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19

Someone must have been waiting anxiously for the signal to begin, because the moment that word left Kadai's lips, a rock came flying out of the crowd and narrowly missed Ander's head. He actually felt the wind generated by its rough edges as it sailed past his ear and crashed into the crumbling fire behind him, where it was swallowed by the growing pile of coals.

He wasn't so lucky with the second one.

It came in low and struck him against the shin in a sharp burst of pain. Ander's first instinct was to look down, but he knew he couldn't do that. Unlike axes and spears, rocks weren't considered weapons, so they were perfectly legal. He couldn't afford to drop his guard for even a second, because a single well-aimed rock might be all it took to knock him out cold, and if that happened...

Well, he probably wouldn't live long enough to ever regain consciousness.

Keeping his back to the fire, Ander concentrated on the frontline Wolves that had rocks in their hands. His focus was so sharp, everything else just faded into the background: the stinging pain in his leg, the other Wolves and their catcalls, even the stones that came sailing over their heads and had no chance of hitting him. They all took on a pale, black and white shade, leaving the real threats to stand out with perfect clarity.

Don't try to dodge the rock, Ander thought, his eyes darting from Tinek to Dray to Semmis to Rakah and back to Tinek again, the only Wolves who had a clear line of fire, and the only ones capable of hurting him in this exact moment. Dodge the arm that throws it...

Dray was the first one to try his luck. He stepped forward, pulled his arm back, and hurled his rock with all the strength he could muster. Even though his movements were obvious and easy to read, at this range, Ander was barely able to move out of the way in time. It struck the dirt to the right of him and bounced into the opposite side of the crowd, leaving a pot mark in the dust.

"Hey, watch it!" somebody yelled.

Next was Rakah. His arm was much faster, and Ander wasn't able to avoid the stone completely. It struck a glancing blow against his ribs and spun off into the night amidst more indignant cries from the other Wolves to "be careful with those damn rocks!"

Ander didn't have any time to worry about his ribs. Semmis already had his arm cocked. Ander drew an imaginary line from his hand to the predicted point of impact and started to move away before the rock even became airborne.

"Dance, killer, dance!" Semmis shouted and let rip. Even with his slight head start, Ander had to jump away to avoid it completely.

That's when Tinek made his move. While Ander was still in the air and unable to dodge, he launched the biggest stone yet with a powerful sideways sweep of his arm, aiming it directly at Ander's face.

He saw it coming, rapidly spinning through the air, but there wasn't anything he could do to evade it, so he did the next best thing. He covered his face and let the rock smash into his forearm. The pain came first, then a numbing shockwave that travelled up and down the entire length of his limb. All this happened in a flash, before he even had a chance to land.

More cheers.

"Good one, Tinek!"

"Look at 'em bleed!"

He could feel the warmth flowing down his arm perfectly well without needing to be told by the likes of them, accumulating on his elbow, dripping in a steady -

Something big and heavy suddenly slammed into his left leg, followed by the now familiar sensation of claws tearing at his clothes. He looked down and saw Ryko clinging to his pants leg, trying his very best to lift him up and tip him over.

"I got 'em! I got 'em!" he yelled, probably feeling incredibly clever for taking advantage of the brief moment when Ander had his eyes covered. He failed to consider, however, that Ander was much bigger than he was, and had a distinct weight advantage.

Ander brought that fact home with a hard punch to the top of his head.

"Aah! I don't got 'em! I don't got 'em!" Ryko squealed, but the bastard still wouldn't let go!

Although Ander would have preferred not to do something like this, he had no choice. He raised his fist high in the air and brought it down for a second time, then a third and a fourth, pounding away again and again, his fist making the most awful sounds against Ryko's skull until he finally felt the whelp's grip loosen. That's when somebody snuck up behind him, slipped their arms underneath Ander's armpits and locked their hands together behind his head, effectively putting his entire upper body out of action.

Ander tried to break free, but whoever this Wolf was, his grip was far too strong. He could feel the knuckles grinding into the back of his neck, pushing his head down against his chest, making it difficult to breath.

