The bison didn’t look smaller, no matter how long Toby stared at it.

  Up close, it was less an animal and more a low hill that someone had forgotten to attach to the ground. Flies were already stitching frantic patterns over the darkening patches of blood. Its ribs still shuddered now and then with the last echoes of breath leaving the body, a faint, stubborn twitch that made Toby’s skin prickle. Both of Maxwell’s arrows jutted from its side—one low in the flank, the other sunk deep behind the shoulder. Good, clean shots.

  Zak stood with his hands on his hips, squinting down at the bulk. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ve decided. We’re going to eat for a month and die trying to drag it twenty paces.”

  Reece let out a low whistle. “You’d need six carts and a saint with a strong back.”

  Maxwell slid down from Piper with less noise than a man half his age. He walked once around the carcass, boots crunching through broken reed-grass, eyes taking in the lay of muscle, the angles of horn. He reached out and touched the hide near the shoulder, fingers steady. “I doubt we’ll take all of it,” he said. “We make use before the flies and heat do their work. The rest goes back to the wild.”

  Maxwell grabbed his dagger from his belt and made a quick insertion into the beast’s neck. Upon noticing the three’s confusion, he added: “It’ll be lighter to drag with less blood.”

  Zak grimaced. “Feels wrong to waste so much.”

  “It’s worse to pretend we’ll eat all of it,” Maxwell said. “That’s how you waste it—and yourself.” He straightened. “For now, we move it. The horses drink. Then we cut.”

  “How in the saints’ names are we moving that?” Zak asked. “Tie it to Piper and hope he doesn’t notice?”

  “Piper would notice,” the old knight said dryly. “So would Oak, Daisy, Flint. We’re not dragging the world behind one horse.” He jerked his chin toward their tack. “Ropes.”

  They dug in saddlebags, pulling out what lengths they had—tent ties, spare lead lines, the coil Toby used for hobbles. It wasn’t elegant, but it was enough. Under Maxwell’s direction, they worked in the trampled circle around the corpse, the air thick with the iron tang of blood and churned earth.

  “Through the horns,” Maxwell said. “Base, not tip. You don’t trust the point of anything that big.” He wrapped a rope low, just above the animal’s massive skull, and hauled to test the grip. The head rolled a fraction, heavy, obedient. “There. Now three horses. Oak, Daisy, Flint. Piper’s done his part.”

  Toby nodded and led Oak up, murmuring under his breath. The gelding’s ears went back at the smell but he didn’t shy. Daisy came next, Reece’s hand firm on the lead, the dun mare snorting, eyes wide but calm enough. Flint lagged until Zak clicked his tongue and muttered something about glory and oats; the gray gelding finally stepped forward, as if deciding the matter wasn’t beneath him after all.

  Maxwell tied the rope off in three lengths, one to each saddle pommel, leaving enough slack that the horses wouldn’t trample one another if they shifted. He stepped back and adjusted the line once more, then put his hand on Oak’s neck. “Slow,” he said. “Give them time to feel the pull before they panic at it.”

  “Always comforting when you mention panic,” Zak muttered.

  “Better mine than yours,” Maxwell said.

  They mounted. Toby felt the tension in the rope through Oak’s first cautious steps—a drag, a catch, a jolt as the massive head resisted and then began to slide. The bison’s body left a dark trail in the flattened reed-grass, fur catching, hooves furrowing the earth one last time.

  “Forward,” Maxwell called.

  They walked at first. The rope tightened, creaked, drew the weight along inch by inch. Dust rose in a slow, dull haze. Flies swarmed and then wheeled away when the carcass left them behind. The bison moved in an undignified, steady scrape toward the water basin like some wounded god being hauled from a battlefield.

  Toby could feel Oak’s displeasure in the way the gelding huffed, breath flaring hot against the bit, but the horse bore the weight without balking. Daisy leaned into the pull with quiet stubbornness. Flint made a few offended snorts and then, resigned, lowered his head and dug in.

