The cold came in the small ways first.

  Frost showed up on the reed tips, a thin whitening you could pretend was nothing. A few mornings later, it sat in the grass as well. Then it caught on the thorn ring and stayed there, turning every branch paler and sharper.

  Breath began to show. Talk shortened. People stopped laughing unless it was worth the heat it cost.

  Teshar watched the change with a knot under his ribs.

  He had come back from the foothills alive and empty-handed. He had watched eyes count that emptiness as if it were a choice. He had seen how fast a good decision could be turned, passed hand to hand, until it was only a story that cost you.

  The leopard had taken the rabbit.

  The band had noticed.

  Nobody accused him outright the next morning. Nobody stood by the fire and said, You threw food away. That wasn’t how the Maejak fought. They fought with looks, and with the pauses that made you ask for what you’d usually been offered.

  Hoden didn’t say anything. He just stopped meeting Teshar’s eyes when the shares went round.

  Varek did look. Varek always looked. His mouth pulled into something that wasn’t a smile, and he went back to his work as if the judgment didn’t need words.

  Teshar let it sit on him. He mended nets. He carried wood. He kept his head down and his hands busy.

  Winter didn’t soften anyone. It made them count.

  The band began to measure everything: the fish strips, the fuel pile, the time it took to bring water when the river bit your fingers. Anything that didn’t pay quickly began to look like theft.

  Torek grew harder as the days cooled.

  Training didn’t stop. It tightened. Fewer corrections. Less patience. More expectation. As if Torek could feel the season closing in and wanted hunters made before the cold reached bone.

  One morning, before the frost had lifted, Torek woke them with the same quiet authority—no shout, no ceremony. Just his shape at the shelter flap and the low word that meant the day had already started.

  “Up.”

  Kelon was on his feet at once. Naro sat up slower, shoulders set, pride still there—but banked now, held down under a new kind of focus. Since the marsh and the leopard, he’d stopped trying to win with noise. Now he watched Torek like a man starving for one clean success.

  Teshar watched him back.

  The camp moved in small, economical ways. Smoke rose clean through the vent slits. Children were wrapped in hides and scolded for putting their cracked hands too close to the flame. Siramae’s herbs lay in neat little piles, bits of green saved against cough and fever. Arulan sat on his stone, staff across his knees, eyes on the treeline as if winter might walk in and name its price.

  Torek handed them spears again.

  “Today,” he said, “you watch.”

  Naro lifted his chin. “We watched yesterday.”

  Torek’s eyes slid to him. “Yesterday you paid a leopard to leave,” he said—flat, not mocking, not praising. Just a fact.

  Naro shut his mouth.

  Kelon’s gaze flicked to Teshar for half a heartbeat, then away. Kelon didn’t spend words on acknowledgement. He spent them on staying alive.

  They followed Torek out through the thorn gap and into the scrub. The further they went from the smoke, the sharper the air felt. Stones broke through the soil. The wind moved differently here—drier, colder.

  Teshar kept his eyes on the ground because the ground didn’t lie. Deer prints crossed a patch of damp earth, edges softened by time. Rabbits had left small scratches and scattered pellets. Along a shallow ridge, wolf tracks ran straight, not hunting—travelling.

  Teshar’s stomach tightened anyway. Wolves didn’t waste energy without a reason.

  Torek walked as if he belonged to the woods. No hurry. No scanning like prey. Not fearless—just unwilling to show fear to anything that might taste it.

  After a while, he stopped beside a thicket where the earth looked wrong.

  Churned. Gouged. Ripped.

  Torek crouched and ran his fingers along a deep mark. “Boar.”

  The word landed heavily.

  Boar meant meat, yes. It also meant tusks. It meant muscle wrapped in anger. A boar didn’t run away from danger. It ran through it.

  Naro’s eyes brightened. “We can take it.”

  Kelon frowned at the sign. “Boar’s dangerous.”

  “It is,” Torek said, standing. “And you will not take it.”

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  Naro’s face tightened. “Then why show us?”

  Torek looked straight at him. “Because boar is what kills stupid boys.”

  No one spoke for a moment.

  Naro swallowed the anger down. You could see the effort in his throat. Quietness was a new armour on him. It didn’t sit right yet.

  Torek gestured with his spear. “Follow. Slow.”

  They tracked the sign through brush, careful with their feet. The prints were fresh—deep, sharp-edged. Droppings sat dark and wet. The smell came next, rank and low to the ground.

  Teshar’s caution wasn’t fear. It was simply counting.

  A boar could cripple one of them. A boar could kill one if it caught them wrong. And winter didn’t forgive injuries. An injured person became a burden that the whole band had to carry.

  They found the boar near a muddy wallow, half-hidden by reeds and low branches. Thick-bodied. Bristled. A ridge of coarse hair along its spine. Tusks curved out from its jaw like pale knives, smeared with mud.

  It lifted its head, snorted once, stamped.

  Teshar felt his pulse in his throat.

  Torek sank into a crouch and pulled them down with a motion. “You watch,” he whispered. “You learn where it looks. Where it listens. How it decides whether to charge.”

