Hangman was still grinding the leaf paste when his father, Butcher, and Fang came over to where Jono lay on the mats.

  Hangman didn’t think anything of their approach until his father glared down at him in a deep scowl. “Leave the man alone and stop treating him like a baby.” He turned to Jono. “Stand up and be a man. Your initiation is over. You aren’t so hurt that you can’t stand up and face the world on your own two feet.”

  Jono gulped and heaved himself off the mat. He winced a lot, but he tried to hide it.

  Hangman didn’t find any visible injury to Jono’s leg earlier. He might have torn or strained something.

  He tried to put his weight on it, limped again, and then pulled himself up straight in front of his father and uncles.

  Shadow surveyed the boy up and down, pursed his lips at the sight of the cuts on Jono’s face, and nodded.

  “That’s good. You did well against the Gorlock. I’m proud of you. You’re a man of the Godless Clan now. After today, you’ll be called Cross after those scars on your face. You’ll come with us on our missions from now on.”

  Cross burst into a huge smile. “Thank you, Father!” He turned to Butcher. “Thank you, Uncle!”

  “You have nothing to thank us for,” Butcher told him. “You earned that one all by yourself. You earned your place.”

  Cross practically burst out laughing in joy and relief, but the three older men only turned away and waved behind them. “You two come with us,” Butcher told them. “We need to discuss our next move.”

  The three older men crossed the camp to Butcher’s shelter. It was a shake hut made of thick, flexible saplings bent into a frame.

  A covering of leafy vines formed the roof and walls on three sides. The front stood open to the air.

  The Godless always built shelters like this no matter where they went. They built their shelters with four walls for privacy reasons, but only in camps where men and women lived together.

  No one had to protect themselves from the weather in this jungle. The shake roof barely blocked rain from entering. Other than that, the temperature always stayed oppressively hot and steamy.

  Hangman’s cousins stood off on their side of the camp listening to Shadow change Cross’s name. No one would ever use his old name again. He was Cross now.

  The women and children would call him that, too, as soon as the men returned to the rest of the band. His old name belonged to his boyhood and that time was over. The name no longer applied to him.

  The cousins followed the three older men back to Butcher’s shelter. He sat down in the very rear with Shadow on one side and Fang on the other.

  The cousins gathered around the three men. Some of the cousins squatted. Others sat on the ground.

  Cross limped in the rear. Hangman slowed his pace to stay near his brother. Shadow could afford to act harshly toward his son and insist that no on treat him like a baby.

  Hangman kept an eye on Cross to make sure he pulled through this all right, but he just looked sore. He would recover.

  His swollen face looked worse than it was. The leaf paste exaggerated the swelling, too. All of that would subside in time.

  There wasn’t enough room inside the shelter for everyone by the time Cross and Hangman got there.

  Hangman didn’t want Cross to go through the ordeal of sitting down and then having to stand back up again, so the two brothers remained standing in the back.

  Butcher pulled forward one of half a dozen leather bags he wore slung across his chest. All the Godless men carried their personal goods in bags like this.

  Butcher wore the two frontmost locks of his hair in two plaits down the side of his face. They hung in front of his ears. He wore the rest of it loose.

  He, Shadow, and Fang presented a picture in contrasts even though they were brothers.

  Butcher had a young, almost baby-like face with too much extra padding around his jaw and neckline. It made him look like the youngest of the three even though he was the oldest.

  He was also the biggest, the strongest, and the tallest. He wasn’t as big as Viking or Alien, but Butcher cut an imposing figure—on the outside at least.

  He lacked Shadow’s sharper, more astute strategic thinking abilities, though. Butcher wouldn’t have been able to lead the band at all without Shadow’s constant guidance and suggestions.

  Fang was the youngest, but he looked like the oldest. He looked older than Hangman imagined Midnight would have looked if he had been alive.

  Fang aged long before his time. He had been lanky, wizened, and distant for as long as Hangman could remember.

  Fang didn’t participate much in any strategic decision-making that Hangman could see. From what Hangman could tell, Fang just sat there and followed Butcher around to show everyone that Fang supported Butcher’s leadership—which was better than nothing.

  Shadow was a completely different story. He wasn’t as big as Butcher. Shadow was nowhere near as big as the bulkier nephews.

  He made up for it by being the brains behind the operation. He had a way of dropping information and suggestions into Butcher’s ear to make it seem like Butcher thought of all these details himself.

