Chapter 417: Mother’s Fury
The smell of iron and dried meat permeated the air and mixed with the smoke rising from Tauri’s campfire. The Blood Fang hunters huddled around the fire, trying to gather what little heat they could from the flames. The fall into the river had left them all freezing, even the goblins were struggling to stay warm.
The hunters and Tauri had taken refuge in one of the frost troll’s storage cellars. The cellar had been carved out from the side of one of Grimstone Mountain’s numerous tunnels. The room wasn’t very large but it was easy to defend if any more trolls were to attack.
The cellar was filled with frozen hunks of meat, some dangling from the ceiling, others resting atop large wooden tables. Tauri had dismantled one of the tables and burned it with a flame spell to create their campfire. Some of the hunters that were well enough to walk had grabbed some of the cellar’s meat and hung them over the fire to cook.
Jahn sat in the cellar’s doorway, his spear resting between his arms. Tauri had offered to take shifts between guard duty but Jahn had politely declined.
A chieftain’s duty was to protect his tribe and he had already failed to protect them, he would not fail them again, not while he had strength, he told her.
Tauri had let him be after that. She understood what it was like to have failed the people you were meant to protect. How many had fallen at Widow’s Crag due to her rash decisions made in anger. The blame wasn’t only hers to carry but such a thought hadn’t made her students’ deaths any easier to carry.
Around half the Blood Fang hunters had fallen in the chasm’s river never to rise again. The rest were wounded, some far worse than others. Srixa and a few other hunters tended to the unconscious in grim silence.
“It’s freezing in here,” Plum muttered with chattering teeth. She rubbed her arms and inched closed towards the fire.
It was freezing in this godforsaken mountain, but there were worse places to be Tauri supposed. She glanced at the bundle of white flower petals next to her and felt a pang of worry eat at her insides.