-workers of the Stone-lords would give such armour to us, rather than to these bandits lamented the chieftain Argnut, as he gave orders for the corpse to be stripped of its hauberk, belt, and weaponry.
"I say we burn this brigand's carcass! said someone suddenly. And let's hope the Forgoil see the flames from the other side of the river and see what's coming to them!"
This sparked a lively debate. "Fire's too good for him an old man replied. Better to leave him out for the crebain and wolves to feast on. One predator devoured by another" he cackled.
Gorronef looked excited. "I have a better idea. We cut…"
"We will do nothing until Serred has been given a decent burial" interrupted Argnut sternly, gesturing towards Forrak's fallen father. "Tomorrow we will deal with the bandit, but tonight we must mourn our fallen." Argnut's words had a sobering effect, and almost immediately the mood inside the hut changed; the ecstatic chatter faded, and faces become more sombre. One of the old women comforting Leresta took advantage of the sudden quietness to lambast the insensitivity of the other villagers. "You ghouls!" she wailed. "You care more about a dead Strawhead than one of your own!" On hearing her words Forrak burst into fresh tears, and even Gorronef shifted awkwardly on his feet.
Later that evening, after extensive funeral formalities, Forrak and his sister stood over the grave of their father. Forrak, being too young to remember the death of his mother, had never felt such loss. Leresta, having recovered her composure after her harrowing experience, felt she was reliving a nightmare. She had been Forrak's age when she had watched helplessly during her mother's final illness. Today she had watched helplessly as a spear had cut down her father. And she had had that done to her. She shuddered involuntarily at the memory. Memory. Such a horrible thing. An instrument for torturing oneself.
The Rohirrim, having returned across the Fords of Isen, wearily made their way back along the road, knowing that tomorrow they would arrive back at the great fortress of the Súthburg. They were pleased to have the raiding mission completed; entanglements with the wild Dunlendings beyond the river were never pleasant experiences. On this occasion the mission had been particularly exhausting, with a large number of villages in southeastern Dunland being targeted. It had nevertheless been a successful operation, and tired though he was, Éofor, leader of the troop, smiled to himself. Those Dunlendings would think twice in future before attacking the small outlying Westfold settlements.
What Éofor and his men had failed to notice, however, was that one of their own number was missing. Under normal circumstances there would have been a check made, but Rohirric raiding parties into Dunland had grown lax in recent times - losing men on such missions was the greatest rarity. The extreme weariness of the men also reinforced their general desire to dispense with formalities and return home. Indeed, it was only after they had halted for the night that someone finally realised that Hámwine was absent. Enquiries about who had been last to see him all met a dead-end.
"Curse that young fool!" spat Éofor, as he heard the news. "I knew I should never have allowed Fréawine to talk me into taking Hámwine with us!" His annoyance was palpable as he glared back through the moonlit darkness towards the Isen. This was followed by an uncomfortable moment of silence, before Fram, the phlegmatic second-in-command, broke the tension.
"But surely we must go back to search for him? He is, after all, the grandson of the King's Heir, and both Fréa and Fréawine will not be pleased if they find him to be missing."
"Bah!" replied Éofor. "He's not missing. He's playing one of his stupid japes. Remember that nonsense at Edoras last year? I'm not going all the way back on a fruitless search for him only for that young imbecile to turn up much later safe and sound at the Súthburg or Meduseld."
"But…"
"No, Fram. I'm not going to be made a fool of this time. I will wager anything you like that he is perfectly safe. But if by some strange chance Hámwine has fallen into difficulties then he can get himself out of them. Curse him! If only he were more like his elder brother. Goldwine is a grandson of the King's Heir that we can be proud of, but Hámwine…" Éofor's words trailed off, and he shook his head sadly.