---Ksem’s perspective---

I twirl the second arrow to horizontal in my hand, nock it to my bowstring and aim it at the wide eyed teenager holding Raala captive.

I don’t draw it yet (since the longest I could hold my bow drawn is about fifteen heartbeats and I wouldn’t be able to speak properly in that time!)

“That was a warning shot, Sir! Please believe me when I tell you I could hit you in the eye at this distance!”

“He’s not bluffing! I’ve seen him kill a cavebear at fifty paces!” Raala confirms, sounding the happiest she ever has to have me in her presence(!)

The terrified boy points his bitten and bleeding hand at me and asks “What the fuck are you!? Why do you look like that?!?!?!” dismayed.

“I’m from a long way South…” I answer “…people just look like this where I’m from! However, I’d say you shouldn’t allow my strange appearance to distract you from your more immediate concern; I am a man with a deadly ranged weapon trained on you! Let my companion go, let us get our things and leave your forest in peace and you’ll have the rest of your life to wonder about just what I was!”

“I can’t!” he answers, crouching behind Raala as if he thinks that might stop me hitting him “Only my dad would have the authority to let you go!”

“Do you think your father would prefer to have an obediently dead son or a disobediently living one, Sir?” I threaten, calmly.

He hesitates, straightens back up slightly, smiles and says “I… think… it’s about to not matter anymore!”

My confusion at that is interrupted by Raala’s eyes darting down and left and her shouting “Ksem! BEHIND you!” just as my nose catches a whiff of petrichor and my ears the rustle of a bush.

I immediately turn and start drawing my bow but, before I’ve made it halfway around, I’m hit in the back of the legs by a powerful tackle.

My halfdrawn arrow flies into the snow, maybe ten paces away, as I’m bowled to the ground and held by two, impossibly strong, attackers.

My cloak falls over my head as my hands are wrestled behind my back and lashed together there.

---Lorgul’s perspective---

Nurgo and I are maybe halfway back to the hearthstead with our captives.

Brogol’s run ahead to let everyone know to get the performance ready and taken their strange weapons (the dart launcher, bag of darts and the spear with the thousand-knap head) as well as that enormous basket (which, on examination, turned out to be mostly full of charcoal?) with him.

The fighty woman I’m pushing ahead of me is responding to her capture, understandably, by struggling, shouting and describing the exact spot between the Ravening Wolf’s carnassials that she thinks I’ll end up in for what I’m doing(!)

The… not-sure-what-he-is is reacting far less comprehensibly.

He seems unnervingly calm!

Not like when I captured Tava, the Spring before last…

She wasn’t calm…

She was resigned… like she thought death was about as good as she could hope for!

If not for this man’s hands being tied together beneath his cloak and the spear pointed at his back, you could mistake him for someone just going for a relaxed walk in the woods!

When I found their prints, I assumed he had to be a narrow footed woman, wearing some kind of odd snowshoe, but… no! His feet just look like that!

His skin is tree bark brown and his ropey hair charcoal black!

His head and face are the wrong shape and his beard is thin enough that I can see that the jut of his chin doesn’t come from facial hair, that’s bone!

I thought I was tall and slim but this man is nearly a full head taller than me while looking like he maybe weighs three quarters as much at most!

His whole body looks… stretched out! As if he was a piece of leather that’s been put on a stretching rack!

The most unnerving thing about him, however, was the way he spoke to me after his ‘warning shot’!

The look in his eyes, the tone of his voice… I don’t think he was bluffing!

I think he was genuinely prepared to kill me and might’ve actually done it if Nurgo and Brogol hadn’t intervened!

Maybe I should bring up the possibility of revising our policy on trespassers after we’ve dealt with these two? This one was too close a call!

If-

At that moment a particularly loud and violent outburst from the muzzled woman I’m pushing ahead of me breaks my concentration.

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“GIRL! If you don’t. SHUT. UP. I might decide that muzzling you wasn’t enough and you need to be gagged instead!” I warn.

“Oh, Sir…!” chuckles the half Human lanklet from my right.

Disbelieving, I turn my attention to him to see a mirthful smile crossing his lips.

“…with just how fond she is of complaining, I’m fairly certain she’d grow another mouth to protest with if you did that(!) You’d be much better served just learning to tune her out… That’s what I’ve found anyway(!)” he finishes.

My captive falls silent and still for the first time.

I stare at him for a few moments, agog at his composure, before snarling “You’re pretty funny for a dead man!”

Completely unfazed, he smirks “I like to think I’m pretty funny for a living one too(!)”

Not able to believe the absurdity, I can’t really help but chuckle as I say “Alright, funny man! You think your woman would listen to you if you told her to shut up?”

The gangling monster waggles his face from side to side and smiles “Well… she’s not my woman for one thing!… Would you believe we’ve known eachother for nearly three Moons and, earlier, you witnessed the first and second times I’ve ever actually heard her speak my name aloud?!... And, for the other, I don’t think there’s a force in the world that could shut my companion up!”

I genuinely laugh at that.

