Seiko woke to the sound of metal cutting through flesh.
It wasn't the rhythmic CLANG of his hammer, but the wet, efficient sound of obsidian knives skinning and dismembering.
For a moment, panic gripped him. 'The battle…'
Then the pain hit. Every muscle in his body screamed, a chorus of protests against overexertion and blows. He rose with a grunt, his side bruised where the Alpha Krookodile had struck him even in death.
Acies stirred beside him, letting out a weak whimper. The Pawniard was curled up in the Ursaring-skin sleeping bag, trembling.
"Hey," Seiko whispered. "Calm. We're alive."
'Ching...' The sound was faint. Acies lifted its head, but its eyes were crusted shut and terribly swollen. The Sand Attack had done its job; the infection was already beginning.
"Shit." Seiko's pragmatism overrode the pain. 'Priority number one is this.'
He stood stiffly. The cave was cold. The gray light of dawn filtered in, illuminating the wreckage. His barricade was destroyed; the cave entrance was an open hole. And just outside, was his new retinue.
The eight warriors Iris had left behind worked with chilling efficiency. They had already skinned four of the Krookodiles. Thick hides were laid out, and piles of dark, marbled meat were being stacked. They didn't speak; they simply worked.
One of them, a burly man with a scar across his nose, saw him move. His eyes narrowed. He said nothing, but his hand rested on the hilt of his obsidian knife.
They were jailers. Efficient, but jailers.
Seiko ignored the implied threat. He grabbed his water skin and one of his clay pots.
"Water," he said to the warrior. "For my companion."
The scarred warrior merely watched.
Seiko advanced cautiously. The man didn't stop him, but his gaze followed every step toward the stream.
The water was pink-tinged with the blood of battle. Seiko cursed under his breath and walked upstream until the water ran clear. He filled the pot and the skin.
When he returned, the warriors watched. They expected him to give the water directly to the Pawniard.
Instead, Seiko went to his forge. The coals from the day before were nearly dead, but the ashes were still warm. He added new wood from his fuel pile, struck flint against steel, and with expert hands, rekindled the flame. He placed the clay pot of water over the pile of hot rocks.
The warriors murmured. One of them, a young woman with short black hair, approached. "Why are you burning the water?"
Seiko didn't look at her. "Dirty water kills as fast as the teeth," he said, repeating the maxim of his old world. "Sand Attack doesn't just blind. It carries dirt. Dirt brings rot. Boiled water," he gestured to the steam rising, "kills the rot."
The woman watched the water boil.
While the water boiled, Seiko tore a clean strip from his own tunic. When the water cooled enough, he soaked it, wrung it out, and returned to Acies.
"This will hurt," he whispered. "But it's necessary."
With the same precision he used to stabilize a forge, Seiko began cleaning Acies's inflamed eyes. The Pawniard hissed and tried to pull away, but Seiko held it firmly, murmuring meaningless soothing words.
He removed the sand, dried blood, and mucus. It was a slow process. The warriors watched silently.
When he finished, Acies's eyes were still red and swollen, but they opened. The Pawniard blinked, then looked at Seiko with a clarity it hadn't had moments ago. It made a sharp ching and rubbed its head against Seiko's hand.
Seiko felt the tension leave his chest. 'Good. Still functional.'
"The sun."
Iris's voice cut through the morning air.
She stood on the ridge where it had all begun, silhouetted against the rising sun. Her hunting squad was behind her, bloodstained but unharmed.
She descended into the battlefield, her gaze sweeping across everything. She saw the warriors working. She saw Seiko's boiled water. She saw the Pawniard, now alert. And she saw the massive corpse of the Alpha Krookodile, still impaled on the iron spear—a monument to the previous night.
"The pack is broken," she announced. "We killed three more. The rest won't return for a moon."
She approached Seiko, who was now standing. Dawn had run its course.
"It's morning, Seiko," she said. "Time. Teach us."
Seiko felt the weight of her words. This was the turning point. He could be their slave, or he could be their prophet.
"No," said Seiko.
The warriors stopped working. Iris's hands tensed on her bow.
"You chose your words poorly," Iris said, her voice dangerously soft.
"You chose your request poorly," Seiko replied, his voice calm, though his heart pounded. "I cannot teach you iron. Iron is not taught. Iron must be honored to be earned."
"Riddles?" she spat.
"Facts," said Seiko. He pointed to the smelting furnace. "That fire. You think it's just normal wood?"
Iris frowned.
"It isn't. It's baked wood. Charcoal. Burns hotter. Burns cleaner. Without it, your iron will be brittle slag."
He pointed to the pile of iron ore. "You think you want this. You don't. You want what this represents: the power to kill Alphas."
He straightened, the pain in his muscles a burning reminder of what it had cost. "My knowledge… was given for a purpose. It isn't a trick I can show you in a morning."
He improvised, weaving his theology on the fly, based on the only thing these people understood: work.
"It's work in exchange," he said. "An exchange. Work for power. My God, the Great Creator of the Great Mountain…" his mind clung to Mount Corona from the Legend of his People, the Celestica Clan. "…gave me this knowledge to share, not to hand out."
Iris stared at him. "What do you want, Seiko? Meat? Hides?"
"I want your work," said Seiko. "I want your order. You want my weapons, but my weapons require something your followers do not have."
He pointed to the warriors. "They know how to hunt. They know how to kill. But they do not know how to build."
"We make spears. We make bows," Iris said defensively.
"You make single-piece tools," Seiko countered. "This," he tapped the iron spear embedded in the Krookodile, "is far more complex than what you make. The shaft. The head. The binding. The furnace. The charcoal. The ore. If one step fails, everything fails."
He walked to his pile of wood, picked up his iron axe, and offered it to Iris, handle first.
She took it, surprised by the weight.
"The first lesson I will teach is not iron. It is the fuel to make it," said Seiko. "I want your warriors to cut down a hundred young trees. Not just any trees. Hardwood. Cut to the length of my arm. No longer, no shorter. I need that exact measure."
"Slave labor?" she said, narrowing her eyes.
"Acolyte labor," Seiko corrected. "You do the work, and I show you the next step. You follow the process, and you will have your iron. Try to skip a step, and you'll have a pile of hot rocks."
"This is a waste of time," said Kael, the scarred warrior. "We should take his knowledge and…"
"And what, Kael?" Iris interrupted, not taking her eyes off Seiko. She saw the Alpha's corpse. She saw the knife at his belt. "If we kill him, will you know how to get it hot enough? Will you know why his boiled water is better than ours? No, you don't. So first, you do as he asks."
Kael fell silent.
Iris had understood. She was pragmatic. She saw the power, and even without understanding the process, she was willing to pay the price… for now.
She returned the axe to Seiko.
"Hundred logs," she said. She turned to her people. "You heard Seiko! Kael, Rorin, Tama! Move! Bring the wood as he says! The rest, finish with the meat."
The warriors hesitated, but Iris's command was absolute. They grabbed their own stone axes and headed for the nearby forest.
Iris turned to Seiko. "You have your work. I hope this 'pact' of yours pays off soon. The People of the Earth are not patient."
"Neither is iron," said Seiko. "It doesn't care about patience. It only cares about the correct heat."
He turned, picking up his hammer and broken spear. The work had only just begun.
Acies, now more alert, limped out of the cave. It sat by the forge, a small steel guardian watching the giant humans begin the first work of the new era.