“Ambush!” Caidi screamed and took several stumbling steps backward, drawing her bow taut.

Sheilah and the others hastily scrambled backward as three of the disgusting creatures rose up, black eyes glittering, bloody muzzles wrinkled back from brutal teeth in horrific snarls.

Sheilah distractedly wondered how they’d missed the smell; they reeked of rotting flesh and something savage, a beastly, primal stench that hung in the air. Flies buzzed around them in a cloud.

Sellia loosed first; the feathered shaft punching through the beast’s throat.

Sheilah loosed her arrow even as terror wrapped her in a warm, cozy fog of shock. She was a child of the tribes, was used to hunting and killing, was used to using her bow for both, but the gnolls were grotesque, primal, savage, monstrous things that were filled with a baleful and hateful intelligence.

She had a second arrow nocked, but she hadn’t even noticed the first going down, nor the two with it dropping as well.

She took a stumbling step backwards and nearly fell on her ass as she stumbled.

Three of the hideous gnolls down, and she’d only managed to fire once. The gnolls were pincushioned with arrows.

Fialla shouldered her bow and pulled out her hatchet with casual, businesslike efficiency.

Sheilah nodded, slowly realizing what needed to be done.

Kill a gnoll; take its head.

The rest-

Sheilah cleared her throat. “Fialla, do it. Everyone else, fan out and watch for others. That couldn’t have been all of them.”

Fialla went to work, and even though Sheilah was supposed to be watching for other gnolls, she couldn’t help but watch with disgusted, horrid fascination as the black blood splashed and flew as Fialla bent to her task. She turned away as much to regain her focus as to watch their backs, bow half drawn.

She faced the river; it wasn’t likely that they’d come from that direction but she probled the grasses and plants at the water’s edge intently.

“Done.” Fallia called out, and the girls tightened their formation as Fallia rejoined them. “Good shot.” She murmured to Sheilah.

“How many arrows do we have left?” She managed to keep her voice firm.

Each girl called out; they had a little more than thirty arrows between the five of them. There wasn’t a soul in the Redstone that would willingly reuse an arrow harvested from a gnoll’s corpse.

Thirty arrows. If the gnolls had made a nest it wouldn’t be enough to wipe the gnolls out. An ambush implied there were more of them, but there was no obvious sign of them.

“Tracks?” Sheilah called.

Sellia stepped away from the cluster and scouted the ground.

“Plenty, but no idea of their numbers.”

Movement out of the corner of her eye caught Sheilah’s attention, she whirled, bow coming up, arrow fletchings on her cheek. She loosed without thinking, without even seeing her target.

A dragon hatchling was pinned to a nearby tree trunk, her arrow catching it right behind the head.

Fialla let out a low whistle of admiration as Sheilah approached her kill, drawing her sword.

Her sword was handed to her by her father, a blade made from a shard of the tooth of a dragon, the grip dragon bone, bound in strips of tanned dragonhide.

Dragon teeth were harder and stronger than steel and kept their edge forever.

The sword belonged to her great-great-grandfather, one of the last true tribesmen that kept to the traditions even as the men from Stormheim tried to take them away.

Her movements were practiced and sure as she cut the neck away from the head, still pinned to the tree by her arrow. She raised the body of the dragonling to her mouth and began to drink.

Each clan had a totem animal. Theirs was the Dragon; it was their responsibility to hunt hatchlings and dragon pups. Not just as trials, not just as tests of skill and courage, but also as a ritual. By drinking their blood and eating their flesh, they grew closer to their Totem and gained its strength and power.

The blood was hot, scalding her throat as she drank, fingers digging into the hatchling’s body in practiced movements, squeezing and draining the blood from it as she drank. Her mind went hazy and a vision of the riverbank and copse of trees boiling with flames raced across her vision.

She didn’t remember dropping the sword. She didn’t remember falling to her knees, either. A trickle of dragon’s blood ran down her cheek, she wiped it away with a practiced thumb and stuck the thumb in her mouth as she dreamily let the body of the dragonling fall to the ground.

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She took a breath that hurt her ragged throat as the world steadied around her.

She blinked as she came back to herself. Dragon blood, even the few swallows a dragonling provided, was a powerful intoxicant. The rush caused her heart to race, her head to spin, and occasionally brought visions like the one she’d seen.

She picked up her great-great-grandfather’s sword, and using the edge, cut open the cat-sized lizard with practiced ease, something she’d done since she was at least four years old. She plucked the heart out of the things’ chest and popped it into her mouth, disliking the feeling of eating the raw, tough flesh.

How many had she eaten? There was no way to know. Dragon hatchlings weren’t particularly smart. A child of four could lay a net on the ground and a hatchling would tangle itself up in it, and a well-placed blow from a rock would crush its head.

