Tormund Ironbraid crouched in the wet ferns and watched a horned puffkin nibble moss. The little creature swung its curved horns, fat and slow. His stomach growled. He had eaten nothing since his clan scattered from the stronghold three days past, when their enemies broke the gates and drove his people into the wilds. Now he hunted alone. A chief with no hall, no fire, no people to lead. He raised his spear. A branch cracked behind him. The puffkin bolted. Tormund spun, spear ready, and found three of his own clansmen standing among the trees. Their faces were smeared with mud. One carried a child on his back. Their eyes were empty, the eyes of people who had stopped hoping. "Tormund," the eldest whispered. "We thought you dead." "Not yet." He lowered the spear. His chest tightened. Three. Only three, from a clan of two hundred. "Where are the rest?" "Scattered. Everyone ran a different way. We hide by day. We walk by night." The man's voice shook. "By the next moon there will be no clan left to find." Tormund knew he was right. Fear was pulling his people apart faster than any enemy could. Hunger and cold would finish the work. He had spent three days thinking only of his own belly. That shamed him now. He made his choice. "Then we give them a reason to stop running." The clansmen stared. Tormund pointed at the ridge above them, where smoke would carry for miles. "Fire. A big one. Our people know the old signal. Three fires means the chief calls them home." "The enemy will see it too," the eldest said. "Let them see." Tormund gripped the man's shoulder. "A hidden clan is already dead. I would rather burn one bright night than fade in the dark." They climbed the ridge together. Tormund found a wide flat stone and they piled dry wood upon it. He struck sparks until the flame caught and grew. Then a second fire. Then a third. The three blazes roared against the dark sky. Smoke rose in three straight columns. Tormund stood between the fires and waited. The child slept. The clansmen watched the treeline, hands on their knives. Hours passed. Nothing moved. Then a shape stepped from the trees. A woman, thin and ragged, leading two others by the hand. Behind her came four more. Then a family. Then a dozen. They came out of the wilds one by one, drawn to the light like moths, their faces lifting when they saw him standing there. By dawn, sixty of his people ringed the fires. Not two hundred. But sixty was a clan. Sixty was a start. Tormund looked at the ragged crowd, at the hope returning to their faces. They were together now. And together, they would need somewhere to go. He turned his eyes north, toward the stronghold his enemies still held.

At dawn Tormund counted his people again. Sixty faces, all hollow with hunger. They had come to the fires with nothing. No bread, no meat, no packs. The stronghold lay far to the north, and no one crossed that distance on an empty belly. He knew it. If he marched them now, half would fall on the trail. So the north would have to wait a day. "We do not march today," Tormund said. The crowd stirred. "Today we hunt and gather. We build. A man cannot fight for his home if he starves before he reaches it." He split them into three bands. The strongest took spears into the trees to hunt the small horned creatures that fed on moss. The old and the young gathered wood and dug pits for a store. He set the rest to raising shelters from bent branches and hide. By midday a rough village stood among the ferns. It was crooked and small. It was theirs. Tormund led the hunt himself. He tracked a fat horned creature through the wet ground, drove his spear, and dropped it clean. By dusk his band brought back a dozen carcasses. The gatherers filled two pits with roots and dried berries. Smoke rose from a cooking fire, and for the first time in days his people ate until they were full. But meat and roots would not win a battle. Their spears were old, their blades chipped. Tormund needed iron, and the wilds gave none. Then a boy came running with something cupped in his hands. It was a ball of tangled moss, threaded with black thorns and glowing an eerie blue. "Chief, it grows on the rocks past the stream," the boy said. "There is much of it." Tormund pressed a thorn against his thumb. It did not bend. It bit like a needle and drew blood. He had seen this moss before, in the old days, when the clan smiths burned it under the forge. It made the fire hot enough to soften metal. And the thorns themselves could arm a spear. "Bring all of it," he told the boy. "Every rock you can strip." That night the clan worked by the strange blue glow. They lashed the black thorns to shafts. They fed the moss to their fires and heated their chipped blades until the metal ran soft, then hammered it true. Weapon by weapon, the village armed itself. Tormund walked among the shelters at dawn. His people slept warm and fed, spears stacked and sharpened beside them. He had turned sixty starving refugees into a clan that could march and fight. The village had done its work. Then a hunter came stumbling from the trees, breathless. "Chief. Tracks by the stream. Boot prints, fresh. Not ours." He swallowed. "Someone found the smoke." Tormund looked north, then back at the crooked shelters he had just built. The fires had fed his clan. They had also drawn the enemy.