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Grud immediately called a family meeting and announced that Zogor, Reta's third-born son, had died while protecting his tribe from inland raiders. Hearing this, Reta broke down, and all his wives began crying, especially his older wives, who had nursed Zogor and treated him like their own son. The newer wives joined their senior sister-wives in their grief and comforted them.
Over the years, there had been a few of Grud's children who had died, but they died from accidents or hunts went wrong, in those cases, he could not get angry at bad luck or a wild beast fighting for their lives and winning, but this was different, someone deliberately attacked and killed his son and that, Grud could not let go unpunished.
When his wives had calmed down, Grud sent out runners to gather any capable and willing fighting men who were not essential to the defense and food production of the chiefdom, especially those who had any relatives from the Wide Tooth tribe that Zogor was from, he would give them the chance to exact revenge.
By the time their numbers were counted, supplies gathered, and transport arranged for, it was the next day. When all were gathered, there were around six hundred fighting men and ten wagons that were purchased from traders who decided to hunker down and wait out the winter. Their wagons were used to carry supplies and auxiliary staff, who handled the cooking, logistics, and repairs for the fighting men.
There was no speech needed, and all the men knew that blood would be shed, so they marched in a colomb, out into the freezing white.
***
Two weeks later, Grud and his men arrived at the Burning Talon tribe, the tribe where his daughter-in-law and grandchild had managed to escape to.
In order not to put the whole tribe on alert of an invasion, Grud sent one of his men ahead on a fast horse to tell them of his arrival. When the army arrived, Grud, along with some senior hunters, entered the tribe proper to see his daughter-in-law to get the full story
The Burning Talon tribe chieftain invited Grud into his home, there, he saw a woman holding a little girl who looked to be three to four years old.
The woman was the wife, now widow, of Zogor, Dalya, who looked paler and skinnier than Grud remembered when she married his son and spotted a bandaged wound on her right shoulder.
When Dalya laid eyes on Grud, her eyes started welling up with tears, "Father… they… Zogor…" was all she could get out before breaking down in a sobbing mess.
Grud walked over and hugged his daughter-in-law and stroked her head like he would with any of his children, "Shhh… Hush child, I am here, nobody will be able to hurt you." As Dalya cried, the little girl in her arms also broke out in tears and wailing, all Grud could do was hold the mother and child while ensuring them that everything would be right with the world.
When Dalya finally got all the crying out of her system, they noticed that the little girl had cried herself to sleep. Grud moved the strands of hair from the little girl's face and asked, "How old is she?"
"She is Koma; she is four this year, born just as the long winter began." Dalya said.
Grud nodded as he caressed his granddaughter's sleeping face, "You and your daughter will be taken care of. But that is for later, what I need to know now is who attacked your tribe?"
Dalya shook her head before answering, "I do not know, and neither did Zogor, they were all covered in thick winter wear… but the design of their shields seem to come from a few different tribes, most of them I do now know, but I recognized two of the shield designs, Falling Thorn and, Swift Deer tribes."
Grud did not know who they were, and when asked, Dalya informed Grud that they were tribes further inland that were a week's journey by foot from her tribe.
"How many of them were there?" Grud asked.
"I am not sure. We are a small tribe so our walls could only hold so many people, but there were close to a hundred attackers, but I suspect there were more outside the walls." she replied
Grud asked a few more follow-up questions before getting directions to her destroyed village. When Grud got all the information he could out of her, he sent Dalya and her daughter with an escort back to his chiefdom so his wives could take care of them.
Even though Grud did not get much useful information on the attackers, he had three leads to follow, he would start by investigating what was left of the Wide Tooth tribe, followed by investigating the Falling Thorn and Swift Deer tribes, they had much to answer for.
***
A week of traveling later, Grud and his men arrived at what was left of the Wide Tooth tribe, and there was not much left, everything but the stone foundation was stripped and gone, and the only thing left behind were all broken stuff.
