The next morning began before sunrise.
The camp of the Painted Dogs was still wrapped in darkness when Torren woke to the low murmur of men's voices and the scrape of steel against leather. For a few moments he lay still beneath the furs, listening. The wind pressed softly against the hide walls of the shelter, and from somewhere outside came the dull thud of boots on packed earth and stone.
He already knew what it meant.
A raiding party.
By the time he pushed aside the furs and stepped into the cold air, the camp was stirring in a different way than it had the day before. This was not the quiet order of a hunting morning. This was sharper. Harder. Men moved with purpose, fastening belts, tightening straps, checking blades and spearheads in the dim glow of the fires. There was less talking and more silence. Even the few jokes that passed between warriors were lower, tighter, as though no one wished to waste breath before the climb.
Torren saw Harrag near one of the larger fires.
His father stood with three other warriors, his axe hanging at his side, a rolled hide bundle tied across his back. Unlike some of the younger men, he was not painted yet. The war paint would come later, once they neared the road and the lower slopes. For now he looked exactly as he always did before violence: calm, broad-shouldered, watchful.
A few paces away stood the clan chief himself, speaking with another cluster of men. Torren had seen him many times before, of course—every child in the camp had—but children did not stand close when leaders prepared for blood. The chief's face was already marked in white and red, and the warriors around him watched him the way lesser fires watched a larger one.
Torren moved toward Harrag.
His mother was there too, tying a strip of leather around Harrag's forearm where the old scar tissue made armor sit awkwardly. She noticed Torren first.
"You're awake early," she said.
Torren looked from her to his father. "You're going."
Harrag gave a short nod as he adjusted the strap across his chest. "South slope. Then lower."
That meant a village.
Torren's eyes sharpened. "How long?"
"A week, maybe less. Maybe more." Harrag picked up a small skin of water and tied it to his belt. "Depends what we find."
Torren stood a little straighter. "I can come."
His mother immediately turned her head. "No."
Harrag did not answer right away, which Torren took as a mistake and a small hope.
"I can keep up," the boy said. "I climbed higher than Dren last week. I saw the goat before the others. I won the—"
"This is not a hunt," his mother cut in.
Torren ignored her and looked only at Harrag.
The warrior met his son's gaze with the same steady look he used when weighing a path in the mountains. "You're six."
"I'll be seven."
"Not today."
Torren clenched his jaw.
The calm voice in his mind, silent through most of the night, did not speak at once. Torren almost wished it would. Not because he expected it to change Harrag's mind, but because it had begun to feel strange when it was absent.
His father bent slightly and rested one heavy hand on the back of Torren's neck.
"Listen well," Harrag said. "A child who goes on a raid too early becomes a burden, or a corpse. Both are useless. Learn first. Walk the slopes. Watch the camp. Keep your ears open. Your time will come."
Torren hated that answer because it sounded reasonable.
His mother finished tying the leather and stepped back. "And don't go climbing ridges alone."
Torren looked away.
Harrag noticed. Of course he noticed.
"You'll stay close to the camp," the man said.
Torren said nothing.
One of the nearby warriors barked a laugh. "That one? Stay close? Better bind him to a tree."
A few of the others chuckled. Harrag did not.
The clan chief called out then, and the remaining warriors began to gather. More women emerged from the shelters to see husbands, brothers, and sons off. A few older children trailed behind them, watching with the hungry curiosity children always had for war.
Torren watched his father sling the axe more securely across his back and step into line beside the others. As the raiders began moving out of the camp in a long, dark stream of fur and steel, Harrag glanced back once.
He did not wave.
He did not smile.
But he looked directly at Torren, held the gaze for a heartbeat, and gave the slightest nod.
Then he turned and went down the narrow path with the other warriors, disappearing among the pines and rock as the mountain swallowed them one by one.
The camp felt different almost immediately.
It was not truly empty—far from it. Women remained. Children remained. The old remained. A handful of warriors too young, too old, or too injured for the journey stayed behind. Yet the absence of the strongest men created a strange hollowness, as if the valley had lost part of its sound.
The morning passed slowly. Torren drifted through it without purpose.
He watched the women scrape hides and cut meat. He watched two boys wrestle near the lower fire until one started crying and was cuffed by his mother. He watched the older men speak quietly among themselves, their voices too low to catch. Once he saw the Tree Speaker walking at the far edge of the camp with a bundle of red leaves in his arms, but the old man did not call to him.
