From infancy to childhood, childhood to adolescence, adolescence to full-growth, the mountain folk of Rekkeršueh were trained to leap from height and land in safety, whether springy turf, fresh-fallen snow, met their patulous soles or unyielding stone, frost-firm ice. Most successful among the lads had for uncounted generations espoused most successful among the lasses, with least successful of both expelled or gelded, till sturdier frames and thicker legs were seen nelsewhere beneath the sun or moon. Leaps that would have splintered the bones of otherfolk, killing outright or crippling for life, were accounted child’s play among the Rekkesašueh, and even their expulsi could reckon to earn well in the arenæ of the plain, making eight-high towers of themselves on the sand, wherefrom the highest would spring, then the next, next, and next, till the tower was gone and they swarmed masts to leap from twice and thrice its first height onto iron plates.
At climbing too these monticolæ excelled, agile and active on cliffs too smooth, at heights too airless, in seasons too frore, for the most skilled and reckless climber not upbred amongst them. Wherefor otherfolk sniffed and sneered at the Rekkesašueh, naming them apes, not men, mocking their gait and frames, mimicking their accent and gestures — though never in the presence or hearing of a Rekkesošueh, whose wrath and kicking catamounts themselves learnt to dread and flee. Nor could any king or prince reckon himself their master: expeditions had failed time and again among their peaks, lured on to destruction by avalanche or frost-bite, which former the Rekkesašueh could contrive and latter were rumored to conjure.
Aye, ’twas true that Amegrek IV had approximated their conquest one summer, turning their own skills upon them with apes he had trained to wield sword and fling stones, while innately skilled at leaps and climbing; but he too had retired in chagrin and sorrow, defeated by an ape-phthisis wrought with adulterated pipe-herb, which his hirsute horde smoked in mistaken prophylaxis, discovering it amidst the loot of a mountain village. And next year, returning with greater strength of pipe-averse apes, he found the Rekkesašueh prepared with horns and drums toned not to trigger avalanches but enmadden apes, whereby, after incessant hours of noise, the creatures ran raving and tearing among their human officers or deserted in droves, downclimbing for their natal wilderness.