And Ryko was still holding on!

"Let go!" Ander shouted, not even sure himself whether he was talking to Ryko, the mystery Wolf behind him, or to both. He raised his free leg, stomped down on the top of Ryko's head, and the little bastard finally let go with a yelp of pain, a single line of red slowly flowing down the side of his face.

Kyro, his brother, quickly rushed forward and dragged his semi-conscious sibling back into the safety of the crowd, muttering, "You stupid idiot! What you do that for!?"

"At least I did something, shut up!"

Since stomping proved an effective technique against Ryko, Ander tried to apply it to the one behind him. He lifted his leg and stomped down as hard as he could right on top of the Wolf's foot.

Not even a single grunt of pain.

It was difficult to tell with all the different smells mixing in the air, but if Ander had to guess, he'd say that this scent belonged to Dorin. If so, he was in a world of trouble. Unlike Ryko, Dorin was an accomplished warrior under the direct command of Garten. It would take more than a simple foot-stomping to get a Wolf like this to release his prey, but since it was better than hanging there doing nothing, that's exactly what Ander did.

He stomped down over and over, alternating between his legs, probably looking like a fool, but not caring. It was tricky aiming at something below and behind you, and to make matters worse, Dorin (if it really was him) was adept at maintaining his hold while keeping his feet well back, making it even more difficult. Sometimes he scored a hit, but mostly he only managed to slam his foot down on hard dirt.

"Would somebody help me with this guy before he breaks my toes!?" he yelled, jerking Ander back towards the crowd. There was no mistaking that gravelly voice. It was definitely Dorin.

"I dunno, Dor. It looks like you got things well under control," somebody said.

"Very funny, now help me! This bastard is stronger than he - Aarhgh!!"

Ander didn't know how, but in his wild flailing he actually managed to grab hold of something. One side was soft and furry, but the other was smooth and waxy, and there was only one thing that could possibly be.

Dorin's ear.

Ander squeezed down hard, crumpling it between the clenched fingers of his fist, his claws punching holes right through the membranous flesh.

"Aargh! Thoka, you fat bastard! I could really use some help heeaaargh!"

Ander pulled for all he was worth, honestly not caring if he ripped the whole thing off. Compared to what they were trying to do to him, a torn ear was nothing.

"All right, all right, keep your ear on! Ha!"

It was getting difficult to hold on. Dorin's ear was all slippery with blood, and the way it twitched beneath his fingers was -

Dorin suddenly bit into Ander's shoulder so hard he could actually feel the teeth strike his collarbone, each jagged point setting off an explosion of pain as they bored into his flesh.

"Aargh!" Ander squeezed harder, no easy feat considering the way he now had to contort his arm around, but that, in turn, made Dorin bite down even harder. He could feel the side of his face against his neck, could feel his hot breath blowing over his gushing wound as Dorin tried to talk, his words muffled by Ander's flesh.

"I gonna have a crook i hy ear hor teh rest o' hy life, oo astard!!"

"Wow, I'm real sorry to hear that!" Ander said and twisted.

Now they were both screaming in pain.

Ander knew he shouldn't be surprised by the reactions of the other Wolves at this point. He's lived with them his entire life, and he's seen what they were capable of, especially in the last few hours. Even so, what they were doing right now made him sick to his stomach.

They were laughing.

There were two big red triangles of blood saturating Ander's fur on his chest and shoulder blade, both pointing downwards, both slowly elongating as his frantic heart pumped more and more blood through the puncture wounds. He couldn't see much of Dorin's face past his growling muzzle, but judging by the slick feel of his ear, he must be bleeding pretty badly, too. His whole face was probably soaked by now.

And everyone else was watching this and laughing.

"Well hey there, Ander," Thoka said, leisurely strolling into view. "Haven't spoken to you in a while. How's it going?"

"I've been bet -"

Thoka lunged, moving surprisingly fast for such a heavy Wolf, and threw a low, sweeping uppercut right to Ander's midsection, hard enough to actually lift him up onto his toes, knocking all the wind out of him in a noiseless rush of air. Even worse than that was the way Dorin's teeth shifted with the impact, tearing into his muscle.

