The dawn was breaking full across the land, but the sun would not shine on this battle. The clouds were dark and low and the scent of snow hung heavy in the air as he angled across the wooded tableland. The sound of his chopping feet, breaking ice-crusted snowpack as he ran faster than any man he had ever raced, despite having run for a day and a night, filled him with confidence. He was Hush, Crow-feeder, Grandson of DeathSong, Demon of Nearest Sunset and he was primed to kill, despite being sick to death over the slaughter of his people ahead, a slaughter he had yet to hear, but saw clearly in his mind's eye for what it was—the end of them.

This is a sign from Sunset, where Three-Rivers looks out upon the striving world. Father and Grandfather slaughtered the Spanish on such a day. Father and I shall repeat this feat.

He then cut sign that had been very recently laid. The tracks of some ten men had broken off from the main body to take the very same approach he had chosen.

This speaks of a traitor, or of a master scout, to have gotten the lay of our camp so well. Damn, Six-Song and Father are to be taken from front and back!

He began to sprint and then he saw him there, a Pushing River brave, dead with one of Six-Song’s black-falcon-feathered arrows through his painted head. Signs of the invaders fanning out and pursuing showed immediately and he chose to travel in Six-Song’s footsteps as the table of land began sloping upward and deadfalls became more numerous. He and his three men were soon sprinting from tree to tree and leaping deadfalls in a mad scramble to overtake the enemy, some of whom had just trailed fresh blood on the snow.

He soon came across a gut shot brave who lay in agony—black enemy eyes, glazed with the oncoming shroud of death, regarded him from a vast distance within. He merely hurdled him, signing for Green-Eyes to finish him.

Within minutes he was cresting the ridge and hurdling another body that had an arrow through the neck—then his heart sank in his chest. Behind a deadfall to his left, overlooking the camp, he saw two wounded braves scalping Six-Song, his gray-black red-quilled bush of a scalp-lock being lifted as high as possible by the arrow-transfixed arm of a brave too winded to hoot in exaltation, for Six-Song was the greatest man-hunter of the Sons of Fierce Woman, a man who had slain thirty Pushing River men in his lone hunts. These two warriors, tall, sturdy, painted black and white in strips, with red paint around their eyes, and otherwise naked but for their moccasins and loincloths, had left two of their kin dead with arrows in their faces on the intervening ground.

Despite his sorrow he did not hesitate, but cut sharply to his left and charged as fast as he could. The men heard him when he was still thirty paces off. He responded by running faster, a snarl on his lips. Fortunately their wounds had slowed them and they had set their bows aside—for this was the fire group, who would be feathering his people while the spear, club and ax armed warriors would be storming the camp from the other end.

As one brave rose with an arrow in his shoulder and began to draw his bow and the other ducked to knock an arrow Hush hurdled the fallen beech silently as he ripped a back hand cut with his left hand, the great blade held overhand before the crosspiece. He heard the man’s head fall onto the trunk even as his knee—bent from hurdling the deadfall—caught the kneeling warrior in the cheek.

He rolled and rose as the enemy warrior did the same. But Hush rose with SoulDrinker slicing with a vicious forehand cut as he long-stepped forward. The enemy jumped back out of the way and then fell with an arrow in the back of his head. Hush did not wait for his men, but began frantically pounding down the hillside into the flank of the camp in the hollow below, towards the sounds of dying elders, screaming women and fleeing children.

Kill.