Part II. Vearil

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong…

--Ecclesiastes 9:11

Chapter 1. Twelve Years Later

Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standard. In matters of thought and conduct, to be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.

--Ambross Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

He was not quite dead when she arrived, though the vultures were already picking at his entrails. She lay her head beside him as his eyes glazed.

Voices and faces whirled around her.

“Poor thing—”

“Her first mate—”

“—the last raid of the season—”

“The spring grass is already showing! They hardly ever come so late.”

“—and they only killed three.”

“Poor luck for her…to lose him now, so close to the end of the hunting.”

“Unlucky.”

“Yes, unlucky.”

“So-fet, come away. There’s a storm brewing. Come away, So-fet.”

The young Ferryshaft raised her head. “I should have been with him.”

A friend gave her another nudge. “Nonsense. Come now. Pathar says the storm will be bad.”

So-fet stood and slipped in his blood. Then she vomited. Something stirred inside her in sympathy with her pain. She gagged on the vomit. Blood and water coursed down her thighs.

Her friends started back. “Thunder! She’s foaling! Get her into a cave!”

They pushed her then, nipped at her flanks and pulled at her scruff. Somehow they urged her up a path into a cave in the cliffs. Just as the first furry of the storm broke over Lidian, she heaved her firstborn into the rock floor, his birth-blood mingling with the blood of his dead father. He was tiny, born much too soon.

Amid the strobe lightening, beneath a storm-embattled sky, he lay in his birth-blood and tried to suck milk from a dry utter. His mother did not stop him. She did not seem to see him. In desperation, he licked up the blood in her fur.

Finally, towards morning, So-fet stirred. She looked at her foal and noticed that he was not only tiny, but dark—much darker than the light brown coats of most foals. She looked at the driving rain and at her colt—forced from her body too early and orphaned in a single stroke—and she named him Storm.

* * * *

Her milk came two days later. Everyone said he would die.

He didn’t, but he was two weak to stand when she nursed him for the first time. The storm had blown itself out by then, and the numbness of So-fet’s grief had passed. She did not think about the sodden, half-eaten body on the edge of the plain. She gave all her thoughts and all her love to the wobbly, undersized colt who had no father.

Half-orphan, full orphan: it was nearly the same thing in the Ferryshaft herd. Little Storm would have to fight to survive. He would need to be strong, and for this, he must have good milk. His mother ate for his sake. She had lost her status as a mated female, but she fought the higher ranking females for the good grass.

Storm did not starve, though he did not thrive. By the end of spring, he was still the smallest colt in the herd. When the scarcity of water drove the Ferryshaft on their annual migration across the plain to Chelby Lake, he could not keep up with the rest, and So-fet had to spend a night on the plain alone with him.

This frightened her. Sometimes the Creasia ranged far afield, and there were other hunters who would scruple even less to take a runty colt and his mother caught away from the herd by night. Dawn, however, found them still alive, huddled together in the dewy grass. By the next evening, they had joined the herd near Chelby Lake.

The abundance of the season made life a little easier for them. The herd settled into a comfortable routine—feeding on the plane in the morning and drinking by the lake in the evening.

So-fet hoped that Storm would forget that fearful spring. She wanted his first memories to be happy ones. As he grew and became more self-aware he did seem happy, though his isolation puzzled him. He did not understand why the other colts snickered when he approached, why they unaccountably melted away when he wandered towards their games.

So-fet pretended not to understand when he questioned her. The reason was simple: he was still too small. Even the fillies out-measured him.

So-fet played with Storm alone, fretting all the while about what to do. During their first summer most colts began to form small social groups. Sometimes elders instructed them, but more often they played, practicing skills they would need in the coming winter.

Hierarchies first arose within these groups, often based on the status of parents. For females, the rules were somewhat more plastic, but for males the game was deadly simple. A half-orphan without a clique would never see his second spring.

Yet Storm met nothing but retaliation when attempting to join even orphan cliques. The prominent did not want him because he was insignificant, and the insignificant did not want him because he was not strong.

Yet So-fet remained hopeful. Storm is a quick learner, and his balance and coordination are good in spite of his spindly legs. If the others will only give him a chance, I know he can survive. She said little, loved much, and waited.