Thwei'kha Bhu'ja crouched on the ridge and counted the claw gouges on the pine trunk. Four deep lines, chest-high on a Yautja. The creature had passed here within the hour. Four of his clan-kin were dead by the same hand, and the first skull had been cleaned and set on a stone where his younger brother would find it. That was not a trophy dropped in flight. That was an invitation. He meant to answer it by taking the killer's head, but first he needed to know how the killer thought, and for that he needed the trapper woman alive. The wind shifted and carried the wrong smell up from the valley. Oiled resin, wet iron, something under it that made his mandibles twitch. He had tracked the beast north toward its den, expecting it to sleep off its last kill. Instead the trail bent back. It was moving toward the small pine cottage where the trapper woman lived. She was the only one who had seen the thing and lived. If it reached her first, he lost the only mouth that could describe its habits. A rustle behind him. He turned with his wrist blade half-drawn and stopped. A short green figure stood between two ferns, bare chested, a belt of small skulls at the waist, a stone club across the back. Skar'khan. The goblin had been trailing him since the creek. Beside the goblin sat a gray mechanical raccoon, eyes lit pale blue, one paw lifted toward the slope below. Mara Slatewhisk's machine. The trapper woman had sent it out to lead help home. "She's still inside," Skar'khan said. He pointed at the raccoon. "It came for me first. I came for you." Thwei'kha Bhu'ja did not trust the small ones, but he trusted the gouges on the tree and the distance to the cottage. He clicked once and moved. The raccoon ran ahead through the ferns, weaving a path he would not have chosen, faster than his own scouting. Skar'khan kept up at his heel. The trees thinned. He saw the steep shingle roof through the pines and, on the packed dirt before the door, a long black shape crouched low, tail curled, head tilting toward the shuttered window. He threw the spear before it heard him. The point drove through the ribbed carapace and pinned the creature to the door frame. It shrieked, thrashed, tore itself half loose, and fled into the trees dragging a thick rope of pale blood. The door opened a hand's width. A small furred face looked out, then a woman's boot. The trapper woman was alive. Thwei'kha Bhu'ja stood in the yard with an empty hand and a wounded blood trail leading back toward the den. He had saved his witness. He had also told the thing exactly who was hunting it.

Thwei'kha Bhu'ja stood in the yard with the blood trail steaming at his feet. The spear had come back to his hand slick to the grip, and the wound on the beast was deep enough to leave a scent any hunter could read. He could read it. So could the creature. It had tasted his blade and his musk in the same breath. Now it knew him by smell, and a wounded thing that knows you does not run forever. It circles back. He stepped inside the pine cottage and shut the door. The trapper woman sat on a stool with a short blade across her knees. The gray mechanical raccoon crouched by her boot, blue eyes blinking slow. Skar'khan came in last and set his stone club against the wall. Thwei'kha spoke first. "It has my scent. It will hunt me before it hunts anyone." Mara Slatewhisk did not argue. She stood and pulled a clay jar from a shelf above the hearth. "Fox gland," she said. "And this." She lifted a second jar packed with pale rendered fat. "Bear. I trap them for the fur. The stink covers everything." She set both jars on the table between them. "Strip the leather. Rub it in. Burn what you wore at the door." He took the jars. The bear fat was cold and heavy. He worked it into the seams of his harness, into the shaft-wrap of the spear, into the pads of his feet. The fox gland went last, thin and sharp, laid over the bear grease like a second skin. Skar'khan watched from the corner with his mouth tight. The goblin knew what masking scent meant. It meant walking back into the woods as prey wearing another animal's face. Mara knelt by the mechanical raccoon and tapped its shoulder plate twice. The eyes brightened. "It runs paths I don't walk," she said. "Water crossings. Deer runs. It can lay a false line for you between here and the ridge." She looked up. "But once you cross the gouged trees, it turns back. I won't send it into the den ground." Thwei'kha nodded. He gathered his stripped leathers, walked to the hearth, and fed them into the coals. The wool caught fast. Smoke climbed the chimney with his old scent inside it. When he stepped out of the cottage he smelled of fox musk and bear fat and nothing of himself. The raccoon slipped ahead into the ferns, weaving a track that bent away from the true path. He followed. Skar'khan came at his heel with the club across his back. The blood trail of the wounded creature ran north toward the split rock. Thwei'kha's own trail ran east, false and reeking. He had bought himself the first move. The beast would cast for him and find fox instead. By the time it understood the trick, he meant to be standing at the mouth of its den.

