An Excerpt from "A Treatise on Tracking Prey in Woodlands" by Caedmon Fulcairn

[This paragraph is carefully underlined in charcoal.]

In my travels, I once encountered a Khinasi priestess who told me that the prime tenet of her order's faith was this: that every being serves their god most faithfully when it is being true to its own nature. Long did I ponder on this as I stalked prey in the forests of Wilder's Gorge, for there in our pristine heartlands, barely touched by the civilizing (some might say corrupting) influence of man, where better to ponder the nature of things, where nature is at her most elemental? Aye, I thought, there was some wisdom in the priestess' words. A wolf clad in jewels and a Ciliene ballgown does not serve Eirik; a wolf tearing out the throat of a sick or lame elk, that the wolf pups might feed and the elk herd be strengthened, most assuredly does.

And yet, as I strove to better myself in all things--to be a better hunter, a better marksman, a better woodsman, a better baron, a better husband and father--I was forced to ask myself if such a deceptively simple philosophy could truly be said to encapsulate the experience of man, that most unnatural of creatures. Does a weak man best serve the gods by being weak? Does a cruel man best serve the gods by being cruel? What can truly be said to be the nature of a man? For I have seen the weak take up buckler and blunted blade and go to the training yard every day, for years, until they became strong. I have seen the cruel witness the repercussion of their own cruelty, fall to their knees and weep and beg forgiveness. Would these men have served their gods better had they remained weak and cruel?

Yet by the same token, I have seen disaster follow when men did not honour their own nature. I have seen good soldiers cut down in the hundreds because they were led by a man with the nature not of a general, but a velvet-handed fop with an important father. I have seen good wives' tears because a man with the nature of a whoring drunken cad, not a husband and father, married them.

If you are reading this, I assume it is because you wish to improve your skills, perhaps to attain the mastery of the woods that many claim I have achieved. By my troth I tell you this-- there are two halves to mastery. The first is to know your own nature and honour it always. If you are a wolf, do not wear ballgowns, but pursue your prey with ferocity; if you are instead a fine fat sheep with a thick fleece, then bless the farmer with the gift of your wool, and do not race after the elk herds with bared teeth.

The second is to find the weakness and unworthiness in yourself and cull it as ruthlessly as Eirik's wolves cull the old and sick from the elk herd.

[A note is jotted in the margins: "I am a wolf and I hate wearing damned ballgowns. --R"]