Chapter 1: Warriors in the Mist

There are many wizards born on the island, well-known far and near, many men on the island, whether they were born in the villages and towns in the mountains and deep valleys, or the narrow and dark fjord harbor city, most of them have left their hometowns and gone to the cities of the archipelago to serve as wizards or mages to serve the island owners, or wander the islands of the earth and sea, play magic, and pursue adventure, some people say that among these many wizards, the most remarkable and indeed experienced the greatest adventure is a mage named "Sparrowhawk", when he was alive, he has been respected by everyone as the "Dragon Lord" and "** Master", His life deeds are widely sung in many ballads such as "Gede Xingyi"; But the story to be told in this book is before he became famous, and before people made up songs for his deeds.

The mage was born in Shiyang Village, a remote village that stands alone on the top of the slope of the North Valley, with pastures and cultivated land below, slowly descending to sea level, and other villages and towns on this slope, scattered in the bend of the Al River, and above Shiyang Village is a lush mountain forest, climbing along the current school youth to the snow-covered mountain peaks and stone ridges.

The mother's name, Dani, was given by his mother, and this name, and his life, was all that his mother had given him, because his mother died when he was one year old, and his father was a coppersmith in the village, and he was strict and silent, and Dani had six elder brothers, all of whom were much older than him, and they left home one after another, some went to other villages and towns in the North Valley to farm or strike iron, and some went to sea and sailed, so no one in the family could bring them up tenderly and lovingly.

So, Dani grew up like a weed, tall, loud, quick-witted, arrogant and irritable, and on weekdays the little boy and the village boy were shepherding sheep on the steep slopes above the source of the Ear River, and when his father had grown up enough to push and pull the sleeve of the blast furnace, he made him an apprentice, and the strength spent on beating and whipping was often indispensable, but do not expect much work out of Dani, for he was always absent from the house, not in the forest; It is to swim in the fast, icy river of Ar, the river on the island of Bowte, which is fast and cold, or to climb over cliffs and steep slopes, through forests to the top of the mountain, and to the north of the vast ocean north of the island of Perao, where there are no islands in sight.

Dani's mother, who died young, had a younger sister, and Dani lived in the same village as an infant and was taken care of by this aunt, but she had her own affairs, so when Dani was old enough to take care of herself, her aunt stopped caring about him, but when Dani was seven years old, before anyone taught him about the "skills" and "strength" of the world, one day, he heard his aunt shouting to a goat that jumped on the page of the hut, at first the goat refused to come down, but when the aunt sang a string of rhymes to the goat, the goat jumped down.

The next day, when Dani was grazing long-haired goats in the meadows of the high cliffs, he learned from his aunt to shout the same words to the goats.

He didn't understand the meaning and purpose of the words, but just read them aloud:

Nahammoman Hohan Mohan, after he had finished shouting the rhyme, all the goats came running, and they moved quickly and in unison, silently, and all squinted their yellow eyes, staring at Dani,

The rhyme gave him strength to support the goats, and he laughed and shouted the rhyme again, and this time, the goats came closer, and gathered around him, and their thick horns, strange eyes, and strange silence suddenly made Dani afraid, and he wanted to run away from the goats, but he ran, and the sheep ran with him, always surround Dani, and at last, the goats and Dani went down the mountain together, and entered the village, and the sheep were still close to each other, as if they were being held by a rope, and Dani, who was besieged, could only cry in fear, The villagers ran out of the cottage and cursed the goats and laughed at Dani, but the little boy's aunt was caught between the villagers, but she did not laugh, but said only one word to the sheep, and the spell on the goats was lifted, and they bleated, looked around, and scattered.

"Come with me," said Aunt Dani,

She put Dani into the thatched hut where she lived alone, she used to not let children into the house, so the village was afraid of that place, the thatched hut was low and dark, there were no windows, and the roof diagonal beams hung herbs to dry in the shade with mint, wild garlic, thyme, foreign storage, rush grass, palamo, king leaf grass, hoof-shaped car, tansy, laurel, etc., exuding fragrance, and the aunt sat cross-legged by the fire pit in the house and squinted at Dani from behind the black hair that was scattered in the tangled hair, and she asked Dani what he said to the goat, and asked him if he knew the meaning of the rhyme. When she found out that Dani didn't know anything, but was able to subdue the sheep and let them get closer and follow him back to the village, the aunt immediately understood that Dani must have the quality of "power" in him.

In her eyes, the little boy was just a sister's son, and he had always been insignificant; But from this moment on, she looked at him differently,

In addition to praising Dani, she also said that maybe she could teach other rhymes, and Dani must have preferred them, such as a word that allows a snail to look out of the valley, and a name that can summon a falcon in the sky.

