“Wake up!”

  Someone screamed in Hogog’s dream, but the voice was Uruoro’s.

  He jostled awake, jumping, feeling his body stiffen in protest. His vision was dark, but there was some light pouring into their shelter. Figures moved about. Still lost in the numbness of sleep, he heard words, felt as if he should have understood them but somehow didn’t.

  His vision focused and what seemed like a shadow suddenly turned into a man right in front of him, thrusting a knife towards his chest.

  He more fell than dodged, hitting the ground as the knife cut through air above his head. Hogog kicked one of the man’s legs as hard as he could, bringing the attacker down on top of him.

  The man almost lost his grip on the knife, but turned it around before Hogog could take it from him. With an outstretched arm he grasped the wrist of the hand holding the weapon.

  A punch rocked Hogog’s head to the side. He reached for the man’s throat, trying to push him away, but the angle was odd and the man strong. Hogog couldn’t fully stretch his other arm and something on the ground was biting against his back.

  He looked around, searching for his machete, but was punched again and closed his eyes shut.

  When he felt the man moving for yet another punch, Hogog let go of his throat. The momentum brought him down, and Hogog reached up with two fingers. He felt the eyeballs pop and crunch as they were pushed back inside his skull. The man let out a terrified shriek, his whole body shivering.

  Hogog overpowered him then, sending the man sprawling to the side with a punch to his ribs. He stood up, smmed one foot on the man’s wrist, forcing him to release the knife. Hogog took it and threw himself on top of him, burying the knife in his chest with such strength that he stupidly hurt his own arm when he smmed his elbow against the ground.

  His eyes fell on his machete. Weapon in hand, he stood up and sshed at the approaching footsteps behind him.

  No one was there. The machete cut through air. A little ahead, a man was taking his st steps back, away from Loho, as blood seeped into his clothes from a terrible wound in his belly.

  The three of them gnced at each other. Whatever Uruoro saw on Hogog’s face, it gave the man pause.

  Without saying a word, Hogog turned to grab his things. He had left his bow strung overnight, hanged it over one shoulder and the pack over another, then strapped the quiver to his waist.

  “Why four?” Uruoro asked.

  Hogog counted the bodies. He was right. Why four?

  He was still panting from the fight, his mind too turbulent to really think. There was no time to stop and talk, nor to search or hide the bodies.

  Loho left first and they followed.

  Slowly, the rage faded away, giving way to wariness. They had proved they could handle small groups of the attackers more than once, and yet they attacked in a small number even when catching them by surprise.

  The others had to be closer, and no matter when the next attacks would be, they were reaching their limit. None of the three were getting enough sleep, Uruoro wasn’t a fighter at all, Loho was far from fully recovered, no matter how well the man dealt with pain, and Hogog only had so many arrows left. He reached for his quiver, counted with his fingers. Five arrows. Five kills if they were all perfect shots, and that was only because so many of the encounters had been melee. Not enough. The group he had spotted two days ago had twenty men.

  Perhaps a week until the nearest city. Perhaps.

  Hogog looked over his shoulder as they rounded a rge rock, in time to see more men approaching.

  “They’re coming,” he said, turning ahead.

  The ndscape was pin, with few features they could take advantage of. Plenty of rocks around, but they would at most serve to trip someone — or themselves.

  “We can’t fight here,” Hogog said.

  “Then start running,” Loho spoke matter-of-factly.

  They did. Loho was in the front, bloody sword held to the side, with Hogog close behind.

  Looking behind him, he saw that Uruoro couldn’t keep up, but the men were still to appear around the rock.

  “Just keep running!” Hogog shouted.

  “Here!” Loho spoke from the front.

  Hogog had to dig his heels to avoid from colliding with the man. With his sword, Loho was pointing to a spot where the ground sunk. Not enough to form a ravine, barely a man’s height, but enough for them to not be surrounded. For a while, at least.

  Not surrounded from his side. Following it with his eyes, Hogog saw that the few rocks which had fallen with the shift in the soil weren’t hard to wrap around. They wouldn’t be able to stay there for long.

  And, ahead, the ndscape was almost entirely ft.

  Had the pursuers anticipated this? The strategy didn’t make sense if small groups kept attacking them, but whether intentional or not, this was going to be it. We should have stayed behind, whittling their numbers down from the start, attacking the smallest groups.

  Uruoro reached them, fear written on his face. Hogog locked eyes with Loho.

  “If you have something you can do, now is the time.”

  “No right of bloodshed,” said Loho. “No Headhunters among them.”

