When morning washed the valley in soft gold, nine people stood by the main fire in the capital of Agha. The tenth, Eneke, was already waiting outside. He had never cared for speeches. He preferred action to words.

  He was one of the first men Dan had taught to shoot a bow. Stern, quiet, drawn tight inside like a bowstring. He had been given a special task: to become the first chief of the first settlement beyond the capital.

  Dan stepped up and placed a hand on Eneke’s shoulder.

  “You know what to do. But if something goes wrong, come back. Don’t try to be a hero.”

  Eneke nodded. He had no gift for farewell speeches. But he knew how to raise a palisade and how to read the tracks of strangers in the dirt.

  The new site lay beyond the southeastern hills, a day’s journey away. A small half-wild group had once lived there, speaking in a broken dialect. Their elder, a man with eyes like wet gravel, had listened to stories about Dan the previous autumn and only nodded in silence. When winter crushed their meager food stores, they vanished. Now the place stood empty. Or so it seemed.

  By spring the settlement was up: ten huts, a goat pen, a ditch and a wooden wall. Eneke followed the plans carefully, but tracks in the forest troubled him. Three times he found cold ashes and scattered bones. The hunters said someone was watching.

  He sent a runner to the capital asking for reinforcements and for a mentor, an experienced emissary.

  The mentor was Sorn. Young, disciplined, and as it turned out, deeply loyal. Dan trusted him. Sorn arrived with two hunters, bundles of arrows, dried meat, a handful of copper tips, and a new map of the area drawn on cured hide.

  He barely had time to unpack.

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  They attacked at night.

  Fifteen of them, wild, barefoot, their faces smeared with ash and grease. They gave no warning. They slipped past the palisade near the stream where thick bushes hid the approach. Eneke raised the alarm, but one of the sentries died without a sound, his skull crushed by a stone.

  The hunters of Agha were first to answer. Arrows flew blindly into the dark. Torches flared. Dan had taught them not to lose their heads, even when blood ran into their eyes.

  Sorn fought with a fierce desperation. He held them off with a spear until he was knocked to the ground. Eneke rushed toward him but was too late. A stone struck Sorn at the temple. He fell without a sound, like a sack dropped from a cart.

  By dawn the attackers pulled back, leaving three of their own dead. One was wounded and captured.

  Eneke stood over Sorn’s body and watched the blood sink into the earth. He said nothing at first. Then he spoke quietly.

  “They’ll learn we are not leaving.”

  Two days later reinforcements arrived from the capital. Dan came himself. He saw the strengthened walls, the fresh graves, and the look in the settlers’ eyes. There was bitterness there, but no fear.

  He walked to Eneke and embraced him, long and firm.

  “You did everything right.”

  “I lost Sorn,” Eneke answered, his voice rough.

  “He knew the risk. Now your task is to survive. And to stand your ground. We will answer this.”

  The captive turned out to be a boy. Starved and worn thin. He did not know their language, but fear and gestures needed no translation. From him they learned the attackers were part of a wild mountain band, wandering hunters who lived by raiding. They had no homes, no families, only a leader who believed the fire from the sky had been a sign that it was time to take whatever was poorly guarded.

  “We’ll show them that nothing here is poorly guarded,” Dan said.

  The settlement was reinforced. Eneke was given the right to choose five new people from the capital. The ditch was deepened, the wall doubled. Patrols became routine. The surrounding forest was cleared back. Another tribe, one that had once kept its distance, came with gifts and asked for protection and food.

  They were accepted. They were shown how to build a proper house. How to cook porridge. How to work copper.

  Above the new huts rose the first standard of Agha: a flat stone carved with a circle of the sun and the imprint of a human hand.

  That was how expansion began.

  Not with triumph, but with pain.

  And pain is what pushes the living to move forward.