Redtail Rise red

For the old man of the north, the scene before him played out as many others had during his lifetime. The fall of the Issumatar could have been avoided; but there was no reason to focus on the what ifs, only on what lay there in the snow—the bloodied, struggling body as Avicus choked on blood and mud—and in the end left them without a matriarch. For the wildborn children of the Wealda, death was not something to be feared; yet Tulimaq saw now as mud was pressed to that sliced throat, a desperation.

He saw softening by these children around their mother and was at once disgusted by it, and only as he looked away did Tulimaq understand that the perceived weakening of her brood was not what he loathed so much, but the display of it, the bare way they exposed themselves to their emotions as each ran through shock, pain, loss, maybe denial despite the evidence. These were sights Tulimaq could not handle.

He still loomed there, dripping elk blood, as some malformed herald while Avicus gave her final breaths. His head bowed chin to sternum. There was a wave of disbelief pulsing through the children in that final moment and Tulimaq, raised to see the merit of bone and blood and teeth and power, accepted that the hunt had claimed one more hunter.

That it was their matriarch was a massive blow but inconsequential. The elder looked to pray there a moment and when he raised his head, it was to stare upon the Boulder, and the Snow woman, and then sweep a calloused look across Ashlar and Mulherin while their pain seeped through them. To anywhere that wasn't the children as they crowded the body.

Someone pitched up their head and sang a dirge. Tulimaq stepped away, finally, and dredged his steps through the bloodied snow, to give these wolves of the Rise the space they would require.