“Why are you joking around with these guys who’re about to kill us, outlander!” objects the muzzled woman, outraged (not that I’ve yet seen her capable of any emotion but outrage(!))

The impossibly tall man shrugs and answers “If we’re going to die, we’re going to die, Raala… Can’t let a little thing like that stop me from having fun(!)”

I smirk up at him and laugh “You know… I almost wish we didn’t have to kill you, funny man(!)”

“Well, you could always just accept my original offer to give us back our supplies and let us leave in peace?”

“No… I couldn’t.” I state as Hyena Hearthstead comes into view.

“Lorgul!” I hear a cry.

---Raala’s perspective---

My tall, teenaged captor hands me off to be held by two even younger members of his Hearthstead as a similarly aged girl with fiery bright orange hair and a noticeably swollen belly runs past.

The pregnant woman snatches up his right arm to inspect the bloody bite I left on his wrist.

“This looks bad, Lorgul!” she reproaches “You’ll need your aunt to have a look at it later or it might get infected!”

“It’s fine, Tava! It’s just-”

“It’s not fine! You could lose the whole hand… or worse!” she states, firmly “You’re getting it treated and that’s not up for discussion! I’m not raising our baby alone!”

“Alright woman, alright!… Is my dad here?” he asks, sounding strangely wooden.

“Mugla’s fetching him to deal with these trespassers…” says the woman, scowling at me then seeming to notice the outlander for the first time “Wow! Brogol said one of them looked weird but… that’s the strangest looking person I’ve ever seen!”

Smiling, my fellow captee just says “In my culture, Miss, it’s considered rather bad manners to talk about people present as if they weren’t there(!) I know your manfather is about to kill me and everything… but that’s no reason to be rude(!)”

Taken aback, the woman says nothing for half a breath before giggling “You are a strange one indeed, Sir(!)”

I roll my eyes at the outlander’s apparent inability to ever turn off the charm!

I feel like the only one in the world who’s not susceptible to it!

I look around the crowd of gathered Hyenas.

I only see two who are any older than the father-to-be; a man in his mid forties and a woman in her late thirties but, from context, I know that’s not his father and aunt.

The other nine are all children and teens.

Unusual to have so many young folk in what seems like such a small clan…

I renew my struggling against the adolescent hands holding me in place as I see a third older man appearing between the trees, marching towards the hearthstead with a girl behind him.

He’s about as old as my dad and has a thick, curly, clay coloured beard with greying roots and a mangled nose that looks as if, at some point in his life, he’s had it repeatedly smashed in with a rock!

Strapped to his left arm is a thick plank shield and, in his right, he holds the single most absurd spear I’ve ever seen!

It’s thick and about a leg long but it’s handle is only about three handwidths!

The rest of its length is lined on both sides with obsidian blade.

Might be good to slash at the exposed underbelly of a rhino or a bison but, apart from that, it, like his shield, would only really be any good against people!

Enough have now noticed him coming that a chant goes up of “KVORT! KVORT! KVORT! KVORT! KVORT!…” as fists and weapons are thrust into the air.

At about ten paces from the edge of the crowd, the man stabs his fully bladed, obsidian shortspear into the air and roars “HYENAS! MY HYENAS! WHERE ARE THE TRESPASSERS!?”

The crowd parts between him and us and he swaggers closer.

Eyes immediately drawn to Ksem, he observes “Well, well, well, well, well!… My nephew wasn’t lying about having caught a strange one(!) How’s the weather up there, trespasser(?)”

I’m expecting a flippant retort… but frown as I hear none come.

I look up at my fellow prisoner to see him staring, transfixed, on the man who’s going to kill us!

Wait… no… he’s not staring at him, he’s staring at his…?

“Excuse me?” says the outlander to the old man.

Ignoring him, the clan patriarch turns to me and says “And this must be the biter!… You ever think you’d be wearing a muzzle for your last moments alive, girl(?!)”

I growl through the leather and lurch towards him, only to be held back.

He doesn’t react… except to smirk.

“Excuse me, Sir?” repeats the outlander.

Ignoring him again, the man turns and holds his weapon high, grandstanding “Since my mother and father were banished here from the Basin, fifty Winters ago, Hyena has always been a clan of exiles! Of outcasts! A clan of misfits, runaways and reprobates!”

“Sir? Hello?”

“When outsiders trespass on our home, when they come here looking to steal from us and otherwise do us mischief, what is our answer!?”

“DEATH!” roar the man’s clan of psychotic children.

The gravity of their call is undercut by my incomprehensibly stupid companion politely repeating “Excuse me? Sir?”

“Those who come here looking to take back what they have thrown away? To drag those they have abused back to lives of Mawish misery and pain?! Those who would seek to impose onto us the rules that ceased to bind us so long ago!?!?!?… They must be taught life’s final lesson!!! It’s-”

“Sir?”

The horrific man wheels on my companion and snarls “YES!? WHAT?!?!?!”

Nodding towards the man’s ridiculous spear, the outlander says “I just wanted to say that that is an absolutely magnificent weapon!”