That alone was unusual.
By midday, Torren could bear the camp no longer.
No one stopped him when he slipped up the slope behind the shelters. His mother was busy near the cooking fire. The warriors who remained were focused on their own work. Within minutes he had reached the narrower path that led up toward the ridge he had sat on the night before.
The climb felt easier now.
He knew where the stones shifted. He knew which roots would hold. The wind was colder on the upper slope, but cleaner too. It carried less smoke and more mountain.
When he reached the ridge, he crouched automatically at first, then settled himself on the flat stone where he had sat before. Below him the camp seemed smaller in the clear light of afternoon. Beyond it the mountains unrolled in grey layers toward the west and south, and far to the east the High Road lay like a pale line through the passes.
Torren sat in silence for a time, pulling his knees up and staring at the road.
Then, because he no longer knew exactly how to begin and because he was still a child, he started simply.
Are you there?
The answer came almost at once.
Yes.
Torren let out a breath he had not realized he'd been holding.
He looked around anyway, though less fearfully than the night before.
Nothing.
Only cliffs, pines, sky.
Good, he thought, then immediately felt foolish for saying it.
There was a brief pause, and then the voice replied:
You appear relieved.
Torren frowned. Maybe.
That answer felt too exposed, so he asked something else quickly.
What were they doing this morning?
Preparing for a raid.
Torren picked at a loose edge of goat fur on his cloak. I know that.
Then you did not need to ask.
Torren scowled at the empty air.
For a moment he considered not speaking again. Then curiosity won, as it usually did.
Was the goat hunt good? The one yesterday.
Yes.
Torren waited.
The voice continued, calm as ever.
For a small mountain hunting party, it was efficient. A large goat provides meat, hide, sinew, and bone. It improves clan morale when brought back visibly.
Torren thought about the way the others had reacted when Harrag's group had returned. The whistles. The nods. The small, restrained pride in his mother's eyes. The approval in Harrag's silence.
They were pleased.
Correct.
Torren shifted slightly, then asked, Were they pleased with me?
The answer took a moment longer than usual.
Some were amused. Some were impressed. Your father approved. Your mother was proud. The Tree Speaker's interest increased.
Torren made a face at that last part.
I don't care about him.
The voice did not respond, which somehow made Torren feel as though he had been seen too clearly.
He glanced toward the pines below. The light had changed since morning. Thin clouds drifted over the peaks, muting the sun.
Why is it getting colder? he asked after a while. It was warmer before.
Because the season is changing.
Torren rolled his eyes slightly. I know that too.
Again the voice paused.
Then it said, You asked why. Not whether.
Torren almost laughed despite himself.
He tightened his arms around his knees. Fine. Why does the season change?
Because the world turns, and because the years in this world do not follow simple patterns.
Torren blinked.
That answer only raised more questions.
What does that mean?
In this world, summers and winters are irregular. Some last years. Some last much longer. No child can know from the air alone how long the next winter will be.
Torren looked back toward the camp.
The idea unsettled him in a way he did not fully understand. A winter longer than one winter? Two? Three? He had seen hard cold already, but he could not imagine one that simply refused to end.
How do people live, then?
They prepare. Or they die.
Torren stared at the High Road for a long moment after that.
Far below, tiny moving shapes appeared around a bend in the road.
Travelers.
He narrowed his red eyes and leaned forward slightly, squinting. He could not make out details from this distance, only the slow, deliberate movement of horses and carts.
Who lives on the road? he asked.
Merchants. Guards. Travelers. Messengers. Men carrying grain, wool, iron, timber, silver, and news.
Torren tilted his head. News?
Information. Events. Wars. Deaths. Marriages. Orders. Roads carry more than bodies.
That thought stayed with him.
He watched the small caravan move like a line of ants between stone and shadow.
Why do we live up here? he asked quietly.
The answer came more slowly this time, as though the voice were choosing its words.
Because your people were driven here.
Torren went still.
For a moment the wind was the only sound on the ridge.
Driven by who?
The Andals. Long ago.
Torren frowned. He knew the word. Every child in the camp knew the word. Andal meant enemy, southerner, road-man, steel-clad, village-dweller. Andal meant the ones below.
But long ago?
He had never asked beyond that.
Why?
Because your people were here before them.
Torren looked down at his own pale hands.
