Bor'gazak's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The warriors came at dusk, three of them on horseback with weapons strapped across their backs. Bor'gazak saw them from the training grounds where he'd been drilling Krel and the girl. The riders stopped at the edge of the ruins and didn't dismount. One of them carried a torch. The leader rode forward and threw something at Bor'gazak's feet. A skull with an axe buried in the forehead, worms crawling through the eye sockets. "Krel returns with us or we burn everything you've built. You have until the moon rises." The warrior gestured toward the bone arch at the ruins' entrance, the one Bor'gazak had woven from twigs and small finger bones to mark territory. The torch-bearer moved his horse closer to it. Behind Bor'gazak, Krel went rigid. The girl's hand drifted to her blade. Bor'gazak picked up the skull and walked toward the riders. He stopped ten paces away and met the leader's eyes. "Krel stays. He trains under my command now. If you want him back, challenge me properly—name the terms, choose your ground, look me in the eye when you try to kill me." The leader spat. "We don't follow those rules anymore. Neither did you when you abandoned your blood." The torch moved closer to the arch. One spark and it would catch. Bor'gazak felt Krel step up beside him, then the girl on his other side. Both ready to fight three mounted warriors with a torch that could destroy everything. Bor'gazak threw the skull back at the leader's horse. It struck the animal's shoulder and it reared. "Then you're bandits, not warriors. And I don't negotiate with bandits." He turned his back on them and walked toward the recovery shelter where the fevered boy still slept. The riders could burn the arch or charge his back—either way, he'd shown his orphans that some things mattered more than survival. The horses shifted behind him. No hoofbeats came. When he glanced back, the warriors were riding away, the torch still burning in the lead rider's hand. The arch remained standing. Krel exhaled beside him, and Bor'gazak realized the boy hadn't been holding the clan banner. He'd left it in his tent and stood here as just another orphan. That mattered more than any threat the blood clan could make.