Shadow and Spear

When the hunter with the crossbow on his back came to stand watch that night in return, he brought two wooden boards and a coil of old beast sinew.

"Your ditch trap is ruined," he said. "I'll take the first half of the night and fix the trap while I'm at it. The second half is yours."

"You could just stand watch."

"The trap is mine too."

He refused to count repairing the trap as repayment, and Helian Yuan didn't put a price on it for him. The two worked separately on the northern slope: one secured the stakes again, while the other rebuilt the stone ridge the panther had disturbed.

Before dark, the hunter drew the area he would move within on the ground, making it clear that he wouldn't enter the stone hollow where Helian Yuan hid his supplies or touch the numbered iron tags. Helian Yuan, for his part, promised not to inspect the hunter's crossbow bolt pouch.

Limited cooperation didn't require sharing every secret.

The first half of the night was quiet.

At the change of watch, the hunter suddenly raised a hand, signaling Helian Yuan to stay silent. Something hard scraped against stone in the bushes down the slope. The sounds came in short bursts, unlike a Blue Rock Panther.

A level-three Split-Tooth Lizard crawled along the ditch. Its body hugged the ground, and its back scales were grayish brown. When it opened its mouth, two rows of teeth curved inward. It smelled the water-soaked dried meat and the scent of two humans, but it didn't charge straight in. Instead, it circled the stone hollow in search of a lower entrance.

The hunter raised his short crossbow.

Helian Yuan pressed down on the crossbow. "Don't shoot its back."

"Then where?"

"Make it raise its head."

He threw a piece of mountain badger bone to the other side of the stone hollow. The Split-Tooth Lizard turned quickly but still didn't raise its head. The hunter then fired a bolt. It struck the stone in front of the lizard's nose, throwing a spark.

Startled, the Split-Tooth Lizard abruptly raised its forebody and opened its mouth, searching for the direction of the attack.

A line of soft scales was exposed where its belly met its neck.

Helian Yuan charged down the slope.

Tiger Shadow rose around his shoulders and back as his short spear aimed straight for the soft scales. The Split-Tooth Lizard noticed him and swung its head sharply, its teeth snapping at the spearpoint. An ordinary thrust would have been caught in its jaws.

At the fifth breath, the shadow's tail swept across the spear shaft.

The spearpoint shifted half a foot aside before the teeth closed, scraped past its lower jaw, then curved back toward the line of soft scales.

At the sixth breath, the spear blade plunged in.

Helian Yuan immediately withdrew the shadow and released the shaft. The Split-Tooth Lizard rolled into the ditch, and the butt of the spear caught against the stone wall, pulling the wound even deeper.

The hunter's second bolt struck its front eye.

Each attack had its own objective: one bolt made it raise its head, one spear thrust pierced the soft scales, and the final bolt stopped it from burrowing into the hidden channel. Neither man handled the entire situation for the other.

The Split-Tooth Lizard struggled for a while, then lay still at the bottom of the ditch.

Helian Yuan pulled out his short spear. The spearpoint's position was only a finger's width from where he had intended during training. Shadow Follows the Spear had been confirmed on a living creature for the first time.

The hunter crouched beside the corpse. "That wasn't firelight just now."

"Mm."

"I won't ask what it was."

"Why?"

"Once I knew, you'd ask whether I was willing to keep it secret for you." He pulled out his bolt. "I don't take on things I can't afford."

That was more credible than a casual promise.

The two split the edible meat equally. The Magic Crystal Core went to Helian Yuan because he had delivered the decisive blow; the hunter took the intact teeth and back scales as payment for luring the enemy and following up with a bolt.

While butchering the Split-Tooth Lizard, they argued a little more over the division. The hunter thought his first bolt had forced it to raise its head, so he should get at least one more tooth. Helian Yuan pointed out that if the second bolt hadn't hit its eye, the Split-Tooth Lizard would still have dragged the spear into the bottom of the ditch. In the end, they divided the materials by use: the short teeth suitable for arrowheads went to the hunter, the long teeth suitable for sale went to Helian Yuan, and the damaged back scales were kept as pressure plates for traps.

