At the fore were Ui Birlinn and his men.  They looked weary, and their horses looked worse.  Ui Birlinn pulled his horse out of line as he drew near Iamerge and Gospels, but he motioned the rest of the column on without him.

Rhaury Ui Birlinn smiled and nodded, “I’d not thought to see you again Gospels, but I am glad that there is some good that’s come of the day.”

“Some good and some bad.” said Gospels, “What did you find?”

Rhaury winced and looked down into the valley where the devastated caravan lay, “As to that, death, and some ruin.” He looked back at the two, “and yon caravan beset.”

“You saw who did this?”

“Yes, when I gave chase.  Gospels, you have never seen a more brutal lot.  Our caravan coming up behind these poor folk drove the monsters off, and when I came with the relief we pursued.  I think they are not used to being chased.  We caught them at camp farther down the valley.  I’d heard the reports of the guards who fought them, but I couldn’t imagine, can’t tell you.  These were not men, not in any sense that we know them, they were more like beasts.”

“So you think they were not of the family of man?  Did they bear some sigil, some banner?”

“Not that, they were a war band because they went armed.  Savage, fanged, long armed brutes, they were powerfully built, more than even the doughtiest warrior you’ve known.” Rhaury shook his head, “Nothing in my experience compares.  The largest might have been the height of a man if he stood straight, but they crouched, came at us with their weapons.  Most of them were much shorter than a man, but then they all may have weighed more, even the smallest.”  Rhaury eyes glazed as he remembered, “It was strange.  There were some that were short, as if they were of a size, by comparison, of a child, but they were all as murderous as the largest.  I think our horses were all that saved us.  A man and a horse over matched what they would otherwise tear to pieces.”

Gospels shuddered, “Do you think they are well gone then?”

“Who can say?  I have wounded that can ride and I’m taking them and my caravan to Beallton.  I’m sorry that I forgot to give the brothers word.  What errand brought you and your brother this far?  I advise you show proper caution, this all started last night.”

“We have more brothers coming  . . .”

“Gospels, I do not mean to say that I’ve abandoned those I’m leaving.  We need new horses and then we will return.  It is wretched what has happened to the other caravan.  There are a few survivors, we were coming to get your assistance for them . . .”

“No worries, I think that Hebrews should be here soon with carts and stretchers . . .”

“I fear there will not be need for very many,” said Rhaury

*   *   *

Hunter Wilde huddled by his fire in the drafty hovel he shared with the meat he’d brought down.  The lord of Winterhold, Murchadh, had enjoyed his singing and playing, been amused by his stories, but in the end he was a most practical man.  More than mirth he needed meat. So, instead of a warm place by the communal fire, he got a cold bed alone in the wood.

At least he’d not starve. He had been a fair hunter, finding meat on the way as he travelled, but he was better than fair at it now that he put his mind to it.  Witness the carcasses hanging about, leaving little enough room for him.

Like as not the sleigh would be out in a day or so.  But he’d be off.  Hunter had learned by now that at first you think you’d be happy for any human contact, but the same old small talk and news about folk you don’t know makes one feel all the lonelier.  He’d let them take his work back to the warm fires and leave him the things they always did.  Best sleep for the long walk on the morrow. . .

. . . The days were much longer, but Winter showed no sign of flagging.  He travelled game trails in the thick wood, a world he was learning well.  He was the alpha hunter and now he stalked a huge sow.  What he would do if he cornered her, he had not thought.  Perhaps he was over-confident, or perhaps a bit mad.  He had ranged ever wider to find game so that his hovel saw him less than once in four days and, as often, not at all in ten.  Wandering in pursuit of game, he only had himself and his thoughts which did carry him away at times.

The brush exploded ahead.  He fumbled with his weapons dropping unstrung bow and spear.  Hunter glanced up in terror at a huge bristle boar, tiny eyes fixed on her tormentor.  Wilde gathered himself as she charged.  He flung himself out of her way and tumbled into the scrub beside the trail.

The sow crashed on, preferring escape to violence.  Not so wise the man.  Hunter gathered his things, taking time to string his bow.  Then, heedless of anything but the pursuit, he sprinted after her.

Her passage was obvious, she tore through the undergrowth heedless of path or briar patch.  Hunter followed as fast as he could and much faster than he should.  Then, when he might have turned back, he came out into a stream and again he saw her scrabbling up into the verdant fern and bough of the opposite bank.

Only then did it strike him as strange that he had pursued the sow into Spring.  The stream was not ice rimed.  There was neither snow nor frost on the green slope to the North.  The great pig thrashed off to the East.

Hunter splashed across the rivulet and charged after the sow.  The man followed into a tightening gorge by sound as a mist bespoke the falls he heard as well as the pig.  Then he saw her at bay, head low, staring at him as he approached.  She pawed the gravel, he drew, expecting her charge, but she turned in a spray of brook water and rock and pounded up into the green.  Hunter Wilde followed.

“Hunter!” beautiful and strong, he heard a woman’s voice, “leave off!”

