The Elder Lands - Chapter 25- Interlude - Bear of The South

Fulko gazed at the energetic bonfire, a bitter taste in his mouth. He ignored the sight of Ivar dragging a woman he fancied into one of the hide tents, both of them drunk on mead, no doubt planning to seal the night with the final mortal pleasure.

No, he didn’t care for any of this. Even though he’d taken pleasure on every Holy Fortnight before battle in the past. He didn’t tonight

After all, there was a thief. A whelp who’d returned from a journey thinking he was the wolf. And they believed him.

Oh, after everything Fulko had done. After all the effort he’d put into gaining the trust of the clansmen of every clan. After decades of fighting and bleeding first in line so that all may know him. So that his name would someday become akin to legend and myth, adored enough to be followed. To finally unite the clans against the usurpers.

After all that, the whelp claims that they’d been fighting the usurpers wrong? Oh, and the fools who listened to him never cared to think why he called them ‘northerners’ instead of the usurpers that they were. Did he intend to relinquish the rights of the ancestors? The rights that extended to them in claim and duty?

“Fighting them wrong,” Fulko growled, sniffing. “What a fool.”

He would show them. After the whelp had brought the younger clansmen close enough together to form an alliance, Fulko had risen in rage, as was his right, for he had been working, battling, planning for years and years to earn what the whelp had come to so easily claim.

Thankfully, the Priests of The Mountain had stood with him. They hadn’t been too happy about the whelp returning from the Far East with enough assurance to trample all over their traditions. And if there was one thing the Priests protected as a mother bear protects her cubs, it was tradition.

So Fulko caressed his goldsteel greataxe, letting his fingers trace the enchanted runes etched into it. He caressed it and looked forward to the bloodletting that would restore his station, his name as the first and foremost among the clans. The axe he had picked off the corpse of one of their so-called knights. Since then it had served him faithfully. It was a beautiful weapon, wasted on the usurper, and now in much more capable hands.

He bent his neck left and right as though preparing for a fight that would begin in moments, for he could not wait. The bells woven into his long, dark beard jingled with the movement, bringing with them the faint song of war. The one their ancestors sure heard as they fought on the battlefields before them. They would honor them, and for that, he needed to lead.

Fulko now had the Priests blessing to commence the greatest raids the clans had undertaken since the times of yore. He would make the usurpers quake under the combined strength of the clans that had accepted his call. And then the usurpers would break and then they would flee. And by The Mountain itself, he would triumph; for he would not be Fulko The Bear if he did not.