Fyvesdee, the 25th of Harvest, 768 A.E.

  A Kerathi male, young in the eyes of many though an adult in the eyes of others, sat quietly among a stand of birch trees that lie in a forest of mostly oak and pine. He had a rifle nearly as long as he was tall stretched out before him, and he had braced an elbow on his knee as he targeted a hart with a rack of antlers with no fewer than eight points. A strip of silken cloth laid across his lap, marred along the edges from being cut and sawed-off piece by piece as packing for the slugs that he has rammed down the barrel, packing them on top of a small bag of black powder.

  At sixteen Yarres of age, he is darkly bearded and his eyes were the shade of pines in the Saysuhn of White. He is a blooded male, meaning that he has already been in battle, albeit a small one in his case. Therefore, he is considered to be a grown man insofar as the elders of his village are concerned. As with many rash men of his age, he is still looking to prove himself to those who doubt him for various reasons, some petty and some significant.

  A challenge to his manhood is one that he cannot leave unanswered. This is only the most recent in a series of challenges – a hunting challenge. One of his peers, a young man by the name of Lamont, had suggested in front of the better part of the village that Rolf, who happened to be the male sitting in the woods at this very moment, was rather inept at hunting. He had been so brazen as to even suggest that a pair of rifles were wasted in Rolf’s hands. Rolf had to prove him wrong then or look a fool.

  Being a culture strongly centered on the concept of personal image and honor earned from great deeds, this challenge was important for Rolf to answer, lest he lose face. Losing face would knock him down quite a lot in the pecking order, which would consequently make finding a mate – a very important thing to any healthy sixteen-Yarre-old male – considerably harder. The thing was, whether he passed or failed this test, it would not hurt Lamont’s image in the least. And it wasn’t until Rolf successfully answered this challenge that he could issue his own challenge to Lamont that might damage his honor should he fail where Rolf had not. Yet, neither of them had failed in each other’s challenges, and Rolf was trying his best not to be the first to do so.

  There had been a slight breeze in the early Ouers of the morning, but that was gone by the time the sun began cresting the horizon, painting everything in a tangerine color. Rolf inhaled and exhaled slowly, with one green eye closed as he looked down the sights past the end of the barrel. He drew a bead on a spot just below the base of the neck and just above the front shoulder of the animal. His finger slowly tightened on the trigger, and the hammer was poised to fall and send a hot ball of lead tumbling toward the deer.

  As he inhaled and held his breath to fire, not wanting his breathing to throw off his shot, there was a distracting flash from above and to the north in the high altitudes of the mountain passes beyond sight. A ball of dark clouds hurtled down out of the cloud canopy. They thinned and stripped away from something underneath them as it fell. Something shimmered from beneath the clouds, emerging moments later as it continues to fall toward the ground. Whatever it was, Rolf knew it was pretty big.

  Rolf watched, his trigger finger still. He was as spellbound as the hart he was aiming to shoot. The deer’s tail lifted and its head turned to face the distant object. The hart had about as good of a clue as to what the thing was as Rolf did, and so they both wore blank, surprised looks on their faces.

  It didn’t dawn on man or beast for a long time that the mysterious shape was falling in their general direction. They were both so keen on watching bits and pieces of the object tear apart and fall away with the last remaining wisps of clouds that leave the greater object that the fact that the thing was getting a lot bigger hadn’t really caught on.

  At some point, neurons kicked in, and the connection was made. This happened at about the time that the falling vessel was close enough that Rolf and the hart can both hear it as it whistled through the air. An errant piece of the craft smashed through the trees and landed between the two of them. It lay there smoking as the hart bolted through the tall grasses, crashing past shrub and tree, leaving the Kerathi to watch the wreckage rain down around him. Every thrush, sparrow, and other bird in the area took to flight all at once, rustling twigs and leaves as they winged away from what they’ve accurately identified as a ‘bad place to be.’

  Rolf stood quickly and stared at the piece of twisted metal. He looked up at the ever-so-large vessel approaching rapidly and took off running in the first direction he can turn both his feet toward. With one rifle in hand and another shorter firearm across his back, he pumped his legs as fast as he could to get away, jumping over fallen tree trunks, bounding off rocks, and dodging branches that deviously aim to poke out eyes.

  Heat from the falling craft built up around him as he ran. The Guardian Flier scraped the highest branches of the trees overhead, snapping them with a horrendous amount of racket, all the while chastising Rolf for picking the wrong direction to run in. He threw himself to the ground and covered his head as tree trunks snapped in half and shredded the hull of the Flier.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  There was a thunderous crash as the Flier was finally pulled down to the ground, having been slowed down enough by tearing through a hundred Mayters worth of foliage that it could no longer remain aloft, and it came to a stop. Trees and branches continued to fall for a several Saycunds, until the last bits of wreckage have come to rest.

  Everything was dead silent. There wasn’t a bird or insect making noise anywhere as far as Rolf could hear.

