Krayzor's Arc

Chapter 5 of 16

Krayzor walked through the night and reached the meeting place by dawn. Two great tusks rose from the earth on wooden poles, marking the old boundary the scouts used as neutral ground. Past them, a low cave glowed with candlelight, weapons hung along its walls like teeth. He stopped between the tusks and felt the weight of what he did not carry. No staff. No seal. No proof. Inside, the scouts had already gathered. A ring of painted totem staffs stood planted in the dirt at the back of the chamber, one for each clan that had answered. The tallest space in the middle was empty. That post belonged to whoever spoke for the whole. He had no right to stand there, and every scout in the room knew it. A woman near the fire watched him from under her hood. He felt her eyes find the truth before he opened his mouth. He set his maul down. Then he lifted the dragon skull from his shoulders and placed it on the dirt in the empty center, red eye-hollows facing the room. "I bring no clan token," he said. "My clan is bone. This is what is left of them." He pressed his palm flat on the skull. "I will not stand behind a staff I did not earn. I stand behind my dead. If that is not enough, say so now, and I walk out between those tusks alone." The room held still. One scout stepped forward and drove his totem staff into the ground beside the skull. Another followed. Then three more. The female scout was last. She planted her staff so close to the skull that the carved fox at its top almost touched the horns. She did not look away from him. He had his standing. He also had a problem. He had named his dead as his seal, and every leader here would now expect him to lead like a man with nothing left to lose — and somewhere behind a wall of poison flowers, a wounded fox was waiting on a promise that said otherwise.