Though I was first to meet the hostility of the birds, I was not the last.  As we cut deeper into the wood, brought out more trimmed trees to be used for the building of a long hall to shelter our small clan for at least a season, the birds gathered more thickly about the scene of our labors.  Then the children who had the herding of our few sheep raised shouts of alarm, and went in, flailing with staffs, to keep deadly beaks from six newborn lambs upon whose lives depended much future promise.

Finally Gam had to withdraw men from necessary labor to use hunters' bows and keep watch with the herd.  The birds appeared to have uncanny skill in avoiding even the best of our marksmen.  Thus tempers grew ragged, Garn's cold displeasure ever present, as what had seemed a petty thing grew into a constant threat.

It was not until we had thinned the trees which were the strongest and the most likely to serve as good building material that we found at last what was perhaps the reason for that baffling attack.  For when one morning a giant fell beneath our axes it took with it a mass of creeper already well in leaf, flattened thick brush, to show us that the Moon Shrine was not after all the only relic of the Old Ones in our chosen dale.

Again pillars stood, having avoided the flattening of whatever had screened them, as if they had power to hold away the tree.  There were seven of these, near the height of Garn himself, placed closely together so that perhaps only a hand might be slipped between the column of one and the next.

Unlike the rocks of the ridges which formed our boundaries these were of a dull yellow stone, oddly unpleasing to the eye.  Also their surfaces had a smooth look in spite of what must have been long exposure to plants, wind and rain, reminding one of a foul mud frozen into shape.  Each of them bore, halfway down one side, an incised panel on which was carved a single symbol, all differing one from the other.

When our clearing exposed these to the sun there was an instant boiling up of the birds whose cries and circling of the workers were so threatening that Garn gave an order to fall back, leaving our laboriously axed tree lying where it had fallen for the time being.

Luckily, as we thought then, the birds kept up their clamor, their low flights, only for a short time.  Then they flocked together, winging their way west, paying no more attention to what had been wrought.  Nor did they return.  Thus after three days of freedom from their noisome company Garn ordered the tree to be brought out by the aid of our horses.  He did not need to warn any against going near those pillars, nor did we cut any more in that direction.  We all by now disliked the sight of such relics.

The heavy work of plowing the first fields was complete, our carefully hoarded seed sown.  Still we, fieldmen and kin alike, were not easy in our minds until the first sprouts showed, proving that what we had brought with us had indeed taken root in this alien soil.  Now, sparing disasters only too well known to those who till the fields, we would not lack for a crop this season, small though that might be.

Some of the women, under the eye of Fastafsa, the Lady Iynne's old nurse, now keeper of the house for Garn, sought out other growing things.  There were berries beginning to ripen, and certain herbs which the women recognized as stuff fit for the pot.  Those stars over our heads might be strange, but this country seemed in some ways like the land from which we had come.