#urazakh

'Cheer up, lad.’ Thehunter dropped a hand onto his shoulder, large and rough and heavy,as the rest of the group gathered in around them. 'You’re young.You’ll grasp it in time, with practice.’

After a whole weekspent in Riverwood, watching the hunters at work whenever Minnel tookher eye off him long enough to sneak out after them, Hjolrin doubtedthis, but when he looked up it was hard not take some heart fromSvend’s words. The Nord only lowered his voice from a commandingboom, the boom which carried it across plains in the midst of thehunt, when he felt strongly about a subject. The quieter it was, themore heartfelt his words, and now it was soft and gentle.

'What say I take youon a hunt with the bow? You liked that. See if I can’t teach you totrack at the same time.’ They left the meadow and plunged into theforest, Hjolrin scrambling over stumps and roots, Svend gliding overthem like a ship over the peaks and troughs of waves. 'Try now. Theseventy-two signs of the stag. Go.’

'Slots. Creeps. Browselines. The fraying post. Old velvet.’

'But only in thespring and summer. This time of year, the antlers’ll be clean.’

'When do they dropthem?’

'Bucks’ll cast them ina month or two from now, round about Sun’s Dusk. Does keep them 'tilafter the first calves are born in Second Seed. Now carry on.’

'Fords. Lying uppatches. Stripped bark…’

By the time theyreached Riverwood and packed away the hunting nets, Hjolrin hadlisted fifty-nine signs of the stag, and would have made it a roundsixty if it weren’t for the thunder of footsteps and voices tumblingout of the Sleeping Giant Inn. He started, dropping the rope, and thebells clattering across the floor wasn’t enough to drown out thevoices of his siblings. Minnel and Brandrel led the charge.

'Hjoll! Pa’s here! Itold you not to go wanderingoff.’

'We’re going home tosee the baby! It was born yesterday and it’s a boy. We got a newbrother.’

Svend picked up therope and looped it around his arms a few times.

'Looks like I’m losingmy new apprentice,’ he said. 'Come back and visit, y'hear? You’rewelcome any time if you want to learn how to hunt.’

'Aye. Please.’

'Kyne walk with you.’

And he was gone,loping off, bow slung over one shoulder, into the cover of ferns andpines, as Minnel surrounded Hjolrin and hustled him along the path.Pa Boar-Chaser left his post leaning against the inn porch and strodeahead on the path to Whiterun.

Hjolrin drifted to theback of the procession. At the gate out of Riverwood he paused tostare down the road, and on the bridge he stopped entirely until asmall, sticky hand tugged at his sleeve. He glanced down to findTrond’s round, pink face, clearly weighed down by troubles too muchfor a six year old to bear alone, his other hand gripping his littleleather bag close to his side.

'All right, Trond?’

'No.’

This was not conduciveto much conversation. Aware that they were losing their family to thepath ahead, Hjolrin let his youngest – formerly his youngest –brother tug him onward, in a silence which wasn’t broken until theyrounded the corner which brought the Whiterun Plains into view. WhileHjolrin squinted at the city walls and the distant smoke spreadingacross the sky, Trond slithered down the shortcut in the bank, andwaited for his brother to join him before he announced,

'Brandy said they’regonna sell me.’

Hjolrin stoppedpatting the mud off his legs.

'Who?’

'Ma and Pa. He saidwhen there’s a new baby you gotta make room for it by selling one ofthe others. And he looks after the goats and Minnel looks after thecows and you’re a hunter now, so he said they gotta sell me.’

'Don’t think so.Didn’t sell anyone when you were born.’ He started to walk, thenstopped. There was a book at the bottom of the bank, dislodged by abump against a stone, and no sooner had he stooped to investigatethan Trond snatched it away from under his fingers. 'That yours?’

'Aye. The inn persongave it to me. It’s about a giant.’ Trond stowed it into his littlesack, thumping it until it was well-hidden at the bottom. 'Don’t tellBrandy, he said books are for milk-drinkers. I don’t want to be amilk-drinker.’

'I won’t.’

'Promise?’

'Promise.’