Neither used "fighting the enemy side by side" to gloss over the accounting. The clearer the terms, the less they would have to wonder next time they worked together temporarily whether the other meant to use their past dealings to take more.

Before leaving, the hunter also checked three sets of footprints on the northern slope. The outermost set hadn't been left by either of them. The soles had round-headed nails, and the stride was steady. Whoever made them had watched the entire fight from across the ditch during the night. The visitor hadn't attacked while both men were dealing with the Split-Tooth Lizard, but had merely noted where Tiger Shadow appeared before withdrawing.

Helian Yuan circled the footprints on the map. The Gray-Robed Retrieval Team had yet to formally enter the mountains, but an advance observer had already arrived. Shadow Follows the Spear had been used in real combat for the first time, and it might also have been seen by an outsider for the first time.

As dawn approached, the other man put away his crossbow and prepared to leave.

"The gray-robed people are entering the mountains the day after tomorrow," he said. "There were two wagons, then they added another. At least six people."

"Is this repayment for what happened at the ditch?"

"I already repaid that by standing watch," the hunter said. "I'm telling you this because they asked me last night whether I'd seen any magical beasts that hadn't been entered in their register."

Helian Yuan looked at him.

"They made it sound like every beast in the mountains ought to report in and be counted as soon as it was born." The hunter snorted. "I didn't like the sound of it."

With that, he left without waiting for Helian Yuan to respond.

After finishing with the Split-Tooth Lizard, Helian Yuan hid the Magic Crystal Core separately from his remaining supplies. His right arm still ached after the six breaths of Tiger Shadow, showing that although Shadow Follows the Spear could be used reliably, that didn't mean it could be used repeatedly.

The Split-Tooth Lizard's corpse couldn't be left in the ditch. The smell of blood would attract the panther and also let the retrieval team see at a glance that someone had fought here recently. After stripping off the materials they could sell, the two scattered the entrails along three beast trails leading in different directions, then diverted the bloody water at the bottom of the ditch downstream from the spring.

The hunter had originally intended to drag the back armor away as it was, but Helian Yuan told him to scrape away the unusually smooth cut marks around the spear wound first. The wound left after the black shadow changed the spear's direction was different from an ordinary thrust. Someone knowledgeable could tell from the angle at which the blade had entered that it had changed direction at the last instant.

"Did you hide every one like this before?" the hunter asked.

"No one was looking for it before."

"They are now."

The two exchanged a glance and continued working separately, without turning those words into an alliance. The rules of the hunting ground had changed; they had merely reached the same conclusion for the time being.

Helian Yuan returned to the observer's footprints one last time and measured the shoe width with a stick. The arrangement of round-headed nails differed from that of the short-coated guards in Greystone Town; they might belong to another group of advance scouts. He didn't erase all the traces, only scuffing out two steps near where Tiger Shadow had appeared so that anyone checking later couldn't determine exactly where he had begun his spear thrust.

He marked three routes on the map where the gray-robed people might drive boundary stakes.

Helian Yuan didn't treat six people as a vague number. He broke them down by their possible duties: at least one driver, two people responsible for iron traps and rope nets, one to identify numbers or keep records, leaving only the rest potentially available to fight. If the gray-robed person didn't come in person, there might be only one person on site who could actually change the orders.

Likewise, the Blue Rock Panther wasn't a helper that would obey commands. It might pounce on the retrieval team, or it might pounce first on Helian Yuan, who was closest. All his arrangements could do was create choices; they couldn't determine in advance whom the magical beast would help.

Superior numbers didn't mean everyone could pursue him at once. The wagons, tools, and retrieval targets would all tie people up. The only way Sunken Bone Slope could stand against six people wasn't Helian Yuan's six breaths of Tiger Shadow, but forcing the other side to guard the wagons, control the beast, find their way, and protect the records all at once.

He labeled the three routes "people's route," "wagon route," and "beast route." When setting the bait, he only needed to make two of them conflict, and the retrieval team's full advantage would be broken apart.

The day after tomorrow, they would enter the mountains with three wagons and six people.

And all he had was one newly formed Shadow Spear, a hunting ground he had yet to fully master, and a level-four Blue Rock Panther that no one could control.