The Cold-Thing gnawed.
It was a beast with a thousand invisible teeth, and it was always hungry. It chewed on the rocks, making them sweat with frost. It bit at the mud, turning it to a hard, cracked skin that trapped the feet of the unwary. It gnawed on the spirits of the fifty-three goblins huddled in the shadow of the rockslide, sucking the warmth from their marrow and leaving a hollow ache behind.
Rakka felt it gnawing on her. It was in her toes, a dull, dead feeling. It was in her lungs, a sharp crystal with every breath. It was a constant, grinding pressure, a reminder that the world wanted them dead. The wind was its howl, a long, mournful scream that promised an eternity of this misery.
She was chieftain of this place. Chieftain of the Shivering-Tribe. Queen of the Fucking-Dregs.
Her gaze drifted over her kingdom of misery. A kingdom of huddled shapes and quiet whimpers. There, by the sputtering excuse for a fire, was Old Grok. His one good eye was closed, his head lolling on his chest, a thin line of drool freezing in his beard. He was supposed to be watching. He was dreaming, probably of a time when his belly was full and his bones didn't feel like they were made of ice. Rakka felt a hot spike of anger, followed by a cold wave of… nothing. What was the point of anger? Yelling wouldn't make him younger, or give him back his eye. He was just another broken thing she had to carry.
Near him, a knot of mothers tried to shield their young. They had torn scraps from their own thin clothes to wrap around the little ones, a useless gesture against the Cold-Thing's hunger. One of the younglings, Pip, had a cough. It was a wet, deep, rattling sound that seemed too big for his tiny chest. Every time he coughed, the mothers would flinch, as if the sound itself was a blow. Every cough was a countdown.
This was her tribe. The chipped cups, the cracked pots, the bent spears. The things her brothers had thrown away when they broke the world.
Ufgak. Grob. Her brothers. The names were like stones in her gut. Ufgak, all bellow and break-bone, thought a chieftain was just the one who hit the hardest. He'd taken the strong ones, the big ones, the ones with more muscle than sense, and marched them off to smash Grob's face in. Grob, all whisper and gut-knife, had taken the sneaky ones, the poison-mixers, the ones who could smile while pissing in your soup. He was probably trying to figure out how to make a rock fall on Ufgak's thick skull.
They were fighting over their father's legacy. A pile of rocks, a bigger fire, and the right to be the biggest bastard in the valley. They had shattered the tribe, the whole thing, for it. And in the cracks, she had found these. Her fifty-three. The forgotten.
She hadn't meant to lead them. When the screaming started, she had just run. Hidden. But they had found her. One by one, then in small, shuffling groups. They had looked at her, their eyes full of a terrible, pleading hope. She was the old chief's daughter. Maybe she knew a secret. Maybe she knew the way out of the pain.
The secret, she'd learned, was that there was no secret. There was just the next step. And the one after that. And the crushing, endless weight of fifty-three souls clinging to her back.
A noise. A wet, slapping sound, followed by a sharp hiss like a cornered snake. Rakka's head snapped up. Her hand went to the rusty cleaver at her belt, the familiar feel of the pitted iron a small, hard comfort.
Trouble. It was always trouble.
She pushed herself away from the rock, her legs stiff and protesting. The mud tried to claim her boots, but she pulled them free with a wet suck. Around the edge of the outcrop, she saw them. Two goblins, Retch and Puke—she'd named them that herself after finding them vomiting from fear in a ditch—were rolling in the filth. They were little more than skin and bone, but they fought with a desperate, wiry strength. Retch had his teeth clamped on Puke's arm, and Puke was trying to gouge Retch's eye out with a dirty thumb.
Between them, half-crushed in the mud, was a single, pale, sickly-looking mushroom.
Rakka felt something hot and ugly uncoil in her belly. It wasn't weariness. It wasn't annoyance. It was rage. A pure, clean rage that burned away the cold for a precious moment. They were breaking the first rule. The only rule.
"ENOUGH!"
Her voice was not a bellow like Ufgak's. It was the crack of a whip. The sound of a bone snapping. It cut through their pathetic snarls and they froze, their bodies tangled, their eyes wide and feral, fixed on her.
She walked towards them, each step a heavy, deliberate thump in the mud. She didn't hurry. She let them see her coming. Let them feel the weight of her anger. She stopped, looming over them.
"Mine!" Retch garbled through his mouthful of Puke's arm.
"Saw first!" Puke spat back, a string of bloody saliva flying from his lips.
Rakka looked from one to the other. She saw the raw, stupid hunger in their eyes. The fear. The desperation. They weren't just fighting over a mushroom. They were fighting because they thought they were alone. They had forgotten.
She reached down and grabbed a handful of Retch's greasy hair, yanking his head back. He yelped and his jaw opened, releasing Puke's arm. Then she kicked Puke hard in the ribs. He grunted and curled into a ball.