"Well, teach me that name," said Dani, forgetting the fear that the goat had given him, and fluttering at his aunt's praise of his cleverness.

The witch said to him, "If I teach you that spell, don't tell any other child."

"I promise,"

Dani's childish innocence without thinking made my aunt can't help but say, "Very good, but I have to restrain your promise, that is, to make your tongue not turn until I decide to release it, but even if the restraint is removed, as long as someone can hear you, even if you can speak, you will not be able to say the words and spells I taught you, and we have to keep all the tricks of this line of work,"

"Well," replied the little boy, for he had always liked to do things that people did not know and could not know, so he would not tell anything else.

Dani sat upright, and her aunt tied up her messy hair, tied her clothes, and sat down with her legs folded again, and she threw a handful of leaves into the fire pit, and a puff of black smoke dispersed, filling the whole dark room, and then she began to sing, and her voice rose and fell, as if another voice was humming through her, and she kept singing, and the little boy gradually could not tell whether he was asleep or awake, and during this time, the witch's old black dog, who never barked, sat beside the little boy with eyes red from smoke,

Then the witch spoke to him in a language that Dani did not understand, and he involuntarily followed his aunt to recite certain rhymes and words, and read and recited, and finally, the magic calmed Dani,

"Speak," said the aunt to test the effectiveness of the spell, and the aunt ordered Dani,

The little boy could not speak, but he laughed,

At this time, my aunt was a little afraid of Dani's inner power, because the spell she had just cast was the strongest spell she could concoct, and she hoped to not only control Dani's ability to speak, but also to accept Dani to serve her at the same time, however, although the spell restrained Dani, he still laughed heartily.

The aunt didn't say anything, she poured clean water on the fire until the smoke disappeared, then she let the little boy drink water, and when the air in the house was clear, and Dani could speak again, she taught him the real name of the falcon, and as long as he said that real name, the falcon would come to him.

This is only the first step, in the future, Dani will write that he will spend his life pursuing this path of magic, which will eventually lead him over the mountains and seas to chase a dark shadow to the dark and ignorant shores of the Land of Death, but, from the first few steps, the path of magic seems to be an open and glorious avenue,

Dani found that as soon as he called out for the summon, the wild falcon flew down, fluttering its wings, and perched on his wrist like lightning, which was really comparable to the falcon of the princes and nobles, and this situation made Dani more and more eager to know more summoning names, so he ran to his aunt and begged him to teach him the summoning names of sparrowhawk, goshawk, vulture eagle, etc., in order to learn those words that contained power, no matter what the witch aunt asked, although some were not so easy to do and so easy to learn, Dani did all the same,

There are two sayings in the Gongte people: "I can't get the magic of a good woman's house", "Vicious to the magic of a woman's house", this witch in Shiyang Village is not an evil witch, she never touches advanced spells, and she does not deal with Taikooli, she has always been just an ordinary woman in the group of ordinary women and ordinary women, although she has skills, but most of them are just used to deceive this and bluff that, such as "Dahua Balance", "All Things Form Meaning" and other truths, real wizards understand and abide by them, unless necessary, never cast spells and chant spells at will; But those truths, this village witch doesn't understand, it's just, no matter what the situation is, she has a set of spells to deal with, and she's always busy concocting new spells, but her set is mostly useless disguises, as for the authenticity of the spell, she really can't identify, she knows a lot of cursed methods, I'm afraid it's better to summon illness than to cure the disease, just like the general village witch, she will also mix medicine, but if you want to deal with men's jealousy and hatred, she has several more insidious recipes than **, but, these tricks, She did not pass it on to her younger apprentices, but taught faithful spells as much as she could.

At first, Dani's pleasure in learning these spell skills came from the power and knowledge of summoning strange birds and beasts, and this innocent childlike joy accompanied him throughout his life, when he was shepherding sheep on the plateau, there were always birds of prey flying around him, and when other village children saw it, they began to call him "Sparrowhawk", so when his real name was not known, the accidental name "Sparrowhawk" became his common name.

During this time, the witch's aunt often talked about how capable the sorcerer was, and how he could possess extraordinary glory, wealth, and power, and Dani listened to it, and was determined to learn more practical folklore, and he learned very quickly, and was often praised by his aunt, but the village children grew to fear him, which convinced him that he would soon become a master.

In this way, he followed his aunt, and learned word by word, word by word, and by the time he was twelve, he had learned most of the spells that his aunt knew, and although his aunt did not know much, the witch of a small village had enough to use them; As for a twelve-year-old child, there were too many spells alone, and her aunt taught Dani all the herbs and healing techniques she knew, and all the techniques of searching, binding, mending, loosening, and exposing, and the stories and heroic deeds she knew, and she sang them all to Dani, and she taught them all the mantras she had learned from the warlocks, and from the Celestial Weathermaster and the jugglers who traveled through the villages and towns of the North Valley and the East Forest, and learned many different magics, illusions, and aftertastes. For the first time, Dani had the opportunity to use a spell to prove that he had power within himself, and it was one of the small spells mentioned above.

