Ollowyn knocked at the door to the two story house that was master Karthan’s.

Immediately the voice of the bald swordsman called out. “Darling, can you open the door?.. Thank you.”

The heavy wooden door opened rather slowly and a small three year old girl showed up.

“Ollo!” The little one called out excitedly as she ran towards Ollowyn to hug him.

Ollowyn made sure to keep the axe as far away as possible and knelt down. He let her hug him at the neck and picked her up with his right arm.

“Hei, Sarafina? Slept well?” He asked cheerfully.

“Mmh!” The tiny girl replied before Ollowyn entered with her.

Karthan sat at the dinner table, his bald head and grey-brown beard looking like always, while Alissa stood in the kitchen, opening some eggs into a bowl. Her stomach had grown again and she was humming cheerfully. When she noticed him, she greeted him with the expected question. “Did you eat anything yet, Ollowyn? Do you want some scrambled eggs?”

“No I haven’t eaten yet. That would be great, thanks.” Ollowyn sat down with Sarafina at the table and helped her to drape a small piece of bread with thin slices of cheese.

Karthan immediately noticed the black duraksteel axe. “Oh, did Iordai send you to knock down trees?”

“Twees!” The little one exclaimed happily. before she chewed into her bread.

Ollowyn nodded. “Yeah, I am supposed to help Ronkan today.”

“As far as I know they are still busy building two more houses. They shouldn't be finished before next week though. Oh, thank you darling.” Karthan Cr’Axsun smiled like a madman, as Alissa brought him a plate of scrambled eggs. Clearly heavily in love.

Ollowyn was unable to hide a grin himself. It always felt good to visit Karthan and Alissa, here he was always warmly welcomed and it felt like his first pack, where he had grown up. Alissa presented him with a plate as well. It was spiced up with salt and pepper and a few seared bacon cubes. Pepper was usually very rare in the Valley of Ending, though a few of the refugees had brought spices from their homeland in southern Valuan.

“Thank you. Sarafina, you want some too?” Ollowyn took a small spoon and raised a bit of the tasty treat in front of Sarafina’s face.

“Ja.” She said before quickly taking the spoon out of his hand. “We play today, Ollo?” She wanted to know.

“Ollowyn has to work today, he can’t play with you.” Karthan said with a definite and strict tone. “And you have to help your mother, Sara.”

“Okay..” The girl said before taking another spoon full of food, standing up and running towards her mother to ask her if she can make Ollowyn stay.

“She is a smart girl. Immediately goes and asks my wife the same thing she already asked me, whenever I don’t pay attention.” Karthan sighed.

Ollowyn stayed for some time longer talking to the Cr’Axsun family before he headed out to start his task. The village was already very busy. With nearly seven hundred inhabitants and around eighty houses the village was not small at all, yet wherever Ollowyn went, everybody knew him.

For Ollowyn all the people in this village belonged to his pack. He visited here and there and spend a great deal of his freetime to get to know the families and what they did for a living.

The lionshare of them were farmers. Around 550 people tended to the herds of sheep, held chickens and a cow or two or grew vegetables and hay grass for the winter. One larger family had specialized with a small lake, where they grew fish and a few smaller families were in the business of cutting and processing wood. They made furniture and boards for buildings or fences, sold firewood for the winter, or simply cut down trees whenever someone requested it.

There was even a lonely blacksmith, that lived in a house a fair distance outside of the village. He crafted metal tools for the village and a weapon here and there for the Iordai Clan. Though they prefered to import weapons from Zenshin, mainly because the smith was unable to cope with the workload alone.

Many of the farming families had alternative business that they mainly practiced in the winter and the more quiet times. They smoked fish and meat, made cheese or mud of lime that was used to build walls.

The life in the Valley of Ending was peaceful, the valley fertile and rich. The village had grown significantly, however, ever since the refugees had been taken in from Zenshin over the last to years. Their arrival had not been without friction.

The lack of free land and the resulting lack of living space had lead to the villagers giving up a few of their farming fields, where the new arrivals had settled down.

The Iordai Clan had stepped in and had to do quite a bit of mediation for that, but after their arrival the refugees had immediately helped the inhabitants with their workload, and the teamwork had brought them closer together. It had even gone so far, that the citizens had helped the new arrivals with building their houses.

Ollowyn arrived after a short walk at the end of the original village and immediately new houses with bright, fresh wood replaced the sunburnt wood of the decade old houses. The refugees were mostly not at home though. Only here and there Ollowyn could spot someone sit in front of their house working on something, but the lionshare was currently at the end of the village. It was easy to hear them from afar, working the wood and the constant chatter of many people. With the 600 refugees that had arrived so far, the Valles of Ending housed 1300 people now. Members of the Iordai Clan not calculated in.

Luckily it seemed like he would not have to go that far. Ronkan was standing in front of his house, tending to a injured man. Apparently he had dislocated his shoulder. When Ollowyn walked closer Ronkan looked up.

“Ahh, Ollowyn. Come! Help me quickly. Can you keep his upper body upright? Then it is easier for me.”

Ollowyn did as he was told and a little later Ronkan sent the pain stricken man with a provisorical shoulder tie back home to cool his injury.

“What happened?” Ollowyn asked worried.

“He fell from the roof, luckily he didn’t injure himself too much. Did Iordai send you?” Ronkan washed his face in a water barrel next to the house entry while Ollowyn answered.

“Yes. He gave me a letter for you.” He gave Ronkan the letter, curious what was written in it.

He read the letter with a raised brow, before he eyed Ollowyn and continued. He seemed thoughtful, when he finished.