  Rolf sat up. He gave each of his limbs a perfunctory shake to make sure they still work, and then he stood up. Leaves and twigs rained down around him, each one forcibly detached from their home in the trees above. The sunlight filtered through dust and leaves alike, as well as clouds of sawdust that hung suspended in the air, the sort of light pulp that accumulates in the middle of trees that termites or ants have been working over for Yarres.

  This is where Rolf had to make a decision.

  Many men – or even women – have a number of possible ways to react to a situation such as this one presented. There are some who would forget what they’d seen and run away as fast as possible, never to look back. Another sort of man or woman might go find some friends or enlist some sort of aid to search the wreckage. Still another sort of person could be curious enough to go investigating on his or her own, or even of a pure enough heart to search for survivors in hopes of helping them. Then there was Rolf. He was of an entirely different and less genteel sort.

  A vein began to stand out in the middle of his forehead, and he gritted his teeth together. Rolf was the sort of person who was put out, even angered by the fact that someone had just about killed him by dropping what seemed to be a flaming pile of metal, gases, and fire down over his head.

  Rolf’s left fist tightened around the barrel of his gun while the other locked onto the stock of the weapon. Then started pressing forward through the mess of strewn branches, uprooted trees, and damaged terrain of the sort that made it look like a tornado had just passed through.

  It took him a quarter of an Ouer to move through an area that would normally have taken him just a handful of Mynettes. While this was mostly due to the debris in his way, it was also partly due to caution and frequent glances up at the sky. One never knew when a second hunk of Comrain knew what would rain down on you.

  Thinking of Comrain, the God of the Hunt, made Rolf’s expression darken as he recalled that the hart had escaped. He’d not yet fulfilled the challenge laid out before him by Lamont. This made two reasons to hate whoever was responsible, though it was a lesser reason behind almost being killed. Thinking of Lamont only made that vein in his forehead pulse that much harder.

  When he finally reached the main chunk of wreckage, for there were many smaller pieces littered throughout the artificial clearing the crash had made, Rolf stopped and stared. Bits of metal were stuck deep in trees, and entire trees were thrown about like a child’s careless pile of sticks. A twisted lump of tube frame, fan blades, and metal hull lay in a smoking heap in a crater rent into the dark soil of the forest floor. Amidst all of this, were the sparkling shards of shattered crystals that had crumbled off the folded wings of the Flier, and most surprising to Rolf, the bodies of people.

  With his rifle trained on the contorted form of the nearest man, Rolf advanced on the remains of the vessel. Three paces away from the body, it began to twitch violently, startling Rolf. Rolf nearly jumped in place, and only a supreme effort of will kept him from emptying the chamber of his rifle into the man.

  The prone figure raised his hand and opened his eyes, trying to croak out a few words. Rolf knelt beside him warily.

  “What is it? What happened?” Rolf asked. What followed from the man was an unintelligible string of syllables. Rolf shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  The soldier, for it was obviously a solder as he was outfitted in some sort of metallic armor the likes of which Rolf had never seen, grasped Rolf’s arm tightly, his mouth twisted in a rictus of pain. His body was wracked with spasms that stilled a few moments later. Even in death the expression of pain did not leave the man.

  Shaking his head as he looked at the ruined state of the man’s body, twisted and broken in the crash, Rolf closed the man’s pale grey eyes with his fingertips. He stood then and looked about the rest of the wreckage for a few moments, but the other three passengers had died in the crash, in rather horrible ways.

  Confident that the people, who had almost killed him when they had come crashing down from the sky in their strange craft, were already dead, Rolf poured the contents of his canteen onto the ground to make a patch of mud. This was easy to do since the ground had been so torn up from the crash that there were open sections of soil instead of the forest floor’s normal rug of detritus.

  Once he had a good puddle of mud, he dipped his forefinger and middle finger into it and walked over to place a dab of it on each of the dead men’s eyelids. The act was one of respect for the dead, and for Nelius, the God of the Afterlife and the Dead.

  After this brief act, Rolf set to searching the Flier, which was in accordance with what Cainel, the God of Battle, would wish. For he would frown upon anyone who would leave serviceable weapons and tools out to the elements instead of returning them to the battlefield in another man’s hands. To the survivors go the spoils.

  He searched the bodies, looked around for any coins and valuables, and then tried to see what weapons the men had carried. The pair of sword-like weapons he found had been broken into pieces. From the mangled front of the craft, hardly distinguishable as such anymore, he salvaged the one remaining arc-lance that had not been destroyed or bent to a point that it was no longer usable.

  Holding it aloft, it caught the light of the sun along its length and began to glow. Rolf dropped it in surprise, cursing as he danced aside when it discharged an arc of energy into the air around its tip. He was careful the next time he handled it. Being that he was not a stupid man, he was able to determine within a few Mynettes of trial and error that the lance responded to the sun. After he was done experimenting with the weapon, he covered it with his cloak so that it would not be exposed to the sun.

  He gave one last look at the wreck before shaking his head and moving away. The noise of the crash had scared away any game for the Dee, so Rolf started home. The strange weapon of the sky riders would have to serve as a trophy. Hopefully it would be enough to offset the loss of face from the delay in fulfilling Lamont’s challenge.