"Look at me," she hissed, her voice low and dangerous. She waited until both of their terrified eyes were locked on hers. "There is no 'mine'. There is no 'saw first'. Understand?"
They stared, uncomprehending.
"Stupid," she growled. She pointed a trembling finger at Retch. "You are not you." She pointed at Puke. "You are not you." Then she thumped her own chest, hard. "I am not me." She swept her arm out, pointing at the huddled shapes of the rest of the tribe. "There is only We. The tribe. The fifty-three. The We is what keeps the Cold-Thing from eating our bones. The We is what keeps my brothers from finding us and turning our skulls into cups. When you fight him," she jabbed her finger at Puke, "you are not fighting him. You are biting a finger off the We. You are making us weaker. You are helping the Cold-Thing. You are helping my brothers."
She let the silence hang in the air, thick and heavy. She watched their stupid, frightened faces as the idea, the huge and terrible idea of We, tried to find a home in their tiny skulls.
"Now," she said, her voice softening just a fraction. "The mushroom. It belongs to the We."
She bent down and plucked the sad, muddy fungus from the ground. She held it up for them to see. Then, without another word, she turned and threw it into the heart of the fire. It vanished with a soft, wet sigh.
Retch made a sound, a choked sob of loss. Rakka ignored it. She looked back at the two of them, still lying in the mud.
"Get up," she said, her voice flat again. "Go to the edge of the camp. Both of you. And watch. Watch for my brothers. You will be the eyes for the We. You will get colder. You will get hungrier. And you will remember. Or the We will leave you behind."
She turned her back on them and walked away, not waiting to see if they obeyed. They would. Fear was a better motivator than hunger. She slumped against her rock, the rage gone, leaving her colder than before. The weight was back, heavier now. She had to hold them all together. She had to be the We. And she was so, so tired.
She was drifting into a state of numb misery when a new sound broke the quiet. The frantic scrabbling of feet, a goblin moving with the kind of haste that meant only one thing: bad news.
It was Pip. The little cougher. He skidded around the rock, his face a pale mask of terror, his eyes huge and dark. He tripped over his own feet and fell in a heap at her boots.
"Chief!" he wheezed, the word catching in his throat. "Chief!"
"Breathe, Pip," she said, her voice rougher than she intended. "Words. Now."
"Krik… on the ridge…" he gasped, pointing a shaking hand to the west. "He saw… things."
Krik was one of her better scouts. He was missing two fingers, but his eyes were sharp. "What things? Ufgak's patrols? Grob's sneaks?" They should be to the east.
"No!" Pip shook his head so hard his teeth chattered. "Not… us. They… they wrong, Chief. All wrong."
A new kind of cold, one that had nothing to do with the wind, washed over Rakka. "Wrong how?"
"Bigskins," Pip whispered, the word itself a curse. "Two of them. Like from the old stories. Tall."s. Here. In these mountains. It was impossible.
"And… and others," Pip continued, his voice cracking. "With them. Goblins. But… not. They not stooped. They stand up straight. Like the Bigskins. Tall. And they have… hard shells. On their chests. And big, flat bits of wood. Krik said… Krik said they move like one thing. A big, spiky wall with many legs. They just… walk. Thump. Thump. Thump. And they coming this way."
Rakka stared out at the grey, jagged peaks. Her mind, usually a sluggish thing, was suddenly racing. Humans. Goblins that weren't goblins. A walking wall. It was a story to frighten younglings. But Krik's eyes were sharp. And Pip's fear was real.
Her first instinct, the deep, primal instinct of every weak thing, was to hide. To pull the rocks over their heads and pray the monster didn't sniff them out. They were a small group. They might pass by.
But.
But what if they didn't? What if they were scouts? What if a bigger monster was following them? Hiding was just dying in the dark. You had to see the thing that was going to kill you. You had to look it in the eyes. You had to know its shape.
She looked at Pip, shivering at her feet. She looked at the huddled shapes of her tribe, her broken, useless, precious things. The We. She was the one who had to stand between them and the wrong things.
She put a hand on Pip's head. He flinched, then leaned into her touch.
"Slik!" she bellowed, her voice echoing off the rocks.
Her lieutenant, his good ear twitching, was there in a heartbeat. "Chief?"
"Find ten," she commanded, her voice hard as flint. "Ten who remember how to bite. We are going to say hello."
Slik's face went pale. "But… Bigskins… the wall…"
"Is just a thing to be broken," Rakka lied, pulling her rusty cleaver from her belt. The cold metal felt good in her hand. Solid. Real. "They are coming into our rocks. Our home. The home of the We. We will see what they want." She looked down at the dull, notched blade. It was a pathetic weapon. But it was the tooth of the tribe. And she was the one who would wield it. "Now. Go."