Hunt Marks

The smell of the salve had drawn the level-three Ironmane Bear behind the trap.

Helian Yuan lay hidden beneath a rocky slope, watching the rotting meat in front of the bear's den. The wind blew outward from the entrance, and the smell of the meat masked his scent. But then came the sudden crack of breaking bark behind him, and a drop of warm saliva fell beside his shoulder.

He didn't look back.

He looked first at the shadow on the ground.

A huge dark shape covered half his body, one forepaw already raised.

Helian Yuan dove forward.

The bear's paw struck the rocky slope, sending shards of stone past his ear. The level-three Ironmane Bear leaped down from the top, the stiff bristles on its back standing upright like a coat of short iron spears.

It hadn't been fooled into going after the rotting meat in front of the den.

It had followed the smell of the salve around to the upwind side.

Helian Yuan rolled between two trees, scrambled up, and ran. The Ironmane Bear was slow to turn, but faster than him in a straight charge. Heavy footsteps closed in behind him as branches snapped one after another.

He didn't run toward the pitfall he had dug in advance.

That pit had already been exposed.

Helian Yuan circled toward the stream. The water had risen there the night before, and a length of wood lay at an angle beneath the mud, a makeshift lever he had left there for moving rocks.

The Ironmane Bear closed to within five paces, its foul breath already bearing down on his back.

Helian Yuan stomped on one end of the angled wood.

The other end flipped up a piece of animal hide covered in salve, slapping it squarely into the bear's face. The level-three Ironmane Bear shook its head in fury and tore the hide apart with its foreclaws, but it paused for an instant.

Helian Yuan seized that instant to spin around and thrust his spear.

The spear tip drove toward the bear's belly.

Clang. It was like stabbing a thick wooden board. The stiff bristles deflected the blade, leaving only a shallow white mark.

The bear's paw swept sideways.

Helian Yuan released the spear and retreated, but the force of the swipe still sent him crashing into a tree trunk. The old wound on his right arm split open on the spot, and blood quickly seeped through the freshly changed hemp cloth.

The level-three Ironmane Bear bit through the hide on its face and advanced with a low growl.

Helian Yuan steadied himself against the tree and went no farther back.

He spotted a patch of different-colored fur on the left side of the bear's neck. The stiff bristles were sparse there, and an old scar lay beneath the skin, as if a larger magical beast had once bitten it. Normally, the wound was hidden under layers of bristles, and only a patch half the width of a palm showed when the bear lowered its head to lunge and bite.

He had only one chance.

Helian Yuan turned to his right, deliberately retreating toward the old pitfall in front of the den.

The Ironmane Bear followed as expected, but stopped in front of the pit. It lowered its head and caught the smell of freshly turned earth, then raised a paw and smashed the branches covering the opening.

The trap was completely ruined.

But Helian Yuan had already circled to the side of the pit and hooked a thin cord on the ground over to his foot.

The other end of the cord wasn't tied to a stake, but to half a dead log he had moved there earlier. As the Ironmane Bear crossed the edge of the pit, he kicked the catch loose. The log rolled sideways down the slope and struck the bear's hind legs.

It couldn't hurt the bear.

But it could force the bear's body forward and down.

The old scar on the side of its neck was exposed.

"Come."

A tiger shadow leaped up behind Helian Yuan and poured down his shoulder and arm into the short spear. On the first breath, the spear tip found its mark again; on the second, he stepped onto the edge of the pitfall and used the extra height to bear down with his full weight; on the third, the blade pierced the old scar.

The resistance suddenly gave way.

Helian Yuan didn't try to drive it deeper. He let go of the spear before the bear raised its paw and tumbled into the pitfall.

The bear's paw scraped across the edge of the pit, showering him with dirt and broken branches. The level-three Ironmane Bear charged several steps with the short spear in its neck and smashed through a small tree. It turned to bite the spear shaft, but the movement tore the wound wider.

Helian Yuan hid at the bottom of the pit. The tiger shadow had already faded, and his right arm was shaking too badly to lift.

The Ironmane Bear circled the pit twice.

Each step was slower than the last.