Ander coughed and spluttered, trying to force air back into his lungs, but he couldn't take in more than one wheezing gasp at a time. Any more than that and pain would flare up in his chest.

At least he was still holding onto Dorin's sopping ear.

"Eh? What was that?" Thoka asked. "You're gonna have to speak up, boy."

"I said..." Ander raised his head as much as Dorin's hold would allow. "I'm doing just fine. And you?"

Thoka crinkled his nose as if he had just caught a whiff of an exceptionally foul odour.

"Hoka, hor teh Cora's sake, get dis guy awf eeee!" Dorin burbled against Ander's shoulder. "'Ight ow!"

"You heard him, murderer! Let go!"

"Why don't you try and make me?"

And that's exactly what Thoka did. He struck Ander a series of blows, each one identical to the first, but also more painful than the last.

On the sixth hit, Ander finally lost his grip on Dorin's soggy ear.

Dorin opened his jaws and pulled his head back as far it would go to avoid a repeat performance of Ander's dreaded ear-grabbing trick. "You sure took your sweet time, you lazy oaf!"

Ander looked down at the twin rows of holes in his shoulder, red and dripping. Well, it could have been much worse. Unlike Banno, Dorin didn't shake his head back and forth like a wild animal.

"Lazy oaf?" Thoka said and crossed his arms. "A 'thank you' would have been nice. No wonder you always get -"

Ander kicked him right where it hurt the most, dead centre in the spot where no Wolf ever wants to get kicked. Well, no male Wolf, at least.

Thoka's eyes grew to the size of pot lids and a feeble groan escaped his mouth: "Oooohaaahck..." making him sound remarkably like a bullfrog. He sank down to his knees, cupping his injured pride in his hands, and with tears streaming from his eyes he said: "That... wasn't... faaaaaiir..."

"_You_want to preach to me about fighting fair!?" Ander shouted and wrenched his body downwards. His shoulder was so slippery with blood he almost certainly would have broken free if only Dorin didn't still have his fingers locked together.

"Oh no you don't!" he said and jerked Ander right back up again, making his wound scream.

In the meantime, Thoka had managed to hobble his way back into the crowd amidst gales of laughter, wheezing an obligatory "Shut... up..." to anyone who asked him how his stones were doing.

"This is PATHETIC!!" The shout was so loud, so authoritative, it ended the joviality right then and there. Garten stormed into the small area of open space surrounding Ander and Dorin, his face so livid, a mere glance was enough to kill every lingering case of the giggles. "First Hyker! Then Ryko! And now Thoka! How many more of you worthless lumps will be taken out of action by one bound Wolf!? A Wolf who was never even trained to fight, I might add!?" Garten turned around in a slow circle with his hands outstretched, as if waiting for an actual answer. When none came, he continued in the same, outraged tone of voice. "Have you forgotten what we're here to do!? We are here to punish a traitor! Have you forgotten why? Because he killed Banno! Is this what you call vengeance? Is this what you call justice!? If Banno were here right now, he'd be embarrassed by this miserable effort! Laughing and having fun is all well and good! In fact, I'm sure Banno would have wanted it that way! But our happiness should come at the cost of Ander's pain! Not the ones who were too weak to do a proper job of inflicting it! Verily, the fact that he's still capable of standing is a disgrace!"

Ander watched as many of the Wolves bowed their heads in shame. And why shouldn't they? Joking around, laughing at their injured comrades while they were supposed to be beating a traitor to death? Tsk, tsk.

Ander tried to check the position of the moon again, but he simply couldn't lift his head high enough with Dorin's hands pressing against the back of his neck like this. His heart told him it must have been an at least an hour since all this started. It certainly felt that way, but logic told him it was probably closer to twenty minutes.

"Let me show you how it's done!" Garten said and rounded on Ander. "Hold him, Dorin!"

"I have him, Sai. He's not going anywhere."

"He better not!"

