Pentho and the Warrior

Summary

Pentho is a young Greater Pass Stenza woman who, in many tellings, had recently become an adult, and officially begun her studies under a religious expert, to follow in their footsteps. By this time, inter-clan strife had escalated severely due to a shortage of food for the past few years. So Pentho and her mentor prepare for their mountain climbing excursion in the night.
However, a rival clan's war party had caught wind of this and fired on them, killing the mentor and leaving Pentho fatally wounded in the middle of the Pass, where she was found by the Snow Warrior and taken back to a cave close to her home. Pentho awakens in the cave to find the Snow Pups nursing her back to health. With them is the Snow Warrior himself, who writes something in the dust between them. Pentho, despite being in great pain, manages to push herself up and read the question, and explains her plight the best she can. He nods, then wipes away the words in the dust and writes something else: Pentho can stay and recover so long as she watches over his Pups in the meantime. She agrees.
Meanwhile, hunting season approaches, and the situation is still dire. With no hope of being able to feed everyone, one of the members of the original war party goes back to the Greater Pass to take matters into his own hands. Despite warnings from locals that he's already on the Snow Warrior's radar for the attack on the local priests, he proceeds anyway, crucially neglecting his libations at the boundary between the Ice Flats basin and the Frozen Wastes.
At that moment, Pentho awakes from a fitful sleep due to pain in her wound, and immediately realizes she is short a couple of Pups. She rallies the others to attempt to look for them, since she had given her word she would keep track of them, and they stumble out of the cave and into a howling blizzard.
They push forward, despite the conditions, all keeping close to Fire who provides enough light to see by. Eventually, after spending more time trying not to blow away than actually getting anywhere, they happen upon the rival warrior, stumbling around just as they are but apparently so dazed he fails to notice Fire mere feet from where he's walking. Pentho and her party follow the warrior into the storm until he collapses into the snow.
Then, in a manifestation rarely seen since, everything comes to a stop. The wind ceases, and every flake of snow hangs in the air. Amid the sudden stillness stands the Snow Warrior, hovering over the body of the hunter. Emerging out of apparent nothingness are, depending on the telling, Migration, Hunter or both. The wind itself, still said in earlier versions to be the Snow Warrior's voice, explains that he had been deliberately led astray the moment he trespassed into the Frozen Wastes.
Pentho is led back to the Pass, now with a deeper understanding of the mysteries, and resumes her studies.

Historical Basis

The long and storied history of inter-clan strife among the Stenza in the Pre-Unification stage is very well documented. While most of the earliest conflicts were over the shoreline of the Ice Flats and (actual or perceived) access to nutrients for a clan's pups in the coming years, blights and diseases in herds of prey animals has also led to conflict, especially before the advent of food preservation.
Pentho and her mentor are both considered genuine historical figures, and Pentho has a place as a folk hero for several Greater Pass clans, including Jal'sa.

Spread

The tale is localized to the Greater Pass region, where it is considered a central historical anecdote to several clans, as well as containing important instruction for all who hear it.

Variations & Mutation

Depending on who's telling it, the first Snow Pup to catch wind of the rival hunter's shenanigans is either Migration or Hunter. Migration has the ability to lead astray people who displease them, although the intended actions of the rival warrior are considered heavily in breach of Hunter's rules (see Hunting Season and Trophy Hunting). In some versions, both Migration and Hunter are involved, leaving Pentho with a search team of six.
There are also a number of tellings with a highly specific detail, not often shared with outsiders: in these versions, before Pentho returns home, the Snow Warrior removes his mask or otherwise shows her his eyes, revealing Jeshra's key feature. This makes Pentho canonically the first known person to see that the Snow Warrior has five pupils in one eye and seven in the other.

Date of Setting

Pre-Unification Era, "The Lean Years"