Then why did they take it?
Because they came in greater strength, with better steel, better organization, and a different faith. Your people fought. They lost much. Some bent the knee. Some mixed with them. Some fled into the mountains. Those became the mountain clans.
Torren was quiet for a long time after that.
Below him the caravan kept moving.
Above him the clouds thickened over the higher peaks.
He had always known, in the vague unquestioning way children know the shape of their world, that the Painted Dogs belonged to the mountains and that the people below did not. But the idea that it had once been otherwise—that the mountains were not merely where his people lived but where they had been forced—settled differently inside him.
It made the world feel older.
Larger.
Sharper.
So the road belongs to them now? he asked.
The road serves them.
Torren narrowed his eyes again.
And we just watch it?
For now.
That answer made him look up.
What do you mean, for now?
The voice did not answer immediately.
When it did, it asked a question instead.
What do you think happens to a people who fight each other while richer men pass beneath them carrying food, metal, and wealth?
Torren frowned, thinking.
Children did not think in neat lines. They jumped. They circled. They pulled one idea against another until something caught.
They stay hungry, he said at last.
Yes.
And stupid.
There was a pause.
Often, yes.
Torren almost smiled.
He pulled a small pebble loose from the ridge and tossed it into the drop below.
Are there more clans like us? he asked. Far away.
Yes. But not many who live exactly as your people do. The mountain clans of the Vale are unusual. Harsh terrain preserves old things.
Torren did not fully understand that last sentence, but he understood enough to know that being unusual mattered.
What about the trees? he asked. Are there weirwoods anywhere else?
Yes.
He waited again, and again the voice elaborated.
Many were cut down. Some remain in the North, where the Old Gods are still worshipped openly. Others survive in hidden groves, in valleys forgotten by kingdoms, and in places where the roots still run deep.
Torren looked toward the upper slopes.
The Weeping Grove suddenly felt larger in his mind than it had that morning. Not just a sacred place in the mountains, but part of something older and wider.
And the Old Gods are real?
The wind moved softly across the ridge before the voice answered.
Yes.
Torren blinked.
The Old Gods are real.
The voice continued calmly.
They are ancient forces tied to the weirwoods and the deep memory of the world. Through the trees they see, and through the trees they remember. Those who know how to listen can sometimes hear them.
Torren looked back toward the mountains above the camp, where the Weeping Grove stood hidden among the pale trunks.
The answer did not frighten him.
If anything, it made the grove feel less strange.
Do you hear them? he asked.
Sometimes.
Torren let that thought sit quietly in his mind.
He plucked another pebble loose and rolled it between his fingers.
Do you know everything?
No.
That answer came quickly.
Then what do you know?
Enough to help you. Not enough to remove every uncertainty.
Torren thought about that.
Then he asked, more softly now, Why are you helping me?
The answer, when it came, was quieter than any before.
Because you can become something important.
Torren frowned.
The Tree Speaker had said something similar in his own way. So had the women after his birth. So had the looks from the campfires and the strange stillness that sometimes gathered around him in the Weeping Grove.
But this felt different.
Less like praise.
More like measurement.
Important how? he asked.
That depends on what you choose to become.
Torren looked down toward the camp again.
From this distance it seemed so small. Fires, hides, tiny moving figures. The whole life of the Painted Dogs pressed into one narrow valley while beyond them stretched roads, villages, valleys, castles, and kingdoms he had never seen.
He thought of Harrag walking south with the raiders.
He thought of the caravan on the road.
He thought of the weirwood face staring down through red leaves.
Then, because he was still a boy even with strange thoughts growing in him, he asked one last question in a smaller voice than the others.
If I ask you things again… will you answer?
The reply came without hesitation.
Yes.
Torren nodded to himself.
For a while after that he did not speak. He sat on the ridge and watched the afternoon deepen over the Mountains of the Moon while the caravan slowly vanished around a bend in the High Road. The air grew colder by degrees, and the shadows lengthened across the slopes, touching rock after rock like dark water.
When he finally stood to go back down, the world did not look different.
The pines were still pines.
The camp was still the camp.
The road was still a pale scar beneath the mountains.
And yet something had shifted all the same.
The mountains no longer felt like the whole world.
Only a piece of it.
And somewhere inside him, beneath the curiosity and the unease and the stubbornness of childhood, the first faint shape of a larger hunger had begun to form.