Gamble King Chapter 38. Options

Max's brain kicked into overdrive.

The young barbarian was thirty feet from the cliff base. The White Hands were maybe forty feet behind him, moving with that synchronized fluidity that made Max's skin crawl. The sun was almost gone. Darkness spreading like spilled ink.

Options.

Option one: Do nothing. Let them kill the kid. They'd do it while he was climbing—easy target, couldn't defend himself, would fall and break something even if he didn't die from whatever they did to him first. Then they'd either leave or they'd climb up here too, and Max would have to deal with six of them instead of helping when it was six against two.

Option two: Help the kid. Kill the cannibals, or at least drive them off. Make an enemy of the White Hand tribes, except they were already his enemy. Borgen had been crystal clear about that. They hunted squires for sport. For food. Whether Max acted tonight or not, they'd try to kill him eventually.

But if he helped the kid, the kid would owe him. Debt was currency in the tribal cultures. Protection, favors, information about the territory, maybe even shelter with whatever tribe he belonged to.

The choice crystallized in about three seconds.

Max grabbed his bow.

He still had the spears from the wendigo fight—four of them, tucked in his pack, the shafts solid but the heads dulled from use. He'd need to make new ones. Add it to the list. But right now, he needed range.

He pulled an arrow from his quiver. One of the ones he'd retrieved after the wendigo, which meant it had already been shot, already impacted something hard enough to leave the fletching slightly bent and the shaft with a hairline crack he could feel under his thumb.

Not ideal. But it would have to work.

The young barbarian hit the cliff base and started climbing. Fast, despite the limp in his left leg. Blood soaked through his trousers from a gash that looked deep.

The White Hands were closing. Twenty feet now.

Max nocked the arrow, drew, aimed.

The lead White Hand was a broad-shouldered man with patterns spiraling down both arms. He moved like a hunter. Confident. Predatory.

Max exhaled slowly, tracking the movement, leading the target just slightly—

He released.

The arrow flew.

And missed by a solid two feet, burying itself in the snow to the man's left.

"Shit."

All six White Hands stopped. Looked up.

Saw him.

Max's stomach dropped as six pairs of eyes locked onto his position. The damaged arrow. Of course. The bent fletching had thrown off the trajectory, and he'd been too focused on the target to account for it.

The White Hands started moving again. Faster now. Not toward the cliff—toward the space directly below it, spreading out to cut off any escape route the young barbarian might try.

The kid was fifteen feet up the cliff. Climbing with the kind of desperate speed that came from knowing death was right behind you.

Max dropped the bow.

No time for another shot. Not with them repositioning. He needed something that couldn't miss.

"Bro," he said. "We're doing the thing."

The spider's glow intensified immediately. Bright orange shifting to blue-white. Heat building.

Max thrust his hand forward and released the spell.

The methane poured out in a cone, invisible but present, spreading forward and down toward the cluster of White Hands below. He could feel it dispersing, covering the area in a cloud of flammable gas.

Bro opened his mandibles and breathed.

The ignition was instantaneous.

A wall of fire erupted from Max's position like a dragon's breath, the methane igniting in a rolling blast that turned late dusk into day. The flames roared outward in a cone, engulfing the space where the White Hands had been standing, heat washing back over Max's face hard enough to make him squint.

They scattered, throwing themselves backward, hitting the snow and rolling away from the inferno. One of them wasn't fast enough—his furs caught fire and he went down screaming, beating at the flames.

The young barbarian hesitated on the cliff, looking back at the chaos below.

Max grabbed his bow again, nocked another arrow—this one undamaged, he checked twice—and screamed at the top of his lungs:

"COME ON! COME ON UP!"

The kid snapped back to climbing.

The White Hands were getting up. Most of them had avoided the worst of it, but they were disoriented, patting out small flames on their furs, coughing from the smoke.

Max drew.

The same broad-shouldered man from before was the first to recover, shaking his head, turning back toward the cliff—

Max put an arrow through his thigh.

The man went down with a scream that echoed off the rocks. He hit the ground hard, clutching at the arrow shaft, blood already dark against the snow.

Max was already drawing again. Muscle memory from hundreds of practice shots. Nock. Draw. Aim. His fingers found the familiar position on his cheek. Anchor point.

The wounded man was trying to stand.

Max put the second arrow in his stomach.

The man dropped.

Just dropped, like someone had cut his strings. He hit the snow on his side, curled around the arrows, and went still.

The other five White Hands froze.

