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Agron's worst scar came from a hunting accident.
It was mid-winter and there was a foot and a half of snow on the ground. Agron was fourteen, and Duro was twelve, and their father had taken them hunting for something of a bonding experience. It was just the boys. Adelais wanted to come, and for a few minutes Agron'd been scared their father would agree, because Adelais was the one who always climbed on his lap and kissed his fuzzy, bearded cheek and gave him big, adoring eyes and normally got what she wanted, but he'd been elated when their father'd told her that she had to stay home.
“Women don't hunt, Adelais.” He'd told her, pressing a kiss to her head of brown curls that were the same shade as Agron's hair and twisted up into a braid even if they refused to co-operate.
She'd pouted a little bit, but Agron'd stuck his tongue out at her and wiggled his head behind their father's back in a triumphant sort of dance, and then flashed a great smile. Because he didn't want Adelais there, he wanted just himself and his father. Well, himself and Duro and his father, but Duro was okay, even if he really wanted undivided attention.
Duro was at least a boy.
So they'd gone hunting with their father, all wrapped up in their skins that made them look twice as big as they really were since they were just kids and were more thin and boney protrusions than limbs no matter how tough Agron pretended to be (which was, in fact, quite tough. The toughest, actually). Most of the morning had been rather uneventful. There'd been a lot of sitting still, and a snowball fight between himself and Duro that'd started when, standing too still for his liking, Agron'd lifted a handful of snow and stuck it down the back of the wolf-skin that covered Duro's back. It'd gotten him a look from his father that was sudden and severe and accompanied by a stiffening of his body that conveyed his disdain even without him having to say a word. His father was always able to communicate so much with just his body language - a trait Agron had inherited, though he didn't realize it yet.
At some point, when the deer were hiding and probably hibernating and they were waiting for the random appearance of the birds that they were currently hunting, Duro'd wandered off. Agron wasn't sure when it'd happened, because they'd walked in order of age, which was also order of size because they hadn't yet gone through that six month phase when Duro outgrew Agron before Agron caught up and then surpassed him.
So they were walking in order, with Father first, and Agron second, and Duro third, even if Duro had expressed that he thought that was shit. The two boys tried desperately to follow in their father's footsteps, even if neither of them had legs long enough to go even half the distance, and at some point, their father'd crouched low, and held out his hand in a silent gesture for them to stop.
That was when Agron'd noticed Duro was missing.
He'd turned around to smile at his brother, a wicked sort of grin on his face, because this was fun, this following after his father and pretending like they were adults, because Agron was still at an age to think pretending to be an adult was fun and before the weight of responsibility ever hit him. But he'd turned around do dead air. Duro was gone.
“Fucker.”
Agron'd turned almost instantly and tried to follow Duro's footsteps to find him. (Not that he really blamed him, because following their father had become boring about a half an hour before for Agron, which meant Duro'd probably been bored three hours before, and well, they hadn't actually killed anything.)
It was a difficult process.
The snow was still coming down, and he only got about halfway along the path before Duro's tracks started to become indistinguishable from anything else.
That was when the trouble started.
Agron'd thought the danger was gone.
It was winter, after all. All of the animals that made their home in the woods that filled their mother's scary bedtime stories for the girls, designed to keep them from wanting to join the men in the woods, were supposed to be tucked in for their winter sleep, and not up. There wasn't supposed to be a bear wandering through the woods. But apparently sometimes mother bears did not hibernate when their young were too, well, young. Because Agron first happened upon a baby bear, who clumsily tried to climb a tree for the red berries growing up high (that Agron was pretty sure were poisonous, but how exactly did you communicate that to a bear?) and then fell down on his butt, leaving a bear-butt-print in the snow.
It was actually kind of cute.
Agron'd stopped near the tree to watch the baby repeat the process because of the cuteness, but the baby bear hadn't fallen again when it's mother came lumbering out of the woods. At first, Agron hadn't moved. She was sleepy, after all, and if she was anything like him when he first woke up, she still had sleep in her eyes, and thought that carrying on a conversation was too difficult a task, let alone coming after a human who just happened to be laughing at her cub being cute.
