I was born on High Mountain during a terrible fog. My cry split the clouds, Father said, and let the sun brush my twin sister's bloody face. So sister is Beam while I am Cloudsplitter.
Father fled civil wars ravaging his coastal country. Mother found him lame, half-frozen among her mountain goats. She bedded Father, saved his life, and when the spring thaws arrived, Mother kept me as payment. Room and board, clothes, a guard dog. Rumors claim Beam, rootless, outcast, now bodyguards trade caravans.
Seventeen years no man claimed me.
Mother herds higher than my halfbreed body can climb. Visits burn my lungs, my heart pounds. Her family herds beside the great ice cap. Mother still believes childhood stories of an ice bridge joining the mountain crests all the way to the world's cap. Spirits wander the earth until they climb to heaven.
I train as a guerrilla fighter. Even now, those who stole Father's estate encroach upon my foothills.
Mother says I am Father's boot, that I follow his path and not my own.
I beat my pillow with a fist and flatten my other side against the ungiving ground. I must judge at dawn. A friend's trial keeps me alert while foxes prowl outside my tent. Whispered into my furs, court-martial sounds terrible.
Cowlick Lesschin abandoned his post during an ambush. Four enemy scouts escaped.
Cowlick lacks discipline. He sings on watch, juggles during camouflage lessons, but he kills quick defending comrades. Cowlick tickles people. Now he may die under the stones. And my vote could condemn him.
I remember my birth because all depended on timing.
"The scouts were caught in a box canyon. Cowlick, were you behind the cracked boulder, the one wide enough to admit a man?"
Each judge, chosen by lot, asked one question. Cowlick stood with tied noose around his limbs and neck, half his hair shaved.
"Yes, I stood behind the boulder," Cowlick said.
"Did you sleep?" A dumb question from Foxglove.
"No."
"Forget your weapon?" Minx braided her hair across her shoulder. Kept her eyes on the prisoner's bare toes.
"Of course not."
"Could you hear our attack signal?"
"I heard. I heard the scouts dying under your arrows, Oak," said Cowlick the joker who had not explained a single answer.
Our red-haired leader, StingBriar, laid his hand on my shoulder. My turn, as last judge, as friend no longer. "Won't you tell us what happened as each enemy reached your position?"
Cowlick smiled. "I stood hidden until the first man stepped one leg through the crack. Then I held my hatchet against his whiskered throat. And I asked him, why must I kill you on such a beautiful quiet morning? I told him that if he guessed correctly, I would let him pass.
He answered, he survived. Thus for all four men. Their companions died beneath your arrows and pikes. Instead of ten deaths, our fighters won six."
Cowlick winked and hopped over the small clearing until I could reach out and touch his blue tunic.
"You have my answer. Decide wisely."
Witnesses shifted and muttered softly in small clusters.
We five judges separated to our tents. One hour to weigh Cowlick's words. One hour to sit and wonder what answer could've sufficed.
Why was Cowlick to kill those four men on a beautiful quiet morning?
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