Skada had managed to return without much drama, but the hunter who had fought alongside her was nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t sure how badly injured he had been, and she didn’t know how she could have helped him. She was no bone setter and she couldn’t very well carry him home. They would both have been picked off by lions if she would have tried. It didn’t feel very good to have left him for dead, pretty much, but she did her best to squish those feelings. She was back and she had killed a lioness.Well... they had killed a lioness. Yes, she had helped! Skada hadn’t cleaned the blood from her maw and she still smelled the sweet scent of lion blood and victory. She had tried to clean the nasty wound on her shoulder but it kept seeping blood and she would have to find someone to look at it. This was the first time she’d had the need to visit a bone setter, and she had to think for a moment before remembering where they usually stayed. Hopefully the wound wouldn’t scar too badly, or leave her crippled, but it looked deep even to her untrained eye. She preferred not to use the front leg on that side for now. It hurt and bled more if she tried to walk on it for more than a few paces.
The bite wound wasn’t her only memento of the fight, however. There had been a white hare with the lioness, one that Svärta had killed, and the bone collector now carried with her. She had wanted to take something back as a token of the fight, but skinning a lion or trying to remove a claw would have taken too much time and probably drawn the wrong kind of attention. She might be a bit of a hoarder, but she didn’t have a death wish. The hare was easy to pick up and not too cumbersome to carry, even for a hyena using only three legs to run. The pelt would make a nice pouch or embellishment if she ate it carefully without damaging it. She wouldn’t hunt for a while with her injuries so this little snack would come in handy in more ways than one.
She considered stopping by her skull den to leave her souvenir but decided that her wound would need attention. It might look silly to come there carrying a dead hare when she had set out toward a war against lions, but she figured the very real lion bite would show that she had indeed contributed. She hadn’t landed the killing bite, but she had helped wear the lioness down and kept her from crushing Svärta completely. She wondered if he’d make it back, and how much of the blood covering the male lion had been his own. He had looked pretty gruesome, but she supposed that happened when you bathed in lioness blood and gore. She probably looked pretty bad herself, limping and with old and fresh blood matting the fur on her shoulder and down her front leg.
It was a petty she couldn’t go on fighting, because she was sure her blood streaked maw would strike fear into her enemies’ hearts. She promptly forgot how scared she had been only a short time ago when a lion got close to her on the way back. And she ignored the fact that she probably wouldn’t have lasted long unless she’d had an experienced hunter sharing strategy tips and actually killing the weakened lioness. She had killed a lioness! What a rush!
It was hard to forget that many of the pack members wouldn’t return today, however. She hadn’t really thought she would die, but she could guess the odds. Hyenas had to gang up on lions two or three to one to be able to secure a victory, and even then it was highly likely that someone would get fatally injured. A singled out hyena would have to be extremely skilled and lucky to survive an unfriendly encounter. In short... The odds weren’t good for those that had not yet returned, and she hoped to see some friends when she got to the bone setters. She had already greeted some of the border guards and hyenas left behind to watch cubs and youngsters. They seemed happy that she’d brought one of the foul lions down, but there was a grim tension in the air. Everyone knew someone that had left to fight this day, but not many could have returned yet.
Skada wondered about the guard Payaso. She hadn’t managed to finish the armour she’d been experimenting with and she wondered how her friend had fared. She seemed skilled, so hopefully she’d do fine, with or without spiky bone armour. Skada vowed to work harder from now on. If she had worn some kind of protection the lioness wouldn’t have been able to bite her like she did, and she wouldn’t be limping along hoping that everything would heal properly and that the wound would not fester and kill her later.
She had seen hyenas suffer bite wounds that didn’t look too bad in the beginning but that started to smell after a few days. Some still survived, but other times the wound was too corrupt and it seemed to eat them up. Not a pleasant way to die, and Skada hurried her pace. She could see where the Bone Setters were gathered now, and she noticed other hyenas that must have returned from the fight injured.
When she got there she put down the hare and told her story once more time.
“I fought alongside Svärta the hunter,” she said, “We brought down one of those nasty lionesses. She bit me here and I think mauled him pretty badly. We got separated and I don’t know if he’ll be able to get back. But we got her, we got that lioness.”
She laid down in the spot assigned to her and heaved a grateful sigh. There were others more seriously hurt so she was told she’d have to wait, but she didn’t have the energy to argue much about that. She was home. They had killed a filthy lioness. However it ended, it would have been worth it.
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