[center][b]Somewhere in Bjarskaland...[/b][/center]

The rivers flowed, the winds blew. Wolves howled, reeds grew, the old 'uns passed away, new kits were born. Things went well, by and large. The Bjorks in the north navigated the currents of many gods in their native land, and in the south, the Bjarska simply shrugged and lived another day. In the decades that passed, a neutral observer might have noticed a peculiar difference between the two: Bjorks fought when times were tough. Biarsks fought when there was plenty.

"HAAARGH!"

Grotnip reeled back from the blow, already winding up his strong arm, and slashed his claw across Kmak's face like a fistful of blades.

Let's take a moment to see how things came to this.

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"It's my bloody creek and it's my bloody stone! Everything south of the marker post belongs to the Western Lubov!"

"You MOVED the fecking post!"

"[i]I[/i] moved it BACK! [i]You[/i] moved it all the way past the second willow!"

"What? From where I'm standing, that's the [i]third[/i] willow! Count 'em, you shit-brained maggot rat!"

Rolling her eyes high up into Heaven, Yek dragged her hands down her face and begged the Singing Maker to come and smite both men. She stamped down on her husband's tail to get his attention, and he yelped. "Grotnip! Quit your jabbering! Get back in the lodge right now before Toka gives birth with no-one but a rockslave to help her!" Actually, she realised, maybe Toka would prefer if she just went home and left them here.

"Shut your stinking gob, woman!" Grotnip pulled his long tail away with his hands and pointed in her face. "This isn't lodge business, this is men's business! You have no say here! It's the law!" Yek had no answer to that. 

"The law?" Kmak had not forgotten their quarrel for a moment. "Let me tell you what's in the law, you sneaking old creep! This slave-rock was in my half of the brook, which makes it mine!"

"Well, I've seen where you dug it up, and it's on my side of the damn post!"

"YOU MOVED THE FECKING POST!"

The two bjarska continued to scream insults and accusations over the large pebble until Kmak abruptly picked it up and hit him with it.

Grotnip roared, and so their fight began: rolling in grass, in mud, into the creek splashing and tumbling every which way, digging nails into one another's pelt, sinking their stained teeth deep into shoulders. It was over in seconds. Kmak rolled his enemy's skull onto a river-rock; it connected with a bang and he went still. Blood trailed down the clean shallow water.

Yek yelped, clutching her hands to her mouth and splashing down to her spouse. "You bastard! That was my favourite husband!" 

Kmak said nothing, gasping and groaning as he clutched his deep wound. Yek backhanded him with her work-hardened knuckles.

"You know the law! You killed my husband, now you replace him!" Kmak gave her a dazed and a pained stare. "Swear it! Swear it right now!"

"I swear," said Kmak, raising his paw, "by the Maker of lake and sea, and may the Sun-Headed Giant bear witness from his hill, that I have done you wrong, Yek of Svietla. I beg for thy mercy, and I grovel before thee, I relinquish my lodge, and I offer myself as the lowest of thy husbands."

There was a quiet pause as they both regained their breath. Something small swished the grass. Yek looked up and saw the pebble-headed earthenslave approach them. "My god, she really is giving birth. Damn you. You killed her only husband," she said, fretting with her hands. "Orphaned on the day they were born."

A noise in the brook. They turned and stared. Grotnip lay there on his back, eyes closed. His chest was heaving.

[i]"I'm! Not! Dead!"[/i]

Yek threw a clod of mud at him. Kmak turned to Yek and roared, but the words could not be unspoken. "YOU! YOU TRICKED ME!"

"YOU SHOULD HAVE MADE SURE THE BASTARD WAS DEAD!" She scratched the sides of her face, groaning audibly. "Now I have three bloody husbands to deal with! Three! [i]Shit![/i]"

The two bjarska continued to fight with words only, as was proper between manbiarsk and wifebiarsk. Grotnip rolled and tried to at least get on all fours.

"Oh. Look, a slave-rock." 

Dizzy from the head-blow and woozy from all the blood he'd lost, Grotnip yanked from the mud the stone he'd fallen on, a big gleaming pebble perfect for carving. The crude stick-and-bone golem on the riverbank watched with stupid interest. Then it turned and tottered back to the reedy mud-heap that was their lodge, where its mistress lay curled up by a little fire stoked by her brother-in-law.

Toka gave birth to eight healthy kits, and life went on.

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We check in on the Bjarska. They're doing just fine.
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