Byrthiri

The region of Byrthiri lay on the far west coast of the continent of Tithind. To the east was a range of mountains extending from north to south. The people of each of Tithind's five regions had a different name for those mountains, but in Byrthiri we simply called them the Brothers' Mountains.

Lore passed down by generations celebrates the legend of the mountains. According to the stories, Tithind was once inhabited by the largest creatures and beasts of all varieties of mythological origin. Dragons dwelled in the caves of the canyons on the far north of Tithind, near what is now the Utlagi region. Hydra inhabited the east. All manner of other monstrous beings lived in the regions between—beasts that crawled across the lands alongside the continent’s main river that led to the bay in the south, and ocean-dwelling monsters in the bay itself. And then there were the giants, who roamed the continent, unbound by any one territory, until their numbers began to dwindle.

The giants were being killed off by the other creatures, which were at constant war with one another. And so, over years and decades, the giants retreated to the west, to what would later become Byrthiri. There, they sculpted a vast range of mountains, almost reaching the ocean to the north and south of the region, to protect their people.

Warriors among the giants left to fight off the beasts that were killing them, but by the completion of the mountains, their numbers were already greatly reduced. Dragons continued to make it over the mountains and killed off the giants, who became more and more timid as their people's population was destroyed.

Over time, the warriors that had left were able to eliminate all manner of bloodthirsty beast from Tithind, even the dragons to the north that still posed a threat. But back in the western region, their people were nearly all gone. When all the fighting and battles had finished, only three of the warriors, brothers, returned to the west. They stood guard atop the mountains in a vain attempt to protect what was left of their people, but the population was so much gone that they merely died off in time.

In the end, the three warrior brothers were the last to die. And centuries later, when I was a child, mothers would conclude the story to their children by telling them that the last brothers' spirits are sealed beneath the mountains, and so our people today are protected not only by the mountains, but the spirit of the warriors who stood atop them.

And so they are the Brothers' Mountains.

All of this, of course, was merely legend. It gave us in Byrthiri something to feel pride about; the legend was known all over Tithind, but we were the ones it defended. It made Byrthiri seem almost like a holy land. Out of all the landmarks in Tithind that had their place in the myth, Byrthiri was the one that was protected, and that made it almost sacred.

And Byrthiri was my home. I lived in one of its smaller villages, Haugra, in the hills near the southern part of the region. Like the surrounding areas, Haugra was mostly a farming community. Further north lay much of the fur and wool trade, and traders visited Garthir—the nearest large city to Haugra—twice a year, in the spring and in the fall, for selling their goods. Likewise, after harvest each year many farmers would make the trip north, where farming was more sparse, to sell their crop.

Overall, Byrthiri was a self-sufficient community stretching over much of the western end of the continent. We had to be; the mountains made trading with and even migrating to other regions difficult. But we, like the Giants, believed they kept us safe, and we were able to get by, for centuries, as far as our history could tell us.

For me as a young boy, Haugra—and ultimately Byrthiri as a whole—meant safety. I lived with my mother and father and sister. My sister was born when I was nine years old, after a series of miscarriages that left my mother wondering if she would ever have more children. I was very young for most of those miscarriages, but I still remember the devastation and pain each time, and the fear when she found out she was with child for the sixth time, the panic when the time for childbirth came. My sister, Alani, was born more frail than most, and my mother couldn’t leave bed for weeks. I remember, because I was the one who had to care for her.

My father, I always thought, would have been a warrior, though I couldn’t have imagined then that Byrthiri would ever fall under the threat of war. Almost all young boys see their father as the very picture of strength, but I remember watching him work, long before I was old enough to help in the fields, and thinking that he had the strength of ten men. Even looking back, I think he may have. And when the raids began, he was one of the first to prepare to fight.