  The drag wasn’t long, but under the sun and weight of the day, it felt like dragging his own shoulders. Sweat stung his eyes; his hands ached from holding the line steady. The smell grew stronger as the carcass warmed—copper and wet hide, rank and real.

  As they neared the basin, the ground changed under the horses’ hooves. The reed-grass thinned and gave way to churned, bare earth pocked with wide, shallow depressions.

  Reece wrinkled his nose. “What in the saints is that?”

  Maxwell barely glanced. “Wallow.”

  Zak frowned. “A what now? Some kind of… mud pit?”

  “No.” Maxwell nudged Piper along the edge of one of the pits. “Where the herd rolls. Cools themselves. Keeps flies down.”

  Toby leaned a little in his saddle, studying the ground. The wallow was smooth in the center and ringed with clumps of shed fur and pale, crusted dung baked hard by the sun.

  Zak made a face. “I don’t like that word. Or that smell.”

  Reece pointed with his chin. “And that pile is…?”

  “Fuel,” Maxwell said simply.

  Zak stared at him. “You mean for fire?”

  “For fire,” Maxwell repeated. “Dried dung burns hot. Hotter than you’d expect. We’ll take some.”

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  Zak groaned into his hands. “I regret being born.”

  Toby nudged Oak onward, studying the patterns in the earth, the way the herd had churned everything to mud and hard clay. Even here, in the wildest land he’d ever seen, creatures carved out habits. Spaces. Safeholds.

  Even in the wild, the world had rhythm.

  By the time they crested the rise toward the shallow basin, Toby’s shirt clung to him as if it had grown there.

  The water below gleamed dull and welcome. The herd was already a far smudge on the horizon, a line of dust drifting east where the bison had run on. Only the churned mud at the edges and the sour musk of their passing marked that they had ever been there.

  Maxwell raised his hand. “Here. Ease them.”

  They angled down the slope in a slow arc, bringing the dragged carcass to rest on a patch of flatter ground not far from the water’s edge. Maxwell swung down first, hands already reaching for knots. “Unfasten. Let them breathe. Give them the length to drink.”

  Toby dismounted and began working at Oak’s rope. The gelding snorted once when free and made for the muddy shallows, drank with quick, eager gulps. Daisy followed more politely, lowering her muzzle and taking deep, measured pulls. Flint stomped through the shallows with very little grace, splattering Zak’s boots, which earned a hissed curse and half-hearted swat.

  Piper walked down without hurry, the big destrier’s hooves sinking into the soft bank. Maxwell let him drink for a few breaths, then pulled him back a step, never letting him overfill.

  “Four horses, one bison,” Zak said, dropping down onto a dry bit of ground and flopping backward with a groan. “And somehow I’m the tired one.”

  Reece sank to a sit rather than a sprawl, pulling his boots off to rub at his sore feet. “You’re always the tired one.”

  “I work hardest,” Zak said.

  “The lies are heavier than the bison,” Reece replied.

  “Explains my strength,” Zak said, proudly.

  Toby let their banter wash past him, his eyes on the carcass. The bison lay on its side, a dark island in the sea of pale reeds, flies thick over the wound. The great head tilted at an awkward angle, tongue just visible between heavy lips. Death had a way of making even powerful things look abandoned.

  Maxwell crouched beside it, pressing two fingers into the thick fur just behind the jaw. He stayed that way for a count, as though listening, then nodded once. “We’ll rest an hour,” he said. “Then we move back to the stone. Butchering is work enough without doing it in the worst of the heat.”

  Zak threw an arm over his face. “I could rest three.”

  “You could complain for four,” Reece said.

  Toby walked down to the water and splashed his face, the warmth of it still enough to feel pleasant after the dust. He scrubbed at his neck, rinsed his mouth, spat out grit. The water tasted faintly of animal and mud and something older—minerals, maybe—but it was wet and safe enough.

  He watched Oak drink, nostrils flaring, the horse’s throat working with each deep swallow. Back home, animals were worth their weight in labor. He didn’t like running Oak hard without giving something back. It eased something small and tight in him to see them resting, however briefly, in this hot afternoon.

