Dravak Ironfang had not always been the Chief of his own tribe.

  Once, he had been just another warrior in a tribe so vast its numbers swelled into the hundreds. In such a horde, a single goblin’s voice was worth nothing. Strength earned food. Cunning earned safety. Weakness ensured you were forgotten.

  His old Chief had ruled through fear and the weight of sheer numbers. If the tribe wanted meat, he sent dozens of hunters into the woods until they found something to kill or died trying. If the tribe wanted territory, he simply threw bodies at his enemies until someone broke. To most goblins, that was enough. Eat, sleep, breed, fight. Repeat until something bigger inevitably crushed you.

  But Dravak had never been content with “enough.” He was different, strange even, among his kind.

  He watched where beasts made trails long before others noticed the patterns. He studied where water pooled after storms, where wind carried scent, which thickets hid predators and which hid prey. As a result, his hunting parties often returned heavier, more consistently, with fewer wounded. Warriors whispered it was luck.

  They were wrong.

  During battles, the War Chiefs bellowed loudly for glorious charges. Dravak heard only stupidity in those shouts. While others rushed at the enemy in straight, screaming lines, Dravak studied the battlefield: where mud would bog down feet, where roots could trip a charge, where stones forced bottlenecks. His small squads fought smarter. They struck flanks, retreated to high ground, used the forest itself as their blade.

  Their losses were fewer, and their victories came easier.

  But praise never came. His Chief dismissed him as strange. The tribe muttered that he thought too much. That he hesitated. That he was soft because he would not charge blindly into danger. Even the successes they benefited from were attributed to coincidence or spirits. Always to something else. Never to him.

  But some goblins in the tribe knew better.

  A few sharp-eyed, sharp-minded warriors saw the truth. They watched him win fights that should have been lost. They noticed when he returned with more food than the “blessed hunters.”

  Those goblins listened when, one night, Dravak gathered them in secret and whispered that he would no longer waste his strength under a blind fool.

  Ten or fifteen followed him into the forest that night.

  They never went back.

  That was many seasons ago. And from those few, the Ironfang tribe had grown, slowly and steadily. He took in exiles, wanderers, lone survivors, even defeated enemies who bent the knee rather than die. It was a motley collection, but a tribe nonetheless.

  His tribe.

  Now, the Ironfang numbered forty-five.

  Ten were still children, too young to fight but old enough to eat and learn. Dravak counted them carefully. Children were the tribe’s future, not its strength.

  The rest were Warriors and Hunters.

  Dravak had not built the Ironfang tribe alone. Two special goblins, System-blessed like he was, had followed him from his old tribe, back when Ironfang was nothing more than a whispered plan and a sharpened blade.

  Throk was strength made flesh. Broad shouldered, loud, eager for blood and training. He believed Warriors were forged only through pain and pressure. He drilled them until they collapsed or learned. Those who endured became strong. Those who did not were discarded.

  Kesh, meanwhile, was his opposite. Lean, sharp-eyed, and patient. Where Throk focused on bodies and strength, Kesh focused on movement and strategy. She organized hunts, scouted rival territories, tracked trails others missed. She spoke little, but when she did, Dravak listened.

  Together, they were the Ironfang tribe's backbone.

  Dravak had chosen them, as he chose everything, with care.

  He had chosen their home the same way.

  Tucked behind a natural rise, protected by the slope above, with a stream flowing nearby, every piece of it mattered. Arrows could not fly far downhill into its mouth. Beasts rarely roamed the immediate ridge. Sound carried far in all directions.

  It was a strong place. A place meant to last.

  His Warriors called the find lucky.

  Dravak knew it was not luck. It had been him.

  But even the strongest den could rot from within.

  Among goblins, sickness and injury were not tragedies. They were a fact of life, a test to see if a goblin was strong or weak.

  A wounded warrior was weak. A sick warrior was weak. Weakness was not punished, nor was it mourned. It was allowed to resolve itself. If strength returned, the goblin rose and took his place again without comment. If he died, then he had failed the test. The tribe moved on.