Grud and his men immediately started scouring the place for clues that would at least point them in the direction of the people who attacked this tribe, but they had little luck. Any tracks were long covered by snow, and even Grud's enhanced sense of smell was not helpful in the cold environment that dampened all odors from a few weeks ago. The only clues that they managed to find were some scuff marks on trees and broken branches that suggested that when the raid on this tribe was done, the assailant went back up north from whence they came.
The only other oddity was the lack of bodies. Dalya said that she clearly saw the attackers cutting down anyone who opposed them, but there were no bodies or shallow graves nearby, so Grud and many of his men were wondering where the bodies went because they could safely rule out wild animals eating the corpses due to the lack of scattered body parts. The only sign that people were killed was the copious amounts of frozen blood when they cleared away layers of fresh snow.
When it was decided that they were going to find all that they were going to find, Grud held a short ceremony to lay the spirits of the fallen to rest and started making their way to the other two tribes on their list.
***
When they reached the Falling Thorn and Swift Deer tribes, they were expecting some opposition, but what they found was the same as the Wide Tooth tribe, everything was stripped, there were signs of battle and death, and all the bodies were missing.
"It looks like the attackers are using equipment of the fallen." Grud muttered his assumption to the.
"Either that or those who surrendered joined up with the attackers." one of the senior hunters who came along said.
"That is a rather disturbing thought, siding with the enemy that attacked your tribe." Grud replied while shifting more snow to try and uncover more clues.
"You will be surprised at what people would do to survive." the senior hunter said.
At the end of searching what was left of the two tribes, they were still left with no answer, so Grud decided that they had to do the tracking the old-fashioned way. So he made camp in what was left of the Swift Deer tribe and sent out trackers to follow a week's travel of whatever tracks they could find that were left behind from the ruins of the three tribes.
***
After a week and a half, the trackers came back with reports. Within the radius of one week's travel, they had discovered the ruins of eleven tribes that were in the same state as the three ruined tribes they found. But out of all the reporting tracker teams, there was one team with some good news, they found a bigger-than-normal tribe that seemed to be on high alert.
'Finally,' Grud thought, 'Some locals to tell us what in the world is going on.' they quickly packed up camp and followed the tracker that found the surviving tribe.
When they arrived near the surviving tribe, Grud hid his men in the woods and only came forward with ten men behind him.
The moment the guard on the wall saw Grud and his ten me exit the tree line, he shouted in alarm, "THE CANNIBALS ARE BACK!" and within seconds, there were dozens of men up on their wooden fortifications with arrows drawn.
This agitated the ten men with Grud, and they started raising their shields to defend Grud, but before they could surround Grud in a shield wall, he waved the men away and told them to hold their position.
Grud walked forward, causing the guards on the wall to start shouting at him, "Stop where you are and turn around you monstrous bastard cannibal! Or we will fill you full of arrows!"
Not wanting to further provoke the defenders, Grud stopped and planted his spear into the ground and raised his hands to show that he meant no harm. "I am Grud, Chieftain of the Rock Claw tribe. I am here to ask what happened to the surrounding destroyed tribes."
Turns out that his name carried some weight even here, as the guards looked at each other, followed by some discussion and sending one of their numbers back into the tribe, only to return with someone else.
The new person on the wall shouted, "Remove your helmet so we can confirm you are who you say you are."
Seeing that this was a reasonable request, Grud removed his helmet. After the newcomer nodded his head to confirm Grud's identity, the runner went back into the tribe, and a few minutes later, the main gate opened to reveal an old shaman with his escorts.
Even with arrows still trained on him, Grud took this as an invitation and walked up to the shaman on his own. "Greeting shaman, I am Chieftain of the Rock Claw tribe, may I know your name and the name of your tribe?"
The shaman gave Grud a respectful smile and replied, "Welcome, Chieftain of the Rock Claw tribe, your name and deeds are told around fires even here. This one is Obua, and this is the Deep Lake tribe, be welcome to our tribe, we have much to talk about."