Hunter stopped, looking after the boar.  Then among the fern and the mist, from behind a birch tree, stepped a lady more lovely than legend.  Her golden hair fell to her waist, her raiment was soft doe skin embroidered with gold and silver and emerald.  There was a golden torc around her long creamy white throat.  Her eyes were smoldering amber hued.

“Why do you pursue the mother of generations?”

He stood dumb, gazing at her, wondering how to speak to such a creature, wondering how she knew his name.

“Go back Hunter, this is not your place, you have strayed into the lands of the Ui Uilsen of the Elves.”

“You know my name?”

Her laughter was music.  Her smile was radiance.  “I think this mother of generations is not to be meat for you. . .    . . . Hunter.  Go!”

He turned to obey without thought so commanding was her presence, but following the moment of compulsion, Hunter succumbed to curiosity.  He turned back, “My name, you know it, but I do not know yours.”

“It is not I who came unbidden, nor do you have need of my name.  You must go from here!”  The woman’s anger was clear to see.  In her long fingered hand she held up a bronze dart of lethal aspect.  “Flee Hunter, South into Winter from whence you came.”

He stumbled back, feet slipping in wet rock so that he fell to one knee.  He looked up fearing the dart would take him or perhaps to see her, but she was gone.

Hunter did as he was told, though he did not run much after he left the stream.  When snow began to fall again he slowed to a walk.

He had time to think as he walked back to his hovel.  As he went, he hunted.  He brought down a beautiful stag and he thought, “I really am a fine hunter,” and suddenly he knew that the beautiful woman had not truly known his name, only his vocation.

He pursued a doe into a bush and, as he approached, three wood hens exploded from the branches, flapping and squawking and he thought “The sow ran past the woman, but the sow was not the woman.”

Still, when by happenstance the sleigh and Hunter were both at the hunter’s cabin, the men could tell him that he was relieved to come back to the warm halls.  Hunter the singer, Hunter the poet, Hunter the bard had a tale to tell.  In it the shape-shifting fairy woman knew his name. . .

*   *   *

Lugh ran after, hampered by the shaking ground.  He glanced back over his shoulder to see what was happening and nearly fell.  He saw ground cascading off of what looked like stone pushing up from the earth. 

The girl, Oatey, had reached her goat.  He hadn’t seen she was armed, but she took from the waist of her loincloth a knife.  She tossed away her bundle of items and approached the goat.  The goat was already struggling at the tether and Lugh expected that she would cut the goat free. 

Oatey used her body and one hand to shorten the lead, moving up the line until she could grasp the goat.  It was struggling madly from the shaking ground.  The girl expertly grasped it by one horn with her free hand, wrenching it around she plunged her knife into the goats neck and then twisted it as she jerked it out.

Lugh gasped, the sudden violence was not what he expected

Oatey released the bleeding goat that bucked and plunged to escape this new danger.  The girl slid back along the lead line and after wrapping it several turns around her arm stretched it tight from the peg and cut it loose.  She stuffed the knife into a sheath and gathered her things, all the while holding on to the plunging goat.

The girl glanced at Lugh, a fierce smile on her face, and then she let the goat have its head, letting it pull her along toward the treeline.

“What is that?” Lugh asked, looking back at what appeared to be stone ripping free of the sod.  He turned back only to see that the girl and the bleeding goat were nowhere to be seen.  Lugh shouldered his pack and settled his weapons for pursuit, then began to run toward where he had seen the girl and goat heading before he’d stopped to marvel at the geologic wonder that still shook the earth.

It was no difficulty to follow the blood trail that the goat was leaving.  Lugh decided that perhaps that was her intent, but he couldn’t help feeling disconcerted.  Oatey Moss, whatever else she might be, was unpredictable and likely dangerous.  “Why am I following her?” He thought to himself, but he already knew the answer to that.

Folk that don’t know our homes, our treasure houses, and our work places think we live in dank caves.   Many think us a species apart.   Certainly we tend to be thick of waist and broad of shoulder, and too, while Gaellic and Umircen tend to be light complected and haired we, who descend from Loki the son of Dana and his miners, are short, dark haired, and perhaps even darker of skin.

It may be that our homes have shaped us, but not so much in the living as the making.  We are deep delvers, miners of the mountain’s wealth, we are masters of metal and stone.  Perhaps more than any other folk we recall the knowledge of the star farers.

We grow fruit and vegetables in crystal galleries high in the mountains.  We forge mechanical wonders, both tools and weapons and all manner of conveniences and mine apparatus.  We bring light to the deep darkness. We are fire masters.  We are water masters. We are stone masters.

These things we have mastered, but we strive for still more, to recapture what was our heritage of the stars. Our knowledge is great but our numbers are small.  Perhaps because we are not very social, preferring solitude, perhaps because our people are jealous of knowledge hard won, perhaps because most care more for the knowledge we have mastered, for stone and metal and mechanical things, so that they have given up on ever regaining the high knowledge.

Loki is a Norse god.  I have intended to find an equivalent Celtic deity, but I haven’t yet found the right combination of god of the forge and trickster.  Perhaps it is okay to pull the Norse into it all as I believe that there has been cultural cross-pollenation, certainly in Scotland and Ireland, but also back in their origins, their asthetics, their manner of life, and perhaps in their geneology.