Two more weeks and we arrived at Areskit, or rather the site where Areskit had been. The wagons were gone, the palisade was missing. The area around was heavily trampled, grass churned into mud in a large blank circle that had been the camp.

“Huh. He moved early. You think he hopes we’re gone?” asked Hatrikilo. I was standing surveying the site from a low rise with the two older men in the party. The warriors were spread out around us, a few hundred metres out.

“Trikilo, you’ve felt the chill. It could be that he was justified,” said Kril dubiously. Hatrikilo snorted.

“You believe that?” he asked quietly, turning a harsh look on Kril. The old man shook his head.

“What is the significance?” I asked. “I don’t know your customs.”

“He has moved a moon too soon. They shouldn’t have set off until the middle of the tenth cycle. If he’s moved now he’s taking the yearlings with him and will have to cull on the road, or more likely, at the winter pasture. Bad fortune, that. The blood infects the grass and brings disease. Hakubin fears the influence we would have if we returned with the tusks Kril set out for so he ran south early.”

“Why? How does it help him?” I asked. I still didn’t understand.

“The tusks are the issue. They are incredibly valuable to the shit-sitters. Every few years we might bring back a pair of tusks, one mastodon. The Hatrik clan will gain a lot of wealth and respect across the winter if we can trade the ivory for new animals and metal. Hakubin only let us go because it was late in the season. He didn’t expect us to return. That and he was distracted by the horse-fuckers death. Jytik was one of his best fighters,” said Kril.

“Killing those things wasn’t that hard?” I wondered.

“Not for you, Shikrakyn. Usually we spend days chasing a straggler down till it dies of exhaustion. We don’t kill them in a handful of blows because we are mortal men, fool.” Hatrikilo snapped. A fair point, I supposed.

“We’re ragged and tired, we don’t make an impressive sight,” I observed to change the topic from their belief that I was a kind of demi-god. All our tunics were soiled and tattered. We had all lost weight, although corded muscles had replaced whatever fat we had carried before.

“Pah. Spoken like a shit-sitter. A day in town and we’d be looking fine and richer than the main Haku branch plus their allies combined. If you own the herds you decide who rules. It’s the way the world works.” Kril spat to one side.

“So your plan is an economic takeover? I was expecting something more… violent.”

“We aren’t savages like the Koprigyn’s. Those bastards eat the old King's heart. Slice it into slivers and share it out raw to the warriors of the new King. The old King’s warriors are fed to pigs and dogs.” Hatrikilo’s voice was cold and distant. “There’ll be some killing but our traditions serve to maintain the strength of the tribe, not waste it through infighting.”

“Why did we bring the women?” I had asked this question often when what I’d come to think of as “the command team” had our little meetings. Hatrikilo, Kril and myself were the primary members but periodically the Fangs would attend as well. I approved overall, junior officers should be privy to the thoughts of the senior leadership, but it made the impromptu meetings lengthy and rambling as the warriors bantered with each other and refused to stick to the point.

“Fayala was pledged to Hakudan. The boy is cruel and spoiled but it would resolve the differences between the families that have festered for seasons. Hatrik and Haku would be united through Fayala’s sons. She was against the idea, naturally. This old rascal convinced me that bringing her and her friends along would allow Hakubin to find another poor girl to fill the role and he managed to talk my brother into believing it as well,” Hatrikilo finally explained.

“But why wouldn’t he just wait for her to return if it was politically important to bring the families together?” I asked.

“The boy comes of age soon and Hakubin was hoping we wouldn’t return at all. That would weaken the Hatrik family enough to rob us of our influence. Even if we did return, hunting three great-tusks ought to have taken weeks or months in the tundra; not a couple of days. We wouldn’t have returned before spring and Hakuban will come of age in the new year. He needs a wife before we get back? Time to find a new wife.” Kril replied.

“He’s a fucking kid! He needs toy swords to play with, not a wife!” I laughed.

“He’s thirteen winters old in the second moon next year. That makes him an adult and he would have to go on Koryolis. As a noble his wife is usually pledged before he departs.”

“Did Graben have a wife waiting for him?” I asked, potential regret ran through my mind at the thought of it. I had begun to wish that Graben had not been mortally wounded. In hindsight I’d begun to think of him as an exemplar of his people who would have been a valuable ally.

“He did. She’s been travelling with us.” Hatrikilo replied.

“Fayala?” I wondered aloud and the older men both cackled nastily. Hatrikilo was learning bad habits from Kril it seemed and I suspected they had plans for my love life that left me feeling at best awkward.

“No, dolt. Haylin was pledged to him. That girl has a taste for bastards it seems,” Kril cackled. Everything I learned about these people left me more confused. Were Graben and Jandak technically nobles, despite being illegitimate? How the hell did it work for the common boys who returned from Koryolis? Did they auction off the women for the raid loot or something? Questions for another time. I couldn’t escape the thought that the hazel eyes that haunted me “belonged” to the obnoxious little prick who’d pelted me with shit while I hung half dead on the end of a wagon.

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“How long until we can catch up?” I asked. I needed time to prepare more enchanted items, time to gather more souls and gain more strength. Time to train my Fangs and turn my warriors into future leaders. I could feel a confluence of events coming that would ripple outwards into my future. There would never be enough time.

“Mighty hunter, they have left a road for us to follow,” said Kril sarcastically, pointing at the tramped down grass the tribe had left in their wake. “The wagons are slow. It will depend on how long ago they departed but we should be able to re-join the tribe in a week or so.”

