“Don’t rush. Look for weakness then exploit it.”

  Feebee talking about first principles.

  The clearing was quieter the next morning, the greys gathered with a newfound seriousness. Davy didn’t waste time with speeches.

  “Today, we gonna test our strength and stamina,” he said, gesturing to a pile of rocks and logs he’d dragged into the clearing. “Pick one up. Hold it, walk to that tree and back. Then, do it again.”

  Grumbles arose, but no one refused. The greys stumbled and strained under the weight; their small frames unused to such physical demands.

  “Not bad,” Davy barked, pacing among them. “Now drop it and run. Full speed. Go!”

  The greys sprinted and the flyers flew, their breaths coming hard and fast. By the time they returned, most were panting, but their eyes gleamed with determination.

  Davy tossed a spear to one of them. “Now let’s see how you do up close.”

  He grabbed a stick from the ground and stood in front of the young flyer who’d impressed him the night before. She was wearing a hat, like his and had made her own spear, the one he’d offered her discarded at her side, “Come at me.”

  The flyer hesitated, then lunged. Davy sidestepped, tapping her lightly on the butt with his stick. “Too slow. Again.”

  They sparred, Davy keeping the pace just challenging enough to push her. By the end, she managed to land a solid hit on his side and was using an interesting mix of foot work and flight to attack him.

  “Good,” he said, stepping back. “Now pair up. You’ll take turns; one attacks, one defends.”

  The clearing became a flurry of motion as the greys and flyers practiced, their movements growing sharper and more confident. Some took hits but shook them off, rejoining the fight.

  “Not bad, got some grit.”

  Rebecca appeared silently at the edge of the clearing, a small group of kits at her side, watching as Davy corrected a grey’s stance. She approached him as the mob took a break.

  “They’re improving,” she said, her tone encouraging and approving.

  “Yeh, they have to,” Davy replied, wiping sweat from his brow. “Reds won’t go easy on ‘em.”

  She nodded, her expression softening. “Neither are you. They are distracted; tonight is Sha’daru.”

  “We have to train anyway, we don’t have a choice, the reds won’t wait,” Davy said. “They need to be ready. Or they’ll die.” He was half watching the training then with a sharp exhale, stomped across the ground, picking up a spear on the way, “No! Like this.”

  Rebecca shook her head, “He’s a good teacher but short on patience.”

  As they finished with the training, the scent of rain stayed, hanging in the air though the skies held their peace, clouds slowly moving away. The morning in the valley crept on, the silver shadows shifting, marching long and gentle across the training ground. Some had stayed back and continued to practice. Davy approached and asked them to come with him.

  He led them to a gulch, a dry crease in the land where rock teeth rose in tight rows and the wind never quite reached the floor. The kind of place a body could die in and not be found until the bones rattled themselves clean.

  Davy knelt by a patch of disturbed sand and gestured for the greys to stop. Five had come; two from Rebecca’s hunting crews, older, experienced, and three eager kits still clumsy with their spears but hungry to prove themselves.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He pressed his fingers into the earth, felt the shift of weight beneath.

  "Trigger’s still live," he muttered, nodding toward the cluster of rocks. The greys had rigged the gulch with snares and deadfalls, simple traps dug from instinct and memory.

  Davy spent an hour or so showing them how to set the traps better, bending saplings into tension lines, how to guide prey toward the kill zone. It was meant to be a lesson. Maybe catch a nok’nil or two. But something felt off, the area had gone quiet… too quiet.

  He stood, slow, hand resting on the handle of his knife.

  "Keep your eyes peeled," he said, voice low. "We’re not the only hunters out here."

  The wind shifted.

  Then it came; movement in the distance, on a ridge away to the right. A flicker of red and brown, too smooth, too coordinated for beasts. Davy’s eyes narrowed. Reds. With browns at their flanks.

  The greys tensed, ears flicking. One of the kits hefted their spear.

  "Easy," Davy hissed, lifting a hand. "Let 'em step in first."

  The first red moved with purpose, coming down into the gulch’s throat. The snare snapped, catching their ankle and dragging them sideways into the pit trap. A startled cry tore from their throat before it was cut off by the thump of impact below.

  Silence followed; for half a second.

  Then the rest charged, realising they’d been seen.