The false trail ran east through wet ferns, and Thwei'kha Bhu'ja knew it would fail by dusk. Fox musk washed off in dew. Bear fat thinned in sun. The wounded creature would cut the loop, taste the trick, and come back on its own path. He needed to be at the split rock before then, waiting, with the beast pinned inside its own door. He crouched at the edge of the gouged trees and studied the ground. The den mouth sat past a low run of scarred pines, under a stone shaped like a broken tooth. The smell there was wrong, sharp and metal. Skar'khan came up beside him, club low, breath quiet. The goblin's skull belt clicked once against his hip and then went still. Thwei'kha pointed at the split rock, then at the pines above it. He drew a line in the dirt with one claw. A drop. A snare. A closed door. "I go in," Thwei'kha said. "You hold the mouth. When it comes back to den, it must find the way shut." Skar'khan nodded. He unwrapped a coil of braided sinew from his belt and tied one end high on a leaning pine. The mechanical raccoon crept from the ferns with its blue eyes bright. Thwei'kha tapped its plated shoulder twice, the way the trapper woman had shown him. "Run the false line back on itself," he said. "Bring the smell here. Then run." The raccoon's ears twitched. It turned and slipped downslope, quick and low, laying fox scent in a curve that would pull the creature straight to the tooth-shaped stone. Thwei'kha entered the den. The passage narrowed and stank of old kills. Bones lay in stacked rings, cleaned the way the first skull had been cleaned. He set his spear against the wall and worked fast. He rolled a flat stone across a soft spot in the floor and dug beneath it. He drove three sharpened stakes upward from the pit and covered them with hide scraps and dust. Then he backed out, sweeping his prints. At the mouth he braced a deadfall log on the sinew Skar'khan had strung, angled to drop across the entry once the beast crossed inside. Any weight on the trigger line, and the log would seal the den with the creature pinned behind it, standing on the stakes. They moved uphill and waited in the pines. Wind shifted. The raccoon came back first, ducking into the ferns behind them. Then the sound Thwei'kha wanted, a long dragging breath, wet, low, moving fast up the false curve. The black shape came through the trees on four limbs and two, tail lashing, jaw open. It went straight for the tooth-shaped stone. It crossed the mouth. The log fell. The stakes caught. The den sealed with the creature screaming inside.

