HORDES OF MEN desolated, struck down, destroyed, sunken form of skin and skeleton, bare cloth matted to torso, bodycage and hipbone, white face and neck darkened, bloating to black, rain the endless dream stuck fast in the stone-dead skull and blood a fine sheen over all, arms and legs tangled, a severed hand, eyes dull white opals half-bled from orbital bones, grey earth below and stink in the air and the near cry of predator birds, birds of unbearable hunger, the sodden smell of open wounds, a flock of Dayraven far above, black, and in the blackness light, black sky with stars and moon like fires defined wholly apart from one another and only darkness in between, mute beacons, and cold.  The sun has gone and there is near silence after seven days of fighting, and in the quiet only the caw of birds and the faint word, like a child’s, of those whose breath, impatient, labored, stops, and broken off, takes leave to await them in spirit or etherworld, blood echo in the air, agony awaiting peace on the other side. 

Hordes of the Red Clan, prehistoric in the White Clan darkness, the Red and the White come to kill over fear and love and vengeance. 

To him all are blind, and all are maimed, and all are dead: save two.

Thalon ran north hard under cover of night, fast along riverbed and up ascending the forested bulk of land over land, up rock faces and out upon the serrated edge of snow-laden cirques and down again descending into valley and further down low upon valley floor, then daylight piercing all as he ran through pinch of canyon walls and out again over open plains crumbled at the far edge by timber and stone, down in the night to the crowded heart of the great forest and out and up over a wide expanse of grey rock, bold line of trees along the Big Bend River below, the man running more animal or wind than man, bent to the far place of snow and skyborne earth, bent with abandon toward Ten Mountain House. 

Like shadow Chalese followed Thalon, and desired him dead. 

To the house of the sun the men traveled, one sighting the mark of the other, depression in snow and bent branch, grasses laid low among that which the wind has lifted and lain down again, dirt, leaves, snow, a hint of wildberry in the air and with it the feint scent of wood smoke.  At the fjord of Cemsish-tipchek, behind the cliff wall of Ur-Gathska, a valley opened and from the high ridge to the north, Chalese, broad-shouldered, hailed the slighter man. 

“Thalon!  Ah-huoy.  I see you with my own eyes and you are well made and I have great sorrow.  For you must die.  And I must kill you.”

The voice carried, low and full of feeling, and Thalon stopped and paused, turning his head, seeking the form of his enemy far off among the grey stone.  Seeing Ur-Chelese he put his fist to his chest, then pointed to the sky, to the ball of fire burning there.  He yelled to Chalese:
“I am like the sun.  I will never die!” 

THREE DAYS MORE, a closer, more circular and predatory pursuit. 
Thalon, unable to shake the one stalking him, turned south and east, leading Chalese away from woman and child, away from a desecration Thalon felt assured would accompany his own death; so he went south, shunning night omens, and waited for the morning star, and prepared to take the life of his friend.  Unafraid.  Continuance, longsuffering, movement, transience, savage attacks in darkness or dawn, him to the White Clan, the White Clan to his own, the Red—these he had visited upon friend or foe.   He was tired.  He would end everything today.     
 
In the half-dark he rose and pressed dirt from the riverbed through his hair, the soil oily and black, gritty, a surface of muddied silt he applied equally to his face and chest and forearms.  He would be of the earth, he would rise from the earth, to the earth he would return.  He had seen no birds the previous day, another night omen.  Back to the earth, body outstretched, he prayed to the sky before light, to open and give him the sign he sought. 

At first light, the sign, but darker still: Dayraven, the Life Eater, high above, small as a thumbnail to the eye, circling the open rock face on which he lay. 

He tried to ignore the sign and rose from his place and went and hid himself, prostrate in a stand of willows, to await Chalese.  Once-friends, brothers, the families had parted, he could not remember when, some seasons past, over the accidental death of an elder.  Powerful elder, Ur-Scavah, a man Chalese claimed Thalon had played a part in killing.  The death of the elder had become an excuse, Thalon thought, for Chalese to do what he had always wanted—seize more than the allotted share, and wield what he seized like a weapon.  Thalon had not wanted it this way, and he reasoned there was a time when Chalese agreed, but finally nothing came to them for which to make an appeal, neither kindness nor regard, nor heart, nor spirit, nor even the quiet tenderness that in their youth had so long been with them, the former life became only a feint whisper hardly heard or recalled.  Of the darkness, no light, and of the light no sign or symbol, the heart of man awaiting light like water poured into that which holds all autumnal, liminal, on the threshold of death he sees trees let go their leaves and stand naked against everything and into the hard ground the light descends and there where dark holds sway, water is transparent conducting every bright latency upward for all, once-interred and held womblike but given again to fly from land to a height of sky unforeseen and glint on upturned leaves, and higher set gold on the back of the Dayraven.  But vision eluded them.