  Hogog was suddenly mad at how little he could read his face, even in this situation. Perhaps that was why they wore the mask. To hide the terror in their faces when they died. If so, then they should also hide the mouth, to deepen the fa?ade.

  Loho gestured behind Hogog with a tilt of his head.

  The pursuers were approaching, spanning out. Twenty, thirty men, all with knives, a few with swords.

  Hogog grabbed his first arrow.

  For the briefest of moments, he wondered at the stupidity of it all. How did those men convince themselves that they wouldn’t be targeted by the arrows? That they would be the ones to survive long enough to approach?

  He shot, ending a man’s life. Reached for another arrow and took his time to aim. He had to make these five arrows count, no matter what. Hogog looked for the closest targets, picked out the most dangerous-looking of them, the strongest, the ones with swords and without any apparent wounds.

  Five arrows, but not five lives. Some might bleed to death, but others were only out of this fight. Hogog stepped back and Loho took his pce. Something about the jade mask passing right by his side… not a memory, but a half-formed thought.

  Machete in hand, he walked up to Uruoro’s side. He stared up at him, but Hogog kept his eyes on the approaching men.

  At least, Hogog thought, you won’t die in shackles.

  He brought his bde down to the nearest attacker, but Hogog was too slow, too tired, and the man’s sword reached him first.

  Uruoro’s spear was the only thing that kept him alive. As Uruoro thrusted it into the man’s side, he lost momentum. The bde’s path was diverted, leaving behind only a ssh across his chest.

  Hogog pulled Uruoro back, who somehow managed to pull his spear from the man’s body at the same time. With the other hand, Hogog struck again, this time splitting half of the man’s neck from his shoulder.

  Uruoro threw his spear at the others, scaring the group more than hurting them, then reached for the sword of the man Hogog had just killed.

  Three men were soon closing in, attacking with more patience, testing their defenses. The fight slowed down enough for Hogog to pay attention to the sounds coming from behind. Screams, most of them coming from Loho, but whether they were from pain or threats he couldn’t tell.

  Five men stood in front of Hogog.

  The sword was clumsy in Uruoro’s hand and he swung too much. He was keeping the men away, but the moment he tired they would be overrun.

  Hogog stopped moving, simply holding his machete.

  Loho was right, there was no Headhunter among them. At first, these men must have been scared, after all, they knew how dangerous a Headhunter could be far better than he, a foreigner, did.

  Exhaustion caught up to Uruoro and he stepped back, sword pointed to the ground.

  The men started moving, threatening them with their knives.

  They retreated.

  Hogog hit someone with his back. Since the man didn’t turn, he knew it had to be Loho.

  The three of them pressed together, back against back against back. They were still alive, but the fight was over. Maybe they could kill another one each, in the st moment before the st blow, but it was over.

  Killing a Headhunter had to pay well, no wonder they were willing to attack in small numbers, no matter how stupid it was. Whoever—

  “Give them your mask,” Hogog said.

  The sudden words made everyone stop, including the attackers, who looked at each other in confusion.

  “We’ll give you the mask!” Hogog shouted at them.

  Uruoro seemed to have caught on.

  “That’s what you came for, isn’t it? The mask is proof of the kill.”

  “You are surrounded,” one of the men said, the closest, bravest one.

  “We can still kill some of you. Is that worth it?”

  The unmasked stared at each other, uneasy.

  “Give it to them,” Hogog told Loho, “And no, I don’t fucking care whether you can or not. You want to see Gima again? Give them the stupid skull.”

  He felt Loho moving, then leaning away from his as he threw something in the attacker’s direction.

  There was a long moment of silence, in which Hogog wished the crowd to be considering it instead of simply waiting for someone else to make the first move.

  “We share,” the same unmasked spoke again. “They killed half of us, so we will each get double. We share the reward for the Headhunter.”

  He raised his knife. The way the men around him moved made it obvious that they were his allies.

  No one compined, which he seemed to take as agreement.

  Slowly, very slowly, they retreated.

  Hogog pushed Uruoro forward when there was enough room. He felt Loho retreating as he stepped forward, backs still pressed against each other.

  They left the small hole in the ground that had almost been their grave and watched as one man picked the jade mask up from the dusty soil.

  “I-I…” Uruoro stuttered, “I should have noticed. They needed the mask as proof of the kill, otherwise they would get nothing. That is why they didn’t wait in pce to cut the bridge was we crossed. They’d have to make all the way down the ravine to retrieve it.”

  “Fucking stupid,” Hogog said.

  Loho spat on the ground, threw his sword down and fell himself, hurt and exhausted.

  When they turned to stare at him, the face was revealed.

  “Thank you,” Loho babbled the words, tears streaming down his face.