Prologue
Waking up when the sun is normally just breaking the western sky and finding, instead, the unbroken darkness radiates an unsettled feeling deep. Digging beneath tempered muscles and finding a place to settle in hardened bone. Galand's thoughts begin to swirl. Wondering back at the course of the last ride's events and trying to remember if they actually occurred in that bizarre chronology or was it some half-demented concoction elaborated on by the weird mood the lack of sunlight brought.
He could barely hear the rain begin to smack against the side of the keeps stone walls when the reality of the northern morning smacked in full force. The tribes would gather again today as they gathered every day for the past twelve and attempt to lure them from the walls of the stone works. Hundreds of men and boys clad in hides tormenting the bastion of the king's northern grasp as all the past days. A game of boasts until, when finally dusk began to settle, the group of unwashed barbarians would settle back into their camps to rest for the next day's performance.
Looking out on this damp, drizzling morning set his mind to wander back into the realm of memory. Glimpses of a time in his childhood many miles south.