  Shadow had an expertly subtle way of steering his older brother into making the decisions Shadow wanted him to make. Shadow held the power that kept Butcher in position no matter what.

  It always puzzled Hangman that Shadow never challenged his brother for the position of Kral. Shadow might not have been as big or as strong, but he was big and strong enough to defeat his bigger, slower, less agile, and less alert brother.

  Shadow could have marshaled the support of every man in their band. He could probably even have marshaled the support of Butcher’s own sons.

  Shadow never stepped out of line. He never once showed by even a hint of facial expression that he ever questioned Butcher’s leadership.

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  Butcher never questioned Butcher’s leadership, either, thanks to Shadow’s diplomacy. It never crossed Butcher’s mind that he wasn’t the one in charge of this band or that he might not be the most qualified to be in charge.

  He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a handful of ancient sheets of some material the Godless had never seen anywhere else.

  Whatever material it was didn’t come from any known source in the jungle.

  The sheets resembled the glossy leaves of some jungle trees, but the sheets didn’t have veins nor did they take the same shape of leaves.

  Each sheet showed a different picture. The images didn’t come from the jungle, either.

  Hangman had seen these sheets for the first time the night of his initiation—the same way Cross was seeing them for the first time right now.

  The sheets puzzled Hangman as much now as they did every time he’d seen them since. They puzzled everyone in Butcher’s band. No one could figure out what the pictures were or where they came from.

  Butcher spread them out on the ground in front of him. There were nine sheets, each with a different picture on it.

  Most of them showed giant mountain ranges in the background with blue skies and some kind of symbols printed across the top.

  In the foreground, the pictures showed banks of some kind of iron tubes all facing in the same direction.

  Each tube attached to some kind of box or, in some cases, a lump of some kind of stone as far as Hangman could tell.

  Other pictures showed one or two individual, much larger tubes pointing up at the sky.

  Butcher pointed at the mountains in three of the pictures’ backgrounds. “We know these three are the same mountain shown from different angles. We also know that this mountain doesn’t belong to the Jagged Points to the west of our territory. Wherever this mountain is, it must be somewhere else.”

  “We might be able to see it if we got on top of one of the Jagged Points,” Boxer pointed out.

  The group should have taken his suggestion as almost as important as Butcher’s own opinion. Boxer was Butcher’s oldest son. He would probably become Kral one day.

  No one treated Boxer’s opinion as anything important. Alien actually sneered at him. “We can’t get on top of the Jagged Points. That’s ridiculous. The Jagged Points are inside the Renegade Clan’s territory. We would lose our lives going in there.”

  “We don’t have enough men to attack the Renegades outright,” Butcher decided. “We need to find another way to see what lies beyond those mountains.”

  “What other way is there?” Viking asked. “The Renegades patrol their territory, especially where it adjoins Godless territory. The Renegades are already encroaching. There is no way to get past them.”

  “These weapons could change everything,” Butcher replied. “We could turn the tables on the Renegades, drive them back over the mountains, and reclaim the territory they took from us.”

  “Then the question is how do we get across,” Butcher’s younger son Magnet added. “Without the Renegades finding out that we’re there.”

  “We don’t even know if that mountain is beyond the Jagged Points—or if the weapons are beyond the Jagged Points,” Feather pointed out. “We would risk our lives for nothing.”

  “It wouldn’t be for nothing,” Shadow replied. “We would be doing it to find out if the mountain is over there. Once we know where the mountain is, anyone who comes back from this raid will have a better idea of whether we need to push further inside the Renegades’ territory or not.”

  Feather raised his eyebrows. “Raid? We’re going on a raid—on the Renegades?”

  “We don’t have to drive back their entire invasion effort,” Butcher replied. “We only have to strike hard enough to get behind their front line. Once we do that, we can penetrate to the top of the Jagged Points. From there, we’ll see if the mountain is anywhere in sight. Then we’ll retreat and regroup before we make a play for the weapons.”

  The cousins exchanged glances. Hangman caught Vulture, Chaos, and Banjo all looking at him.

  Banjo even brought his eyebrows together in the center. The three cousins wanted Hangman to say something about this.

  He didn’t say anything. He was only eighteen. He didn’t make decisions on behalf of the band. Feather, Alien, and Viking were all so much older. They could get away with objecting to Butcher’s decisions right to his face.

  Hangman never did that—or almost never. He watched his father and the other men negotiate. Hangman learned from what worked for them and what didn’t.