The exchange seemed tohave reassured Trond. He hummed a tune picked up from the SleepingGiant to himself, and Hjolrin found his attention drifting to thelight between the trees, looking for slots in the ground and thebrowse lines in the leaves. When they set foot on the plain andfollowed the shadows of Pa, Minnel and Brandrel, however, the hummingstopped. Trond dragged his feet through the heather.

'Hjoll?’

'Aye?’

'I hate babies. I wantto sit by the river and read my book and never go home. Why do wehave to have a new brother? We were happy before.’

'Dunno.’

'Will I have to lookafter him?’

'Nah. Ma 'n Pa’ll doit.’

'What if they don’twant to? What if he’s really really naughty?’

'We’ll make Minnel andBrandy look after him.’

Satisfied once again,Trond resumed his humming, prodding Hjolrin until he chimed in with a harmony. The song carried them up to the Boar-Chaser Farm. At the gate, a wheaten wolfhound ambled up and butted her head into Hjolrin’s chest, to Trond’sevident amusement, and he tried to wave away the nose snuffling intohis hair.

'Grosta. Down.’

'She missed you.’ Pacalled the wolfhound to his side with a whistle and held open thefront door. 'Come on. Minnel and Brandrel are already in with Ma.’

They followed Grostaupstairs to Ma’s bedroom, where the wolfhound charged past Minnel andinstalled herself in pride of place, muzzle resting on the bed andgazing, with the unfettered adoration only a dog could achieve, atthe mother and child tucked in beneath the blankets.

Ma, more usually foundbutchering a rabbit for dinner, hammering fences into place, orprowling the edge of the farm scaring off wolves, lay with her eyesclosed and her head resting against the pillows. Her arms were still,wrapped around a bundle of cloth which smelled of herbs and soap andthe alchemist’s cheapest healing potions. When Trond thumped againstthe bed and tried to clamber up, only to be tugged back by Brandrel,she opened her eyes and smiled, which was unusual enough in itself.Ma’s fondness normally took the form of chivvying and chiding herbrood with a long-suffering sort of weariness, and if she did smileit was big, toothy, and administered with a slap on the back. Thiswas small and tired, and deeply, untouchably content.

'This is Haaki,’ shesaid. 'Your brother. Come and say hello. No, Trond, stop poking him.’

'I hate him.’

'You haven’t even seenhim yet. Sit here, you can hold him. Hjoll, make sure he looks afterhim. I went through a lot of trouble for that baby and I’m not havingyou drop him in the first five minutes.’

That sounded more likethe Ma they knew. Brandrel ushered Hjolrin forwards to sit on the bedbeside Trond, wriggling in against Ma’s legs and the folds of theblankets until he could offer an arm to rest the baby’s head on. Oncethey were all in position, Minnel moved the bundle reverently fromMa’s arms to Trond’s, and they had their first real sight of theiryoungest brother.

Haaki, one day old,looked to Hjolrin’s eyes much like all the other babies he hadencountered. Small, and puffy, a bit blotchy where the healer hadbeen overzealous with her tools. Cute if a person liked that sort ofthing. Not so much for someone whose head remained full of stagsigns, running the hare, and the perfect trajectory of an arrow inflight, but from the cooing of his siblings he gathered that thisbaby was somehow superior to, for example, the Battle-Born girl onthe farm down the road.

He studied Trondinstead. His other younger brother’s hostility was fading, but heremained skeptical, and settled on disgust when the baby sucked in adeep breath through puckered lips, scowled without opening its eyes,and began to wail. Trond thrust the bundle back so quickly Hjolrinhad to pitch forward to keep his hand beneath the baby’s head.

'Ma, it’s crying!’

'Oh, give him here.Mara forbid you should ever have children, if this is how you handle 'em.’ Ma folded the baby into her arms, where the screams subsidedinto whimpers and then steady breaths. 'Do you still hate him?’

Trond considered thequestion for some time.

'No. He’s all right.’

'Good. You’d betterplay nice with him, understood? That goes for the rest of you, too.’

'Of course, Ma.’

'Aye, Ma.’

'Aye.’

'I guess. If I gotto.’