When the frost came and the grass paled, the Eorlings retreated into their halls. They burned a forest’s worth of trees in fire pits as long as ships, and their chimneys like dragons’ nostrils huffed smoke into the clear white air. Laughter and song rumbled from the bellies of their halls, and they ventured from their cities only to rob the woods of boars.
In recent years, though, warmer winters brought milder rains with little thunder. Rushing rivers lapped up the snow lingering on their banks. The farms were seeded early and the crops grew lush late into fall. The sheep never lacked grass and the fowl multiplied in the excess of cattail growing in the marsh.
Every winter, Gryffudd kept his vigil over Rohan. After fulfilling the day’s duties as chieftain of Tros Hynt, he climbed to the top of the spire they call Nyth yr Eryr—a needle of stone whittled by unbridled winds since the forests of Dunland were felled long ago. From the Nyth, the Eagle-prince could see in every direction, with the widest scope filled by the length of the enemy’s lands. In the winter gray, their firelit cities looked like a long chain of amber beads, strung on a cord of wide roads, settled on folds of white velvet.
There were so many of them. Gryffudd could not count the hamlets along the Isen, nevermind the rest that infested the rest of Rohan to the Isen’s brother river in the east. He had never been further than a league over the ford, but it haunted him how many forgoil had planted farmsteads and birthed whelps in what was once their land.
Their land. His land.
Three years it had been since he’d crossed the Isen and plunged the banner of Wulf into the enemy’s soil. He’d felt larger then than he’d ever had, filled to his crown with pride and gratitude. Of all his battles—skirmishes in Starkmoor and Carreglyn, the seasonal harassment of ships sailing up the Isen, and every ambush by kinsmen on his own roads—none had bolstered him like that one raid.
He had watched from the stone spire for weeks afterward, waiting for a trumpet-call, a raised pennant—any answer from Rohan. He watched for the teeming of eoreds along the eastern bank or dust drifting up from the roads…but nothing came.
While his eyes were on Rohan, however, there was movement behind his back. Turmoil brewed in the heart of Dunland.
The Draig-lûth, always ready for opportunity, had been emboldened by Gryffudd’s exploit, but instead of turning their axes on the forgoil, they set their target on the Dunbog. In a single evening, under shadow of a closed-lidded moon, they torched a third of the Avanc-lûth’s villages. By the morning, the stilted huts were extinguished, crumpled, and sunk into the marsh.
The Eryr-lûth could not stand for that. For two summers they clashed against the Draig-lûth alongside their allies until the Dragons were driven back to Pren Gwydh. The third summer, the Eryr-lûth helped the Avanc fortify the upper, hard ground they had gained from the Draig. Now a long stretch of stone and baked-mud wall separated the Dunbog from Starkmoor. It would slow the Draig’s advance if they should seek a second war, but it would not stop them. For the long hot months, Gryffudd’s kin and the Avanc kept a stony vigil on the hills to the north, but nothing came. It seemed the Draig’s appetite had been satiated, for now.
Wasted time, wasted effort, wasted men.
So it always was, as it had been for his father in the same wane of youth. So had it been for five hundred years since the forgoil drove them out of their herding lands and into the muddy hills. The slow churn of wars, season after season, clan against clan, distracted them from their true enemy. His people squabbled over scraps of hillside, forgetting there was a fattened sow of land lying just beyond the river, if they could set aside their hatred for each other long enough to take it.
Rohan did send one message—they left Wulf’s banner to whither in the field. No one came to tear it down. No other spectacle besides its planting was ever made. From his spire Gryffudd watched the black and white pennant flap furiously for weeks, weathered at its edges but still proud. Then in heavier rains it sank against the pole, folds shivering. In wilder winds it was ripped, torn, and then in a night of true thunder, the banner ripped from its stake and lay, a sopping heap in the grass.
After that, Gryffudd never had a cloak or shield made that didn’t bear the wolf and raven that had, for a moment, conquered a square of grassland over the Isen. He knew Rohan thought it a small thing—little prince as he was over a little, insignificant people. To him, though, it had been a promise—a whisper of war to come. He intended to keep it.
If he were to turn his full focus on Rohan, though, the Draig would have to be dealt with, first.