A strange feeling stole over Ander as he watched Garten ball up that big fist of his. Sure, there was the instinctive dread that came from anticipating a blow to the face, that stressful knot in your stomach that made every muscle in your body go tense, but there was something else, too, something Ander was very surprised to find himself feeling in the heat of such a dire moment.

Bemusement.

Here was Garten, a Wolf who arguably despised Banno more than anyone else in the entire tribe, who couldn't go more than a week without challenging him to sparring matches so vicious that sometimes whole groups of Wolves had to stand by to keep Banno from literally mauling the poor fool to death, going on about 'justice' for his fallen comrade, as if they used to be the best of friends.

"This is for Banno, you piece of filth!"

The strike came in slow, but there was a lot of power behind it, and no way for Ander to dodge. It smashed into the left side of Ander's muzzle, mashing his lips against his teeth and pushing his face to the right. The sudden movement made it feel like his shoulder was exploding from the inside out, each hole like a small, burning furnace of pain. He probably would have been able to count the teeth marks just from feel alone, but there was no time for that. The second strike followed immediately after, but from the right side this time, sending his head twisting back the way it came.

"How does that feel, Ander, huh!?" Garten shouted, his eyes bugging out of his sockets, spittle flying form his mouth.

He's going crazy, Ander thought, fighting against the blurry shadows that were starting to creep into the corners of his vision. He's genuinely going crazy...

The third blow connected with his cheekbone, the fourth with his lower jaw. It was this last one that made the blurry shadows suddenly flare up into a swirling mass of nothingness, like there was a black fire inside his head and the smoke was leaving a dirty layer of soot against his eyes, but it didn't last very long.

Garten's next blow landed in almost exactly the same spot as his first, grinding the soft meat of his lips against his teeth yet again, cutting them open with sheer pressure. Ander could feel the blood seep into his mouth from a dozen tiny cuts, probably mixing with Hyker's.

Disgusting.

"How does it feel, Ander?" Garten said. "To feel your brother's vengeance? He might not be with us anymore, at least not in body, but I can feel his spirit in this place, cheering me on! He's the one using my fists right now! He's the one guiding my arms! He's the one savouring your pain, and he'll be the one to taste your death... through ME!" Garten licked his teeth, his tongue hesitating, as it always did, over the broken gap.

And that's when Ander realized it. It was so obvious, he didn't understand how he could have missed it until now.

Don't laugh, Ander, he told himself desperately, fighting the urge to do just that. If you laugh now, he'll lose it completely. He will kill you.

Don't. Laugh.

The thing about holding back laughter at inopportune times; the harder you tell yourself not to do it, the more likely you are to do the exact opposite, and this was no exception. It burst through Ander's aching lips in a bloody snort, and that just made it even funnier, somehow.

Garten took a startled step back, his face going from murderous rage to outright bewilderment in less than half a second.

It's out. No point in holding back now.

The laughter just rolled out of him, gaining strength until he could barely breathe. He could hear the whispers all around him; Wolves asking each other if he had finally gone insane, and that just made him laugh even harder. He laughed and laughed until tears streamed form his eyes. It hurt his stomach so bad, but he couldn't stop! If Dorin wasn't holding him up, he probably would have sunk down to his knees by now.

Garten reached out and grabbed Ander by the throat, forcing his face up so they were looking each other in the eye.

"What is so damn funny?" he asked.

Ander wanted to answer him - really, he did - but he was laughing so hard he just couldn't force the words out.

"What is so damn funny!?" Garten bellowed and grabbed Ander's bloody shoulder, digging into the wound with his claws until the laughter turned into a bloody scream. "I'll only ask you one more time..." He slowly eased his grip and waited a few seconds for Ander to get his breath back. "What... is so... damn... funny...?"

Ander smiled and said, "You are."

"Me?"

"No matter how hard you try, Garten. You'll never be Banno."

"What!?"

"You've been jealous of Banno your entire life, haven't you? He was bigger than you, he was stronger than you, he was faster than you. He was a better hunter, and a better fighter. He demanded respect wherever he went, without even trying, and no matter what you did, you could always be sure that Banno could do it so much better than you, because he was better than you."

