The First Scout and the Lady Mother

When the mighty Ashbane was a burned and dying stablecolt, it was Verdant Cress who dragged him from the fires. Her husband was dead, and her son was a frightened yearling. The Wrothkin filled the forest around them, screaming in the night. But Verdant was as swift on hoof as she was at thought, and, lashing together two polearm axes with some pine boughs, she dragged both Ashbane and her son to safety. The Wrothkin harried them all the way to the nearest broch, a sturdy tower far from the main road where refugees had barricaded the doors. The lord of that place unbarred those doors for Verdant, but in so doing he let in the deer.

Nail Biter still remembers when his mother tore the polearm axes from the litter and decapitated the first Wrothkin to charge the broch. He still remembers the lord of that place taking an arrow between the eyes. He still remembers how everypony present was struck dumb by fear. And he remembers how Ashbane, with burns still seeping, rose like a mountain with the other poleaxe in his hooves. Together, with lochaber and bardiche, Ashbane and Verdant saved Broch Boardwall. It's been many years since that night, and Nail Biter is no longer a colt chewing on his hooves. But though he calls Lord Ashbane "pa," and "father," his adoptive father still sees Nail as another stallion's son.

Nail tries not to let this hurt him. He's a loner after all, more a dark uncle to his half-brothers than one of their own. But in the dark of the woods, hunting and hunted by turns, his doubts still prickle on the back of his neck...