Hogog saw the two men approaching. One old and the other young, both scrawny little things wielding nasty knives.

  He ran at them, machete in hand. The young man halted for just a moment, and Hogog was bringing his bde down. He sshed with mad fury, grunting, forcing the two to retreat, tearing bits and pieces out of them. Soon all three were screaming, and as quickly as it had started, he found himself standing above two men bleeding to death.

  Whirling around, he gnced at the downed bridge for an instant. His eyes would have looked for Kaye on the other side — the unmistakable spot of green was there in the corner of his vision —, but there were too many people on their side for him to spare it a moment.

  Hogog knew they would all be dead when a dozen men came running up in their direction. Uruoro was just a few steps in front of him, struggling to draw his spear from the chest of a dead man, while Loho sent lines of red trailing in the air.

  He would be killed as well. Headhunter or not, this was not a duel. They would be swarmed.

  “Come!” Hogog bellowed, turning the other way as soon as Uruoro made to follow.

  Without looking back, Hogog ran away, machete in hand and mind boiling with rage. His mouth hurt with how hard he was keeping it shut, teeth against teeth, but he knew that if he released the pressure, he would start screaming.

  Kaye was on the other side, and he had no way of getting to her.

  The rocky path took a turn left, away from the cliffs edge, and he had no choice but to follow it. Footsteps and shouts were close behind him.

  Ahead, a small fissure broke the path. Hogog jumped.

  As soon as he found his bance, he let go of his machete and drew his bow, nocking an arrow.

  The first moving thing he aimed at was Uruoro. There was no way he could jump over the fissure, not with Hogog himself standing right on the other side. Uruoro half stumbled, half slid his way down and away from Hogog’s aim.

  Farther ahead, at least a dozen men were pursuing Loho.

  The arrow whistled through the air beside Loho’s head and buried itself deep into another man’s throat. Hogog shot again, hitting a shoulder. The target stumbled, and two others smmed onto him.

  When Hogog noticed that Loho was going to jump over the fissure, it was too te for him to move away. The Headhunter crashed into him as he was bringing another arrow out of the quiver, and they fell to the ground in a tangle.

  “You’ll kill us you bastard!”

  Loho ignored his curse. They stood up kicking — Hogog heard as arrows slid away from his quiver to fall into the ground — and ran again, but Loho was in front of him now, while Hogog awkwardly held his bow in one hand and the machete in another. Uruoro was nowhere in sight.

  A quick gnce over his shoulder showed Hogog that some men were preparing to jump over the fissure, but most were looking for other ways.

  He followed Loho through the rocky ways, sliding down some formations and jumping over others. Their path pointed north as often as it did east, and the road had been left well behind.

  Ahead, Loho slowed, dragged his feet — one limping —, and stopped.

  “We have… to keep going,” Hogog said between ragged breaths.

  The jade mask looked up at him. Loho was a mess. Blood trailed from his left shin and thigh, while the blood of the men he had killed was mixed with his own dripping sweat.

  Saying nothing, Loho sheathed his sword, which took considerable effort from his shaking arms.

  Hogog turned to study their surroundings. He could see most of the way they had traversed in his mind’s eye, could imagine the distance and direction. Though no pursuer was in sight, they could still be approaching, and the pce Loho had happened to sit by was not particurly well hidden. A small rocky hill south and another southeast would provide direct sight to them, and to the west a craggy downslope that seemed to lead nowhere, beyond which the nd rose abruptly and vertically. It seemed possible to climb, if they found a way to approach it that didn’t require going down first, but that could take hours and they were far too exhausted and hurt to attempt it.

  The sound of something tumbling down reached his ears. Loho either didn’t seem to have heard or was too tired to care.

  Again it sounded, rocks hitting one another. Hogog approached the downslope, feeling his body heavy. He was more tired than he expected, the exhaustion quelled his anger.

  Below and on all fours, Uruoro was crawling up the incline.

  “Shit,” Hogog let out. “Take your time, there’s nothing to stop you if you slide down.”

  It was a long time until Uruoro got close enough so that Hogog could reach out a hand and pull him up.

  “The small man lives,” Loho said from behind them.

  “You’re hurt,” Uruoro said, approaching. While Hogog had been waiting for Uruoro, Loho had taken the time to bandage his own wounds.

  It didn’t look good. It was hard the gauge the paleness of his face behind the mask, but what skin was visible of his cheeks looked a tone brighter than they should. The bandages in his chest and shoulder were also dirty and spotted with red, though surely not all of the blood was his. He would have died long ago if it was.

  “Can you move?” Uruoro asked.

  “I’d rather not,” Loho answered.

  “We should look for a better pce to hide,” Hogog said, looking around. “That way,” he said, pointing to a spot roughly east. “If it continues to go down, it will be hard to see us from up here. We sleep for the night and look for the road first thing in the morning.”

  “The road?” Uruoro asked, turning at him with a face of confusion.

  “We need to go back to Kaye.”

  “The bridge is down.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We find a way.”

  “How far west is the next bridge?” Uruoro asked.

  “Four, five days,” Loho answered.

  “That’s too far. We’ll find a way to scale.”

