The Sowing moon slowly swung towards the moon of Glas. The end of the year was fast approaching, and I wandered in the distance, in the shadow of the flames that consumed me. To tell the truth, I was going crazy. Ulrick had deliberately fed my rage with his blows, and now he was going to starve it in the same way. I had experienced this outpouring of anger as a liberation at first. Then, as the days and weeks went by, as the world became less and less coherent, I gradually took the measure of things, of the price at which the inferno was burning. My soul and my being were the fuels of that fire. I found myself immersed in a fight that was even more important than the one that was imposed on me every night. The outcome of these battles would determine the sovereignty of my own body, and there was no doubt in my mind that I was losing the war.

Every night, the beast howled when Ulrick confronted me, and I frayed behind the red veil. He would then beat me, as he had sworn to me, harder than ever. My whole body was decorated with bruises and bumps, which didn't even have time to heal before more bruises replaced them. I was pain made flesh.

During the day, we trained tirelessly, to the point of exhaustion, and sometimes the fatigue and concentration induced by the maneuvers were not enough. The rage could explode at any moment, even during our exercises. I would then resurface, foaming like an animal, gnawed by the despair of these double defeats. I would lose to the fury, then the fury would lose to the Val. It took less than a week for me to understand which of these two failures cost me the most.

Rage quickly ceased to be a deliverance, to become chain and whip, studded collar of a fighting dog. As my remaining lucidity was shattered, this dark corner where my besieged mind was still entrenched became the bastion of a growing fear. I became more and more afraid of what could happen when the rage of battle possessed me. The demon of wrath feared nothing, neither pain nor death, and when I lost my footing I hurt myself, sometimes more than the Val did. Ulrick would only entrust me with the simplest, most physical household chores for the rest, even to take care of Pike, I was no longer of any use. The beast that monopolized all that I was knew neither how to love, nor heal, nor do anything but destroy. I understood, long afterwards, who I was at the end of the year, or rather what I was. I thank Ulrick again for showing me what an ordinary killer, soldier or cutthroat, or child killer, looks like.

It allowed me to understand that, behind the massacres and plunder and rapes, behind the worst horrors that the world can contain, there is no evil, no demons, no bad spells, but only the madness of desperate men, whose fear has turned them into monsters.

The winter frost soon turned the grasses on the plateau yellow, the last leaves added their dry tones to the brown carpet of the forest, then we also had our first snowfall, but to tell the truth, all I remember is the terrifying feeling of not being myself anymore. Ulrick probably would have needed my help and company at that time.

I had stopped speaking, to lock myself in a silence that was only half deliberate. The Val often talked to me, but I heard his monologues without listening or responding to them. He must have felt lonely, too. He limped more, his knee hurt him with the cold, but he still went off into the snowy woods, disappeared between the dark trunks with his bow and dagger, and his hunts kept us from hunger. The skins and the dry sausage that hardened accumulated under the roof of the cabin. Every day, Ulrick stubbornly showed me that he had the strength to sustain both of us, in addition to his age and old wounds. I don't think there are many men who would have been willing to accept that. I wouldn't say that it was easy for me to wallow in pain, to think only of myself and what I was going through. But I also recognize what a sacrifice it must have been for Ulrick from the val country, far from his own and his home, half fugitive, half hermit. The loneliness and isolation we experienced in the heights of Culon, all this and more to honor this debt he felt he had contracted with a child.

Caught in the whirlwind of those red weeks, and even before, I had felt like I was sinking. It was actually the other way around. An ascent, a squeaky crescendo, the painful maturation of a suppurating wound, which had been there since day one when I had put on the mail of a dead man.

Wolves howled to the moon in the steep woods that surrounded the plateaus and peaks, and in the valley, sheltered from the manses and city walls, the Vawans had to prepare to celebrate the ide of the solstice and the new year. I envied them from hell, nibbling on the smoked meat that constipated me, waking up three times a night when I was restless and I rolled over a hematoma. I remembered the dances and the troubadours and the puppeteers of Brown-Horn. The hot chestnuts and the doughnuts. I remembered the tunes played by Robin, and the red nose of Brindy, and the sting of cooked wine on my chapped lips. I ruminated over my past, my childhood, like a bitter delicacy. And then one evening, unexpectedly, it all culminated in a peak of madness, and the abscess finally burst.

The night was cold and thin snow flew lazily to settle on the blackened hillsides of the heights. We were inside, I was cowering on my fern mat, trying to sleep, and Ulrick was kneeling in front of the fire, greasing Berda's bard. During the construction of the cabin, the Val's equipment had suffered both from the humidity and from the time he had not been able to devote to its maintenance. The tallow from hunting was used as much for lighting as for the rehabilitation of weapons and armor. That evening, Ulrick spoke, as he had become accustomed to, to fill the silence. His voice was rocky and monotonous, and he no longer cared about his digressions. Sometimes he would speak to me, but he wouldn't take his eyes off his meticulous work, because he knew I wouldn't answer anyway:

"... here's a strange thing. I was thinking today about my own training. I had one of the best warriors of Benkepp's vaïdoerks as a teacher. His name was Roïgerr. A remarkable fighter. Very old now. He was losing his head the last time I saw him. And I looked at you, Sletling, and tried to remember what it was like. To be your own prisoner. And it turns out I couldn't do it."

