Sometimes, however, he did sense other people, and by their scent and their shape he knew they were indeed people, the inhabitants of this region rather than the traders who journeyed through it. And as the legends told, they were indeed almost black in color, and he marveled at this. He scented their dwellings from afar, and now and then he spotted small groups of men with spears or bows or peculiar narrow lengths of hollow-looking wood watching him secretly. Seeming less afraid than simply very, very cautious, these folk hid, and warily they observed the progress of the boy with the great sword upon his hip and the burnished ring of bluely gleaming metal girding his mighty arm. They did not come to him, though, and so neither did he go to them. Truly, it was a strange place full of unkno