At last, its forelegs buckled, and its head crashed into the mud. The end of the short spear was still trembling faintly.

Helian Yuan didn't climb out immediately.

He picked up a stone and threw it at the bear.

The bear didn't move.

He waited several dozen breaths more before climbing out at the side of the pit. First, he stabbed his hunting knife into its eye socket to make sure. Then he sat down where he was and tightly rebound his reopened right arm.

The level-three magical beast's Magic Crystal Core glowed a dim yellow inside the bear's skull. Helian Yuan held it in his hand, feeling a weight he could measure in his palm for the first time.

It wasn't a bloodline from legend.

It wasn't a path someone else had left behind in a secret manual.

He had gained it in exchange for three breaths of the tiger shadow, two failed layers of traps, and a wound that had split open again.

While skinning the bear, he found a ring of faint dark marks beneath the old scar on its neck, where iron had rubbed against it. They were very faint, as if something had been fastened around it when it was young and had later broken as its body grew.

Helian Yuan paused, but didn't dig any deeper.

Much of the bearskin was intact. He chose the innermost side and carved a third mark into it with his hunting knife.

The first two were on wolfskin. This one was on the hide of a level-three Ironmane Bear.

The blade made a faint sound as it scored the hide.

The hunt marks weren't medals.

They simply reminded him that every victory meant something tangible had died at his hands, and a tangible price had been left on his body.

Before dark, Helian Yuan prepared the bear's gallbladder, Magic Crystal Core, and the most valuable armored hide. There was too much meat to carry, so he piled it up high on branches and took only enough to eat for a few days.

There was also an oily smell in the bear's den that didn't belong to a beast.

He held up a torch and ventured inside. Broken bones, dry grass, and several old planks the bear had dragged back were piled on the floor of the den. Deepest inside, a length of something black lay beneath the pile of bones.

Helian Yuan hooked it out with his spear tip.

It was a length of iron chain.

The chain was only as long as his forearm, and thicker than anything a hunter would use to tether a hunting dog. The break was clean, plainly cut by a sharp weapon; several links near the middle had been worn bright, as if they had been dragged over stone for a long time.

A number was engraved on the outside of a link.

Seven.

Helian Yuan wiped away the rust and mud with a cloth and looked again.

It wasn't a hunter's mark scratched at random. On either side of the number were the remains of a border, worn smooth, as if a plaque had once been set there.

As the torchlight shone on the chain, fragments from the moment of the body takeover suddenly flashed through Helian Yuan's mind.

Iron bars.

Pages of paper.

A chain dragged across the floor.

The images appeared for only an instant before scattering. He gripped the chain, feeling its coldness in his palm, while the blue-black markings on his right arm warmed faintly for a moment.

He examined the broken end of the chain again. A thin lip curled inward on one side of the break, showing that whoever had cut it had stood outside the thing that had been chained; the several unusually bright links had been pulled straight repeatedly, always under force from the same direction.

This wasn't scrap iron the bear had dragged back by chance. It had once tethered a living creature that struggled and tried to flee in the same direction.

At the bottom of the den, Helian Yuan found half a wooden wedge, already rotten. It bore marks of rust and was just the right size to fit into the end of the chain. Someone had refastened the chain here, but much more recently than the cage in Old Mo's memories.

Helian Yuan separated the visible tracks in the den one by one. The Ironmane Bear's old paw prints lay at the bottom, and there were also two more recent sets of boot prints: one with narrow heels, the other with horizontal cleats on the forefoot. Both went only as far as the wedge before turning back; no one had gone farther in to examine the pile of bones.

The visitors might only have been responsible for securing the chain and might not have known what it had once held. Or they might have known, but had been unwilling to get too close while the bear was still alive.

A distant beast's roar came from outside the den.

Helian Yuan immediately extinguished the torch, wrapped the chain tightly in bearskin, and tucked it into a compartment in his pack.

He had come only for the level-three Magic Crystal Core.

Now the prey was dead and the traps were spent, but another road had appeared in the mountains, one that didn't belong here.

That road led from a "seven" at the bottom of the bear's den to the iron bars he hadn't seen clearly in his dreams.