The Val smiled for himself and moistened the bard before resuming his vigorous rubbing. "It's a question of freedom, all that," he said softly, chewing the strip of dried meat he had been abusing since nightfall. "I told you already that my father's father was a carmian slave. Do you know that most of the slaves in Carm are Carmians too? Over there, when a man can no longer pay his debts, they put him in chains. Those who escape like my grandfather, and who manage to cross the Denis, they are welcomed in the val country, if they want to stay. And I was thinking about him, my grandfather. He was a slave in the fields. When he came to Riteshell, he became free again, and then he went to work the land in a small hamlet on the Wudd-Wot. He did the same thing as in Carm, and he did it just as hard. He died reaping. Died in the wheat. I came across many like him. Most of them don't understand what it means to be Val. They die having understood nothing, regretting the gold and their sun-god. But they stay, because they think they are free. It's their children who really become Vals. And who become truly free. Do you know what my father told me, Sletling? That the day they brought his old man back to him, still clinging to the scythe, he laughed. He had just grasped the nuance between courage and stubbornness. That is freedom. To be brave, you have to be free. Whereas obstinacy belongs to the slaves, and to those who don't see their own chains. My grandfather was brave when he crossed the Denis, and obstinate when he died. At last. I thought I should share this thought with you, Sletling. More courage and less stubbornness, that's what you need."

While the Val coarsely rolled up the bard, which must have weighed twice my weight, I turned my head to hatefully study his wide arched back. As I scrutinized the movement of his gnarled shoulders, as I listened to his grunts and watched, like a wild beast, for the slightest sign of weakness, I suddenly saw my own deliverance. I knew at that moment that I was going to kill him. I was going to kill Ulrick. It was a burst, a primary impulse of life and death mixed together. I was going to kill the Val and at the same time defeat the red demon and suffering. My body was set in motion, guided only by rage and throbbing evil. Without a sound, I unfolded meticulously, and my fugitive hand slipped towards the dagger that hung after the weapon belt that Ulrick hung above his bed. My eyes did not leave the back of the Val, while, inch by inch, I cleared the steel from its case. Then, in the same gesture, as discreet as alley cats had taught me to be, I returned to my blanket, holding the object of my liberation close to me.

Crouching in front of the hearth, the warrior rummaged through the embers of the hearth by whispering alone.

Finally, after a time that seemed interminable to me, he finally added a rotting stump to the glowing bed, undressed himself by cracking all his joints and blew out the grease lamp. I waited, in the half-light, my hands clenched around the stained handle. The warrior's breath soon deepened and I squinted my eyes. Outside, the wolves were howling.

Somehow I found it appropriate. Slowly, very slowly, I pushed aside the discolored plaid that covered me and stealthily straightened up, grimacing as my grazed knee pressed against the hard roundness of a plank. I took one step, bent in half, then another, like a murderous ghost holding its shiny blade. I was close enough to see Ulrick's peaceful face now. The flickering hearth drew on his face a gullied landscape, sculpted by age and steel. I was about to open a new valley there, from which a red river would gush out. My hand tightened on the handle of the dagger and I took a deep breath before bending over him.

The eyes of the Val suddenly opened and he smiled kindly at me. My body contracted with a jerk. I dropped the weapon in surprise, all the air left my lungs, and it was as if he had hit me, even though he hadn't moved a muscle. "I chickened out," he confided to me, with a grin. "He kicked the shit out of me that night. Not for trying to kill him, but for taking his sword without his permission." I stood still like a panicked animal, and my eyes passed over the weapon I dropped. Ulrick cut me off in my momentum in a voice sharper than the carmian steel that laid at my feet :

"If you touch the knife, Sletling, I'll break your arm."

He straightened up on his bed and held out his finger towards the trap door, his eyebrows frowned. "You're going to turn back," he said more calmly. "You're going to take your blanket and go to sleep with the horses. I don't want to spend the night wondering if you're going to try to cut my throat again."

Trembling under the effect of anger and despair, I hesitated for a few moments, then, faced with the realization of my own impotence, I executed myself, both shameful and ridiculous. As I crawled through the opening with my tail between my legs, and the icy air gripped me in its embrace, Ulrick drove the final nail in. "Do you really think I don't know where my own weapons are?" he said before the trap door was pulled down. I found myself alone, facing the still tranquility of a night of ink and snow.

Tiny flakes fluttered around me like the petals of a fallen cherry tree, and the moon was pale and full somewhere beyond the invisible clouds. The plateau was bathed in a sweet halo with a fresh scent of resin and rock. Miserably, I dragged myself to the horses.

I had failed again and my enemy had not even let me fail with dignity. Berda raised her big head at my approach and folded her ears to protest my presence. Her mane had grown since I had met her, and the black, shiny war brush was slowly giving way to a falling brush fringe. At her side, Pike looked at me in a friendly manner and, although Berda kept rolling her huge eyes to express her displeasure, the mare finally let me intrude between their heavy flanks, on the thick bedding of rushes and leaves. My nose was numb from the cold, I was uncomfortably squeezed but the massive presence of the two animals was reassuring. I was almost as warm as in my own bed.

