Chapter One
"What are you doing? Keep working or the elder will tan your hide" said Pate, still striking the ground with is hoe; "Take a sip of water and till the earth, the day is almost done and soon we will be able to rest". You could do nothing but nod, take your hoe in your hands and return to work; but your strikes lacked strength, you felt a burning pain in your upper body and your breath was short. This had been going on for days, and each one that passed increased the pain that you felt; you could only hope that you had not contracted any illness or you would be in deep shit, after all your meagre saving could not pay for the treatment that the woods witch could provide.
Finally you lowered your hoe and looked around you; the work for the day was done, the field had been tilled and you could return to the village, hoping to find respite in a warm bowl of soup and a good night of sleep. Tiredly you trudged towards your shack, built at the hedge of the village, and, opened the ensemble of plank and rusted nail that passed for a door, you entered in your home. There was not much to talk about it; a simple room with pressed dirt floor and a small space set aside in the centre for a fire, which you immediately lit; the shack was cold during the winter and incredibly hot during the summers, this because it was full of drafts and small holes that you keep covered with a mixture of mud and straw, thankfully the village was currently experiencing a warm spring so the temperature was bearable. Once the fire had become big enough you put the pot, a small and darkened piece of pewter, on top of it and started preparing a soup; nothing more than boiling water with inside a few pieces of carrots, celery, cauliflower and some leave of laurel to give everything a bit of taste; truly it was a poor thing, barely capable of keeping you fed, but you were saving money to buy a new pair of wooden clogs, the ones you were currently wearing were growing too small for your feet, and that meant you could buy bread only every other day.
Slowly using your spoon to eat the soup you felt the pain, both from the day's work and for your strange affliction, vanish leaving in your stomach a pleasant warmth. After having eaten your meagre dinner you collapsed onto the stack of straw that passed for a bed and thought about the day; the planting season would soon end and that would leave you without a stable income, so you would have to make do with whatever you could find; you were not picky, having resorted on eating roots and leaves on more than one occasion. Once more you cursed the Seven for your suffering, not only you were piss poor but you were an orphan too; having lost both your father, mother and brother in your infancy; your mother carried away by the mountains clans during a raid when you were but a babe, and a few years later your father and elder brother died when a small bout of winter fever passed in the village. Your family was never rich, your father having a wound on his right shoulder that prevented him for doing the kind of heavy work that paid well, and you had lived in the shack since you could remember; but being an orphan made life far more difficult, you had nobody helping you, and while when you were a child you had survived thanks to small acts of charity by the more well-off villagers, once you reached the age that allowed you to work in the field, even if by doing small tasks, you were forced to relay only in yourself.
You let your mind wander for a few more minutes and then decided to sleep, after all the next day more work awaited you, and while closing your eyes you hoped for a blessing sleep; only to be denied it; the dreams had returned. You were surrounded by darkness; after what seemed ages you heard the sound of thunders and the blackness was shredded by flashes of light that burned your eyes, you felt the ground under your foot tremble with the fury of the Gods; runes flashed in front of you and towering over all of that a grinning skull made of metal stared directly at your soul and a booming voice was heard, screaming in an unknown language words that, while you could not understand, you were sure they were important.
You woke covered in cold sweat, your body trembling and with a massive migraine; you tried to steady your breath by taking great gasp of air and once you had calmed down you took guzzled down copious amount of water. You decided to take a walk around the shack, this was far from your first nightmare and sleep never claimed you after having woken up, so you started walking up the small hill that overlooked the village; and once on the top you looked down at your home. The village was small, so small that it didn't even have a name, just a couple dozen houses surrounded by fields and, a few hundred feet from it, a small creak slowly flowed from the mountains in the distance; the elder said that the small stream ended up dying in the sea, a sennight of travel east.
Since you were a small child you had always loved stories regarding lands afar, but they were few and more often than not they contained warnings about the dangers of the wide world; that and the only one that had ever left the village was the elder, in his youth he was a soldier under the command of the knight in which land you lived; and he had even left the Vale to go fight in the Riverlands, he said that he had seen incredible things, imagine; a land without mountains. Having been a soldier his stories spoke about the losses he had experienced, he said that in just one battle twelve men of the village had died, leaving him as the sole survivor; imagine, half of the village's men dead, your mind could not even comprehend that.