  That was the way it had always been.

  Dravak ruled according to that truth.

  He did not waste valuable food or labor on Warriors who could not contribute to the tribe. He did not pull others from the line to sit at bedsides.

  Normally, this worked.

  Normally, the forest culled the fragile and weak and left the tribe stronger for it.

  But this was not normal.

  It had begun as small things. Scratches that should have closed. Bites that should have scabbed. A Hunter limping back with a torn calf, laughing past the pain through clenched teeth. A Warrior taking a claw along the forearm and trying to shrug it off.

  Then came the rot.

  The stink arrived first. Then heat. Then swelling. Then fever dreams and delirious muttering that made even hardened goblins sound like frightened whelps. One by one, bodies that should have been prowling the ridge or guarding the cave mouth were reduced to shivering shapes around the fire pits.

  Dravak had watched it all happen with a growing pressure behind his eyes.

  He did not rush to intervene, because there was no intervention in goblin custom. No ritual, no poultice worth the cost, no goblin who could be spared from other duties. This was simply how weakness was separated from strength.

  But too many were falling, too many were failing the test.

  Too many at once.

  That was the problem.

  This was not the forest trimming excess. This was something eating into the core of his tribe. Spear after spear taken from the line, not one by one, but in clusters. The test was no longer fair, it was simply overwhelming.

  And Dravak counted.

  Not coins. Not trophies.

  Spears.

  How many could still lift their weapons without shaking. How many could still run to defend their home if something attacked. How many could stand watch without collapsing. He listened to the cave, the coughing, groaning, and fevered whimpers, and he felt the numbers tighten around his neck like a snare.

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  If too many of his tribe died, the forest would sense weakness, as predators always did. Wolves. Bears. Worse things that hunted goblins the way goblins hunted rabbits. And if another tribe smelled blood, if a stronger Chief realized the Ironfang was bleeding from within, there would be no glorious battle. Just domination and bloodshed and the end of the Ironfang.

  Dravak sat on his stone seat night after night, not because he liked it, but because a Chief could not look uncertain. He watched. He waited. He worried in the quiet places where no one could see it.

  He tried to choose the right balance between risks and rewards. He always had. But now the numbers were simply too big to ignore.

  Dravak felt it in the way the cave sounded at night. Too much coughing. Too much restless shifting. Too many spears stacked against walls instead of carried at shoulders.

  He sat near the main fire pit one evening, watching the wounded huddle close to the heat, and spoke without turning his head.

  “Kesh.”

  She stepped to his side at once. “Chief.”

  “Give me the count.”

  Kesh did not hesitate. “Thirty-two warriors total. Fourteen fit for duty. Eleven wounded. Seven sick. No deaths today.”

  Dravak closed his eyes for a heartbeat.

  Fourteen.

  Barely enough to hold the cave if something came for them.

  “Any changes?” he asked.

  Kesh paused and considered. “The sick remain sick. No better. No worse.”

  “And the wounded?”

  “They are… Recovering faster,” she said somewhat hesitantly. “There's less swelling. Fewer infections. Some are standing sooner than we should have expected.”

  Dravak opened his eyes.

  He already knew where to look.

  The strange little goblin was moving quietly among the injured, a bucket in one hand, a rag in the other. He did not speak unless spoken to. He did not beg. He did not flinch when he was cursed. He knelt, cleaned, bound, and moved on.

  Dravak had noticed him days ago.

  Dragged into the cavern unconscious and tied like a carcass on a pole, the goblin had seemed thoroughly unremarkable at first glance. Small. Thin. Weak. Another slave taken. Another mouth. Another burden on his shoulders.

  But this slave had not behaved like the others.

  Dravak had seen as he had sat quietly in the cage for hours, just watching the cavern. Not staring blankly. Watching. His eyes tracked movement. Counted bodies. Measured distances. Took in everything.

  And when he began his strange habits shortly thereafter, Dravak allowed it, mostly out of curiosity.

