**Don't own anything you recognize, but I do own my original characters**
This chapter is supposed to be a few months after the last, let me know if there's any confusion and I'll try to clear it up. Enjoy!
Dawn broke over the rolling grasslands.
The four riders looked out onto the lands they were born into, the calm sighs almost identical.
Their thoughts, though, were very different.
The braided tattooed man pondered how far north he and his companion would have to ride.
Father must be dead, mother was ill with the fever, maybe Sonia will have survived…not the brothers.
He didn't dare think their names.
Lancelot wasn't thinking about his family, well, not in the way you would suppose.
I wish…she…was here. Mother would have liked her. I wonder if she would think this was beautiful.
The youngest of them thought of a lost love. An auburn haired beauty, running through a shallow river towards him.
She'll be married by now, with children. I can't have a son with her; they'll take him like they took me. If I can get her to Briton, they're afraid of it, they won't come after us. Hopefully…
His cousin thought only of getting home.
This air is different, it's clear. Two days ride south east and we'll be near our lands, who will we see first I wonder. Hopefully we won't run into the Carpians.
Lancelot was the first to break the silence that hung like a fog between them.
"In one moons time we will meet there, at that river, two days ride for you?"
Gawain turned from studying the shape of the land, the signs that he would see in a month.
"Maybe three, south east, if you run into any trouble head down. You know what to ask for, who to avoid."
Tristan nodded and looked to the north contemplatively.
"We will be more north than east, my families tribal lands first."
Galahad stifled back a surprised laugh and clapped the man he got along with least on the shoulder.
Two Bastarnae looking for a Venedi and a Fenni, my grandfathers' ashes are stirring.
"Thank you brother, one moons cycle."
They all nodded and left in pairs.
It took three day's for Lancelot and Tristan to find anyone from their tribes. Lancelot was a Fenni, Tristan a Venedi. Their tribes didn't quite love each other, but they traded sometimes and the Venedi would know where to find Lancelot's family.
Tristan raised his fist to signal Lancelot to stop; they scanned the sparse forest feeling multiple sets of eyes on them.
Tristan tested the water by letting out a loud series of whistles, long short long with a flourish at the end.
In response they heard a bowstring tighten.
Lancelot decided to give it a shot, giving Tristan a skeptical look he held his hands in the air and called out a traditional greeting for one who is coming home from a long hunt.
"It has been fifteen years since I saw you last; I hope the gods of the sun, wind and rain have blessed you and the bucks flesh become a decoration for your home."
After a long tense moment a rustle of bushes closer than either of the men expected startled them. Tristan looked at the woman curiously and a little annoyed with himself.
A bundle of curly black hair was piled on the top of her head secured by a leather strip winding around, curls framing her face. She wore the traditional sarmatian dress, a long sleeved green woolen dress with another smaller piece of wool secured on her right shoulder by a brooch made of what Tristan thought might be a stag's antlers.
She did not lower her bow, but her eye's widened when she saw the hash marks on his cheeks.
Her eye's darted quickly to his companion and her face softened making her look almost child-like. Her bow slackened and she lowered it.
"My family, my friend, though our parting was sad our reunion shall be blessed by the gods above."
She turned and gave a low whistle and called out. Two men fell from the tree's and a boy of about ten years stood out of some bramble a few feet ahead of them.
Tristan sucked in a breath, the boy before him looked exactly like his father and bore the same hash marks that were on his cheek bones.
Jumping from his horse Lancelot slowly stepped towards the woman, a silent question in his eyes.
She smiled widely and pulled her sleeve back revealing the twin to the tattoo Lancelot bore around his forearm. Three lines ranging from thick to thin wound around her arm.
He reached a hand up to touch the scar that ran from under her eye to her jaw line and the features on her face hardened.
"Aanya"
"Lancelot"
Quickly they embraced and a laugh like Tristan had never heard before came from Lancelot's lips.
One of the men from the tree's coughed and stirred behind them. Tristan glared at them sharply but the damage was already done. Lancelot and his sister ended their embrace and she whistled sharply, four horses trotted into view and Tristan saw the reason he was so surprised by the girl and boy. The noises he had heard, the shadows he had seen weren't the four people who began pulling themselves onto the horses strung with dead deer and a few pheasants. It was the horses who betrayed their position and Tristan was both impressed and proud of his people.
Without a word the small group began to trot towards the edge of the forest, Tristan and Lancelot following behind. The youngest of them, the boy with tattoos like Tristan kept falling back, looking back to these strangers one so very familiar.
"You will wait for your sister Raif."
The boy huffed at Aanya and trotted up to lead the group, she dropped back and while talking to her brother, eyed the Venedi.
"Kay?"
Lancelot bowed his head and shook it sadly. Kay was the other boy taken from his tribe; he was older and had a pregnant wife. He died in their seventh year.
Lancelot eyed his sister, other than the scar she looked ok. Thought not like she'd given birth, she was too slight. He did not suspect one of the men with this hunting party to be her partner but he worried why she had no one and if this was the cause of the scar.
Aanya watched her brother with a sly smile, he was sizing her up. She knew he would have guessed that she had no family, but why? Or why the Venedi were with them on a hunting party, he would never guess. Before she could begin to explain his companion broke through her thoughts.
"How far?"
She started for a moment, her train of thought thrown. This man, certainly Tristan, was not the kind eyed silent boy she had expected. There was a hardness to him, something she saw daily with his sister, a family trait perhaps.
"We will be back at camp before nightfall."
Lancelot looked over to Tristan and gave him a curt nod and with a sigh Tristan pushed his horse faster, thinking maybe he could get a good look at the boy.
Once they were relatively alone his dark eyes bore into hers.
"Tell me, about the scar, about our family, about the Venedi? What has happened?"
And with a deep breath, Aanya began to tell him of the past fifteen years.