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The central stairwell of the fortress was once the main vent of the volcano. The stairs themselves jutted only a quarter of the way across the spout, leaving a twenty-foot hole that extended straight down into the mountain. The top sealed, the platform made by the stone cap was the place Scowling Tiger often haunted. It was where he died.—The Political Geography, by Guarding Bear.
“The Matriarch asks that you keep quiet about the sword for a little longer,” Fawning Elk said.
“How odd,” Leaping Elk replied, “My brother asked the same.”
She and her mate sat in the central room of their new suite high in the Tiger Fortress, near noon on the day after Howling Gale's and Bucking Stag's heads had rolled. True to Leaping Elk's prescient dream, the Elk Raiders as a whole had joined the Tige