At that time, the Karg Empire was rich and powerful, they ruled the four major islands between the north and the east, Karigo, Etuan, Huerhu, Ernini, the language of the Karg people, different from the language of the islands or other border peoples, they were uncivilized barbarians, white skin and yellow hair, fierce nature, bloodshed, like to smell the smoke of burning cities, last year, they attacked the Torrikou Islands and the powerful Tohowin Island, a large number of red sailing ships composed of a fleet is an important force for them to invade the foreign country, in fact, the news of the attack has long been transmitted north to the island of Gongte, But the owners of the island of Bow were too busy with their private affairs to pay much attention to the calamities of the neighboring islands.

After the mouth of Vittori and Tohovin, the island of Speywe was ravaged, and the people were enslaved, and to this day it remains an island of ruins, and the Cargs, in accordance with the greed of conquest, continued to sail to the island of Bowte, and thirty longships sailed to the east port, and began to fight the whole town of the east port, and won the battle, and set fire to the whole town, after which they left their ships at the mouth of the Al River, and sent troops to guard them, and then the army went up the valley, burning and plundering, and sparing no men or animals; Along the way, they were divided into several detachments, each of them chose their favorite location to plunder, the islanders who were lucky enough to flee in the catastrophe, brought the warning to the high ground, and within a few days, you could see the black smoke in the east in Shiyang Village, and the villagers who fled to the high cliff that night saw that the valley below was covered with thick smoke, the tongue of fire was formed, the fields of the original harvest were set on fire, the orchards were burned through, the fruits on the trees were burned, and the barns and farmhouses were slowly burned into gray and black ruins.

Some villagers lived in the mountains and fled into the canyon and hid in the woods; Some villagers were prepared to fight to save their lives; The witch was one of the escapees, she ran to the cave of the Kapotin cliff, sealed the entrance with a spell, and hid in it alone, Dani's coppersmith father was one of the survivors, because he did not want to leave behind the furnace and boiler where he had worked for fifty years, he hurried all night to make the spear points into all the metal available at hand, and the villagers who stayed behind did not care about further repairs, so they quickly tied the spear tips to the wooden handles of hoes, rakes and other agricultural tools, because there was no time to make suitable wooden handles, In addition to the general hunting bows and short knives, Shiyang Village has always had no war-ready weapons, after all, the people of Gongte Mountain are not warlike people, they are really not famous for warriors but for sheep thieves, pirates, and wizards.

At sunrise the next day, there was a white fog on the high ground, just like the autumn on the island, on the streets of Shiyang Village, the villagers stood between the huts and houses with hunting bows and freshly forged spears, they did not know whether the location of the Karg people was far or near, they could only stare silently at the white fog in front of them, which hid the shape, distance and danger, and did not let them see clearly.

Dani was also among the villagers who stayed behind to fight, and the night before, he kept operating the blast stove, busy pushing and pulling two long sleeves, and constantly blowing air and fire for the blast stove, so at this time in the morning, his arms were already shaking with pain, and he couldn't even hold the spear he had chosen, and he didn't know how to fight like this, and what help he could use to himself or the villagers.

Thinking that he was only a young child, he would be stabbed to death by the spear of the Karg; He still doesn't know his real name, the real name that represents the adulthood, he is going to report to the underworld, his heart can't help but panic, he looks down at the thin arms, due to the relationship between the cold and mist, the two arms are already wet, he knows that he has always been magnificent, so the powerlessness at the moment makes him angry in vain, his inner strength is powerful, as long as he knows how to use it, he searches for all the spells he has learned, and measures which ones can be used - or at least give him and his fellow villagers a chance, unfortunately, by "need" alone"It's not enough to release power, you have to have "knowledge",

The bright sky, the sun hangs high, there is no shade and no hidden light on the top of the mountain, the heat of the sun makes the nearby fog drift away, the villagers can see clearly, there is a team is climbing up the mountain, they are wearing copper helmets and shin armor, wearing leather chest guards and holding shields made of wood and copper, equipped with swords and carger spears, the team along the twists and turns of the Al River, forming a line with spear feathers and Kuangdang paintings, advancing in a circle, the distance between them and Shiyang Village is close enough for the villagers to see their white faces, I could also hear the sound of them shouting in tongues to each other, and the invading army in front of them was about a hundred, and there were not many of them; But the men and boys in Shiyang Village add up to only eighteen.