Cry for the Wolf, Chapter 7. by Richard Walker

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He beat the persistent memory of his dreams down with a well-disciplined will. All those metal-clad men with the faces of his foster-brothers, Tostig and Eberulf.
They could only have been brother Eberulf's "knights."
He stood limned in the morning sunlight, a perfect plains animal, the top warrior of his tribe, save only those foster-brothers, and they had both originally been foreigners to his land. Slowly and with great ritual he scrubbed himself with the glistening sands from head to toes-as he sang his name, Garad Plainsrider, with his greeting to the morning sun that glared at him across the shining waters of the river like the merciless eye of some god. His homage completed, he dressed again and turned his attention to the river, following its banks as it wended its way steadily northward. In the past two weeks and more he had come over three hundred miles, north from the plains of his native Bardûm, through the Isenstein Mountains on the Shanrian border, north through the foothills and forest primeval of the Shanrian Marches, following many a tributary seeking the river Dansis, whose banks he now followed. He had no doubts where he was or the identity of the mighty river whose path he traced now. His sense of direction was flawless, were it not, he would never have survived growing up on the wild, high southern plains, beyond the mountains. Forage had been scarce so early in the year. More than once he had gone to sleep hungry, but he had survived. Garad followed the shore, content to follow its meanderings, knowing that it would lead him to the northern coast and the sea in its own time, hoping that he would arrive in time himself. He had been traveling the river bank for three days now, his native lands more than a fortnight behind him now, and wondered if he would ever find the great waters and the tribal village, the "city," he sought, which his father had warned him was greater than any sight he had yet seen in the world, shy only of the great mountains of his homeland. He doubted his father's words still, but had dared not admit it.
Only for you, Father. Only for you would I have endured this, leaving The People, for such strange lands. Only for you will I enter this den of men that you call a "city."
It had been one of the hardest treks Garad had ever known, and he had known many. His favorite blanket, striped with Mother Earth's green and brown horizon with figures of the Thunder Birds ridden by the fair Valkurs dancing down its center on a field of Father Sky's azure blue, was torn in more than one place, and much worn from sleeping on the ground wrapped in it. He clutched it about his shoulders like a cloak against the chill of the winds. The cherished spear he had made as a young man had broken, and his heart along with it, in the breast of a charging boar in the forests of South March, almost a week to the south now. His favorite horse had had its belly gored wide open by the same boar. With tear-stained face he had been forced to speed its way to the Invisible World.