For exactly two seconds, they stared at their fallen companion. Then at Max. Then at each other.

Then two of them grabbed the wounded man by his arms and started dragging him backward, toward the tree line.

The other three followed, moving in that same synchronized way but faster now. Retreat. Not a rout—too organized for that—but a tactical withdrawal.

They were leaving.

Max kept his bow up, another arrow already nocked, tracking their movement until they disappeared into the darkness of the forest.

He didn't lower the bow until he counted to thirty and heard nothing but the wind.

Then he turned.

The young barbarian had made it halfway up the cliff. He was moving slower now, his injured leg clearly causing problems. His breath came in ragged gasps that Max could hear from twenty feet above.

"Keep coming," Max called down. "You're almost here."

The kid looked up. His face was pale under the dirt and blood, but his eyes were focused. Determined.

He grabbed the next handhold and kept climbing.

The kid kept climbing.

The sun had dipped below the horizon completely now. Darkness settled over the landscape like a blanket, broken only by the faint glow of snow and the dying embers of Max's fire attack below. The temperature dropped immediately. Max could see his breath.

The young barbarian's hands appeared at the cliff edge, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the frozen rock.

Max moved forward, grabbed the kid's wrist, and hauled.

The kid came up and over the edge in a graceless tumble, hitting the stone platform hard. He lay there for a moment, chest heaving, before rolling onto his side and trying to push himself up.

He couldn't. His arms gave out and he dropped back down, gasping like he'd just surfaced from deep water.

"I—" the kid tried. "I must—"

"Stop talking," Max said. He pulled his water flask from his belt and crouched down. "Here."

The kid stared at the flask like he wasn't sure what it was, then grabbed it with both hands. He drank. And drank. And kept drinking until the entire thing was empty and he had to stop to breathe.

"Thank you," the kid said, handing back the flask. The words were in Max's language.

Max blinked.

Borgen had said the tribes spoke their own languages. Dialects that varied by region. He'd been preparing himself for communication through gestures and broken phrases.

"You speak—"

But the kid was already trying to sit up again, wincing as he put weight on his injured leg. Max let it go. Questions could wait.

He stood and moved to the cliff edge, scanning the tree line below. The White Hands were gone. No movement. No signs of them regrouping. They'd taken their wounded and retreated, which was the smart play. But smart didn't mean permanent.

"They will come back."

Max turned. "What was that?"

The kid was sitting now, back against the cave wall, still breathing hard. His face was pale under the grime and sweat. "The White Hands," he said. His voice had an accent to it—not heavy, but present, like someone who'd learned the language from a book and not from speaking it every day. "Come morning. After the monsters are gone. They will come back."

"Well, yeah," Max said. "That much is obvious."

The kid looked at him.

"We've got the high ground," Max continued. "They want to come up here and try again, we'll fight them. We did fine just now."

The young barbarian went quiet at that. He looked down at his hands, then at his injured leg, then at nothing in particular.

Max finally relaxed. The adrenaline was fading, leaving behind the familiar post-fight exhaustion. He studied the kid properly for the first time.

Young. Maybe sixteen, seventeen. Dark hair matted with sweat and blood. The injury on his leg was a long gash, deep enough to need stitches but not deep enough to have hit anything vital. His furs were good quality, well-made, the kind you got from a tribe that knew what it was doing. His face was narrow, with high cheekbones and a jaw that still had some growing to do.

"I'm Harek," Max said, extending his hand. "From Frosthold."

The kid stared at his hand.

Then he reached out and grabbed it. Wrong. He grabbed Max's hand like he was gripping a staff, thumb on top, fingers wrapped around the side.

Max laughed. He couldn't help it. "No, like this." He adjusted the kid's grip, showing him the proper handshake. Palm to palm. Firm but not crushing. "There you go."

The kid's expression shifted. Something between embarrassment and curiosity.

"What's your name?" Max asked.

"Tarak," the kid said. "Of the Splithorn tribe."

Splithorn. Max knew that one. Borgen had mentioned them. Hunter-gatherers, primarily. Nomadic. They followed the reindeer herds and traded with Frosthold twice a year.

"Why were the White Hands chasing you?"

Tarak's face went flat. "I was hunting deer. With my friends. We met them. They killed my friends. I ran."

"Oh." Max paused. "Sorry to hear that."

"No be sorry," Tarak said immediately. The grammar was off but the meaning was clear. "I will see my friends later. In Valkar. But before that, I will kill the evil White Hands who made them die like that."