The log had fallen. The stakes had caught. But the creature was not dead. Thwei'kha Bhu'ja crouched at the sealed mouth of the den and listened to it scream. The black beast thrashed on the points, tail whipping the walls, claws raking stone. Its long head still snapped at the air. He could not step inside without losing his gut to it. He needed the skull clean, and he needed it whole. Skar'khan came down from the pines with his club. The goblin pressed one eye to a gap in the deadfall and pulled back fast. "Still strong," he said. "Tail like a whip. Head like a hammer." Thwei'kha thought fast. A spear thrust through the gap would only feed the thrashing. He needed the beast pinned by more than the stakes. He turned to the mechanical raccoon at his heel and tapped its plated shoulder twice. Its blue eyes brightened. "Cottage," he said. "Bring rope. Bring the iron hooks she keeps by the door. Run." The raccoon turned and vanished downslope toward the trapper woman's pinewood cottage. While it ran, Thwei'kha and Skar'khan worked the deadfall. They pried a narrow slot at the top of the log, wide enough for a spear shaft, too tight for a claw. Thwei'kha drove his spear through the slot and into the beast's shoulder. He did not push for the kill. He pushed to pin. The creature shrieked and lunged, and the stakes bit deeper into its belly. Black blood ran down the shafts. Its tail slammed the wall once, twice, then dragged. The raccoon came back with a coil of rope in its jaws and two iron hooks strapped to its back. Thwei'kha fed the rope through the slot, weighted with a stone, and worked it around the beast's neck by feel. Skar'khan climbed the deadfall and caught the stone as it swung back. They pulled together. The rope drew tight under the long skull and cinched it to the log. The beast's head jerked up and held. Its jaw snapped on air. Its tail beat slower now, tired, wet. Thwei'kha shifted the deadfall a hand's width and slipped inside. He kept low, under the reach of the claws, above the sweep of the tail. He drove his blade up beneath the jaw and into the roof of the skull. The body shuddered on the stakes and went still. He stepped back, breathing hard, blood to his elbows. The skull was his. He would cut it free at the cottage, where the woman kept clean water and sharp tools. Four kin. One head. He set his hand on the black carapace and felt it cool.

Thwei'kha carried the skull down the slope in both hands. The black shell was still warm on the inside where his blade had gone. Blood ran between his fingers and dripped on the pine needles. Skar'khan walked ahead with the club on his shoulder. The mechanical raccoon padded at his heel, its blue eyes bright in the dusk. The den stink clung to Thwei'kha's arms. The trophy was his, but it would rot before the clan ever saw it if he did not clean it now. He could already smell the change. The humid air of the den had soaked into the bone. Soft tissue at the base of the skull sagged. A pale film crept along the ridges. In one more night the plates would loosen and the teeth would slip in their sockets. He would carry home a ruin. They reached the pinewood cottage at last light. The trapper woman opened the door before Skar'khan could knock. She saw the skull and stepped back, but she did not close the door. "Round table," she said. "I'll boil water." She moved to the iron stove and stoked it. She set a wide copper pot on the plate and filled it from a jug. She laid out her tools on a cloth: a curved knife, a scraper, a bone hook, a stiff brush. Thwei'kha set the skull on the table. Skar'khan brought a bucket and caught the black blood as it ran off the edge. Thwei'kha worked with the curved knife first. He cut the last strings of muscle at the jaw hinge. He peeled the tongue free and dropped it in the bucket. He scraped the inside of the palate until the bone showed clean. The woman poured hot water over the shell in small careful streams. Steam rose. The stink thickened, then broke. The brain came last. He worked the bone hook through the base of the skull and pulled in slow turns. The mass came out in wet pieces. He rinsed the cavity twice. He rinsed it a third time. The woman brought a jar of salt and pressed a handful into his palm. He rubbed it into every seam. The salt drew the wet out. The bone began to dry pale under the lamp. Skar'khan stood at the window with the club across his knees. The mechanical raccoon sat on the sill and watched the tree line. Thwei'kha did not look up. He worked the brush along the crest and inside the eye pits until no soft matter clung to the bone. When he set the brush down, the skull on the table was clean, hard, and whole. He wrapped it in a strip of oiled cloth the woman gave him. He tied the bundle to his belt. Four kin. One trophy, saved. Then Skar'khan turned from the window. "Tracks," he said. "Fresh. Not the one you killed."

