The Fire Queen

Chapter 5

The teewah chick that Uraia gave me, which I had named Lucy, grew fast. After two years she was fully grown, and I was riding her all over the Northlands, exploring as much of it as I could. My two years of unrelenting daily training with my father had made him confident enough about my abilities to leave me to explore the Northlands on my own. We still trained every day but with my father being so busy with making improvements to the settlement our training sessions were much shorter than they used to be. To make up for the amount of training time that we were losing he asked Uraia to spend time training me whenever possible. Despite how much more skilled I had become, I still couldn't keep up with Uraia during the training sessions that we had. Whenever we sparred she would carry me throughout the exchange before dropping me to the ground with one powerful blow to remind me of how much further I still had to go before I could consider myself a warrior.

Thanks to Uraia, the bandits made getting the tools and materials that my father needed for his improvements their top priority and he was able to bring most of his ideas to fruition. He was able to build his waterwheel which was primarily being used for milling lumber but which in the future could also be used for irrigation and milling grain. Uraia's father rode out often on his teewah to our settlement to see how my father's projects were coming along. He was hugely impressed by the sawmill and asked my father if he would mill lumber for his village, to which my father responded that if he supplied the logs he would happily do it. There was no question of asking for anything in return; were it not for the help that we had received from the chief and his village we in all likelihood would be dead by now. To haul in the trees that we felled in the nearby forests the chief had given my father two buffalos from their livestock herd, and he promised that when my father needed more buffalo for plowing he would provide them. The sawmill was running almost all day and was working terrifically, which was critical because, as my father predicted, people kept coming north from the kingdom. There wasn't the time to build new dwellings for them from stone; my father kept the sawmill running for as long as possible and new dwellings were built entirely from wood.

The more people that arrived at the settlement, the more time I spent away from the settlement with Lucy. I didn't have any problems with the new arrivals, I had just come to really enjoy the peace and quiet of the vast expanses of the Northlands. My favorite thing to do when I went riding was to watch the wolves. They were the top predators in the land and were able to freely roam the plains of the Northlands without fear. Only the Okwari could have posed a threat to them, but the practice of hunting wolves had been outlawed generations ago and the wolf was now considered sacred by the Okwari.

The wolves were beautiful. I could spend hours just sitting and watching them, and I often did. It was during one of the days when I had ridden out on Lucy and was following and watching a pack of wolves that I noticed something in the behavior of the pack that I hadn't seen before. It looked like they were playing, but the more I watched them the clearer it became that they weren't playing. One of the pups was being ganged up on by the rest of the pups and a couple of the adult wolves, and their treatment of the pup grew increasingly violent until the pack moved on without the pup. Left on its own, it was only a matter of time before the pup died. I waited until the pack was a safe distance away from the pup and when they were I got on Lucy and went to get the pup. It didn't have any serious injuries, just a few scrapes that would quickly heal. The pup was a male and had thick black fur. I brought the pup back to the settlement with me and gave it a few small pieces of meat and some water to drink. When I told my father why I'd brought a wolf pup home with me he said that he wasn't surprised by my actions given my affinity for animals. I named the pup Anbu. He lived with us in the hut and slept next to me at night. During the day he was free to roam the settlement but he never strayed far away from me, and if he did it was to play with Lucy. Lucy had taken to Anbu like a mother and wouldn't go far away from him unless he was with me. Over time the three of us became inseparable and we did everything together. When he saw that I had a wolf pup, the chief told me that it was a sign that there was something special about me. By this time I had learned how to speak the Okwari language, thanks mostly to Uraia. I spent a lot of time at the Okwari village, and because I had a teewah I was able to go on hunts with them. I didn't have the strength to bring down a buffalo with a spear so I still used a bow and arrow, though I was able to bring one down with just one arrow.

The settlement kept getting bigger as exiles and refugees came north in greater numbers. The stories that they told confirmed what we had been hearing from Uraia for months, which was that things in the capital city were going from bad to worse and as a result so was everything in the rest of the kingdom. People all across the kingdom were fleeing in search of a better life elsewhere. Those that lived in the northern parts of the kingdom were coming north to the settlement while those in the eastern, western and southern parts of the kingdom were heading for the nearest border. To the east was the kingdom of Erst, to the west was the kingdom of Dranii, and to the south was the kingdom of Theran. The deterioration of the kingdom had produced a large refugee problem that the neighboring kingdoms were responding to by firming up their borders with increased troops and physical barriers. My father warned me and the others in the settlement that if the number of people coming north became unsustainable then we might have to enact similar measures. Our primary concern was the Okwari becoming anxious about us increasingly encroaching upon them and tensions arising between us because of that.

As far as resources went we had the capacity to absorb many more people. We had a surplus of lumber for building dwellings thanks to the sawmill and the fields that we'd cultivated had produced a good crop the past two years. My father had used the two buffalo that the chief had given him for hauling lumber to pull the plow that he'd had made and create fields for planting. After seeing the success of my father's efforts, the chief gave him extra buffalo to use to plow more fields. The quick growth and development of the settlement was due to the arrival of skilled artisans. The plows that we were using were made by the carpenters and blacksmiths that had come north from the capital city, and the planting that we were doing was being overseen by a farmer who had come north after his land was seized. The progress of the settlement was exceeding all of our expectations and yet, despite all of the success that we had managed to achieve over the last four years in building a new life for ourselves, I couldn't help feeling uneasy about it all because of how different the way that we were doing things was than the way that the Okwari did things. Now when I left the settlement it wasn't just for the day but for days at a time. I would take Lucy and Anbu with me and we would ride out far away from the settlement, deeper and deeper into the Northlands. Anbu was now fully grown and had become a reliable tracker. When we went out into the wilderness for days at a time we had no problem finding food. Our usual prey was deer. We'd go into a forest, Anbu would sniff one out and lead me to it and then it was simply a matter of me bringing it down with an arrow. Whatever we went hunting Anbu never forgot himself and chased after our prey. He always remained by my side, trusting that he and Lucy would be provided for after I'd brought down our prey.