Chapter 01

Keredic son of Alaric had never known a time when the lands to the East weren't under Wainrider rule. Some among the elders remembered; they told stories of the shock of the initial invasion, and the clan’s fear the invaders would continue over the Isen river. They remembered how the Northmen had allied themselves with the men of Gondor–those giant descendants of the tree-slayers who had swept across the sea in tall boats and decimated the forest that had once covered Enedwaith. As the elders told it, the Northmen and their allies had fought fiercely, but their fate was sealed with the death of the Northman leader Marhari and his ally, King Narmacil from the land of Gondor.

The Wainriders enslaved the Northmen and forced the Gondorians to abandon their northernmost lands. Enedwaith remained free. Keredic’s clan continued tending their sheep in the western foothills of the Misty Mountains and fished along the Isen river.