Greip was a hulking brute of a man, his entire body covered by coarse black hair so dense that it almost hid his skin from view. His face was almost hidden by a long, unkempt beard. Only the area around his eyes was bare, and his eyes glared out from it like a mudclaw from its cave as he took in the other occupants of the sweat tent, his great penis swaying between his legs like the trunk of a fennbeast. The trophy necklace hanging around his neck had seven human finger bones strung on it. The women glanced at each other as they silently debated which of them would have the task of scraping his back, as if scraping would do any good when there was no much hair between the plethin blade and his skin.

  Beside him was his son, Skoll. Not quite as much of a hairy beast as his father but only because he was younger. One year older than Tarvos. Even at that young age, though, he already had two human finger bones on his trophy necklace. He had a full beard and his chest was covered with hair, thickest across his well defined pectoral muscles. He looked strong and powerful. He had once killed a rex with a single rock thrown from his sling, they said, and had broken the neck of a muskril that had eaten a locoweed and attacked him in a deranged frenzy. He liked to arm-wrestle and it was said that he had once broken the arm of a man while doing so. Tarvos could easily believed it having arm-wrestled him himself on a couple of occasions and having felt the raw strength of his body. That had been before the friendliness of their rivalry had turned to bitterness.

  He was looking at the women appraisingly, in a way that Tarvos didn't like, and when his eyes fell upon Daphnis they widened with an appreciation that almost had Tarvos leaping to his feet in alarm. He forced himself to relax. Of course he was enjoying the sight of Daphnis. She was easily the most beautiful women present. And she couldn't possibly be in any danger from him with so many other people present, including his father. He kept his eye on him nevertheless as the two men made their way to an empty corner of the tent and lay down on the soft towels.

  Helene went to attend to Greip. It wasn't a job that she was prepared to hand off to another woman. One of her daughters went to attend to Skoll but as she approached him with a clay bottle of gooth oil he waved her away. "I want her," he said, pointing to Daphnis. Again Tarvos almost leapt to his feet and again he stopped himself. Skoll was trying to provoke him, knowing very well that he and Daphnis were betrothed. He'd had a grudge against Tarvos ever since Tarvos had beaten him in the slingstone contest at the last meeting of the clan Chiefs, and had been looking for any chance to get even ever since.

  Tarvos forced himself to relax, deciding not to rise to the bait. He'd made his father a promise, and besides, he thought with a mental grin, ignoring Skoll's baiting was the best way to annoy him. It was a very minor bait anyway, not worth getting upset about. It was a breach of etiquette to choose his own attendant but only a minor one. It would be a greater breach for Tarvos to break the peace of the sweat tent.

  Daphnis evidently felt the same way because she took the bottle and scraper from Helene's daughter, who looked relieved, and sat down beside Skoll. Tarvos turned his face away, unable to watch, as she applied oil to his back with long, slow strokes of her slender hand. He found himself facing his father who was also frowning with disapproval.

  "Easy, son," said Gunnlod softly. "Let her scrape him for a couple of minutes. Then I will suggest we go to the Great Hall. As your betrothed Daphnis will come with us. We'll rescue her from this ordeal."

  "Thank you, father," said Tarvos earnestly. "I'll try to relax."

  He couldn't relax, though, and turned again so that he was facing Skoll. The young man was clearly enjoying the attentions of the lovely Daphnis and when he rolled onto his back Tarvos was outraged to see that he had a full erection. A man had little control over such things, of course, and Tarvos himself had been embarrassed in a similar way many times, but it was obvious that this was more than just an involuntary reflex. Skoll was harbouring carnal thoughts about Daphnis.

  He couldn't keep silent but he forced himself to be diplomatic. "I expect you've heard the news," he said. "That we are betrothed."

  "Betrothed," Skoll replied, his eyes fixed on Daphnis's perfect breasts. "Not married."

  "She will be married soon enough. To me. We would be married already but she is too young to lay with a man."

  "Not according to the old laws. And the new laws are optional. The lovely Daphnis doesn't have to wait if she doesn't want to."

  "She does want to wait. For me." He looked at Daphnis, suddenly anxious to see whether the look on her face would confirm what he'd just said. Daphnis was looking scared, though, and was looking back and forth between the two men.

  "The daughter of Aegaeon, Chief of the William Tell clan, has told me many times that she is willing to wait for her twenty fifth warm season," said Helene, coming to stand beside Daphnis. She put an arm around her shoulders and Daphnis put her hand on that of the older woman, pulling it closer to tighten the hug.

