I can tell they trust me now. They sit close, voices low, trading short answers and shy jokes as we get to know each other. They still don't know I'm my clan's war-chief; if they did, we probably wouldn't have made it this far. Under the cold night sky by the pond, moonlight turns wet skin into thin bands of silver. I read them the way I'd read tracks in mud, where the weight falls, what makes them tense, what makes their eyes soften.
I ask for their names, but first I offer mine. "My name is Ragno, a great warrior," I say without flourish. "And you?" My voice stays even. Two of them keep their distance behind their eyes. Desire is there, plain and unhidden, but they don't want to speak. They glance at one another, blink, then look back at me with a flicker at the corner of their mouths that gives them away.
The dark-haired one who speaks most finally answers. "My name is Myr," she says, voice soft as the night. "I work leather in our village. The hunters bring hides; I shape them into clothing." As she speaks my name, she leans closer, barely enough for warmth to cross the gap. The other two hover just behind, their eyes returning to us in quick, curious loops. Myr's breath grazes my cheek. The nearness feels natural and dangerous at once. A simple thought presses at the back of my skull: I could have them. I push it aside. First I need answers.
The hunter. Who was he?
I let silence thicken, then I break it cleanly. "Two nights ago, while we were at the pond, two of your hunters ambushed us," I say. "I had to kill one, self-defense. The other died too; I don't know how. I'm trying to learn who they were. Will you help me?" The words drop like a stone into still water; ripples cross Myr's eyes. I add the weight I need: I am fair, I say; if wrong was done, I will find the one truly responsible and make it right. Promise and threat, balanced on a blade.
Something will happen between Myr and me. The others pull a step back, but she holds her ground as if saying, without speaking, I will do what you ask. Her gaze isn't naïve; it's decided. She's drawn to me, and I'm not immune to her either. I tell her I will show her the head on our village stake. The words chill her, and for an instant her arms fold across her chest. But I don't know the full truth any more than she does. She nods anyway.
We go. The other two drift away into the trees, and Myr and I walk alone, the night breathing around us. Dawn presses at the horizon but the darkness still holds. The path is a quiet echo of our footsteps and the whisper of leaves. My spears ride my back. Myr's shadow moves beside me, long and slim, keeping the rhythm of my stride.
At the edge of our settlement she sees the ring of sharpened logs and pauses, surprised. "These are to keep us out?" she asks with a small smile that doesn't reach her eyes.
"I don't know you," I say. "I don't know what you can do. We attacked you, and now we have to be ready for you to attack us." I don't raise my voice. The truth is steady.
Myr steps closer, close enough that her breath fogs between us. "We attacked each other yesterday," she says, "but you're calm with me. Not afraid. Why?"
"You think I'm a great warrior," I say, "but you also think I'm not a bad man."
"You're like us," she answers. "Trying to survive."
At the gate I keep her waiting in darkness, shielding her from the spike where the head is mounted. I walk ahead, lift it free, cold bone, the weight of a life snatched short, and bring it back. "Don't be afraid," I tell her. "Just tell me who he was." She nods once.
I show her. The sound leaves her body. She knows him; I can see it in the way her pupils widen and fix, in the way her throat works without sound. Her eyes fill, then harden. She doesn't speak. She turns and runs toward the trees, fast. I don't chase her. Fear can crush a deer; pressure can ruin a witness. Whoever he was, he mattered to her. That is enough for now.
I do not put the head back on the stake. I carry it into my tent, wrap it, and hide it in shadow. By the time I tie the flap closed, dawn is washing the village in a thin red. People stir. Smoke lifts. The ache behind my eyes says I've been awake too long. Answers still hang out of reach.
I seek Pre, our chieftain. He moves around the square, measuring fences, scanning faces, quiet but watchful. "I need to speak," I say. He nods and leads me to his cave. Only the two of us enter.
The cave breathes cold stone. I don't bother with courtesy. "I won't drag this out," I say. "Tell me who the hunter was." He looks past my shoulder at the rock. Changes the subject. Talks of sentries. Of repairs. Of nothing. I ask again, and he turns the answer away a second time, then a third. His eyes shift, then settle on me, then shift again.
"Today I met three women from the other tribe," I say, keeping my voice level. "We spoke. When I asked, they told me who he was. I want to hear it from you. As the war-chief of this clan, you owe me the truth."
He flinches like I slapped him, pupils widening, hands twitching once before he laces them behind his back. He paces, jaw tight. Finally he rounds on me, voice rising. "You came yesterday as a scout. Remember your place." The words are meant to cut. They don't.
"I've already proved myself," I say. "I lead your fighters. If you refuse, I'll ask you again in the square, before everyone." There's no threat in my tone, just the promise of daylight.
Something shifts behind his eyes, small and dark. I feel it a heartbeat before it happens: the air changing, a weight moving wrong.
Pain explodes at the base of my skull. A blow from behind, clean and heavy, like a rock dropped from height. My knees fail. The world narrows to a tunnel of stone and smoke. I fall, the cave floor rushing up to meet me, grit grinding my cheek. Breath leaves me and doesn't quite return. The chieftain's shadow flickers, then splits into two, then into darkness.
Sound thins. The cold stone smells like damp ash and old blood. The last thing I hear is the echo of someone's breath bouncing off the cave wall, sharp and quick and not mine.
Everything fades.
The darkness lifts and settles, lifts and settles, as if the night itself breathes. In that tide I feel it, the same tightness I felt by the pond when Myr chose to trust me, when words and presence did more than any spear. Something in me has stepped forward again. Not the strength to lift a boulder, not the endurance to run down a boar, but the gravity that turns faces toward me and loosens tongues. It isn't new. It's deeper.
Before the world goes, a few images cling like burrs to fur: Myr's face when she saw the head; the way she pivoted without a word; the shame in Pre's eyes buried under fury; the feeling of the village watching, even when no one could see us in the cave. Answers are close. Close enough that someone thought a stone to the skull would keep them from me.
My head throbs in slow, heavy beats. Each beat pushes me deeper, and each beat carries a thin wire of anger that I will coil and keep for when I wake. When I wake.
And then nothing.