“We should get moving. We’re fast, they’re slow. We need to catch them before they reach the winter pastures and the traders set out,” Hatikilo said. He began calling orders out, his voice echoing across the plains that in my head should still house the hustle and bustle of the small, semi-mobile town. Cries and waved spears confirmed he’d been heard and we began the chase.

We moved swiftly during the day but stopped and made proper camps each night. Each day we started early and didn’t stop until the sun was beginning to set. Walking had become the norm for me now. I suspected it would feel strange and uncomfortable to stay in one place for more than a single night.

I began to experiment with my enchanted rocks and teeth. Each warrior was issued with a bracelet of three animal teeth set equidistantly around a loop of leather. Each tooth had three charges of a spell. One for size, one for mass and one for enhancement. During the evening training sessions I would sit to one side as the warriors fought each other, learning to use their trinkets effectively, and flick pebbles to unexpectedly alter their weight or size. Making them smaller or larger was the hardest for them to master and watching a man grow or shrink by fourteen percent as he rushed at an enemy only to stumble and trip over his suddenly longer or shorter legs caused howls of laughter to echo out into the nights.

I had just plinked Jandak with a stone that made him lighter and he had barrelled into Hermune’s team with a yowl of surprise having thrown himself forward faster than he had thought possible. The women had laughed happily while Kril cackled madly on the other side of the fire.

“Can you just make his pecker bigger?” called Haylin with a throaty laugh. The other warriors grinned and chuckled at the popular fighters' expense.

“I think intent has something to do with it. Maybe he can work it out for himself?” I called back from where I was overseeing the training. “It only lasts ten seconds though!”

“Whatever will we do with the other three seconds, my love?” Haylin called out. Fayala slapped Haylin on the arm but her face had gone red from suppressing her laughter.

“Three seconds would give us long enough to talk before I fell asleep!” called Jandak as he climbed back to his feet. He scowled at me briefly but quickly broke out into a grin.

This sense of belonging was dangerous for me. At least that's what all my old instincts told me. Moving through the world as an unremarkable grey man, no friends or connections that could make me vulnerable, had been a vital part of my defences back home. Here the same approach would leave me weak, easy prey. The necessity of community, of having another spear to watch your back, was a simple fact of life when you existed an inch away from subsistence becoming starvation. Improving the lot of these people from subsistence to prosperity would have to go at the top of my agenda.

I continued to slowly acquire Souls each night. As we moved south, despite no noticeable increase in temperature, my nightly harvest crept back up. A week into the chase I had gained another one hundred and twenty three. I was expecting us to see the rumbling wagons ahead of us every time I looked up at this point.

Three more days passed with no sign of the tribe and we’d seen no sign of any other travellers. I began to tease Kril about the inaccuracy of his forecast. He became increasingly bad humoured about it as yet more days ticked by.

We were sitting around the campfire after training one evening, perhaps twelve days after we began the chase and I made some throw away joke at his skills of precognition.

“Fucks sake, boy. This is no laughing matter,” he snapped suddenly. The quiet banter around the fire faded away. Jandak looked up from where he had Haylin sitting on his knees and shot a dark look at the old man.

“So they set off earlier? How much can it matter?” I asked.

“Boy, you’ve settled into our ways well so far but you’re ignorant of so much. If we don’t catch them before they set up for winter they’ll send out the traders to the south. We won’t be able to sell the ivory to the shit-sitters and the whole bloody plan goes to blood and gore!” he barked harshly.

“We could make our own caravan? We’re a strong force for our numbers. Couldn’t the Hatrik patriarch support us?” I asked.

“There are only so many chits,” said Hatrikilo with a shrug.

“Chits? Eh?”

“Tokens that grant you access to the border town markets and the King controls them. Shit-sitters don’t let nomads in without chits and they only issue a handful of them,” called Jandak from across the fire. He whispered something into Haylin’s ear and she giggled like a schoolgirl.

“We could make our own? Forgeries must be easy enough?” This kind of passport must be almost impossible to control among such primitive peoples.

“It’s cast in bronze. The size of your palm and intricately carved. We can’t make them. Our tribe has three, most have only one, if that. Hakubin will send them out as soon as they make camp just so that if we catch up we cannot trade outside of the tribes,” said Kril. Technology, or lack thereof, itself made this system workable?

“Why not?” I asked, looking for confirmation of my suspicions.

“Our only smith is a half blind, half mad cripple in the Jagan tribe and he can make crude blades when he has the materials but that’s about it. We do not work metal, we don’t know how and Sulk isn’t sharing his secrets,” said Hermune sadly.

“Sulk is the smith?” They nodded. “So we trade the ivory within the tribes instead,” I concluded.

“They aren’t wealthy enough. They won’t part with more than a fraction of their herds at any one time and the ivory is worth much more than that. We should be looking to arm our fighters with bronze weapons, daggers and spears, and maybe even some proper armour but if we miss the traders setting off we’re fucked until next year.”

I checked my Souls. The last few days had helped and I was now up to three hundred and twelve in total. Not quite enough to purchase the equipment for a proper smithy set up but I wasn’t too far away from the basics I would need. I had some experience from back home. Mostly using recycled metal and a small gas fueled forge to let me make various simple weapons and machine parts for different projects I’d dabbled at.

“I might be able to help there. I look forward to meeting Sulk, the smith of the Jagan tribe!” I said with a grin. The others looked confused, except for Kril who cackled loudly, his good humour restored, earning a few strange looks from the others. After the magic and training the rest didn’t share any doubts they might have had out loud. I had a feeling it would soon be time to break the prime directive.