Nyra reached the second band’s camp an hour after dark on the fourth day, dust and two days of hard walking on her, and Vhar was already at the boundary rope before she’d crossed the last of the open ground to reach it.
"You’re later than four days," he said, though there was no real complaint in it.
"House Severin sent someone to slow me down. He didn’t manage it, but he tried." She let her pack drop for the first time since morning, and for a moment neither of them said anything further, the particular silence of two people confirming with their eyes that the other had actually made it back whole before trusting the rest of the conversation to words. Her boots had worn through at one seam from the pace she’d kept, and the skin beneath had blistered badly enough that she was favoring the foot without seeming to notice she was doing it.
"Sit before you fall over," Vhar said. "Whatever you’re carrying will still matter in five minutes."
"The report matters, but I can give it to you sitting down." She lowered herself onto the nearest log, winced as her boot came off, and named the valley, the blasting, and the season of noise that drove the animal out.
Vhar listened without interrupting, and when she finished, he was quiet a moment longer than the silence needed. "We didn’t create it. But we’re the reason it’s here instead of wherever it used to be."
"Tavik’s crew created it. We’re just the ones standing close enough to answer for it now." Nyra looked past him toward the ridge, invisible against the full dark. "Any trouble here while I was gone?"
"One scare. It came down to the pen’s edge two nights ago, tested the new timber Riona’s people had already reinforced, and left without pressing the attempt." Vhar’s shoulders went tight at the memory. "It didn’t try hard. I think it was checking whether the wall itself had changed since the first time, nothing more."
"Testing, the same as it tested you on the ridge."
"The same as everything it’s done since we first found its tracks." Vhar shook his head once, as if trying to dislodge the shape of the thought rather than examine it further just yet.
"What did four days of mapping get you, then?" Nyra asked.
"A descent down the ridge’s southern face that avoids the scree entirely, and a stretch of ground on the far side that reads wrong on every approach I tried." He’d drawn what he could onto a scrap of hide, rough strokes standing in for terrain neither of them had walked yet. "No good reason for a Tier IV animal to favor that particular fold of rock over easier ground nearby, unless there’s something on the other side worth defending rather than just hunting from."
"A den."
"Or young. Maybe both." Vhar traced the curve he had drawn without full confidence behind it. "I didn’t climb far enough to confirm it. I wanted you back before I did anything that couldn’t be undone quickly."
"Since when do you wait for confirmation before acting?"
"Since acting alone means finding out the hard way whether something’s actually defending young." He set the hide map down between them, weighing it against a loose stone so the evening wind wouldn’t carry it off. "A territorial animal defending ground fights to drive you off. Something defending young fights to kill you before you can reach it. I wasn’t going to learn which one this was by testing it a second time without you here to read what I couldn’t."
Nyra studied the rough map. "If it has young, the hunt changes. Killing a territorial animal clears a camp. Killing a parent leaves three young in the hollow."
"I know." Vhar kept his eyes on the map. "We see the den before we choose a killing blow."
Nyra studied the map a moment longer, exhaustion fighting the same instinct that had kept her walking two extra hours today rather than stopping to camp short. "We go together tomorrow, first light, and we don’t climb blind a second time."
They ate near the fire Riona’s people kept going through the night now, nobody willing to trust full dark the way they had before the wall came down, and it was well past the meal when the first sound reached them that didn’t belong to the ordinary camp.
A goat screamed once, short and cut off, from the direction of the newly repaired pen.
Vhar was moving before the sound finished. He reached the wall in time to see the same long-limbed shape from the ridge already clearing the top rail, four animals scattering ahead of it in the enclosed space with nowhere real to run.
"It came to us," Nyra said, Thronebreak already in hand behind him. "It didn’t wait for the ridge."
"It waited for you." Vhar closed the distance at a flat run, putting himself between the animal and the scattering herd rather than trying to intercept it directly. "It tested me alone four days ago. Now it’s testing both of us together, on ground it didn’t choose this time."
The animal turned from the herd to meet him rather than finish the kill it had already started, exactly the calculation he’d warned Nyra it was capable of making. It favored the compromised shoulder visibly now, weight distributed to spare the joint even mid-charge, and Vhar read the adjustment for exactly what it was: a threat that had already learned which part of itself needed protecting, and was fighting around that knowledge rather than in spite of it.
It tried the same low strike it had used on the ridge, aimed beneath his guard for the legs, and this time Vhar was ready for the repetition rather than surprised by the change in angle the way he had been four days earlier.
He didn’t meet it head-on this time. He drove it sideways instead, using the pen’s own repaired wall as a wall rather than an obstacle, forcing the animal to choose between the confined space and a retreat it hadn’t planned for.
CRACK!
Its shoulder, already compromised from four days earlier, caught the timber at an angle that cost it more than a clean escape would have. It staggered, favoring the same joint, and Nyra took the opening from the flank rather than the front, Thronebreak’s haft driving into the same leg rather than risking the point against hide that had already proven it could turn a spear thrust aside.
THUD!
The animal broke for the gap in the wall it had entered through rather than press an attack that had already cost it twice in the same week. It cleared the rail in one motion and vanished into the dark beyond the firelight, already out of reach.
Riona arrived at a run, a lamp raised high enough to check the pen without stepping fully inside it, Dessin a step behind her despite his still-bound arm, unwilling to be left at the fire while the rest of the camp answered an attack. "How many did we lose?"
"One," Vhar said as he counted the scattered herd. "The animal left the goats and attacked us. It ran when the wall caught its damaged shoulder."
Riona counted the remaining animals with her lamp, exhaling once when the count came back short only the one. "It’s never come this close to the fires before. Never past the wall while people were still awake around it."
"It is no longer driving us off its territory." Nyra watched the dark. "It came here to test us together. Tonight, the damaged shoulder drove it away. It will learn around that injury."
Vhar looked toward the ridge, black against a sky just beginning to gray at its eastern edge. "We don’t give it four more days to keep learning. We go at first light, together, and we find out exactly what’s worth defending on the other side of that fold before it decides we’re worth fighting for real."
Nyra didn’t argue the timing. She checked Thronebreak’s edge instead, methodical in the dark, working a whetstone along the same three inches of blade until the motion itself seemed to settle something in her that words hadn’t managed to reach.
Riona brought them both water before they’d finished preparing, setting the skins down without comment on the decision already made around her fire. "Dessin wants to come with you partway. I’ve already told him no, and I’d appreciate it if neither of you undid that answer by looking impressed with him for asking."
"We won’t," Vhar said. "He’s already proven he knows the difference between brave and useful. That’s worth more than one more body on a ridge that’s already killed better-trained hands than his."
Riona’s mouth eased at the corner before she caught herself, then turned back toward the fire and the boy still watching from its edge, careful not to let him see the relief that had briefly shown through. Vhar and Nyra said nothing further until the sky had lightened enough to see the ridge clearly again.
Before they left the fire, Nyra spread Vhar’s hide map beside the valley sketch. The southern shelf, the old blast cut, and the animal’s repeated track did not meet by accident. She marked the one descent that would let them see the far bowl before stepping into it.
"We use this," she said.
Vhar studied the mark, then nodded. "We use it once. If the ground changes, we turn back and read it again."