Concavia: The Holten.

The Holten were the first hunting and gathering folk of the Bridgelands. They are dark of look but for their eyes. Their skin is swarthy and their hair black, but their eyes are all a keen blue, in many their eyes are said to be “Alf-bright”. The Holten stand midway between other plain men-folk, and the Maäliset, being for the most share of the widespread and oft-seen kind, yet in no small share Maäliset. For this mingled stock they are a little shorter than usual men, yet they are stronger, and in turn they are taller than the Maäliset, yet the quicker and lighter on their feet. Their forebears mingled with the Maäliset along their long wayfaring into the Bridgelands, for at that time the Maäliset alone dwelt there. Given this breeding, the Holten now bear the Maäliset’s queer, two-bridged nose. Their heads are like hewn blocks, nigh as wide as they are long, and their eye-hollows are long, narrow slits with straight sides. They are a tough breed, biding wind and rain under the bare sky out of doors, making their rest only in makeshift hide-booths.

After the Teutā herdsmen came down into the Bridgelands through the narrow of Teutāham and the Herride ploughmen came up into it from the south, the holts were slowly felled in the north to make room for the Teutās herds and the south was cleared for the sowing of the Herrides fields. And so the Holten were driven to live in what scraps of wilderness were left, rather than the full spread of holt that once lay thick over all the Bridgelands.

The Holten did not meekly bow to the later waves of outlanders, however. The incomers feared them sore, some even deeming them land-wights warding the holts. For the Holten would cast spells at the outlanders while unseen, setting the land itself against them, then stealing through the woods un-marred like ghosts.

Only with great loss did the outlanders at last hew ways through the land where they might go unharried. The Holten would boldly fall upon the Teutā’s herds, taking kine as they liked and they would lay hands on Herride ploughmen, not letting them go until food and women were given for their freeing.

Seeing that they lived by hunting and gathering, the Holten were few beside the Teutā and the Herride and they could not withstand them all. Though they were the stronger in body and knew the land far better, they were too few to hold it.

Yet a wonder befell. Though most of their land was lost and their way of life was driven into the farthest nooks of the Bridgelands, the token of high birth among the Herride came to be Holten blood. Their Alf-bright eyes were the token of their stock, and their right to be lords over the lesser folk was shown in how hard it was to take the land from so few mighty men.