Just as the last sled was being loaded and Boji was preparing a triumphant speech about "temperature vectors and fish psychology," a splash cut through the murmuring.
A single fish jumped from the open hole—flipping mid-air and slapping into the snow with a wet thump.
Everyone turned.
Another leapt.
Then three more.
Then a wave.
The ice hole burst into silver motion—fish springing upward, flailing through the air, scattering snow as they landed at the militia's feet. Dozens. Then hundreds.
The Ikanbi warriors stood frozen, weapons forgotten, eyes wide.
Boji dropped to his knees, stunned. "They're… offering themselves?"
Even Ben was speechless.
Then, a sound rose across the snow—laughter.
Not cruel. Not mocking.
Just deep. Familiar. Unmistakable.
Ben turned.
Twa Milhoms stood atop a small rise near the riverbank, cloak of mist trailing behind him, eyes bright with mirth.
"You stood here all day," the god said between laughs, "with your clever stones and bait lines—when the fish were ready to escape on their own."
He chuckled again, as if amused by a child's attempt to push a boulder already rolling downhill.
"Ten days trapped beneath silence," he said. "You only had to wait."
Ben bowed his head. "Then why allow it?"
Twa Milhoms smiled. "Because effort is never wasted. And discipline deserves reward."
The last of the fish leapt from the water—an enormous blue-scaled thing that slammed into the snow like a thunderclap.
The river stilled.
Twa Milhoms raised his hand.
Without a word, the hole in the ice closed.
A sheet of white crept across the surface, sealing the current beneath.
The wind stopped.
Silence returned.
Ben turned to the gathered warriors. "Gather everything. We move before dark."
They nodded, still stunned, but obeying.
Boji remained kneeling, mouth open.
Ben looked at him, half smiling. "Next time, tell me your plan sooner."
Boji blinked. "You mean you'll—"
"I said next time."
The river was quiet now.
Frozen thick, sealed by a god's hand, its surface glinted like bone beneath the pale winter sun. No wind. No sound. Just silence and the memory of a miracle.
The sleds returned heavy with fish. Warriors, children, elders—everyone helped unload them. There was no shouting, no celebration. Only motion. Only hands passing weight from one to the next. Only the rhythm of survival.
The fish were gutted, smoked, and buried in packed snow. Others were wrapped in salt and ash, sealed into stone-lined pits beneath the village. Fires didn't burn—not here. But the warmth of Twa Milhoms' breath radiated from the earth, slow and steady, keeping frost from claiming everything.
Sema oversaw the work with sharp eyes. "One for the shelter, two for the cache. Keep the bones—grind them for broth." Her voice carried through the cold with the confidence of someone who had counted hunger more than once.
Ben watched it all without interrupting.
He didn't speak much now. He didn't need to. Each Ikanbi knew their role. Knew their weight. Knew that discipline, not luck, would carry them through.
He walked the inner lanes slowly, from granary to smokehouse to outer shelters. Warriors trained in silence near the fire pits—drills of balance, breath, and endurance. Children cleared snow from ventilation holes and tool racks. Even the Red Clawed prisoners moved in tight formations, hauling and stacking what they were told.
Mala stood among them like a silent blade.
"They're quiet," she told Ben when he passed. "Not grateful. Not hostile either. Just… cold."
He nodded. "Good. Cold keeps men from pretending."
Kael led a watch crew to the ridgelines later that week—not to scout, just to see. He took three warriors, moving slow through thigh-deep snow. No weapons drawn. No signals sent.
At the summit, they stood beneath frost-bitten pines and looked out across the valley.
Smoke.
Not near—miles off. A thin column rising from a tree-covered ridge to the south. Another to the east, much smaller.
Kael frowned. "Still alive out there."
A deer trail crossed their path on the way back. Old scat. Shallow prints. Life moving beneath the snow.
Even here, the world did not sleep. It simply endured.
At the Red Clawed camp, subtle changes bloomed.
Fewer arguments. More movement. One elder began carving small wooden tokens from firewood scraps—faces, animals, strange runes. Children traded them between shelters like currency. A kind of order formed.
One youth, no older than twelve, began organizing teams to gather bark for water boiling. Another followed Ikanbi crews during ration rounds, asking questions without speaking.
Mala watched and said nothing. But when she reported to Ben that night, her tone had shifted.
"They're not just waiting for spring," she said. "They're becoming something. I don't know what yet."
Ben nodded. "We'll decide then, not now."
That evening, Ben walked the line.
He passed the sealed fish caches, the smoke huts, the edge shelters where the snow piled thickest. He walked without escort, past both tribes' boundaries, letting the silence press into him. Letting the cold speak.
It said nothing new. Only that it would keep pressing down.
He returned to the great hall where Kael and Sema sat beside a shallow pit. No flame. Just the hum of warmth from the god's earth.
They shared a meal of roasted root and dried fish.
Kael chewed slowly. "We won't forget this cold."
Ben looked out the window, where snow fell again, soft and endless.
"We'll carry it," he said, "into every warm season that follows."
Far beneath the snow, in caverns lit by tallow and dim stonefire, the Duru tribe withered.
The cold did not reach them. Not fully. Their tunnels ran deep through earth and rock, warm enough to sleep, dark enough to hide. But warmth meant nothing when stomachs were empty.
Their food stores—roots, bark, cured lizards, dry fungus—had been rationed poorly. Their hunters, strong in voice but weak in skill, had returned empty-handed too many times. No prey entered the tunnels. No rescue came from above.
Now, with winter sealing the surface and hope running thin, the Duru were feeding on each other.
Not with teeth—yet.
But the strong had begun taking more than their share.
The loudest, the cruelest, the ones with muscle and memory of old raids—they ate first. They slept in warmth. They left the others to scrape fungus from rock and chew leather to ease the ache.
No one led them. No one stopped them.
Until Mia.
Seventeen winters old. A voice not yet hardened, but a gaze sharpened by silence. Daughter of a dead weaver. Sister to no one. She watched for days, saying nothing. Listening to footsteps. Mapping shadows.
When the third child died quietly in sleep, and no one cried, she stood.
"We go," she whispered, her breath misting in the cavern's stale air.
A few heads turned. Girls, mostly. Her age. Some younger. None armed.
"They'll kill us," one said.
"They already are," Mia answered.
She led them to the outer shaft—a narrow passage sealed in ice and stone. For days, she'd chipped at it in secret, using a broken mallet head and boiled water. Just enough to loosen the edges.
Now, as the weak slept and the strong feasted, she pulled the stone away.
Cold wind screamed down the shaft.
The young women flinched, but Mia didn't pause. She wrapped her feet in cloth, tied a strip of fur over her face, and began to climb.
One by one, they followed.
Out of hunger.
Out of desperation.
Out of belief that something above the snow might still be kinder than what waited below.