Kill the hatchlings, drink their blood. When you were old and strong enough to use a bow or spear reliably, it was time to hunt the much larger and much smarter dragonlings. One for each year of your life, all the way up until you were at least fourteen. When you were old enough you took your families’ dragon-tooth weapons and you headed into the Ashlands to kill your own dragon and bring back bones and teeth to craft your own.

“Couldn’t wait for your dragonling; you had to go for a hatchling as well?” Sellia complained.

Sheilah shrugged weakly as she wiped the blade clean and rose to her feet. Suddenly she felt energized and alert.

“Let’s see if we can’t get a couple more of those... beasts.” she finished with a grimace, gesturing at the gnoll corpses. She carefully tugged her arrow free of the tree, letting the whelpling’s head fall.

“...The man?” Caidi asked hesitantly. She was somewhat meek and timid in the face of her three older sisters.

“Caidi, how fast can you run back to camp?” Sheilah asked, biting her thumbnail. Ever since she’d started drinking dragonling blood her nails had turned a hard and glossy black, the same as every other Dragon.

“I’m fast, I think.”

“Can you run and tell someone- anyone- about him, grab another quiver of arrows, and run back in...” She consulted the sun, “half an hour?”

Caidi smiled, a lovely, shy smile she only showed rarely. “I can do it in fifteen.”

“Then what are you standing around for?” Sheilah asked with a smile.

Caidi dropped her bow and quiver and bolted back the way they came, her legs flashing as she ran as fast as she could.

“Kellia, can you find us a trail to follow?” Sheilah asked.

Kellia nodded and began poking and prodding at the gnoll tracks.

“The rest of us will cover Kellia. Divide up Caidi’s arrows.”

“Wait. What will she use when she comes back?” Sellia asked.

“I did tell her to bring back an extra quiver of arrows.” Sheilah reminded her half-elven sibling, who nodded.

*****

“...found it!” Kellia exclaimed. “We’ve got a trail to follow!”

Sheilah nodded, her head beginning to buzz from the dragonling’s blood.

“It’s ... difficult to hunt in this forest.” Sheilah complained. “I’m not used to it.”

“I don’t think any of us are.” Sellia replied. “Those gnolls were on top of us without us noticing.”

“The Clan of the Mountain Cat really should be doing this.” Fialla complained.

The other girls nodded. Dragonling or no, gnolls needed to be stomped out, and this was Mountain Cat territory. The Dragon Clan’s territory was much higher up in the cliffs with uninterrupted vistas that stretched for miles.

Sheilah pointed out something. “Think I spotted something...” She called out. The girls hunkered down in a small circle immediately.

“How many?”

“Was it just one?”

Sheilah shook her head. “I just spotted movement.” She pointed to a jumble of redstone boulders. “I think we should take the high ground once Caidi comes back.”

The whole of the territories of the Clansmen were the redstone cliffs and canyons. Climbing the sides would be no problem, especially for the Dragons.

Caidi eventually returned with a quiver of arrows. She’d picked up her bow and followed their trail.

“Well?” Sellia asked.

“Well, what?” Caidi asked, blinking.

Sheilah rolled her eyes at this as she continued to try and see movement, sign, anything.

“What about the man?”

“Duren said it’s a man from Stormheim.” She reported.

All the girls immediately frowned at this.

Years before they were born, the men of Stormheim tried to “civilize” the Tribesmen of the Redstone Cliffs. There were all sorts of dark and depressing stories of that time. Even Davian, Sheilah’s own father had been sold as a slave to one of the princes of Stormheim.

He himself wouldn’t speak of it to anyone, except maybe to Ladria, their mother. If pressed, his face would tighten and he would simply reply “It was a dark time for everyone.”

Even if Sheilah’s father wouldn’t talk about it, there were plenty of stories from everyone else. Fialla’s father, for example, said that Davian killed the Stormheim prince, liberated the Wild Elves, and brought them to the Redstone Cliffs. He dueled the King of Stormheim personally for freedom from Stormheim's oppression and won.

It took years for the Wild Elves to be accepted as Tribesmen, but the elves and the men of the clans worked together and brought peace to the Redstone lands.

Sheilah’s father was a hard man. Strong and proud, he refused to bend his neck to the other Clan Leaders, but that was because he was a Dragon, and the Dragon bent their necks to nobody. But a liberator? A hero? She couldn’t see him pulling off half of the stories that Fialla’s father claimed. One person could not possibly accomplish as much as Fialla’s father claimed.

Sheilah inched over to Caidi and pointed up to the cliffs. “We’re headed up there.”

Caidi adopted a contemplative look.

“We take that hill, and then it looks like there should be a way up the cliff from there.” She agreed.

The other girls eyed the low hill, and then the cliffs, and nodded. It seemed like the best bet.

They started to rise as a group, but hunched back down as the echoing cackle of the hyena-men floated towards them.

Sheilah peeked up from the grasses they hunkered down in and saw two of the hated creatures carrying fire-hardened spears.

They can use weapons?