The dawn would reverberate in the clear water as in a liquid mirror. On the glossy surface, the light undulated and rustled like a living thing. Dazzled, I spat into the stream, a thin red trickle. The wound in my mouth had reopened. I endured the sting in silence, while meticulously rubbing my teeth with my fingertips. I had been taking special care of my teeth since Ulrick had pointed out how lucky I was to have them all despite my deficiencies. As I remembered reading in one of Narsilap's rajjan treatises that some varieties of horsetail can strengthen the gums and roots, rightly or wrongly, I had been chewing it regularly. That the Val attacked my teeth while I was doing my best to preserve them had touched something deeper. Ulrick usually hit me in the body and muscles, and he always avoided hitting me in a way that could cripple me or seriously injure me. I still wasn't quite sure what had happened the day before, whether the Val had really lost control when I had mocked his son's memory or whether, again, it had been calculated. I massaged my jaw darkly. I had the impression that it had been a close call for my teeth to come loose.

Ulrick had left a little before dawn, leaving me alone with my anger and swollen lip. If he was angry with me, he hadn't let it show. The val-warrior had taken his bow and dagger with him, and although I wished that he would run into a legion of hungry bears, I hoped that if he didn't, he would bring back something to eat. We had made an inventory of our supplies a few days before, and even rationing what was left, it was obvious that we would have nothing left at the end of the Sowing moon, when winter would begin for good. While we were working on the cabin, the Val had warned me that the cold season was likely to be harsh, but he had also assured me that we would come out of it stronger, just in time for the opulence of spring.

I spat again in the clear water and wiped my mouth on the sleeve of my cloak. It was cold enough for my breath to condense in my aching hands, and the dripping contact of the freezing water had made me feel even colder. My ragged clothes hadn't quite had time to dry overnight, and I found them cold and sticky. I glanced over my shoulder towards the cliff.

Under the awning, Pike and Berda seemed to steam quietly, two placid furnaces of skin. I passed some more water on my face before dragging my foot towards the horses, not really in a hurry to disturb them. Berda sometimes showed me the teeth when she felt I was waking her up too soon.

I strapped Pike while carefully avoiding the war mare, then with Ulrick's longest rope and the blunt hatchet I ventured under the yellowish foliage of the western slope. The gelding obediently followed my lead. It was not the first time I had asked him to do this task, and he knew that at the end of it I would reward him with a good grooming session. Ulrick had shown me how to harness him, what I could do on my own if I stood on my toes, and also how to tether him, which was about as complicated as it sounded. After a few trips under the warrior's supervision, I had acquired the right to take Pike with me on my regular quests for firewood. Much to my displeasure, during the construction of the cabin, the Val had forbidden me to do the same for the muddy clay, claiming that I needed exercise to harden myself. I had to reluctantly admit that these difficult weeks had borne fruit. I could hardly feel the mail, which my body was about to accept as a second skin. Even Ulrick had been impressed by how quickly I had adapted to the dead weight. On those rare occasions when I dropped the armor, I felt as light and fast as a gust of wind.

To say that it was a special day would be a little understatement. Despite the repetitive quietness of my wood chores, the air was as if saturated and oppressive. I was floating on a dangerous calm, a motionless lake that treacherously masked the turbulence below. The voice of Vaw, increasingly peaceful at the end of the year, seemed to me muffled and distant. The trees seemed to be closer together, darker, and the dead wood heavier, harder to break. It was a time of flies, a time of plague.

I was waiting for a storm to come, for something to break, but nothing came, and above me the sky was cool and clear. Yet there was the tension that roared behind my ears, a stiff, vibrating thread, drawn like the nerves of a tortured man. Of course it was neither the sky nor anything else.

It was me, but I didn't want to realize it.

I was just bringing back my second load of branches when Ulrick appeared at the corner of a sandstone pile, dragging a young doe behind him on the wooded slope. He smiled and grimaced under the effort. The smell of blood came up my nose. The electric scent of iron and death saturated the air even more. Ulrick didn't hang around when the meat was cut up. By the time I piled up the wood along the cliff, the Val had already skinned his prey and was starting to cut the carcass into quarters. On my fourth trip, there was nothing left. The skin of the doe was stretched out in a frame to dry against the cliff, most of the meat was hung inside the fireplace, a juicy shoulder was cooked on a spit on our outside fire and, in the hearth, the fat was simmering in the pot so that the Val could extract the tallow.

