The boy sat with his hands under his legs as the red splash of blood warmed his face. It smelt as always of hot metal, the small bit that got on his lips tasted as always of thick salt. He stared with cold black eyes as the man was beaten by the others, he didn’t mind as much today for the cold was more harsh than usual. They found the man while out on their most recent hunt. He had been cooking for an old woman in a single story shack two miles south. As always, they took them, but she had died on the way. The man coughed up blood with a familiar gurgling sound as the Wilds smashed his front teeth in with a piece of scrap metal. The boy cringed still at the crunching sounds. He minded less, it was more reflexive, like nails scrapping against a grainy surface. The Wilds would keep at it for hours, until the man stopped breathing or passed out. Then they would eat what they could and toss the rest. The boy hated the taste of it, but he was hungry, so hungry and the meat so warm. He was given the bones, the scraps left by the older Wilds, he was the youngest, the newest and least liked. His mother had been found on a hunt, had been taken while pregnant. His father, if alive would have been killed. If the boy had been a girl, he too would have been killed. Wilds had no need for women, aside from the initial encounter, he knew his mother had been raped before she was killed, he had some small memory. She had been allowed to live for a short time as a healer of sorts, but eventually upon refusal, the Wilds took what they wanted and killed her too. The boy thought he could still remember her face, but he was so young. He too was beaten as a child, forced on hunts when barely able to walk and left behind a number of times, but he always found his way back. He never thought to leave, he hated the cold. Hated the snow, hated the hunger, hated them.
The boy would be allowed to live because he would become a Wild one day, would help hunt, would kill, would fight. If he had not been an infant, he would have been killed most likely. He had never seen another child, wasn’t sure that there were any at all. Mostly the hunts found old men and women too weak to travel out of the mountains. The Wilds had been there forever the boy assumed. When he came to naming age, he too would be there forever. Forever in the cold, forever hunting and taking what he could from others; at least he was alive. Tomorrow there would be another hunt, as there was every day, the chances of finding anything were slim, there seemed to be less and less activity in the past months, perhaps there were less people now. He didn’t know where they came from, assumed they were seeking refuge from the south, from the desert. He didn’t know why, Wilds were short on words and even shorter with him. He did overhear two younger Wilds, both without wrinkles, talking about how this was supposed to be a refuge of sorts before. He assumed people thought this a place of safety, from what he did not know. It was not.
The camp consisted of five large huts and twenty or so Wilds including the boy. Most were grey and wrinkled but able bodied. When they got too old, they were killed but not eaten, the boy had seen this twice, once when he was still unable to speak and once recently. They were always slashed across the neck, bled out into a pan and burned. The blood was then spread across the camp. The result was a ring of red in the white snow which blanketed the landscape. It was a good death. He sometimes wished he were the old ones. Would not be eaten. Would not be cold. The boy had never seen land without snow, he knew of its existence only though knowledge of the desert. He wished he could see this land without water, this hot land. He knew he never would.
The boy slept in the Wild Leader’s tent. For fear he assumed that he would be killed before being able to contribute. This man was by far the largest Wild, grey but not wrinkled. He had always been Leader, once the boy had seen him contested. Another large man, a young man. He had challenged the Leader before a meal demanding a larger share for having found the meat. The Leader had simply placed his shard of metal, sharpened on both sides with a small leather grip at the end of the three foot shaft, on the table as the younger man approached at speed. Still sitting on the ground, the Leader caught the younger man’s wrist as he thrust downward with his own metal shard toward the Leader’s skull. He swept the younger man’s legs while holding his wrist and mounted the fallen boy. Slowly he lowered the shard to the boy’s throat while being punched in the head by the boy’s free hand. Smiling, the Leader slowly pushed the shard through the boys neck, halting momentarily to cut though the bone and finally removing his head. Lifting the head above his mouth, the leader drank the falling blood for what seemed like several minutes. There had been no challenge since.
The boy was awakened by a sharp pain in his side. The next youngest wild, a man with black hair pulled back and tied in a tail and a nose as sharp as his shard, was kicking him repeatedly. The body rolled forward to avoid the next kick but the sharp nosed man caught him with a fist in the back of his head causing the boy to see black for a second. The next second the boy dove at his attackers knees headfirst. The attacker fell backwards out of shock, the boy rarely fought back. Having knocked the man over, the boy pounced up like one of the wolves and bit down at the man’s exposed hand. He bit as hard as he could and drew blood as his teeth his the hard bone of the man’s thumb. Yelping the man threw the boy, who was a good two feet shorter into a nearby pole which supported the tent. The structure shook drawing a frightened look from the attacker as he feared the Leader’s entrance. “Time for the hunt,” he said exiting the tent. This method of awakening was common and the boy grabbed his gear together with a grin on his face, knowing he had won a small victory this morning.
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