Tora Ironpaw slammed his purse on the tavern table, and the coins meant nothing to the men who wouldn't look at him. He was a tiger of seven feet, arms thick as oak roots, leather armor strapped across his chest with a row of daggers. He wanted to build a mercenary company of beast-folk, strong enough for Vinerot's royal court to hire. But every fighter in the region needed a name to follow, and no one had heard of his. "I pay double," Tora said. "Sign with me." A badger-woman with a scarred lip laughed. "Pay double? Nobody knows who you are, cat. Could be dead by spring. My coin comes from captains with reputations." She stood and left. The others followed. Tora's claws dug grooves into the table. He walked home to his mountain longhouse, its weathered timber carved with the marks of warriors before him. He had inherited the walls. He had not inherited their fame. Muscle alone bought nothing here. Then he heard the talk at the well the next morning. A direwolf had killed six shepherds in a week. Its coat ran red with old blood. Farmers had stopped grazing the high pastures. No hunter would touch it. The lord who owned the pastures had offered gold to anyone who ended the beast. Tora understood. Gold was small. The name was everything. He climbed at dawn with two daggers and a spear. He found the beast tearing at a dead ewe. It was huge, its muzzle dripping, one yellow eye fixed on him. It charged. Tora dropped his spear too slow and the wolf's jaws closed on his forearm. He roared and drove a dagger under its ribs. They rolled through mud and blood. The wolf raked his side open. Tora locked his good arm around its throat and squeezed until the great body went still. He stood, bleeding, and looked at the ruined pasture. Then he did the harder thing. He hauled the carcass down the mountain by its hind legs, all day, so every village on the slope would see it. By dusk he reached the market square and dropped the direwolf in the dirt. People gathered. They knew the coat. They knew the six dead. "I am Tora Ironpaw," he said. "I killed the thing that ate your sheep." The badger-woman was there. She stared at the corpse, then at the wounds crossing his ribs. "So the cat has teeth," she said. "I'm hiring," Tora said. "Come to the longhouse." That night, three fighters knocked on his carved door. By the week's end, eleven had come. He finally had a name, and warriors who wanted to follow it. But the lord who owned the pastures sent no gold. Instead a rider came with a folded letter. The lord had heard a tiger now commanded armed beast-folk on his mountain. He wanted to know whether Tora meant to serve him, or to challenge him.