We ate when I had unloaded Pike. The grilled meat was tender and succulent, but I couldn't tell if the blood I tasted was mine or the doe's, and my jaw hurt. I barely nibbled. Ulrick was staring at me curiously. "We'll have enough to eat this winter," he finally said. "I saw some white roots after the waterfalls, where it gets swampy." I didn't look up from the glowing log. "There will be mushrooms too," continued the Val. "I'll show you which ones we can eat." I nodded with the tenacious impression of being a dog that is coaxed with a bone, as if that was a way for the Val to apologize. I had no intention of accepting his offering, but I hadn't understood either that we were in fact far beyond such considerations.

Ulrick snapped his fingers. "I'm talking to you, Sletling," he said in a drier tone. "I heard," I replied in a low voice. "When are you going to teach me the sword? I'm tired of fists. I'm too small." The Val spat in the flames. "You're starting to hit well, though," he said. "And you're fast. The sword will be when we're done with the evening lessons." Ulrick stopped, clenching his teeth, as if he had said too much.

I looked accusingly into his eyes. "Will it stop soon?" I asked softly, and hope spurt out like a spark, before being smothered in the moment by something darker. The old warrior made a painful pout that wrinkled his face like crumpled leather. "I can't answer you," he said. "It's up to you. I know it's hard, I've been down that road, too. And you're not the first yunling I train."

Perhaps his answer should have soothed me, or encouraged me, but in truth the words of the Val immediately sank on the stormy sea foaming within me, as if he had thrown a bucket of water on a forest fire.

I was at war, he was my enemy, and I was forced to be with my enemy.

My only substantive interaction with Ulrick - when he wasn't taking me by surprise, or where it hurt, like with Narsilap and the storm - was the teaching that he was giving me, which I accepted only because it might help me defeat him. That was Ulrick's intention all along, of course my state of mind was his creation, and if I had been pulled out of Culon Heights for one week, I might have had the perspective to see it. Since my world only existed through the power of exhaustion and bruising, I had stopped living my daily life as a tough training, I had forgotten Ulrick's initial warnings, and I was only able to see it as a fight to the death.

Training was longer that day. For the first time ever, the warrior dedicated the entire afternoon to me, four hours without respite during which I had to push the limits of my endurance. A repetition of gestures, always the same ones, until exhaustion. "There are few ways to hit a man," Ulrick often said, and he was right. In two moons of bruises, he had only hit me in five or six different ways. It was that same range of sweeps and hits that he taught me, a short list of sober and effective moves. We were practicing in armor, and I was sweating under my mail when the sun finally set the horizon ablaze. Ulrick signaled with a wave of his hand that we were stopping. It seemed to me that the effort had exhausted him, too, and I was satisfied with the signs of his fatigue.

We slowly made our way to the cliff, leaving the edge of the stream where the soft earth was more conducive to falls. On the inside, I shuddered.

It was different from the frightened ferocity that I usually used to brood before the Val's night invitation. I was reaching the breaking point. My jar of rage was full, we were reaching the last drops, the moment when, cornered, I stopped being a victim to turn around and really fight. The effort had not softened this. It was even the opposite. Ulrick was always watching me, intermittently, with a barely veiled curiosity, as if he had perceived it, as if he knew exactly what was going to happen. My anger only grew.

When we reached the bed of gravel and pebbles that surrounded the cabin, the Val put a heavy hand on my shoulder. I pulled myself away from his hand to face him. "I've decided something," I said in a trembling voice. "I don't want to be a warrior anymore." Ulrick shook his head. "I warned you this day would come, Sletling," he said laconically. I took a step back. My head felt like it was boiling. Something was burning my eyes. "I gave you my word. I will make you a warrior. And I will keep my word until you accept it again." The Val stood before me, hands on his hips.

My last attempt to save what could still be saved was aborted. The air froze in my throat and I stood still in the crackling silence.

Ulrick pierced me with his verdigris eyes. Somewhere, from afar, I recognized him, and for a moment I saw that he knew exactly what he was doing. I was following the path he had intended for me from the beginning. By his silences and his blows, his way of dragging the anguish while drowning it in his own nonchalance, he was voluntarily shearing what was left of the bridle, the bridle that held the beasts. Tonight, the strap was about to let go. We both knew it. His words, spoken with the tip of his tongue, clacked one after the other. A fiery whip, which blew the last barriers one by one. "Come on, Sletling. Try to hit me." I took a deep breath, but my lungs filled with fire and ashes. I lost control. After holding two moons clinging to myself, I finally lost control, and the carmine deluge took me away, roaring like a volcano.