  The small goblin hauled water without being asked. Cleaned the shit piles instead of stepping around them. Rinsed filthy rags until they were barely worth calling cloth anymore. He had pressed them to wounds instead of spitting curses at his captors like the others did.

  A strange goblin following strange instincts.

  At first, Dravak assumed it was desperation. A slave trying to make himself useful enough to survive.

  But the results were beginning to show. And they were undeniable.

  Warriors who had been rotting with infected cuts now sat upright. Those who had lain feverish and delirious began to rise, strength creeping back into their limbs. Some, too proud to thank a slave, batted his hands away when he tried to tend them again, snapping and snarling out of habit more than conviction. Even those goblins did not strike as hard as before, and their eyes tracked his movements when he moved on.

  Dravak watched his numbers swell again, watched as spears returned to the line.

  Interesting.

  So, Dravak decided to watch him more closely.

  Tonight, Dravak sat upon his stone seat, a crude, blocky thing, his place that elevated him above the tribe. Gave him more authority. More power. As he did most nights, he sat and watched.

  The fire pits burned low, casting jagged shadows across the walls. Goblins chattered, fought, laughed, and snarled. Children scampered between legs. Hunters returned from the forest, dragging meat for the tribe. Smoke curled thickly toward the ceiling, where it hung heavy like storm clouds.

  Dravak watched as Grub moved quietly among the wounded, his bucket in one hand, a rag in the other. He cleaned a gash along one warrior’s thigh, tied a fresh wrap, then rose and headed toward the cave mouth.

  Dravak stood and began walking to the mouth as well. “You. With me.”

  Grub froze only a second before nodding and stepping behind him. A guard moved forward quickly, spear in hand.

  “Chief, let us go with you. It’s dangerous to be outside alone at night.”

  Dravak turned slowly. Irritation flashed across his face and his eyes narrowed as he looked to the guard.

  “Do you think I am too weak to walk alone with one goblin?” he growled.

  The guard stiffened, realizing his mistake. “I meant no—”

  “Then challenge me.” Dravak rose to his full height, shoulders like stacked stone. “Take my seat if you believe me so weak as to be unfit to guard myself against a slave and some wild beasts.” He towered over the goblin now, staring down at him.

  Silence fell across the cavern.

  The guard swallowed hard. “I… do not challenge, Chief.”

  “Then step aside.”

  He did, head bowed slightly. Snickers echoed through the cavern at the poor guard’s display.

  Dravak grunted and gestured to Grub. “Come.”

  Grub followed him out of the cavern, up the slope, and toward the moonlit stream. The forest hummed with distant insects, the air cool and damp.

  Only when they reached the water did Dravak speak.

  “Why do you work this way?” he asked. “Most slaves gnash and spit. They fight their chains. You, on the other hand, never did. You have hauled water and cleaned wounds without complaint. Never even tried to run.”

  Grub kept his gaze on the stream.

  “Because the forest gave me nothing,” he said. “Here there is fire. Food. Others to keep beasts away. Why should I fight? If I work, I live.”

  He paused, voice softening.

  “I don’t want to be a slave. But if this is the price of safety, then so be it. It’s better than dying alone out there.”

  Simple words. Too simple. But sincere.

  Dravak considered him for a moment before asking, “And what of the cloth? You wring the same strips until they fall apart. Why keep doing it?”

  The little slave regarded him carefully.

  “Because it is all I have,” Grub said finally. “I am trying to clean the wounds and help your tribe recover faster. It's better than nothing, but if I had fresh cloth, I could clean wounds better. There would be less rot. Less fever. More warriors would stand sooner.”

  Dravak’s eyes narrowed.

  “Cloth is costly. It is taken in raids. Bought with effort and blood. Why should I spend it on warriors already close to death?”

  Grub turned to him fully, meeting his gaze without a trace of defiance or deference.

  “Because, close to death soon becomes dead,” he said. “If they die, you lose a spear. A Warrior. A Hunter. Cloth is cheaper than goblins. If they heal, your tribe bleeds less.”

