CHAPTER 13 SavagesThe people of the valley, the children of Rhoem, did not venture high into the rocks of the Kranion. They knew its slopes and springs, its fields and grasses. They knew each little creek that fed into the Spine. Though boys hunted for food and skins in the lower part of the forest, and though their fathers let them stalk the boar and dog runs that crisscrossed the base, nobody traveled higher than the tree line. Wolves and bears lurked in the inky blackness, and cannibals sprung up from hidden tunnels and grabbed and bit and tore and pulled their victims underground to die unspeakable deaths in unspeakable lairs.
But when the great ball of fire streaked out of the heavens one morning, cutting a black swath through the white clouds, a small group of men, seven warriors an
