Ossurnae
The smallest and by far the fastest, nine to ten feet and lean with it, dark brown with a pale band along each flank, low to the ground and appallingly strong for the size. They are the walkers.
They are the only Ossurn other peoples meet regularly and they are consequently the whole species' reputation. They do not stop, they do not turn back, and the frontier saying is that if an Ossurnae is coming, whatever is behind it is worse.
Body
Nine to ten feet and lean with it, dark brown with a pale band along each flank, low to the ground and appallingly strong for the size. The coat is the shared feather-fur, branched and branching, and it is also an instrument: the hair lies over in a wind and an Ossurnae reads direction and strength off the lay of its own shoulder without looking, which is how a walker holds a line in a whiteout with nothing else to steer by.
The body runs at a low idle, banks fat and turns food over across days rather than hours, so a walker can go a long way on very little and then eat an extraordinary amount at once. The walk looks unhurried and covers forty miles in a day.
Country
The ice roads and the ash roads, walked rather than built, kept open in the worst months by this line, and they are the reason the frontier peoples of the world can send word at all. A road walked by Ossurn for six thousand years is a packed lane a yard below the country either side of it, and in summer thaw it shows as a green line across white ground.
They are the road-keepers, the scouts, and the ones who cross two hundred miles of white country alone in midwinter carrying word and a bolt of cloth.
Regard
A frontier town with an Ossurn holding upcountry of it will feed a walker, house a walker and lie to a tax officer for a walker without discussion, and the walker in question is almost always an Ossurnae, because the other two lines travel least.
The cloth goes with them and the cloth is given. Offer coin for it and a walker will hand over the wool and refuse the coin, which is the most frustrating trading relationship in the world and has made the whole people beloved in every frontier district they touch.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Where the ice roads and ash roads run
- How word is carried and in what form, given that a walker carries nothing but cloth
- What an Ossurnae does when the road is cut
- Whether any other people has ever walked a road with them