  Dravak’s jaw tightened. He was not used to being lectured to, let alone by a slave. But he pushed the sharp crack of anger down quickly.

  “You speak as if you count us like tools.”

  “I count what keeps me alive,” Grub replied.

  Dravak recognized that kind of thinking. It was the way he himself had survived.

  He grunted again and gestured toward the stream. “Dump your bucket.”

  Grub did, then scrubbed the inside with sand until it was clean again, plunging his hands into the icy water afterward. When he finished, he stood waiting. A minute passed by as they stood and stared into the water rushing by.

  Dravak spoke at last.

  “Tomorrow, you will go to the stores. You will be given fresh cloth. A small amount. Use it on the worst wounds. If strength returns to my tribe quickly, you will get more.”

  Grub nodded once, calm and accepting.

  Dravak turned back toward the cave, his mind heavy.

  Strange ways. Strange results.

  He had seen this pattern before.

  Days passed.

  The clean cloth rags Grub was given were tied fresh across infected wounds, and the difference was stark. Warriors who had been bedridden sat upright within a day or two. Some limped their way back into guard rotation by the end of the week. The tribe’s fighting force swelled. The feverish murmurs at night lessened.

  Every improvement Dravak saw could be traced back to one slave. Dravak’s curiosity sharpened even further.

  He watched Grub more closely. Watched how he worked. Watched what he prioritized. Watched how he seemed to learn quickly, how he observed the tribe without ever interrupting, how he calculated while pretending to be invisible.

  It was all so very interesting.

  Then, on the fourth night since their talk at the stream, the disturbance came.

  A shout cut through the cavern. It was sharp and panicked. The sound of snarling followed. The thud of bodies colliding. Guards rushed toward the slave cage, weapons drawn.

  Dravak rose instantly. By the time he reached the cage, silence had fallen again.

  Two bodies lay sprawled across the straw. The other slaves huddled at the far side, trembling. Grub stood alone in the middle, breathing hard but upright. Blood coated his face and arms. A rock dangled loosely from his fingers, its edges slick with gore.

  One guard straightened, spear in hand.

  “Chief! These two slaves attacked him. Both at once. He… he killed them before we could intervene.”

  The guard’s voice carried awe more than accusation.

  Dravak stepped inside the cage.

  One corpse’s skull was shattered like a crushed melon. The other lay with a perfect hole through his eye socket. Blood trickled down his cheek, pooling beneath his head.

  Too clean for claws. Too precise for random luck.

  Dravak bent down and examined the slaves face. A trace of grit clung to the blood around the eye.

  A pebble?

  Dravak’s eyes flicked toward Grub, who met his gaze without flinching. A long silence followed.

  Finally, Dravak straightened and stepped out of the cage.

  “Throw the bodies into the forest,” he ordered. “Let the beasts eat them.”

  Guards obeyed immediately, dragging the corpses across the cavern floor, leaving twin red smears.

  Dravak turned back to Grub.

  “What do you say for yourself, little Grub?”

  Grub looked down at himself. At the blood drying on his arms. At the gore clinging to his fingers.

  “They attacked me,” he said quietly. “I defended myself.” He couldn't take his eyes off the floor, from the spot where the bodies had lay just moments ago.

  He paused, then added, even quieter, as if it were the only thing that mattered now,

  “May I wash? Before it dries.”

  Silence fell again.

  Then Dravak barked a laugh, deep and rolling, filling every corner of the cavern and making several goblins flinch. A Chieftains laughter was a dangerous thing.

  When he finished, he pointed at a nearby guard.

  “You. Take him to the stream. Watch him. If he runs, kill him.”

  The guard nodded and turned to the cave mouth.

  Grub just followed quietly, the blood drying on his skin.

  Dravak watched him go, amusement and something darker curling in his chest. “Not as weak as you look, little one,” he muttered under his breath.

  Strange ways. Strange results.

  He had built a tribe on those principles.

  Now he wondered what results this Grub might yield.

  And he resolved to find out.