  Davy didn’t need to give the order. The greys scattered, turned on their shields and moved just as he’d taught them. The reds rushed in, voices silent and weapons ready. They started shooting at the greys but any shots that landed were handled easily by the shields.

  He drew his knife as one came at him, blade raised. Steel clashed against bone. He ducked, drove the hilt into the red’s gut, then followed with a slash to the thigh. The red stumbled. Davy didn’t wait. He turned, catching another coming from the right; a brown, wielding a short hook-blade.

  A brown swung at him; the arc wide. He ducked under, parried an attempt to skewer him and slashed up, gutting the brown who kicked and screamed, joining the cries of other reds.

  "Back to me! Now!" he shouted.

  The greys responded. They fell back into a semi-circle around the larger stones, using elevation and traps to force the attackers into the open. One of the kits jabbed forward with a spear, catching a red under the arm. Blood sprayed. Another grey dragged one of the fallen kits behind cover, teeth bared.

  The red leader: taller, leaner, and armed with a large, curved knife, stepped over the dead bodies of his squad and called a command Davy didn’t catch. Two browns circled and advanced on his flank.

  He braced, knife reversed in his grip.

  Then something moved behind them; a shape out of the dust. It was one of the younger kits, small and skittish, barely old enough to hold a spear. She leapt from a hidden alcove, driving a spike through the back of one brown. The other turned; too late. Davy was already on him.

  The fight ended not with cheers, but with silence.

  Bodies lay twisted in the gulch. Blood soaked into the sand. The wounded moaned, and the air stank of sweat… and fear.

  Davy straightened, wiping his blade on a fallen red. He moved from corpse to corpse, checking for breath, collecting anything useful. The red leader had fled during the chaos; back up the ridge.

  One of the kits limped up beside him. "Why were the browns fighting with them?" they asked. Their voice trembled. "Aren’t they… aren’t they neutral? Friends?"

  Davy stared at the hilltop, where the sun dipped low behind the stones. "Not anymore."

  He didn’t say what he was thinking. That the war wasn’t just coming; it was already here.

  Davy took time to tend their wounds, showing them how to clean and dress them.

  He realised that somebody, somewhere, was wanting these folk divided before the fighting truly began.

  What could he do?

  As they walked back into the village there were no cheers, no raised voices. Just the low hush of wind through the hollow and the soft crackle of the cookfires.

  He’d taken five out and only four had come back, bloodied but alive. They’d been his responsibility and he’d lost one of them.

  Their steps were heavy; shoulders slumped beneath the weight of what they’d lost. No one spoke at first. Even the kits, watching from the shadows between the dreys, held their breath.

  One of the greys, his arm bound tight and bloody; dropped his spear and sat down hard on the packed earth, warming himself by a fire. Another knelt to rinse his face in some water. A smear of red clung to the fur at his neck, not his own. He washed for too long unable to feel clean.

  Rebecca approached in silence, Davy just behind her.

  “It was a trap,” said the oldest of the survivors, voice low and hoarse. “They were waiting. Reds and a couple of browns. Two squads at least.”

  Rebecca didn’t ask why. Didn’t need to. She only nodded, slow and grave.

  “Rikka didn’t make it,” one of the greys added. “We brought back what we could.”

  He held out a pouch, fingers trembling slightly. It jingled with metal and glass. He also had components from the red’s gear, the kind Davy had learned to take apart and study. Trophies, maybe, but this wasn’t a tale of conquest. These were facts, laid bare.

  Davy looked around at the gathered greys. No fire in their eyes, just quiet, waiting grief.

  The camp swallowed the silence like it had done before. Like it would again.

  “This is terrible, will they be Ok?” asked Davy.

  Rebecca nodded, “Yes. They will grieve. But they will grieve in sadness, and they will grieve in joy. The sadness of the loss but then the joy of the person that was and the good times they’d had.”

  “I don’t know how you do it,” he said and then went back to his cave, sat cross-legged on a woven mat, knife in hand, and started stripping bark from a bunch of sapling branches; making arrow shafts.

  The silence was companionable, the work necessary, broken only by the occasional hiss of steel on wood and the faint crackle of wood as the fire burned low.

  He snacked on a pile of nuts and berries, although he was getting used to their taste and texture he missed a good hearty steak.

  He felt guilty, “If I hadn’t taken them out…”