Rulf remained crouched beside the open crate for a few moments longer, turning the iron spearhead slowly between his fingers. The sunlight caught along its edge before he lowered it again and let it fall back among the others.
Around him, the Painted Dogs were already bundling what they could carry. Leather straps were tightened around stacks of spearheads, pouches were filled with arrowheads, and the heaviest bars of iron were being lifted between pairs of warriors. Everyone moved quickly now. No one needed to be reminded that two riders had escaped.
The Stone Crows watched in silence.
A few of them exchanged glances as the best pieces of iron disappeared into Painted Dogs hands. One broad-shouldered warrior with a chipped stone axe at his belt finally muttered something in his own tongue, just loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. His eyes stayed fixed on the iron bars being tied up near Harrag.
"You already took the best of it."
The Painted Dogs warrior closest to him did not bother looking up.
"We killed the knights."
It was not shouted. It did not need to be. The words landed with the hard simplicity of mountain law.
The Stone Crow warrior's mouth tightened, but he said nothing more. Everyone on that road knew exactly who had started the ambush and whose dead now lay cooling against the rocks. Blood counted first in the mountains. It always had.
Rulf rose at last and brushed the dust from his knees. His scarred face revealed little, but his eyes moved carefully across the road, measuring the plunder, the dead men, and the strain already beginning to show in the shoulders of the Painted Dogs carrying iron.
Then he looked back at Harrag.
"You cannot carry all this."
Harrag did not answer immediately. He stood with one hand resting on the haft of his axe, the other near the bundle of spearheads one of the younger warriors had just tied shut. The wind tugged faintly at the fur on his shoulders as he studied Rulf in return.
"We carry enough," Harrag said.
Rulf nodded once, as though he had expected exactly that answer.
"Yes," he said. "Enough. Not all."
One of the Stone Crows behind him laughed under his breath. Another stepped forward and nudged the broken crate with his boot, looking openly at the remaining iron with the same hunger any mountain clansman would.
Torren watched the exchange without moving.
He stood a little apart from the others now, close enough to hear clearly but not yet important enough to be part of the conversation. Blood still darkened one edge of his right axe. He had not wiped it clean yet. The short sword taken from the dead guard hung at his belt, awkward and new there.
Inside his mind, the calm voice spoke.
Negotiation in progress.
Torren ignored the obviousness of that and kept watching.
Rulf's gaze shifted briefly over the remaining bundles, then returned to Harrag.
"We came for the same road," he said. "Your kill. Your first choice. No one denies it."
That was well said, Torren thought. It left pride intact while opening the door.
Harrag glanced once toward the surviving iron bars that still lay on the road, then toward the riders' scattered gear. There was still more there than the Painted Dogs could easily drag back through the high paths before night. Not impossible, but heavy. Slow. Dangerous, if Royce men were already gathering below.
Rulf spread one hand slightly.
"You take what you can carry first," he said. "Stone Crows take what remains."
One of the younger Painted Dogs warriors looked as though he wanted to object, but Harrag raised a hand without taking his eyes from Rulf. The younger man fell silent at once.
"That sounds cheap," Harrag said.
Rulf gave the faintest smile.
"It is not charity."
"No?"
"No." Rulf stepped closer, close enough now that the two men spoke almost as equals rather than leaders of separate groups. "Next time we ride together, Stone Crows choose first."
A small shift moved through the warriors on both sides after that.
This was the true request.
Not the leftover iron.
The next raid.
The first pick.
Torren saw several Painted Dogs glance toward Harrag. Even without the chief here, men still looked to him in moments like this. That, too, was something Torren noticed and stored away.
Harrag looked down briefly at the dead Royce knight, then back up at Rulf.
"First pick of what?"
Rulf shrugged lightly.
"Of the spoils. What matters most."
One of the Stone Crows men behind him added, "If we bleed beside you, we do not wait for scraps."
The Painted Dogs warrior nearest Torren spat into the road.
"Then come on time."
That earned a few quiet laughs from both sides, enough to take the edge off the words without erasing their meaning.
Rulf did not laugh. He simply looked at Harrag and waited.
Harrag was silent for several breaths. The wind moved around the pass again, colder now than before. One of the packhorses snorted and stamped nervously against the blood on the road. Further down the slope, a raven had already landed near one of the dead guards and begun hopping closer, bold with distance and hunger.
At last Harrag spoke.
"First pick after blood."
Rulf's brow shifted slightly.
