//------------------------------//
// Chapter 1 
// Story: The War and What Came After 
// by NorsePony 
//------------------------------//

        Four fours of herdsfolk lay around a fire, built small but hot in the People’s way. The fire’s light shone from their eyes, green and gold and red, and touched gleaming highlights from their tawny coats and their proud, sharp antlers. As one, they watched the shaman in the center of their circle.

        The old shaman looked as dry and brittle as a bundle of winter sticks, so old and weathered he might have been one of the trees of the forest around him, but he moved with a vital energy a young buck would have envied. He darted in close to the fire so the red and ocher storytelling runes painted on his face and neck caught the light, looking like dried blood and fresh blood. The herdsfolk lying around the fire were warriors, all—young and strong and determined to fight to defend the People, but many of them shuddered when the shaman wasn’t looking. They’d seen that sort of energy before, now and again in their own herds—the shaman was god-touched.

        The vines strung between the shaman’s antlers rustled as he thrust his head back. “The People were not always as they are now,” he intoned, and weaving around and through his voice was a sound like wind coursing through dead leaves. More shudders rippled through the gathered warriors. “In the days of my great-grandsire’s great-grandsire, the People were rich beyond dreaming. The People strode across the fields and the rivers, and everything they looked upon was theirs, from horizon to horizon.”

        The shaman was a skilled storyteller, and despite their awe of him, some of the assembled breathed longing sighs, dreaming of the old days.

        “The People lived in great villages, as big as a hundred villages today. The gods gave them tools, and their fields overflowed with food. The gods gave them weapons, and their villages were safe from harm.” The shaman drew himself up, stared around into the fire-glowing eyes. “And the gods themselves walked among the People.”

        The herdsfolk murmured in awe.

        The shaman closed his eyes and some of the booming energy seemed to drain out of him. He sagged, his head drooping down. “But no more. In the days of our ancestors, the Others came, fleeing a great disaster they had brought down upon their own heads.” He did not profane the story by naming the Others in their own language. “They were small, and weak, and unaccustomed to the People’s earth. The People were kind, and took pity upon them.”

        Murmurs rose again, but harsh, angry. The warriors knew this part of the story as well as they knew the reach of their own antlers.

        The shaman raised his head to meet the murmurs. His eyes were fire and his voice was ice. “Soon, more of the Others followed their kin to the People’s earth. The gods warned the People of their danger, but the People were prideful in their power and riches, and their hearts overflowed with kindness, and they did not heed the gods’ words. The People were generous to the Others, giving them portions of the earth on the wide plains between the forest and mountains and teaching them how to live on the earth, how to eat, how to shelter and warm themselves. But the Others kept coming, more and more and more. They were a river that seemed endless, and they demanded pieces of the earth from the People for themselves, more and more and more. At last, the People decided to fight, to take the earth back from the Others.”

        The shaman’s vines whispered against each other as he shook his head sadly. “And that is when the People discovered that the gods had abandoned them, to punish them for their hubris. The People were slaughtered, their great villages consumed by fire like a field of weeds. The Others were too powerful to defeat without the help of the gods. The People fled across the plains, across the rivers. Into the hills, into the forest, where the Others had not come. There, they hid, shivering like fawns.

        “And it was there, shivering in the dark, that the People discovered that not all the gods had decided to punish them.” The shaman’s wrinkled, white-furred lips parted in a predatory grin, revealing that his front teeth had been filed to points. The warriors flinched away, ancient instincts coming to the fore in their moment of shock. “Noa, goddess of the forest, spoke to them then, as she still speaks to the People now.” The shaman’s antlers glowed green, bright and springlike, and the color flowed into the vines strung between them. The vines burst into flower in a riot of color, eliciting gasps from the group. “Noa is the forest, and the forest is life—she feeds us, she shelters us.”

The shaman’s eyes went distant in concentration and the glow of his antlers darkened to the green of the deep forest. The flowers dried and fell away in seconds, then a damp tearing sound could be heard as the vine’s tiny thorns grew to the size of antlerpoints in the blink of an eye, sharp and glistening with poison. This time, the group’s gasps had the flavor of keen interest. “Noa is the forest, and the forest is death—she guides the predator’s fang and the poison’s sting.”

        The shaman stalked around the fire, planting each hoof firmly, as though he were stabbing the ground. He met each warrior’s gaze directly and unflinchingly. “Ano, god of fire, spoke to them then, as he still speaks to the People now.” The shaman’s antlers glowed cherry-red, and the vines between them burst into ravenous fire and were consumed in a breath, though they had been green and filled with moisture. “Ano is the fire. He is destruction. He is the cleansing flame.”

        He stopped suddenly and nodded a signal over the heads of the supine warriors. Another warrior, older and bearing a long scar from an Other’s knife, came into the fire’s light carrying a spear in her teeth. No—not a spear, but a pole with a split end which held a smooth, oblong stone. The warrior waited for no signal, but thrust the split end of the pole into the heart of the fire and held it there. The shaman’s antlers glowed red, and he bent toward the fire, which leapt up beyond the confines of its tidy arrangement of fuel, as though the neat pile were a window onto a towering bonfire. The light from his antlers grew suddenly in intensity. There was a sharp crack which resounded from the trees around the clearing. The flames withered down to their original size as the shaman’s antlers lost their glow and became simple bone once again.