The bear did not agree.
In fact, she'd come after him almost more quickly than Agron'd been able to process. One moment, he was marveling at a baby bear falling on his ass and determining that the mama bear was too sleepy to come after him, and the next he was busy trying to lift his sword to deflect the bear and slipping back, on his ass into the snow, his chest coming into contact with the ground and knocking the air out of him but his limbs moving of their own accord in an effort to take care of himself.
Years later, he'd look back on it and realize that was the first time he was aware of having warrior instincts.
At the moment, he just thought that maybe he'd pissed himself.
The bear swiped at him, and barred her teeth, and Agron screamed, and barred his as well, and his cheeks puffed out as he huffed out his aggression, but there was no competition in who looked more ferocious, no matter how much Agron might try. And for a few long moments, Agron'd been entirely certain he was about to die. They weren't even going to find him, just bits of his blood stained in the snow, and if they didn't find him soon, even that'd be covered up, and the bears would have a delicious dinner. But maybe he'd go out with a bang.
Maybe he'd be able to -
But there wasn't time to think about that, before the bear was trying to bite him, and he was shoving his sword in her mouth. She chewed on the edges, and he had the crazy thought that Father would be pissed because she was dulling it, and he was trying to figure out how he was going to get out of this alive when one paw came up and rested on his shoulder, digging at him.
It was in that moment, as his eyes closed and his head rolled back in the snow, a scream ripping from his lips and his brows contorted in pain, that he'd felt her die.
He'd felt the thunk of the spear in her head, and the way the life fell out of her body even before he felt the crushing weight of her crashing down upon him. He'd felt the heat leave her paws, even if there was no way for him to actually have felt that, but when he felt the blood he knew it wasn't his and he knew the bear was dead. For the quickest, most flashing of moments, he was kind of sad because this was the closest he'd ever been to a bear, and the child in him was still amazed by that.
A moment later, though, he was coughing under her weight, and fairly certain he was about to be pushed through the earth and into the ground itself, before his father and Duro – Duro, who he'd been looking for – were pulling the bear off of him.
“Agron! What were you doing?! Why did you leave my side?!”
As much as his father fussed though, he'd scooped Agron up in his arms and pulled him close, pressing a kiss to his oldest son's forehead.
Later, he'd learned that Duro'd somehow not gone as far as Agron'd thought, and had managed to find their father before Agron'd found the bears, but had gone up to him and tugged on him to show him a snow-flower he'd found and that's when they'd discovered that Agron was missing, and Duro'd let his brother take all the blame for leaving.
At the moment, he just curled into the warmth of his father, and wondered why his shoulder felt so hot, because wounds weren't supposed to feel hot.
He was fourteen, and he was supposed to be too old for tears, but as their father carried him back to the house, he cried on the man's chest until his sheep-skin vest had a trail of icy tears running along it, and his own cheeks were streaked clean from his crying. It would have earned him teasing, but the trail of blood they left behind had Duro pale as a ghost for fear that maybe Agron was dying. They'd tucked him into bed, and his mother'd tended his wound.
Over time, it'd healed.
And he wasn't sure why – maybe it had something to do with uneven terrain or the way she'd clawed at trees to find food for her baby – but somehow it was only the middle claw that'd left a scar. At first, he was proud – when there were still three lines. It made him look tough. But they'd faded, and there was only the one left, and then he wasn't sure how to feel about it. It didn't look like he'd taken on a bear.
It wasn't until he started fighting regularly that he'd stopped being self-conscious about the scar. It wasn't until he started fighting regularly that he realized that maybe he should wear it as a badge of pride, or even that he should just accept it for what it was: proof that his body was strong.
Years later, his body would be riddled with scars. But that morning in the woods was forever etched in his mind, and in his skin.