Harrag continued. "If we raid together, and if Stone Crows stand in the front where steel meets bone, then when the dead are counted, your men choose first from the spoils."
That was mountain speech. Hard and exact.
No one would mistake it.
Rulf considered the words carefully. He was not a fool, Torren could see that much. This was not only about iron. It was about status between clans. To choose first after blood was not merely a share of loot. It was recognition.
At last Rulf nodded.
"That is fair."
Harrag gave a single short nod in return.
No one offered a hand. No one expected one.
The agreement had been spoken. In the mountains, that was enough.
Inside Torren's mind, the calm voice murmured, Alliance probability increased.
Torren kept his eyes on the warriors.
The moment after a bargain always mattered nearly as much as the bargain itself. Men who agreed in words could still spoil things with pride if the wrong joke was made or the wrong bundle touched too soon. But the tension broke cleanly. One of the Stone Crows warriors stepped toward the road and began gathering the remaining spearheads without asking again. A Painted Dogs warrior beside him merely grunted and shifted his own bundle higher on his shoulder.
Work resumed.
The road filled with movement once more. Painted Dogs took the iron bars they had first laid claim to, along with the best of the arrowheads and the knight's armor. Stone Crows gathered the remaining heads, an extra bundle of worked metal, two guard shields, spare spear shafts, and a half-split crate that still held enough iron to matter.
Torren noticed that no one had to be told twice what to leave.
Mountain men knew weight better than most maesters knew ink. Every step uphill mattered. Every unnecessary burden could become a death if riders came too fast behind them.
Rulf stepped past Torren on his way to one of the broken crates. As he did, he glanced down once more at the pale youth with the blood-striped face.
"That was your first real road fight?" he asked.
Torren looked up at him.
"Yes."
Rulf's eyes dropped briefly to the short sword at Torren's belt and then to the blood still drying on one axe.
"You stayed standing."
Torren shrugged.
Rulf gave a low sound that might have been approval.
"Good. Too many boys think one kill makes them men." He jerked his chin toward the road below. "What matters is whether you can still walk back up the mountain after."
Then he moved on.
Torren watched him go.
The Painted Dogs warrior beside him, older by maybe ten winters and missing two fingers on one hand, muttered quietly, "Stone Crows always talk like they invented hills."
Torren almost smiled.
The bodies were stripped quickly after that. Boots, belts, knives, coin, armor fittings, even the buckles from the saddles were taken. Whatever could not be carried was broken or scattered. The dead guards were rolled off the road into the rocks below. The Royce knight took longer; his armor had to be packed carefully, and one of the younger warriors muttered that such steel deserved more respect than the body that had worn it.
When everything of use had been claimed, the road looked less like a battle site and more like the aftermath of wolves feeding. Blood remained. Broken shafts remained. A patch of crushed earth marked where the first stone had struck. But the wealth of the dead was gone.
Harrag looked one last time down the High Road where the two survivors had vanished.
"We move."
No one argued.
The Painted Dogs began climbing first, burdened but efficient, taking the steeper paths they knew better than any lowlander scout ever would. The Stone Crows followed along a different line of ascent, carrying their share toward the higher ridges that led north and west.
Before leaving the road entirely, Rulf paused once more and called quietly across the rocks to Harrag.
"Next time," he said, "send word earlier."
Harrag glanced back over one shoulder.
"Next time," he answered, "climb faster."
That earned laughter at last.
Real laughter, brief and sharp in the cold mountain air.
Then both groups disappeared into stone, scrub, and shadow, carrying iron, blood, and a spoken promise between them.
Torren climbed with the Painted Dogs, the weight of his axes familiar across his back and the new short sword tapping lightly against his thigh. The mountain path was narrow and unforgiving, but he moved it with ease. Behind him, one of the younger warriors was already complaining about the iron bar he had insisted on carrying himself.
"Shift it higher," another hissed. "You carry it like a dead pig."
"It weighs like one too."
Torren glanced back only once.
The road below was already emptying into distance. From up here the blood looked almost black against the pale dirt. Soon even that would vanish into the turning of weather, wheels, and time.
Inside his mind, the calm voice said, The two survivors will report the attack.
Torren answered silently, Yes.
Response probability: high.
Torren looked toward the upper ridges where the Painted Dogs path vanished between broken stone and dark pines.
Then let them come, he thought.
The voice said nothing to that.
It did not need to.
By the time the sun fell lower over the western mountains, the road would be empty again, the iron would be in the hands of the clans, and the first bonds of something larger than a single raid had begun to form between Painted Dogs and Stone Crows.