  "And she has told me many times that she wants to marry Tarvos," Helene added.

  "Perhaps that's just because she's never seen a real man," said Skoll, grinning across at Tarvos. "You think you can satisfy her with that?" He jabbed a finger towards Tarvos's penis, which had shrunk into a small knob with anxiety.

  "You shut your mouth!" shouted Narvi, jumping to his feet to face him. Gunnlod sat up to grab his arm, to stop him doing anything hasty.

  "Or what?" said Skoll, almost laughing. "You'll beat me to death with your mighty fists?"

  "Son," said Greip in a deep, rumbling voice. "We are guests here. Comport yourself accordingly."

  "Yes, of course," said Skoll, still grinning. "Please forgive me my hasty words."

  "I think we have sweated enough," said Gunnlod, rising to his feet. "My sons, let us retire to the Great Hall to enjoy the hospitality of the worthy Bergelmir. There is ale to be drunk and meat to be eaten. We will allow the honourable Greip and his son to sweat in peace."

  "Good idea," said Tarvos, beckoning Daphnis over. She ran over to him with relief and clung to his arm. "See you later, Skoll."

  "Looking forward to it," Skoll replied. Then he rolled over onto his stomach and one of Helene's daughters went to scrape his back.

  As they exited the tent Gunnlod still had a firm grasp of Narvi's arm. "Do not provoke him," he warned his younger son. "Not unless you want one of your fingers hanging from his trophy necklace. He could kill you as casually as snapping a twig."

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  "He wouldn't dare in a crowded city with so many people to see," said Tarvos, though. "He would be exiled."

  "Not if it was Narvi who attacked him," his father replied. "He could snap his neck and call it self defence, and then cut a finger from his corpse while the whole city watched."

  "Self defence?" cried Tarvos in disbelief. "He's three times Narvi's weight."

  "The biggest man can be killed by a single stone from a sling," Gunnlod replied. He looked down at his younger son. "If you provoke Skoll you will die, and there's nothing I'd be able to do about it. Do you understand?"

  "He might not find me so easy to kill," said the boy defiantly. "He insulted Tarvi."

  "I can defend myself," said Tarvos, putting a hard on his brother's shoulder. "I don't need you to fight for me. Do you understand?"

  "I understand," said the boy reluctantly.

  "Good," said Gunnlod, giving him a fond pat on the shoulder. "Come on then. Let's get dressed and go have some ale."

  ☆☆☆

  The Great Hall, which stood on top of a hill at the centre the of the city, was large enough to hold many hundred people and it was full today as the people of the city came to greet and honour the clan chiefs. Gunnlod went straight to the head table where seven stone thrones stood in a line, facing the rest of the hall. One throne for each chief and the central stone for the Mayor. Beside each throne wad a smaller chair for the son of the chief. Gunnlod took his place in one of the central thrones, sitting beside Bergelmir, and Tarvos took the chair beside him. Women immediately came to fill their ale horns and offer them haunches of fleethorn.

  The other chiefs, who had arrived earlier, had already eaten and were talking to each other as carrion bugs buzzed around their heads and settled on the bare bones of their meal. Gunnlod waved the bugs away from his head as he picked up a haunch and took a great bite out of it, cutting the meat free from the bone with a knife. "Just the way I like it," he said around the meat as he chewed. "So bloody and rare that the First Fathers could have restored it to life."

  Tarvos preferred his meat a little more cooked, but he also took a bite from the haunch that had been placed before him while watching Narvi and Daphnis sitting side by side at one of the other tables. He smiled to himself with relief and fond affection for his brother. No-one had asked him to chaperone his betrothed. The boy had taken the task upon himself without hesitation. Not that there was much reason to worry, he knew. Greip and Skoll would be sitting at the high table with the other clans chiefs, but there were plenty of other men in the six clans with more muscle than manners. No-one would do anything inappropriate with the brother of her betrothed sitting right beside her, though. He relaxed, therefore, and took a long swallow from his ale horn.

  The hall was filled with conversation as everyone shared their gossip with whoever was sitting next to them. Citizens squeezed their way between the tables with great bladders of ale slung over their shoulders to refill the horns, and four children with filons made of carved bone filled the air with music. Tarvos watched them for a while, remembering his own attempts to learn the instrument but he'd never gotten the hang of plucking the strings without tearing his fingernails. There was evidently a knack to it that he'd never learned because the children played effortlessly, without a single dropped note or grimace of pain.

