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steps I felt more confident about moving.  They were heavy but my feet did not slip, even on the slimy leaves left from autumn. I left my hiding place and sought some game.
    The harsh early winter had decimated much of the herds and it took me some time to make a kill.  In the end it was the god Vindonnus who came to my aid as I stumbled across a sow.  She looked as though she had been injured and could not move swiftly.  It took three arrows to finish her and I had to climb a tree to await her death but it was worth it.  It was a measure of my new strength that I was able to haul her on my shoulders and carry her home. Once again I felt the pride which comes with praise as I was lauded, not only by my family but the other men, for a boar kill, managed alone, was rare.  I knew that I had been lucky and I made a sacrifice of the heart to Vindonnus.
    The spring leading to the summer was the best and the happiest of my life.  I was becoming the most accomplished archer in the stronghold and my younger brothers looked up to me as a sort of leader.  They say that pride comes before a fall and so it was with me. I felt that life could not get any better and I suppose that I was right for it suddenly got much worse.
    It was a day in late summer and the boys had taken the flock to the hills early and I was helping my father to make a new axe head.  He had become more proficient using the communal forge and the disasters we had suffered only served to hone his skill. Radha came out with our midday meal.  “Those boys were so keen to get out this morning that they forgot their meal and Wolf’s”
    I laughed.  “I would make them suffer but Wolf is a different matter.  Here give it to me and I will take it to them.” I slung my bow for I knew not what game I might come across and waved goodbye to my family. I ran through the woodland trails to the meadows.  I was feeling good and it was joyous just to run.  I knew the pastures they would use and I tried each of them in turn. I found them at the second one.
    “What a pair you two are.  It is bad enough forgetting your own food but to forget Wolf’s? Unforgivable!” Wolf began to attack his food with his glare directed at my brothers.
    Neither seemed worried by the lack of food.  “We came out early to practise.” Raibeart went to the tree which stood alone at the side of the valley.  He brought out my old bow which I had used a couple of years earlier. “We found this in the roof of the hut a few weeks ago and we have been using it.  Watch!”
    Raibeart was the younger but the bigger and the stronger of the two boys.  Perhaps it was his father who had been small, I do not know but Raibeart took the bow and carefully selected an arrow.  I smiled to myself.  It could have been me when I was first learning.  I felt suddenly guilty that neither my father nor myself had taught the boys as I had been taught.  I would remedy that soon. “See the wood pigeon!” I could see, on the branch of a tree some eighty paces away a wood pigeon sunning itself.  I nodded.  It would be a magnificent hit to strike the bird at this distance but I said nothing.” I will hit it!”
    He pulled the bow back and held his breath, slowly he released the bow and the arrow flew.  He had chosen his arrow well and it struck the tree where the bird had been until it flew off. He looked disappointed. “That was well done Raibeart.  Had you aimed slightly ahead of him you would have struck him.  And Aelle what can you do?”
    “I can hit the tree.”
    It was a modest claim but he struck it square in the middle.  Had it been a man he would have hit him in the chest. “You have both done well.  Now if you will take some advice from me…”
    The afternoon sped by as I showed them what I had learned.  When I saw the sun beginning to dip below the western skyline I knew that we were late. “Come boys or your mothers will be cursing me for keeping you out.”  We were a boisterous