  “Which peak do you want to go for?” Vulture asked.

  Butcher pointed toward the west. None of the men could see the Jagged Points from here. The men didn’t have to see. Every man of their band could visualize the Points as clearly in his mind’s eye as if he was seeing them in real life.

  “We’ll go for the Grey Ghost,” Butcher decided. “It’s the closet and the least rugged. We’ll be able to get to it the fastest and climb it the fastest both going up and going down.”

  “How do we ambush the Renegades?” Chaos asked. He always thought everything through in his calm, level-headed, insightful way. He inherited Fang’s reserve but none of his dullness.

  “We’ll scout the Renegades in the area first,” Butcher ordered. “We’ll see how many of them are blocking our way to the Grey Ghost.”

  Hangman spoke up for the first time. “And if they discover us while we’re scouting? It could turn into a fight—in which case, we might as well fight our way through then and there. If we pull back, we’ll only alert them that we’re in the area and trying to get through.”

  Butcher nodded. “I was just about to say that. If it comes to a fight, break through if you can. Get to the peak and see what’s on the other side. One person bringing back news whether the mountain is there or not will be a big help.’

  Vulture caught Hangman’s eye and made a face. Hangman didn’t return it.

  Vulture seemed to take it as a personal insult that Butcher claimed other people’s ideas as his own to make himself look smarter.

  Vulture often made faces behind Butcher’s back to express how displeased Vulture was with Butcher’s leadership.

  Some men of the band openly supported Shadow for Kral—or at least people like Vulture supported Shadow behind Butcher’s back.

  It would never work for someone like Vulture to challenge Butcher on Shadow’s behalf. Then Vulture would wind up fighting Butcher.

  Vulture couldn’t challenge Butcher unless Shadow actually wanted to become Kral in his brother’s place. Shadow obviously didn’t want that. He was practically Kral already. He didn’t need to betray his own brother to do it.

  Hangman didn’t understand his father’s need to support Butcher by giving him these ideas and letting him take credit for them.

  Hangman decided early on to follow his father’s example, make suggestions, and then accept them when Butcher gave these orders as if he came up with them himself.

  Vulture saw Hangman doing it—which meant all the other men of their band saw Hangman doing it, too.

  They saw him following his father’s example. They saw Hangman’s and Shadow’s words coming out of Butcher’s mouth.

  He nodded as if the whole thing was already settled. “We’ll move out tomorrow and see how far we get. You all better get some sleep.”

  The party broke up. Cross and Hangman returned to their mats by the fire.

  The cousins worked around it hanging up the Gorlock meat to smoke overnight. Chaos squatted next to the haunch cooking over the flames.

  He cut it up and passed the to everyone, including Cross and Hangman.

  “Is it like this every night?” Cross whispered.

  “Like what?” Hangman asked. “Camp life is the same no matter where you go. Nothing ever changes.”

  “I’m talking about all of that between Father and Butcher,” Cross hissed. “I’m talking about Butcher saying he was just about to say what you just said.”

  Now it was Hangman’s turn to make a face. “You know it is. You must have heard enough in our camps to know what it’s like.”

  “I didn’t know it was like that!”

  “Well, it is, so you better get used to it. Butcher is Kral. What he decides is what we do. If you want things done a certain way, you have to convince him to go along with your idea.”

  “Convince him to go along with it,” Cross corrected. “Not tell everyone that he was just about to say that. That’s outrageous! And Father just puts up with it.”

  Hangman turned around, leveled his brother with a piercing stare, and lowered his voice to a barely audible murmur. “You’re a man now and in the company of men. I don’t know or care what you’ve heard in the company of women. If you honor Father so much, then do as he does. Use your brain and keep your mouth shut around those who are bigger, stronger, smarter, and more powerful than you. You can call it convincing them. You can call it suggesting things to them. You can call it whatever you want.” He pointed in his brother’s face. “Just remember what will happen if a Kral of the Godless hears you speaking against his rule and accuses you as a traitor. There are some things worse than someone taking your idea and saying he was just about to say that.”

  Cross shut his mouth, but he didn’t stop fuming about it. Hangman didn’t say anything else.

  Butcher was Kral of this band. He could order any of these men to their deaths if Butcher thought someone was arguing too much, questioning or challenging his leadership, or stepping out of line in any other way.

  Cross better learn that real quick if he was going to survive out here.

  End of Chapter 3

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

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