Thunder #2: The Quiverhold.

Feather the arrow,
String the bow,
Dead is the aim,
Of the Archers Row,

Pierce the sky,
Shafts like rain,
Like crash of tide,
The sun they drain,

High from the battlements,
Joined to the fray,
Miss not the Marrowmark,
Shallow graves doth say.

The Quiverhold.

Somewhere sandwiched between the land of the jungle known as Umbria, and the land of the volcano known as Sarass, resides the land of dune, sand stretching as far as the eye can see: hot, desert tan, and laced with many a hidden hallucination.  The Sands of Scorch spans 3.7 million square miles in Mido and accounts for 70% of Mido’s terrain; what remains — as lush and fruitful as it may appear — must suffice to house and feed a nation.  A season-to-season worry for every desert-city council when the complexities of sanitation and sewage are always serious matters to uphold.  90% of any population crammed into a comparatively smaller region of a country can make for that kind of strain.

Land of camel, land of cheetah, land of sand-storms, dust devils and monsoons, land of lizard, land of viper, land of locust, land of scorpion — the belly of the world is dry and from its perils and parchness are its hardened men made.

Bowman.  Bowyers.  Quiverbrands.  Arrowsmiths.  They are the Marrowmark — Desert’s Daggers — embody, they do, both their country (spartan as it is) and the clay walls from behind which they are mercilessly trained.  They are the pride of the Crescent Valley, that thirty percent upon which so much depends, and rear guard against those who would seek to pilfer it for their own gain: death are they to marauders and black shade to those who would dare slip past them in the night to pillage and to rape.  The Quiverhold is entrusted by all with a civil mind for justice.  She straddles the lush and sits as threshold to the never-ending horizon of Scorch.  Climate dictates the hunted here, as does the Quiverhold’s croon:

“Miss not the Marrowmark!  Miss not the True!”

Earned words.  Sung words.

And to the hunt do the Marrowmark wield what every cadet of the Second Thunder has been and is being groomed to master: spear and arrow, sling and bow.  To be a disciple of the Sagitarii is to be committed to its discipline, and to be committed to its discpline is to always have one eye open — sights set, set square.  There is no sleep for the Marrowmark.  They forgo rest for as long as the situation demands.  Does the Sagitarii ever run low?  Is there suddenly something its mighty broadheads cannot pierce?  Triunes forbid!  She is god-born and from her a Marrowmark can push way beyond the bounds of most men’s flesh.  She is the Qiverhold! — its reason, its soul, its compass.  No other weapon stocks the armory, no other Wielder fills its shelves.  Those who use her are as much replenished by her as their quivers are magically refilled.

So word to the wise.  Piss not the Marrowmark.  They may be endowed with not needing much sleep, but magic always has its consequences.  Like irritability.  And you know what they say about irritability.  It’s a bitch in the hands of a trigger-happy bowman.  Take it from someone who knows.  An arrow to the neck isn’t something you easily survive without splinters.

Inkling #28:
What is the Seven Thunders?  Land of sand, land of fountain, before the Crescent and on the Scorch.  Miss not the Marrowmark, stays true their aim.  This be the Quiverhold!  And arrows drawn their foes are claimed!  Long is the reach of the Second of Seven and long is the line of the Archer’s Row.