The words were matter-of-fact. Like he was describing the weather.

Max went quiet.

He knew he should probably say something emotional here. Something comforting or sympathetic or whatever you were supposed to say when someone told you their friends had just been murdered. But he'd given a lot of emotions today—to the wendigo, to the situation with the White Hands, to the general nightmare of being trapped in a frozen hellscape—and this just felt like too much.

So instead, he took out a piece of jerky from his pack, cut off a chunk with his knife, and held it out toward the cave entrance.

"Bro. Food."

Bro crawled out from the shadows at the cave mouth, his eight legs moving in that smooth, mechanical way that Max had gotten used to but probably looked horrifying to everyone else. The spider's glow had dimmed to a soft orange. He grabbed the jerky with his mandibles and a small jet of flame flickered across its surface, charring it slightly.

Tarak jerked backward so fast he nearly fell over.

"It's fine," Max said, holding up a hand toward Tarak. "That's Bro. He's friendly."

Tarak stared at the spider like it had personally offended him.

"Bro, this is Tarak. Tarak, this is Bro. He's a fire spider. Very useful. Saved my life multiple times. Be nice to each other."

Bro's glow pulsed once. Acknowledgment, maybe. Or he was just digesting his snack.

Tarak did not look convinced.

Max pulled out another piece of jerky and tossed it to the boy. "You must be hungry."

Tarak caught it awkwardly, nearly dropping it. "Thank you." He bit into it immediately, chewing fast. Clearly, he hadn't eaten in a long time.

Max took a piece for himself and settled against the cave wall opposite the kid. The jerky was tough and salty and exactly what he needed. Hell of a day. And from the sound of it, tomorrow wasn't going to be much better.

"You know the way back to your tribe?" Max asked.

Tarak nodded, still chewing. He swallowed. "Yes. But I am..." He gestured at his leg. "Injured. Will be slow. And the White Hands, they will be hunting. So..."

He trailed off. Didn't finish the sentence. But the implication was clear enough. He was wondering if Max would take him along. The kid's eyes flicked to Max's face, then away, then back again.

Max laughed. "Sure. You're not that heavy. I noticed when I pulled you up. I can carry you on my back if we need to move fast."

Tarak's shoulders relaxed slightly. "What is your plan? For tomorrow?"

This kid adapts pretty fast to trauma, Max thought. Damn.

He took another bite of jerky, considering. The cave they were in was one of the marked ones. His father had once explained it—some of them had enchantments built into the stone itself, old magic from before the tribes, that kept the interior warm without needing a fire. You only lit one if you were cooking. This was one of those caves, which was the only reason Max wasn't already frozen solid.

He was tired. Bone-deep tired.

"Night's still young," Max said. "And it's winter, so it'll last longer. We should sleep first. I'm dead tired. In the other half of the night, we'll talk. Deal?"

"I understand," Tarak said. He shifted against the wall, trying to find a comfortable position that didn't put pressure on his leg.

Max started arranging his sleeping setup. His pack as a pillow. He pulled off his cloak and was about to spread it out as extra insulation when he glanced at Tarak.

The kid was still pressed against the wall, shivering slightly despite the cave's warmth enchantment. His furs were good, but they were also soaked through with sweat and snow from the chase. And he'd been running on adrenaline for who knew how long. Now that it was fading, the cold was probably setting in.

Max stood up, walked over, and draped the cloak over Tarak's shoulders.

"Here."

Tarak looked up at him, surprised. "But you—"

"I've got enough layers," Max said. "And you're the one who just outran a death squad. Get some rest."

He helped adjust the cloak so it covered more of the kid's body, then grabbed Tarak's injured leg and positioned it so it wasn't bent at an awkward angle. Tarak winced but didn't complain.

"Better?"

"Yes. Thank you."

Max went back to his spot, using just his pack as a pillow now. The stone was cold against his back, but he'd slept in worse conditions. Probably. He couldn't actually remember sleeping in worse conditions, but that didn't mean it hadn't happened.

Bro had already crawled back to his spot near the cave entrance, settling into what Max had learned was his resting position—legs tucked in, glow dimmed to almost nothing.

The anxiety was there, sitting in his chest like a stone. Tomorrow was going to require planning. Strategy. Probably violence. He really, really hoped this wouldn't require burning through his rerolls. He only had so many, and wasting them on a running battle with cannibals felt like poor resource management.

But that was tomorrow's problem.

Tonight, he needed sleep.

He closed his eyes and tried very hard not to think about what morning would bring.