  Uruoro protested, “You won’t be able to help Kaye if you’re a body down the ravine. The men who attacked us no doubt were paid to do so. At least some of them will be waiting by the road. It’s safer if we continue east.”

  “Not for Kaye. Not for Aien.”

  “The small man is right,” Loho cut in. “Kaye is smart, and the boy is not bad. She will make them stay away from the road and look for us.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you.”

  Loho turned to Hogog. “I will repay my debt to Kaye no matter what, but to do that we first have to survive. After we do that, after we see that she is safe, you will see the me you’re used to.”

  Uruoro gestured for their attention. “That is not something we have to worry about now. Finding a hidden spot to rest comes first. Hogog, can you send an arrow to the other side of the cliff?”

  “Probably, but we are far from there.”

  “To send Kaye a message. Give me some of your arrows, and you can shoot them to the other side after we’re rested.”

  Hogog shook his head. “That could be too te.” Reaching for his quiver, he grabbed a handful of arrows, four, and handed them to Uruoro before turning east.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’ll look for a pce to hide. You do the arrows in the meantime. I’ll come back so we can carry Loho there, then I’ll look for the cliff.”

  “We shouldn’t separate—”

  “If anything happens, I have a better chance with my bow than you with your weapons, in the state you’re in. Besides, you can’t stop me.”

  “Hogog, I want to look for Kaye and Aien as much as…”

  But Hogog was already moving away, Uruoro’s voice fading behind him. No, no you don’t.

  Tired beyond belief, Hogog felt like the prey. He had done as he told Uruoro, but trudging a way back to the cliffs was a painful game of bancing himself on stones and constantly hiding. They could still be pursuing the three, after all, but still he worried the only thing he was achieving was to waste time. Precious time, that Kaye could use to move too far to ever find his arrows. If she was even going east. If she was even close enough to the cliff. If she was even alive.

  Please let Kaye see this. I beg you. Godsnake. Irina. Kaza’Enashen. I don’t care who. Just please, someone help her.

  He found himself praying to gods who never answered in the past, gods he knew nothing about but their names. He prayed as he released each arrow, putting two-hundred paces between each of them, moving farther east after each one.

  When Hogog started on his way back to Uruoro and Loho, he looked for a different path, having found no ideal pce to sleep when he came the other way. The sun was barely starting to hide beneath the rockface to the west when he was halfway back — he judged to be halfway back, and he was good at that.

  Leaving the other two alone had been the right decision. The evil, boiling thing within him took long to cool down; shame and fear took its pce, as he looked for a spot to sleep. He was thankful now, that Uruoro had written East in the arrows. He asked what the words meant after they bandaged Loho’s wounds, and the boruodan refused to correct them. East would be safer, and he was ashamed, barely understanding, of why he had even fought on the subject in the first pce. If anything, this fury had been a mild one.

  Hogog remembered the first time it had come to him. He was still to face the White Death and he had been hunting with the others. It was a safe way to give the newer hunters a way to learn by watching the older Nagra in action. Hogog, like all the other kids, stuck to the people he knew — Gairin — and wasn’t expected to catch anything, perhaps only a bird.

  Hogog had always been strong, and in his youth had heard plenty about how difficult his birth was, how big he had been compared to the other babies. By the time of that hunt, however, he could only pull a small bow intended for practice.

  The boar was upon them so suddenly it was as if it had crawled out of the earth. A rge, wild male, rampaging his way towards anyone in sight. Two arrows didn’t stop it, nor three or four, and the boar’s path took it towards Hogog and Gairin.

  His brother kicked him out of the way, put an arrow through one of the creature’s eyes and started running. The boar pursued, and it was a while before Hogog realized Gairin wasn’t really fleeing, but taking the beast away from the younger hunters.

  It was a good thing that Hogog followed. Gairin must have taken a wrong turn, or he simply hadn’t paid attention to his surroundings before making his decision, because he was heading directly towards a closed off path where a gargantuan tree had fallen.

  The blood, the screaming of the wounded around him, imagining what the boar would do to his brother with those stained tusks, the anticipation of how much him and his family and everyone else would cry, it all condensed into a single, nasty thing, and before Hogog could think of anything else he was running like a madman, screaming to get the creature’s attention.

  The boar did turn to him, for only a moment. It was enough for Gairin to gain a few strides of distance, but Hogog was committed to running and there was no time to turn.

  He lunged, going above and past the tusks and reaching the boar’s back. Hogog used two legs and one arm to clutch it tight, and with the other hand brought his dagger down again and again, bringing out screams of pain with every stab.

  Hogog was still growling to himself even when the boar fell and the others approached. He had collected a dozen different scratches and bruises, and somehow hadn’t noticed that one of the boar’s tusks scraped against his leg during the jump.

  That had only been the first time. They called him a hero, joked about how he should always hunt melee instead of with his bow, and was scolded plenty of times for his recklessness, but still, that had only been the first time. As he grew older, he also became stronger, more capable, and the fury wasn’t always the same. When it was aimed at other people, it scared him, and the older he got, at least so far, the more damage he could do.

  His thoughts trailed until he found a good enough spot. Thankfully, sleep came fast and easy. Every moment he spent not resting was a moment longer it would take for him to wake up and find the others, which also meant a moment longer until he could find Kaye.