  The music was soon drowned out, though, as the hall became more boisterous. A fight had already broken out between a Merlin clansman and a Siegfried clansman while youngsters around them shouted encouragement, and the men around the table nearest the roaring charcoal fire were having a drinking contest in which most of the ale was forming a large, foaming puddle on the stone floor. Not far away a trio of John Henry clansman were singing a song while grabbing and kissing any young woman who happened to come within reach, and a group of children were playing a game in which each had a bladder of gooth urine tied to their heads and were trying to burst each others' bladders with sharp knives. One boy had a nasty cut above the eye that didn't seem to bother him at all despite the blood trickling down his face.

  The clan chiefs ignored all this, though. Gunnlod was already in deep conversation with Skrymir, chief of the John Henry clan. "We've been stockpiling food for weeks already of course," he was saying. "Enough to last the whole clan for a month, but we'd need three times that much to reach the summer lands if we walk non-stop. Also we don't have enough wagons to carry that much food plus the seed stock for the crops we'll have to plant when we get there."

  "It is the same with us," Skrymir replied. "We will have to stop to hunt along the way. The journey will take twice as long. It means that the women and children will be able to rest along the way, though. If not for that, well, three months is a long time to spend walking thirty miles a day."

  "Three months is a long time to spend without fences and dykes to protect your people," Gunnlod agreed. "Six months even more so. My grandfather told me that bandit raids cost us much food, much plethin and many young girls during the march south, fifty years ago."

  "The warriors win many finger bones fighting them off, though," said Skrymir with a smile. He fingered his own trophy necklace as he spoke. It had more than a few finger bones on it, Tarvos noticed.

  "Yes, but I would rather have the girls than the finger bones."

  Skrymir laughed. "We captured an entire tribe of bandits once," he said. "We were going to kill all the men, and take the women and children into our clan, but the women and children begged us to spare the men. Some of them were taken from our own clan as girls, but they still wanted to stay with their husbands more than return to their birth families. It is said that our six clans stole girls from each other in the old days, before we made the alliance."

  "Women should be able to choose their own husbands," said Gunnlod firmly. "Kidnapped girls learn to love their husbands out of necessity. There must be months of terror before they learn to accept their fate."

  "True," admitted Skrymir, but then he laughed. "What is a month anyway? Who decided that there should be something special about a span of thirty days?"

  Tarvos leaned forward to see Skrymir past his father. "According to the legends, the land of Zol had a light in the sky to help people see at night," he said. "It grew brighter and darker over a span or thirty days."

  Gunnlod laughed and tousled his son's hair playfully. "Tarvos loves the old legends," he said. "He's always pestering the elders for anything their grandfather's might have told him."

  "We have legends of the First Fathers," said Skrymir, "but I've never heard that one. Why did the light get dimmer if it was supposed to help people see at night?"

  "I don't know," Tarvos admitted. "No-one's ever been able to tell me."

  At that moment Greip and Skoll entered the Great Hall and made their way to their seats at the head table. Bergelmir gave them a few moments to drink some ale and have a few bites from their haunches and then he stood. The hall began to fall silent as people turned to hear what he had to say, and soon the only noise came from the two fighting men who continued to trade blows until their sons pulled them apart and sat them on a pair of vacant stone chairs. They glared at each other until they realised that something was going to happen, and then they also turned their attention to the head table.

  "Great chiefs," said Bergelmir, looking to left and right to include them all in his words. "Once again you are met to discuss matters important to all the clans over the coming half year. And this year you have more to discuss than normal because, as we all know, the Great Winter is coming to an end. Soon we will all have to travel north to the Summer Lands, and the next meeting of the clans will take place not in four months but a whole year from now.

  "Before the planning and organising gets under way, though, we have this day to drink and feast and make merry. Quaff your ale, therefore. Stuff your faces with meat and regale each other with tales of adventure and bawdy mischief. And to get the day off to a good start we will bring the Storymaster into this hall. He will bring the Storyteller, so that we can hear the words of the First Fathers with our own ears, conjured into the air by the lost magics of our ancestors."

  He stretched out his arms towards the doors, and they were pushed open by the guards to admit a bent old man with wiry grey hair. He was holding an object in his hands; an object that captured the attention of every person in the hall and that they all strained their eyes to see as they gave a great collective gasp of wonder and awe.