“Apparently Iordai doesn’t just send you for today. He has quite the confidence in you.” With this exclamation he put the letter in his pants and told Ollowyn to follow. “Did you ever cut down a tree before, Ollowyn?”

“Yeah. I hit a tree with wooden swords until it fell over.” Ollowyn was a bit embarrassed, since that was hardly a comparison to actual woodwork. It was only raw violence.

Ronkan laughed briefly. “Haha, that fits. It's not much different than that. But you will be better off with an axe, trust me. Iordai wrote me that you will help us knock down all the trees on the land we need for the wheat fields. But that is no easy feat. He really has confidence in you when he says that you will do all the work by yourself. You are three weeks ahead of schedule. We will only start deforestation once we finish the houses and the waterway for the future fields. But you can go ahead of us I guess. Though we will catch up sooner or later that’s for sure.”

Ollowyn nodded. The refugees mainly consisted of families, thus they were mostly children, but there were a total of 150 men that did the heavy lifting after all. Even with a large go ahead he would hardly be able to know down everything before they arrived.

Ronkan continued. “For a good harvest next year we will plant winter wheat. But for the harvest to be sufficient for the whole valley we will need quite a bit of land. I will show you just how much. But it’s gonna be a loooot of trees. That much is certain.”

They both crossed a small field with a herd of sheeps and greeted the shepherd that was fixing a hole in the wooden fence, before they arrived at the edge of the woods. Ronkan followed it to the left until the terrain started to rise up and soon started to become rocky and later mountainous.

“Come here, Ollowyn. See this?” He shoved the dirt aside to reveal the rich earth underneath. “The land here is good, but a few feet ahead it's going to be too rocky.” He repeated the process to show the difference, before he continued.

“We don't need this rocky land. Wheat grows here too slowly and sparsely. It would draw out the harvest too long and then there would be no time to sow summer wheat before we have to sow the winter wheat in autumn.” Ronkan drew a knife and scratched a large “X” in the tree before he started going back along the edge of the forest.

Ollowyn followed along, but one important question lingered on his mind. “What is winter wheat? Don’t the plants die off when it gets cold?”

Ronkan laughed. “No, no. Winter wheat is just normal wheat, like summer wheat. The plants start growing in autumn before the first snowfall covers them up. That protects them from the cold. They stop growing in winter and resume when it gets warmer in the spring. Then we harvest them.”

Ollowyn was fascinated. He would have never had the idea to plant something right before winter. He still thought it was absurd and most likely would only believe it once he saw it. “I want to see that. Can you show me then?”

Ronkan nodded. “Sure. Iordai sent you to teach you something, But first the woodcutting.”

The silver haired boy nodded and followed him further down the edge of the forest. They crossed half the valley before Ronkan cut another “X” into a tree.

“That is 600 meters, Ollowyn. From the first tree with the “X” up until here. Now we go another 600 meters further in. That's the amount of land we need to clear.” He spoke with a rather worried voice. Apparently he was not sure that they would make it in time.

Ollowyn swallowed hard. He could be right. That was a lot of trees that he was walking past. Surely more than a thousand. And he had only ever counted to thousand before. But the duraksteel axe in his hand gave him a better feeling. “It’s going to be fine. You have me.” He said, intentionally confident and slung the axe over his shoulder lazily.

Ronkan grinned. “We will see. You will help us out a lot that’s for sure. I don’t want to be too deep in debt with Iordai, we live on his land after all.”

His land. Ollowyn was realizing it more and more, but this land would one day be… his. He was not only working to help out the refugees. He worked for himself as well. Motivated he followed Ronkan until he scratched another “X” into a tree.

“And from here onwards back to the edge of the valley. I’m not sure how many trees there are, but I would estimate around 8.000. Maybe less. Luckily we have hardly any bushes, since we used that up as firewood when we arrived.” Ronkan seemed worried. “Pay attention that the trees only fall in the direction you want them to fall. Preferably not into other trees. It's dangerous if you tangle them up. Oh, and also when the trees fall, call out loud “Tree falling!” or something like this. Just in case someone is near you.”

Ollowyn nodded. Eight times a thousand trees. No wonder that Ronkan though it was impossible to do. As Ollowyn stepped closer to the tree with his axe in hand, Ronkan held him back hastily.

“Wait, wait. If you start here, in the middle of the forest, we can’t bring the trees away easily. You have to start at the edge of the forest, so that there is nothing in the way.”

Embarrassed Ollowyn stared at his axe, he hadn’t thought of that. But he could barely wait to finally start.

“Come, we go back, you know how far we have to cut down the trees now. I will tell my wife that she prepares you some food, my daughter can deliver it to you later.” Ronkan eyed Ollowyn’s long, silver hair. “Can I ask you something? A lot of us have noticed this before… but, your hair… are you-”

Ollowyn interrupted him happily. “Yes. I’m a Valurén. If you mean that?”

Ronkan swallowed. “I see. So your name is...real? Are you a wolf demon? There are many stories and Ollowyn means wolf demon in our language.”

The silver haired boy shook his head. “I was raised by wolves, but I am no demon. Valurén are no demons. That was made up by your emperor in Valuan.” It was sad to think that a lot of the refugees apparently were frightened of the possibility. When he thought back, it made sense now that the kids had always kept their distance towards Ollowyn at first.

Ronkan nodded. “Thank you for your honesty. I will keep this to myself and I will try to end the horror stories from the past wherever possible.” He grabbed Ollowyn’s shoulder. “Thank you for helping out, like so often before.”

Ollowyn grinned and grabbed his axe more tightly. He could barely wait to knock down a few trees. He felt energized.