Skar'khan's word hung in the room. Thwei'kha crossed to the window in two steps. The mechanical raccoon shifted on the sill to let him look. In the last light he saw the prints in the soft ground by the woodpile. Long feet. Narrow toes. A drag mark from a heavy tail. Not the beast he had killed. Something else had come while he worked, drawn by the wet smell of clean bone. He lifted the oiled bundle at his belt and understood. The skull on his hip still gave off the sharp scent of hot water and salt and fresh marrow. It carried through the pine walls the way smoke carries. Whatever this new thing was, it had followed the smell to the door. "Put out the lamp," he told Mara. She snuffed the wick with her fingers. The cottage went black except for the stove seam. Thwei'kha unwrapped the skull and pressed a fresh handful of salt into every joint. He rolled it tight in two more layers of oiled cloth and shoved the bundle into her iron flour bin. He clamped the lid. The sharp smell dropped to almost nothing. "It's still on the table," Skar'khan whispered. He was right. Black blood had soaked into the wood. Thwei'kha poured the bucket of tongue and brain scraps onto a scrap of hide. He tied the corners. He looked at Mara. "Your machine. Can it drag this east and leave it?" Mara knelt by the raccoon and touched two points on its neck. Its blue eyes flared. "Half a mile," she said. "Then it comes back the long way." Thwei'kha lashed the hide bundle to the raccoon's harness. He cracked the door. The raccoon slipped out low and fast and was gone into the trees, dragging the stink behind it. They waited. Thwei'kha crouched at the window with his spear across his knees. Skar'khan stood by the stove with the club. Mara held a skinning knife in a steady hand. A branch snapped near the woodpile. Something long and pale-ridged moved between two trunks, then stopped. Its head turned toward the door. It sniffed once. Its head turned again, east, toward the raccoon's trail. It went after the scraps in three quiet bounds and was gone. Thwei'kha let out the breath he had been holding. The skull was safe in the bin. The cottage still stood. But he had seen the shape of it now, the ridged skull, the long tail, the wrong colors under the bark. Not the beast he had hunted. Not its mate. Something the first one had been running from, or hunting with. His arc goal had been one skull. Now the ground under it had shifted. He turned to Mara. "How many tracks did your machine find, before?" She met his eyes. "More than one set."

The pale creature was gone east after the offal, but Thwei'kha did not trust the quiet. He sat by the shuttered window with the spear across his knees. The skull of his first kill lay wrapped in the flour bin. He needed to know what the second thing was before he stepped outside again. A hunter who guessed wrong at the door died at the door. "You have seen it before," he said to Mara. She wiped her hands on her apron and sat across from him. "Twice. Never this close. It hunts the deep pines past the split rock. It does not come to smoke or salt like the black one did." She held up two fingers. "Two toes forward, one back. Long stride. It climbs." Skar'khan spat into the stove seam. "Climbs means it can drop on you from a branch. Means the deadfall trick won't work twice." Thwei'kha needed eyes he could send where his own could not go. He looked at the mechanical raccoon on the sill. Its blue lights had come back on an hour ago, the long way, as Mara promised. "Can your machine follow a track and show me what walks it?" Mara touched the raccoon's shoulder plate and slid open a small hatch. Inside sat a folded thing with thin wings and a bright body, no bigger than her palm. "It carries this," she said. "The wings send back what the wings see. Half a mile, then it comes home." He had not known such a thing existed. He did not ask how. "Send it east. On the pale one's trail." Mara set the winged thing on the table. It opened once, closed once, then lifted and slipped through the window crack. The raccoon padded to a copper dish on the floor. Its eyes went dark and the dish lit up with a small moving picture, gray trees sliding past. They watched. The picture crossed the offal drag, then a stream, then climbed. It found the creature at the base of a leaning pine. Ridged skull. Long tail. Two toes forward and one back, just as Mara had said. It was eating the scraps slowly, without hurry. Then it lifted its head. It looked straight at the picture. Its jaw split sideways in a way no wolf's jaw split. A second mouth pushed out from inside the first. The picture jerked, tumbled, went black. Skar'khan swore. Thwei'kha did not move. He had what he needed. The thing was tall, clawed, climbed trees, and carried a jaw inside a jaw. It ate slow because it feared nothing in these woods. It had seen the winged eye and known it for what it was. "It knows we watched," Mara said. Thwei'kha stood and lifted his spear. "Then it knows we are coming. Good." He walked to the door and drew the bolt back one notch. The approach was no longer blind.