I screamed, for sure, a muffled, inarticulate roar as I charged Ulrick, but I could hardly say much more than that.

"Fekklin", I remember shouting. "Fekklin", in the language of my enemy, and then it was emptiness. A flash, and I was falling through my own face. Suddenly I was gone. I was holed up somewhere deep, somewhere where he didn't have to see what the burning stream would do to his frail body. I had taken refuge in a place where he would feel no pain when his enemy would strike him down again. There was nothing left now, except this volcanic demon, a primary fury, bristling with claws and fangs. Delightfully, there was no more fear and no more pain. Only the swell. A bestial explosion of flames whose only reason for being was to burn.

When I came to my senses, Ulrick held me firmly against the rough ground, lying on top of me with all his weight, and he pushed my face into the gravel. I was still struggling, foaming like a fierce beast as I snapped my jaws. I had bitten my lips and tongue until I bled and my other wounds had opened up too. The head of the Val was very close to mine. "That's good, Sletling," he murmured. "That's good." All of a sudden I stopped fidgeting, my body was flabby, as empty as my mind. I felt a dull sensation in my leg, where he had hit me, and I knew that the beast in me had lost it. That I had lost again. I realized that I was crying, that I was hiccupping, because Ulrick was holding me by the hair, and he was weighing me down with all his weight, and the stones were scratching my face and stomach. My hands were pressed against my body and I couldn't hit anymore. My enemy was still talking.

I could hear him, between each of my tense sobs. "That's good," he said again between his clenched teeth. "You've found your battle rage." I had a jolt. The Val strengthened his grip and pushed me further into the rubble. The pain was coming now. "And I beat you," Ulrick grumbled, his warm breath against my ear. I tried to get out again, but it was gone. It was too much effort and too much pain.

"I beat you," continued Ulrick. "Remember that despite the rage, I beat you. I'll beat you again and again and again, and then you'll go beyond that." He spoke calmly, between his breaths as heavy as mine, his voice was soft and firm, and it came to me as if from a dream. "Listen carefully, Sletling. This is not our way. You'll see that one day. Men who have to get angry so they don't get scared shout, scream, yell and make big gestures they only half understand. They waste their strength and disappear, swallowed by madness and rage." The Val pressed his knee to the hollow of my loins and let go of my hair. I no longer cried. Hatred swelled again. "Those who are lucky, the silly brownian tales make heroes of them," Ulrick continued, tightening his grip on my hands. "But not the vaïdogan. The vaïdogan knows how stupid the tales are, because he found his rage, and every time he was beaten. You have to go through that, too."

He suddenly released his grip. I got up cautiously, moved only by a bipedal reflex. Briefly, I was only a body. My gaze had frozen, lost in the bald trees to the west of the plateau. Ulrick took me by the wrist, turned me, and I had no strength to resist.

Disoriented and sore, I was now praying. I was praying for the peace that had overwhelmed me as I had fled the deluge, that had sheltered me from torture and words I could no longer hear. "This is what I say to you, Sletling. As my warrior told me when he broke my nose when I found my rage." The Val bent over my puffy face.

"I know you can barely hear me, but you'll remember. And you'll see," he told me intensely, his gaze fixed on mine. "Beyond the fire, Sletling, you have to look for the ice. When you no longer need anger to cope, then we're done. I don't know how long it will take. But every time the red veil catches you, my blows will pull you out." He smiled bitterly. "We're getting to the hard part," he concluded.

Then he spat at my feet and limped away in the direction of the cabin.

I hesitated for a long time, my body floating, before noticing without really caring that the cold of the falling night was crystallizing all around me. I repressed a shiver. A gust of wind swept across the plateau and, under the assault of the wind, the birch trees bent their pale spines. I stood alone, facing the vastness of the world, filled with a turbulent cacophony. In the growing darkness, I was sinking with this volcanic thing that had coiled up in each of my fibers, that had rumbled like a wild torrent. From a place that seemed very far away, Ulrick shouted in the night for me to come and eat. As if I was still the same and nothing had changed.

I felt the beast stirring within me. Swearing ferociously that the fire would take us both.