Prologue

The dark clouds were slow, ponderous, inexorable. Spanning the heavens, they blocked out the sun and brought a frigid, gray winter with their passage westward. It was only jagged peaks, bisecting the continent like the ridged back of some great reptile, that arrested their flight. They crowded up against those peaks laden with a heavy burden of ice and snow dropped on the lands of the east.

 The lands west of the of those jagged peaks rarely experienced the frigid, numbing cold or drifts a man height high. For that half-year, the New Land was isolated from the Old World. That isolation had raised in the New Land a folk independent and self-reliant, private and stubborn, with little need for regard to the contrivances of the powerful in some distant land, and the farther one traveled westward beyond the shadow of the mountain the more intrenched was this view.

For that reason, those who ventured into the far unknown, caravan outriders, Guardsmen, or those stupid enough be trapped by winter and having nowhere else to go, had reason to be so far from the more traveled routes. So, the arrival of the Lady that early autumn morning was out of place. 

She arrived clothed in a long sleeved golden gown that fell to her feet and hugged every contour and curve of her shapely figure. Satin or silk, it’s vibrant iridescence flashed as the sun caught a turn of hip or sway of arm. But the gown had seen better days. It was marred by smudges of dirt and torn at the sleeves, and a ragged, frayed hem left furrowed tracks in the dust on the road. But though her gown was marred from rough use, there was nothing rough about her features.

Hair seeming made of one strand of ebon darkness framed her oval face. High cheekbones, smooth chocolate skin, and a pert nose bespoke her youth, while fathomless eyes, dark as midnight on a starless night, told a tale of wearying travails. In that bleak gaze there was no emotion, no reflection of the thing men sometimes bespoke of as a soul; and there was only grim-jawed determination as she surveyed the dusty, dry road before her that in the distance fell away to reveal a village of irregularly slanted roofs of thatch.

Her shoe snagged a tear in the ragged hem of her dress. With faltering step and bloodied knee, she rose from her fall. She gave a furtive glance behind, though her enemies would not be coming for her along this road.

Taking a deep breath, she turned back to the way ahead and unbound and rewound tighter the purple cloth that held the swaddled child on her back.

 She had to be wary, ever vigilant. She had no more allies. They had all fallen. Now, the only thing that stood between complete annihilation from the cold, terrible enemies arrayed before them, was she.    

When she arrived at the village, her peculiar look, swaddled child, and rigid jaw were met with questioning glances. All who tried to catch her eye regretted the implacable, dark stare that rebuffed their gazes.

She spoke not all, but as she passed through the village making several stops to purchase goods, everyone seemed to understand the specifics of what she wanted from them: at a tanner’s she bought a large satchel that she stuffed with smoked goods purchased at a tavern; she bought a heavy cloak from a clothier; and from the smith, the longbow.

Made of yew it was a bow few men could pull. Every spring festival, traders would travel from the other provinces to barter, renew old acquaintances and make new ones. Each year the festival grew larger and every spring there would be those who would try to pull the longbow and have their names added to list of doughty fellows who had made the attempt but failed.

The bow brought in good business, but the smith was reluctant to part with it. She could not possibly string, let alone pull it he thought, but he could marshal no claim against her stare or her gold, and through it all, the child never uttered a sound from the secure, warm place perched high on his mother’s back.

The smith was not the only one to balk at gold of unfamiliar minting only to acquiesce before that unflinching stare. Even when the gold was later proved true, it was still whispered that some nameless Skill caused them to accept the coin without any surety of its value.

Two men had followed the Lady with furtive step as she moved through the village. Stranded, they were making their way from village to town village the larger towns at the foot of the mountain. But their coin was running low.

With the arrival of the lady, and heavy purse at her side, they considered dame fortune had smiled kindly upon them. They wouldn’t take too much, just enough to see them to their next destination.

They were not too far behind when she departed. That was the last ever seen of them, or the Lady.