The arrow hissed past his ear like an angry snake, a slender sliver of death that flashed through his field of vision before exploding against a cliff, far ahead. The impact struck bright sparks from the stone, a brief, burning blossom that flared for an instant and was gone, lost in the dense forest shadows.
        A wisp of smoke drifted from the site of impact, slowly uncurling in the pale spray of sunbeams that sifted through the tall forest canopy. The smoke lingered in the air, at rest in the pale incense of springtime.
        The rider raced his pony with tumultuous abandon, oblivious to the glories of nature. Standing in the stirrups, crouching low, he focused intently on the trail ahead.
        The beauty of the day contrasted sharply with the deadly business at hand. Awash in clear morning light, the forest exuded the delicate scent of musty earth watered by clouds of clean white snow, the evergreen tang of amber resin, smoky flint, and a translucent shimmer of vapor at rest in a column of light.
        The frantic hoofbeats grew louder, pressing hard against the silence. The thin thread of smoke - offspring of iron and stone - stretched luxuriously in the rippling rays of dusty luminance.
        The horseman ripped through the smoke in heedless disarray, hurtling past the sheer rock wall in a fine frenzy of urgency. He drove his horse recklessly, at the limit of his ability in a desperate dash at breakneck speed along the steep slope.
        Ancient trees towered high above the rider and his magnificent mountain pony. A dense carpet of needles cushioned the perilous, rock-strewn terrain over which they breathlessly surged, an explosion of haste in the midst of the still and solemn forest cathedral.
        The young horseman heard the distant blast of his father's war horn ringing through the valley, answered by the muffled, throaty cries of the bandits. The noises echoed through the haze, mingling with the scent of the dew, the thud of hooves and the harsh hiss of his ragged breathing. Hearing the horn, he remembered the ambush.
        "Run!" his father had cried, and like an obedient son, he had obeyed. He had whipped his pony's flank and sprung away in a dead run, seized by a surge of terror that had surprised and overwhelmed him - even though, from a child, he had dreamed of heroic splendor. His brave plans had disappeared when the moment of truth had come.
        The horseman veered to the right, rushing dizzily down the steep mountain slope, testing the limits of the gifted pony's sure footing and leaving a heavy cloud of dust in his wake. A cruel black arrow hissed past his ear and bit deeply into an ancient tree that he hurtled past without a pause. He heard the cries growing closer now, heard the throaty shouts as his pursuers called to one another in a harsh, unmelodic dialect.
        Their horses must be fresh, he thought, and an unbidden idea suddenly flashed through his mind. It was wild, it was desperate, but he had little to lose.
        Far below him, a great blast from his father's war horn soared above the rocks and trees, filling the distant reaches of the vast, open valley. King Vigmarr was leading the party south, hoping to lure them away from his son.
        If you had been there that day, on a mountainside high above the trees, you would have seen the young rider as he darted across a clearing on his slender chestnut mount. If you had tarried beneath the rim of the valley, meditating in the hush of the solemn, ancient woods, your meditations would have been abruptly shattered by the sudden crash and clamor as he fled past, a bright, fleeting vision of pre-medieval Norse nobility, his blond braids whipping behind him, brass helm low, face peering intently ahead around his horse's neck as he thundered past and was gone.
        His name was Gunnar-val, and today was his seventeenth birthday.