As I wiggled in search of a position that did not press on any of my bruises while ruminating on new carnivorous resolutions, Pike softly snorted. He brought his curious snout towards me and put his full lips in my hair. He palpated, delicately, with the tip of his lips, his breath calm and regular. As I was no longer expecting anything from anyone, I realized that the grey gelding was comforting me. I sighed and gave him a caress. Pike was a little older than Berda, seventeen or eighteen years old, much less clever and much more docile. He was a great simpleton who wanted nothing but caresses and treats, but I like to think that he felt my sadness that night, and that he didn't like it any more than I did. Then, as he couldn't do anything else, he chewed my hair tenderly and I started to cry.

They were neither tears of frustration this time, nor of anger, they were healthy tears, a pure elixir of sadness and pain. Huddled against Pike, I emptied myself a little more with each sob of all that I had accumulated without evacuating it, since my departure from Brown-Horn. I made my mourning. I cried my old life, I cried Brindy and Dera and Ucar and Robin that I missed terribly and that I would probably never see again.

I cried with violent contractions, like a woman giving birth, and each painful spasm drew deep down to pull the evil out at the root. I purged myself. As those icy pearls streamed down my cheeks, under the cover of the snowy night and without really realizing it, I drowned the fire demon in a deluge of frozen tears.

The next evening, after our daily training, I stood in front of Ulrick, and my posture had changed. I kept my head high. I was nervous, though, about getting lost again, but my fear had turned into defiance. I had been silent and thoughtful during the day and I had complied with the exercises with an application and rigor for which the Val had congratulated me. The snow of the night had not lasted, but the ground was beginning to freeze and an icy breeze carried the condensed volutes of our breaths to the first branches of the birch trees.

The sweat that soaked my cloak under the mail was getting warm and, underneath, I had to move every muscle so that I wouldn't get cold. I breathed deeply in front of the Val, my jaw tight, without taking my eyes off him.

Ulrick observed me for a long time, his eyes shining behind a beard that had become bushy, before giving the order I was waiting for. "Try to kill me while I'm awake, Sletling," he said sarcastically, and raised his hands to adopt the fighting posture. I spat and stepped forward, like an ant advancing on a mountain. I felt the rage swell suddenly and almost screamed with spite, I thought I was slipping inside, towards the lava and the volcano, and then in a heartbeat I passed through the red veil, like spreading a curtain. I saw that after the fire, there was ice.

My thoughts had become cold. There was no better word to describe it. I was coherent and lucid and I knew exactly what I was going to do and why. I greeted the sensation with ferocious pleasure, just long enough to take the measure of it. The calm invaded me and I let it flow through me like a peaceful avalanche. Then I feinted to the left, Ulrick followed, and I did the opposite. The Val had seen through my act right from the start. He swung as I crossed the distance between us. We both knew that he would strike at that moment, that he would hit me, too, but that was my intention.

I bowed my head, without slowing down. I went to meet his blow like one goes to meet a friend. I took it, where I had decided, just under the shoulder. My body shook under the impact, but I kept my eyes open and pivoted. I had time to see Ulrick start a contraction that looked like a smile, then my right fist hit him on the mouth.

His knee bent me in half at his feet.

The Val shook his head while swearing and sent a bloody sputum on the silvery bark of a birch tree. I crouched down spitting, and Ulrick suddenly started to laugh. He leaned over me and stared at me with amusement, but there was something else in that look too. Blood was dripping into his beard from the split lip. He reached out his hand to me. I grasped it hesitantly and with a firm gesture he put me back on my feet. "Iss finne, Fyss," he said, placing his other hand on my shoulder. I nodded and swallowed. It was the first time he called me by my first name. Until then, I wasn't even sure he knew it. "So?" he continued, squinting his eyes. "What did you learn?" I frowned. "I've learned..." I replied slowly before pausing. I hadn't spoken for so long that the sound of my own voice seemed foreign to me. "I've learned not to be afraid anymore." The Val nodded. "We're done then. I won't beat you anymore. Do you understand now?" he asked me softly.

I breathed in deeply, hurt and proud at the same time. "I think so," I replied. "I had to want to take your blow to defeat you. And I had to get rid of my anger in order to want to. I learned that anger and fear are the worst enemies of the warrior. And I'm a warrior now." Ulrick shook his head gravely. "Not yet," he said. "Not yet. But you've become a man." And that was true.

From this straitjacket of fear, anger and pain, the old val-warrior had given me a priceless gift, the full value of which I was to realize only later. I had become a man, not by the years, not by losing my virginity, not by all those other stupid ways that often define the thing. I had become a man in the way the val people understood it: by emancipation. Ulrick had assured me, hematoma after hematoma, that I would never again be a slave to myself. That I would belong entirely to myself, even in fear, even in rage, even in the most abyssal suffering and despair. I think I was already guessing this, but with the passing of time, I have become certain that there is hardly any other freedom but this one.