Concealed among willows at the bank of the river, Thalon turned and lay face down, still as stone; today he would kill his friend, or be killed.  He hoped in the first, but welcomed whatever might come.   

Though the thought of taking Chalese’s life broke him, he went on.  I can make a new start, he reasoned.  The clans had been decimated, the Red, the White.  There would be just one now, and of a new name, to cleanse the old: the Black.  First Chalese must die, then Thalon and the women and the very young who hadn’t fought could be at peace and make a fresh path.

THE SOUND of heartbeat in his ear, he woke, his face pressed to his forearm.  The mud had dried and from a distance he heard another sound, that of feet running on stone, the sound a beautiful rhythm over the flat stones that met the river on the far side, stones borne of a massive slide from before the known world, stones pale and open, bleeding from the river outward and up, rock fingers set deep into the forest of dry trees and needled pine—in among the wood, the sound drawing nearer, the feet of his enemy come to kill him. 

Silent, Thalon drew his body upward to a crouch.  In the hard slant of sun he saw the open stones, and emerging then upriver the body of Chalese like a strong animal running, animal and man, legs driving hard as he traversed, very fast, an uplifted arm of rock, and gathering, leapt high and far, wide-armed, back-arched, diving to the river below.   Thalon watched the flight of Chalese, and felt joy in his heart, and when Chalese pierced the water and finally surfaced, he saw him work to the near side of the river, and again, as of their youth, he loved him. 

He kept himself concealed and watched Chalese, stone knife in hand, emerge on the near bank just north, and very near.  Thalon held a rock club to his chest; the flexible handle leather-bound, comfortable and warm in the palm of his hand. 

Chalese shouted.  “Nah-shluhdahnoh!—I say goodbye because I know, once-friend, you are here!”  He stood, feet wide, hands on his hips, looking off west, away from Thalon, smiling.  “I smell you, Thalon.  I have come to see you join the dead.” 

Thalon ran, bolting hard for Chalese and Chalese turned to him and Thalon raised the club and swung a mighty arc and struck Chalese on the side of the head and Chalese rolled with the blow and thrust upward and out, embedding his knife in the gut of Thalon.  Swift motion, and firm, Chalese carved a single sweep upward, arclike, moonlike, deft from the seat of the pelvis, left-side, lower body, full to the rib-work, rough-hewn hilt of blade tilling the surface, deep-thrust point separating man from himself. 

The attack was mutual and resolute and of such force both men stumbled then fell bone to bone in a heap on top of each other.  Blood from Chalese, the side of his head scooped out, large divot above the ear, the skull showing and among the blood a dent of flesh and fractured skull depressed but not wholly crushed.  And from Thalon, a river of blood passing down from the vessel of his body into the earth, darkening the earth, deepening it, and from his mortal eyes, the light lifted and went out. 

Chalese stood and felt at the broken part of his skull, and wiped blood on his legs.  He went to Thalon and knelt over him.  He kissed Thalon’s cheeks and wept.  Then he rose and walked along the river to Ten Mountain House.  
         
AT A GREAT HEIGHT he found her.  Salin her name, she with her freshly-awakened child, three-cord weave of rawhide in her hand, waiting to strangle the child, then to slit her own throat with the longknife, wood handle, crude stone sharpened narrow and longer than the foot of a man, a blade meant for cleaning deerskin and carving meat for cooking or drying.  She was ready, but unaware as he crept silent behind her from the forest, seeing the glint of her hair, the hand like a stone door over the mouth of the child, small boy-child of perhaps three or four winters. 
           
Swift he came and he took her weapons and kissed her hands and she was heavy with loss and fear, and aware he was her husband’s enemy.  In that moment also she saw her child, the boy’s flaxen hair and open eyes, and she kept her words quiet and watched Chalese.  She noted the bruises on his face, the black wound above his ear by club or hammer, and about his body the colors of dark soil and silver river and war, and in his eyes she saw sorrow. 
           
Her look questioned him of the others, the men. 

“There are none,” he said, and she believed. 

“None,” she whispered, and she rose and took his hand in hers and led him to the home of her first love, stone hut with wooded roof and center fire, and she lay Chalese down to sleep.  And he slept and as he slept she touched his wounds with cloth and water and remembered once he was called brother to her clan, brother to her husband.  She kissed the underside of his wrists and at the end of her work she drew the child close and lay down with her child in the angle of Chalese’s body, and she was consumed with thoughts of death and yet she was alive and so she lived for her child and for that which is unnamed yet breathes, animated, vital, in all.