  Maxwell joined him after a moment, washing his own hands and forearms to the elbow, rubbing at a bit of congealed blood on the cuff of his sleeve. “You did well,” he said quietly.

  Toby glanced at him. “I didn’t do anything but hang on.”

  “You did that without letting the Art run you onto your back in front of a few hundred hooves,” Maxwell said. “That counts.”

  Toby stared at the ripples on the water. “Felt like it wanted to.”

  “It always does,” Maxwell said. “It doesn’t know the difference between a stampede and a stone. You do. That’s the part that matters.” He straightened, flicking water from his fingers. “Eat. Drink. You’ll have enough to think about when we start carving.”

  They kept the break short by necessity. A strip of jerky each, some stale oatcake Reece had managed not to burn on a previous morning, water passed around from skin to skin. The heat lay on them like a tired hand. The only shade came from the sorry excuse of a shadow cast by the bison itself, which Zak tried to claim until Maxwell simply looked at him and he made room for Toby and Reece without being asked.

  By the time Maxwell clapped his hands once and said, “Up,” the sun had shifted just enough that the worst of the glare had softened. Not gone—not with this sky—but less like being stared at.

  They tied the ropes again, this time with shorter lengths. The drag back toward the white fang of stone was quieter. The bison left a more distinct trail now, a long, raw scar through the reeds leading away from the water. Toby tried not to think about how easy that trail would be to follow for anything in the wild that fancied meat.

  “Doesn’t this… invite company?” he asked, nudging Oak into line beside Piper’s flank.

  “It tells the wild where we are,” Maxwell said. “But the smell’s already doing that. Better to get the mess back where we have our gear.” A corner of his mouth tugged. “And where the stone can watch our backs.”

  Zak shuddered. “You know, Ser, you say things that are meant to be comforting, but somehow they never are.”

  “Then you’re listening,” Maxwell said.

  They came in under the shadow of the fang a little before the sun kissed its top. The sight of the great white pillar against the sky tugged at Toby’s chest in an odd way—relief, maybe, or the strange comfort of anything that stayed in one place out here. Their tent still stood where they’d left it, rope lines humming softly in the breeze. The little fire pit lay cold, ringed by stones. The horses whickered when they recognized the hollow, picking up their hooves a little as if to say home enough.

  “Here,” Maxwell said, drawing them to a stop in a flat patch between the stone’s base and the tent. “We’ll work in the shade while it lasts. Tie off the ropes to the stake there—we don’t want it sliding onto someone’s feet.”

  Toby and Reece did as told, looping the lines around a driven stake and backing off to test the tension. The bison lay heavy and final beside them. Zak stood a moment, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “Saints,” he said under his breath. “Feels wrong, cutting something that big. Like taking a piece out of a statue.”

  “Statues don’t feed you,” Maxwell said. He unhooked his belt knife—a plain, long-bladed thing with a handle worn smooth from years of work—and gave it a quick once-over on the whetstone, the rasping strokes quick and economical. “First lesson if you want to live out here longer than the food you bring: you don’t waste the gifts the wild gives you. Second lesson: you don’t pretend they’re not gifts.”

  He knelt by the animal’s head and put his hand on its thick brow, fingers sinking into coarse fur. His lips moved—not loud enough for Toby to catch words, but the intent was clear enough. Then he drew the knife.

  “Throat first,” he said. “The hide is thinnest there. If we could, we’d hang it by the hind legs, but for now, this will do.”

  The cut was quick, deep, clean. Blood had already settled, but enough came to darken the disturbed earth beneath the neck. The smell sharpened, heavier, rich and metallic.

  “Reece,” Maxwell said. “You’ve the neatest hands. You take the kidneys, liver, heart when we reach them. They spoil fastest. We cook those tonight.”

  Reece swallowed once, then nodded, jaw tight. “Aye, Ser.”

  “Zak, you’ve strength and no sense,” Maxwell went on. “You help me with the hide. Toby, you’re with me on the legs. Pay attention. The way you start a cut decides whether you can use the skin later or have scraps.”

  “Yes, Ser,” Toby said.