  Naro’s eyes were too bright. Hunger and pride made them shine. Kelon had gone pale, but his hands stayed steady on the spear. Kelon didn’t flutter when he was afraid. He got sharper.

  Teshar’s mind ran ahead and mapped exits.

  The wallow sat in a shallow dip. Reeds on three sides. Scrub behind them. Trees to the left where trunks might break a charge. A slope to the right where the footing would turn bad fast.

  The boar rooted in the mud, snout pushing, huffing, tossing clumps aside.

  Then it stopped.

  Its ears twitched.

  It had heard something.

  Teshar looked at Naro.

  Naro had leaned forward a fraction, eager. Weight shifted. Breath came a touch too loud—not a gasp, not foolishness, just hunger making sound.

  Teshar caught his wrist and pulled him back.

  Naro jerked, furious, and his foot slid on wet ground.

  A small splash.

  The boar’s head snapped towards them.

  It charged.

  Mud sprayed. Reeds snapped. The animal became pure momentum.

  Torek’s voice cracked, sharp. “Back!”

  Kelon moved at once, retreating into the scrub fast and clean. Teshar yanked Naro with him, but Naro fought the pull, trying to stand his ground, trying to prove something to a creature that didn’t care.

  Teshar didn’t let go.

  The boar hit the reeds where they’d been a heartbeat before, tusks slicing through stems. It turned faster than it should have been able to turn and drove straight at them.

  Teshar had his spear up before he’d finished thinking. He angled it down, point forward. Torek’s words came back: an extra bone.

  The boar slammed into the shaft.

  The impact shuddered through Teshar’s arms and shoulders. His feet slid in the mud. Pain flashed up his wrists as the spear tried to tear free. The point scraped along thick hide and didn’t sink deep enough.

  The boar roared—an ugly, furious sound—and twisted.

  The shaft wrenched sideways. The boar’s weight shoved it off like it was only a branch. Teshar clung on, teeth clenched, fighting not to go down.

  Naro was right there—too close, trapped by pride and Teshar’s grip.

  Teshar shoved him hard into a gap in the scrub.

  A tusk flashed.

  It caught Naro’s right thigh.

  Naro screamed.

  Blood spread dark across pale mud, sudden and shocking.

  The boar surged past, then turned again, ready to finish.

  Teshar went cold.

  This wasn’t watching now. This was the cost.

  Torek lunged in.

  He moved like a man who had killed enough times that fear didn’t get a say. His spear drove into the boar’s shoulder with a wet, solid sound.

  The boar screamed and stumbled. For a beat, it looked as if it might turn on Torek and take ribs for the price of pain.

  Then it broke away.

  It crashed into brush and reeds and vanished into the thicket.

  They were left with the churned wallow and the sound of Naro’s breathing.

  Naro lay on the ground with his hands clamped to his thigh, blood spilling between his fingers. His face had drained white. His eyes were wide, trying to understand what had just taken him.

  Kelon stood a few paces off, spear raised, breathing fast but controlled, eyes fixed on the thicket.

  Teshar’s hands shook on the spear. His wrists burned. He could still feel the boar’s weight in his arms.

  Torek stood over them, chest heaving, eyes bright with fury that had fear under it.

  “I said watch,” Torek said, low and lethal.

  Naro tried to speak. A sob came out instead—thin, humiliating.

  Teshar forced his voice steady. “We need to move,” he said. “Before it comes back.”

  Torek stared at him for a heartbeat, then nodded once, sharp. “Carry him.”

  Kelon stepped in and crouched beside Naro without flinching at the blood. His hands were steady, already working out how to lift.

  Teshar dropped to his knees, mud soaking through. He prised Naro’s fingers back gently. The wound was a long gash, torn, not clean. Blood welled slowly but steadily.

  Naro’s eyes grabbed at Teshar’s. “I—I didn’t—”

  Teshar didn’t blame him. Blame could wait, if winter allowed waiting.

  “Hold still,” Teshar said and pressed his palm above the cut hard enough to slow it. Naro hissed. “Breathe. Don’t fight.”

  Kelon slid an arm under Naro’s shoulders. Teshar hooked his arm under Naro’s other side.

  Together they lifted.

  Naro cried out, the sound ripping straight through Teshar.

  Torek’s head snapped up, eyes on the thicket, spear ready. “Quiet,” he said—urgent, not cruel. “Quiet or you call teeth.”

  Naro bit down on the pain until the sound strangled into a whimper.

  They moved.

  Slow at first, so they didn’t fall. Then faster because winter didn’t wait for care.

  Naro’s weight sagged against Teshar. Warm blood seeped through the hide. Teshar’s breath tore in and out, and he tasted iron as if it had already climbed into his mouth.

  Behind them, the wallow sat wrecked. The boar’s tracks cut away into scrub, dark and fresh. Torek’s wound would make it angrier, not calmer. Wounded animals remembered.

  Teshar didn’t look back for long.

  Looking back didn’t change what was coming.

  As they dragged and carried Naro through frost-stiff brush, Teshar felt something shift for all of them, whether they agreed or not.

  Whatever Torek called training, the boar hadn’t. It had taken payment.

  Winter had teeth.

  Sometimes they were tusks.