The warrior drew the pole out of the fire, tilting her head to hold the split end aloft for all to see. The young warriors gasped in surprise. The smooth stone had fractured and split, becoming a gleaming razor-edged spear head. The thin split ends of the pole which held it had not been burnt or even singed by immersion in the fire. The shaman continued speaking as though there had been no pause. “Ano is the fire. He is creation. He is the flame which shapes, the flame which molds.”

        Silence fell around the fire for a dozen heartbeats, partly fearful and partly thoughtful, the only sound the whisper of the night breeze through the forest around them.

        The warrior dipped her antlers in salute to the shaman, and left the circle without a word. The shaman watched her go before speaking. “Four fours of warriors of the People,” he said, sweeping his gaze around the circle, “a holy number, for the gods numbered four fours before the People drove them away. The elders of your villages saw potential in you, and they sent you to us, deep into the forest, to be taught to hear the gods. And to speak to them.”

        The shaman’s voice was eerie in the stillness. “In the seasons since the gods punished the People, we have remained hidden in the forests and the hills, reaching out to prey upon the Others with the gods’ blessing and the gods’ gifts. Though the Others encroach upon the hills, Noa’s favor is upon us in the forest. The People are powerful here, and the Others do not survive long when they enter. This forest shall ever remain free while the People live. We follow the gods’ ways. We remain true. We guard the earth. One day, all the gods will forgive the People, and on that day, we will rise up and drive the Others from the earth!”

        A doe rose to her hooves before a cheer could rise up to follow the shaman’s words, the whisper of her movement as loud as a shout in the tension which surrounded the campfire. All eyes went to her proudly erect form—all eyes but the shaman’s.

        The shaman gazed into the fire, though his words were for the doe. “Why do you stand?”

        The doe did not flinch. The sharp points of her antlers gleamed like teeth in the firelight. “Teach me to use the gods’ power to kill Others.”

        The shaman looked directly at her now, appraising, weighing. “Why?”

        “Snowfall was the village of my herd.”

        Her tone was flat, giving the words no more weight than a simple statement of fact. But all around the fire, the other deer gasped and whispered. Snowfall, they told each other, eyes wide and frightened. She survived the burning of Snowfall.

        The shaman tossed his head and the whispers died. “How came you to survive that day? You could not have been more than a fawn.”

        “I was a fawn. The first I knew of our fall was the flames and the stink of the Others’ magic. I was not yet a warrior, so like a fawn, I ran, I hid. By skill or luck, I remained unseen. I made it to the palisade, still unseen, and leapt through a burning gap where part of the wall had fallen. I fled into the night, hearing the screams of my family fade behind me, the fire leaping from the bones of my home casting a long shadow before me as I ran.

        “I could scarcely see through my tears, and in the tall grass beyond the palisade, I met a female of the Others, one of those who was tasked with slaying the People who fled. I surprised her, I think. Or she was slow to act because I was young. I know not why she hesitated, but hesitate she did. And though the velvet had not been shed from my first antlers, I did not make the same mistake. I struck, and opened her skull with a single blow. They bleed just as we do, and her blood was bright and heavy in the firelit darkness as it dampened the earth beneath her head. I ran from my dying village into the safety of the night.

        “I ran west for a day and a night, through valley and over ridge. I fell down nearly dead before the scouts of Clearbrook, and that herd took me in. While I recovered, I did not weep. I have not wept since that awful night when the Others came upon my herd, because that night, I learned that the Others are weak, that they are fragile. With that knowledge, I found purpose. As a fawn, I killed my first pony.” The doe’s lips twisted as she named the Others in their own language. She paused to spit, to clear her mouth of the taste of the word.

“I have become a warrior. I have mastered the People’s tools of death. I have learned to lead warriors against the Others. I have hunted many, killed many, since that first terrified kill in the fire-bright snow. But my own strength and cunning is not enough. I cannot kill them all. I came here to earn the gods’ power, so that I can.”

        The shaman began to speak, but stopped without uttering a sound, looking around at the forest as the night breeze died. A stillness fell over the clearing, deep and dark. In the silence, there was a sound like the snap of the smallest twig, and a flame-red leaf drifted down through the still air from the green canopy overhead to land softly between the doe’s antlers.

        The shaman lowered himself to his knees in a deep bow. “Our gods see you, doe of Snowfall. You are welcome.” He met her steely gaze. “How are you known?”

        The doe bowed, not to the shaman but to the forest, without disturbing the leaf perched on her forehead. “The name my herd gave me is ashes mingled among the greater ashes of my village. In its place, I took for my name what the Others whisper fearfully about me when they find their warriors dead, their merchants dead: I am Ghost.”