While you were thinking about the stories that you liked so much you heard the bushes rustling a few feet from you, realising that some animal was passing so close scared you; the only animals living in these lands not afraid of human were wolves, shadowcats and bears, so you quickly hid yourself in a bramble cluster and tried to make as few sound as possible; what emerged from the bushes froze both your mind and your heart, there stood a man. He was an emaciated thing, covered in furs and leathers, in his hand he was holding a wooden spear with an hardened point; he was soon joined by other two figures; your mind raced , they were probably bandits, maybe they were wandering around, or maybe they were there to steal one of the few sheep that the village possessed. But then they started speaking, their tongue was not the common one no, it was an harsh one, with words that sounded like stones scraping together, you did not understood what they said but you knew who they were; everyone living in the Vale was taught the meaning of speaking this language since they were children; it was the language of the First Men, the language of the mountains clans.
You were thinking about bolting towards the village to alarm them of their presence but before you could start running down the hill a stream of men started emerging from the bushes, you froze in place as your mind started silently counting, you could only count up to fifty but there were far more clansmen than that; once they were all gathered they silently started making their way toward the village, chuckling between them and grinning in anticipation of the carnage that was to come, you didn't move from your hiding place, hoping not to be found; soon they reached the village and then the screams started. Slowly you moved in order to look at your home, and what you see scarred your mind forever; the raiders were burning down the village while killing anyone that crossed their path, in the penumbra you could see the villagers running around, trying to escape the carnage, but there was none; the clansmen had surrounded the village and they were slowly closing towards the centre, herding the people between the burning buildings. Soon all the people were in the centre of the village and, while until now the screams were of fear, you could hear the cries of pain and pleas of mercy coming from the children and the women; you clenched your hands over your ears in order to stop the sound and started praying the Warrior and the Father to somehow save them, but as always the Gods didn't cared for the suffering of the people.
You remained hidden long after the cries had ended and the fires had stopped burning, only when the first rays of the sun announced the dawn you moved from your spot, and slowly made your way towards the burned husk of the village. Having reached the village your nose was assaulted by the various smell that lingered there; the first one was the smell of blood that seemed to permeate all, the second the smell of ashes, not exactly unexpected given that all of the building had burned down, the last one was a strange one; it was so sweet that you started mouth watering. Finally you reached the centre of the village, and while making your ways towards it you had seen patches of blood on the ground you hadn't seen any bodies, and now you know why. In what passed as a square in the village, where two piles of bodies; the first one was made by the men of the village, they had been stripped and anything of value had been carried away by the raiders, among them you could see the body of goodwife Becca and another woman whose face was so ruined that you could not recognise her; while looking at the pile you crossed your eyes with the empty ones of Pate, your only friend. Finally you moved your gaze towards the other pile, and you found the source of the sweet smell; the pile was made by the bodies of the children, children's bodies burned probably, given the screams you had heard the night prior, alive; understanding what the smell was you started throwing, you continued to empty your stomach on top of your clogs, the few bit of food having already left your body so simply barfed bile that burned your throat; finishing you fell to your knees and stared crying your eyes out, screaming like an obsess for what seemed hours, until slowly the crying was replaced by a laugh. You were broken inside, what you had known for all of your short life had been destroyed; so you laughed like a madman, slowly rising to your feet and looking around you moved automatically towards what was left of your shack, and once there you started to move the few planks of wood that had survived the fire aside, quickly revealing the dirt floor, then you started digging with your hands until you reached what you were searching; a small leather pouch that contained your treasure, two halfgroat and seven penny; the small amount of money you had managed to save in two years of hard work.
Having recovered you small stack of coins you walked up to the hill, and once at the top, you took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, then you started walking; you could not remain here, who knows when the clans would return and you couldn't live the rest of your life as a farmer; the things that you had seen had awoken something inside you, a great desire for more. So you decided to start walking toward the sea that lie east; the voyage was difficult, you had nothing to eat nor a canteen to carry water with you, so you simply followed the course of the creek, eating what berries and edible mushrooms you managed to scavenge; and after almost two sennight of travel you laid your eyes on the sea and the great city that was build on the shore, you had finally reached Gulltown