Page 92 of Iron Beneath the Snow

No one interrupted. No one responded.

The names were not mourned. They were remembered.

Eira stood among them, listening without recognition and yet unable to detach from the repetition. Each name landed differently, not as something inherited, but as something acknowledged—without embellishment, without distance.

When the last one faded, Soren spoke.

“We hunt so that no name is added this year.”

Nothing followed.

The gates opened.

The shift from stillness to motion was immediate.

Outside, the forest had changed with the season. The light was thinner, stripped of softness, and the ground answered every step more sharply than before. Sound carried farther. Mistakes would not disappear easily here.

The line extended as they moved, spacing widening naturally as the terrain opened.

Riven took the forward position without announcing it. Others fell in around that choice without needing to name it. His pace was steady, his attention moving between ground and distance with an ease that came from familiarity rather than effort.

Eira adjusted into the outer arc, her movement aligning without thought, as though her body had already learned the pattern.

They followed the trail of a boar.

Not a clean pursuit.

The ground told a different story—disturbed earth, broken undergrowth, the kind of signs that suggested not retreat, but resistance.

Near a frozen stream, the trail deepened.

Riven crouched, running his fingers lightly over the ground before glancing ahead.

“It’s still close,” he said, rising.

Soren gave a slight nod, and the line widened further.

The boar came out of the brush without warning, heavy and fast, driving left as it slammed into one of the younger hunters and threw him hard against a tree. The impact knocked the air from his lungs and left him exposed just long enough to become the weakest point in the line.

The response formed instantly, but without disorder, as Riven shifted to intercept, angling his spear low to redirect the animal’s momentum rather than meeting it head-on. The boar twisted sharply as it turned, its tusk catching along his shoulder and tearing through leather before he could fully clear the motion.

Eira caught both movements in the same instant—the break in Riven’s balance and the young hunter failing to recover—and although there was a brief opening where she could have gone for the strike, she chose differently.

Instead, she moved for the wolf.

She reached him just as he tried to push himself upright, catching his arm and forcing his weight sideways, pulling him out of the line and behind a fallen trunk. He resisted at first, driven more by instinct than intention, but she didn’t give him space to argue, pressing him down with enough force to override the reflex.

“Stay,” she said, her voice low but firm enough to hold.

The command landed.

Behind them, the line adjusted, tightening around the space she had left rather than collapsing into it.

Riven adjusted with the shift. His attention flicked once toward the angle she had abandoned before returning to the boar, and he held its focus just long enough to prevent it from turning back toward her.

He didn’t rush the strike. Instead, he let the animal commit fully before stepping into its blind side and driving the spear beneath the shoulder in one controlled motion.

The boar staggered, thrashed once, and then collapsed heavily onto the frost-hardened ground as the clearing seemed to exhale around it.