"You don't know what you're talking about! Shut up!" Garten started squeezing Ander's shoulder again, making the blood ooze out between his fingers, but there was no way Ander could stop now. All the pain in the world couldn't make him stop now.

"You always trained so hard, but it never made any difference," he said through gritted teeth. "Every time you challenged him, the outcome was always the same. You, lying facedown in the dirt. Him, standing victorious. Always!"

"Shut up, you bastard!" Garten screamed, pulled his arm back, and punched Ander right in the nose. He could feel it breaking inside his muzzle; the sound it made was like stepping through a frozen puddle in the middle of winter. Blood gushed from his nostrils in a crimson stream.

With his nose rendered useless, Ander had no choice but to keep his mouth open to breathe, but that suited him just fine. He didn't even noticed the way his blood was flowing over his lips and into his mouth. There was so much blood in there already it hardly made any difference anyway. "You're not angry because I killed Banno, Garten," he said, his voice all gurgly. "You're angry because I did it before you could prove to yourself that you're not completely inferior to him in every way. Because if you're not the best, then you might as well be last, and if you're last, then you might as well be dead. That's why you tried so hard. It's because you didn't want to feel dead inside. Nobody wants that. I've felt that way for so long, so I know what it's like. Even now, with Banno gone, you still feel like the second best, and I took away your chance to finally surpass him. That's why you're so angry."

"Your little mind games won't work on me, Ander." Garten spoke very softly, very slowly, but the tribe had become so quiet not a single word was lost. "You barely knew your own brother, and you don't know me at all. Don't speak as if you do."

"That's where you're wrong, Garten. I knew Banno better than anyone, maybe even better than his own parents." Ander glanced in the Cora statue's direction, but the crowd was too thick. Still, he knew Kadai and Shekka must still be standing underneath its reaching arms somewhere, listening to every blood-soaked word. "That's how I know you. You hated Banno. You despised him. But you hated yourself even more because you were always striving to be just like him! You wanted to become him!"

"Shut up!" Garten punched him in the nose again, grinding the shattered bones against each other. Ander tried to scream, but that only made the pain worse. Bloodbubbles popped from his nostrils as he struggled for breath, that horridly familiar iron taste coating his mouth and throat. It felt like he was about to drown in his own blood. Ander's head sagged - he simply didn't have the strength to keep it up anymore - and he watched as the blood dripped from his nose and splattered onto the ground. He was having trouble actually seeing the drops fall in the growing darkness, so it looked to him like red spots were simply materializing out of nowhere. Or maybe it was the ground itself that was bleeding? He didn't know. It didn't seem important right now. There was a rock lying by his feet, the top half already covered in red. It reminded him of the rock that had started it all, the rock that had struck Kiana. The rock that Banno had almost used to...

"You don't know me!" Garten punched him again and again, swiping his fists so wildly that Ander couldn't even track them in his muddled state. He was only aware of the explosions of pain that appeared on his face completely at random, accompanied by Garten's frantic shouts. "You don't know me! You don't know me!!" Maybe if he could hit hard enough, or deny Ander's words strongly enough, he wouldn't have to feel dead inside.

Ander's whole face was just a gigantic throbbing ball of pain now, but that was okay. It was fading away. Becoming... less.

Was the fire dying? It wasn't burning so brightly anymore. All the light was just... going away, being replaced by shadows. Even the moon seemed pale, robbed of its light. Wait, no... that wasn't right... How could it be the moon when it was so close...? And how could the moon be so bloody?

Ander strained his eyes until the image swam back into focus, and he realized he wasn't staring at the moon. He was staring at the blood-soaked rock in Garten's hand.

"Sai, wait!" Dorin said, but it was too late.

"YOU DON'T KNOW ME!!" Garten thundered, and brought the rock down.

Ander saw it rushing towards his face; a jagged, red orb. He felt it crash against his forehead, felt its edges tearing his skin open.

And then, mercifully, there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Not even the blackness of his nightmares.

---

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