When I open my eyes that morning there is a weight in my chest I cannot ignore. Today is different. Today I either live or I die again. My breath is short, my heart beating like a drum. Tension sits on my shoulders, but my stare is steady.
I shrug the hide over my back and strap the horned skull to my head, feeling its press like a promise. I check the spearheads one more time, the stone edges I've sharpened through the night glint in the sun. My fingers trace the shafts; my hands tremble for a second, then steady. I drink deep from my waterskin and tear off a piece of meat. It sits heavy and hot in my gut, a fuel that tastes of smoke and victory yet to come.
Stepping out of Ragno's Haven, the light slaps my eyes. The open plain is already full: men, women, children form a ring that closes around the clearing. Silence hangs heavy. Only the rustle of cloth and the low breaths of a waiting crowd break the air. He stands in the center, Karlmos. Up close he is like a living boulder: shoulders like split trunks, arms folded cords of muscle, a long scar mapping his jaw and neck. His club is a swollen tree branch, jagged stone lashed to the end. His eyes are more animal than human.
The chief speaks, his voice rolling out like thunder: "Ragno will face Karlmos. The sun will be at its peak. No more rule than this: fight until one yields or until death." The words land like a stone in my stomach.
Karlmos meets my gaze and bares his teeth in that slow, mocking smile. Then he moves, and the earth answers him. He comes at me with a swing that would fell a man twice his size. I yank back, the club whistles past my skull, dust and small stones exploding from the ground. The first shock lands in my shoulders and goes right through to the bones.
I throw my spear, heart in my throat. It slices the air and finds purchase near his shoulder, tearing through hide and drawing blood that splatters in droplets across the dust. The crowd murmurs. Karlmos sneers and responds with a convulsive surge. His club connects with my forearm; a burning crack shoots up my nerve and for a beat my hand goes numb. Blood beads where his stone grazed my skin, warm and sticky. I taste iron at the back of my mouth, a rivulet runs from a split lip down to my chin.
We crash again and again. He smashes with the raw force of someone who has spent the best years of his life learning how to break things; I respond with the bite of speed and a method that comes from the old life and the new combined. A knee to his ribs rattles his breath out; a hooked blade across his arm opens a seam that sends dark rivulets down his bicep. He answers by backing me with the full weight of his bulk until I feel my breath compression under it. My ribs ache; one of my side muscles twinges with a hot spike that doubles me over if I move wrong.
At one point his club lashes and the stone scrapes across my flank, opening a long red line that pulls at my skin. Blood soaks the fringe of my hide, sticky and warm against my back. I grit my teeth and keep moving. My vision stutters when he slams his shoulder into mine; sweat blends with blood and trickles into my eyes until the world is a smear of sun and color. Still I force myself to breathe steady, to find the rhythm between the strikes.
There's a moment, a sliver of time, when his swing catches only air, his balance pitched too far forward. I seize it. I plant my spear hard into the meat of his thigh. He howls, a deep animal sound that sets everyone's teeth on edge. He staggers but claws at the spear shaft; his grip, enormous, is like a vice. Blood pours down his leg and soils the dust; he tries to lift, tries to push, tries to stay upright. I drive my knee into his face as he collapses to one knee, and his mouth spits red.
By then my own wounds are many: the cut across my forearm throbs, my side pulses with pain, my lip is split and tastes of iron, my fingers are slick and sticky and slower to obey. Each breath is heavier than the last, but I am not spent. The crowd's shouts are a fog around me; something like a drum pounds in my ears, it might be my pulse, it might be the heartbeat of everyone watching.
Karlmos rises like a trapped animal, furious and relentless. He swings and misses as I step aside, but the motion takes him forward and his weight becomes his enemy. I wrap both hands around my spear and, using the last of my reserves, thrust. The spear slams into his chest with a sound that feels like a bell in the hollow of my bones. He falls forward, club flying out of his grip and skittering across the dirt.
We stand over each other in that silence after the storm, he gasping, face marked with blood and grime, me breathing fire, sweat and blood streaking my chest. For a second the world narrows to his eyes and mine. The crowd stops. Time is a held breath.
I could pull the spear and finish it. The old reflex, the quick death, the finality. The smell of iron is nauseating but clear. If I end him, there is no question, survival but not mercy. But I look that defeated chest, the man who has been their shield and terror, and I see the shape of the tribe, not just challengers, not just threats, and I see Annabel in the crowd, her face pale with fear and something like pleading.
My hand trembles around the shaft. I pull the spear free. He thrashes, blood painting the dirt, then stills. He does not die. His chest rises and falls in ragged pulls; his eyes roll under heavy lids. He has yielded. The chief steps forward, voice booming with a weight I have not heard before. "Ragno has beated Karlmos. He is one of us now." The cry that answers him is raw and sudden, a sound that moves the dust.
The crowd surges, some with cheers, others with the rattle of a grudging acceptance. Women clap and exhale in relief; men set their jaws and look at me new. Annabel's eyes meet mine and there is a small, almost-broken smile on her face. I feel the exhaustion like a tide pulling me down; blood from my wounds beads and trickles across the hide and onto the sun-baked soil.
[+250 XP]
Strength +3
Endurance +2
Skill Progress: Weapon Mastery Lv.3
New Trait Unlocked: [Respected by the Clan]
New Trait Unlocked: [Clan's Respect +1]
The sun is sliding toward the west. The crowd thins and drifts back to their huts. The chief announces that tomorrow I will be formally welcomed, but for now I am told to rest and recover in my cave. I can feel the ache in every muscle, the hot sting of fresh cuts, the slow loss of blood from shallow wounds. My hands shake as I make my way back to Ragno's Haven.
Inside, I strip away the sodden hide and run cool water over the worst of the cuts, watching the dark flow stream away into the earth. The bandages I have are crude strips of cloth and bark, but they hold the bleeding at bay. My forearm throbs; the line across my flank is red and angry. I press my palm to the wound until it calms, breathing slow and even. The wounds ache with the truth of what I did, and the cost of what I spared.
I light a small fire and sit, wrapping cloth around my cuts, tasting copper and grit. My body is bruised and stained, shoulders pulled tight with the memory of the blows. But there is a new steadiness under the exhaustion: something like belonging settling in my chest. The chief's words hang in the cave like a warm cloak. Tomorrow I will stand among them not as a stranger but as one of their own.
I let the fire die down, the embers warming the stones beneath me. I close my eyes and allow the darkness to come, knowing that rest is what I must take now, to mend, to gather strength, to be ready for the ritual that will make a man of me in their eyes.