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  Skiljan and her companions readied their bows. Marika’s dam said, “Shout when you are ready.”

  Gerrien closed her eyes for half a minute, breathed deeply. Then she opened them, nodded, laid an arrow across her bow, rose. Skiljan rose beside her.

  An ululating howl ripped from Gerrien’s throat. In an instant it was repeated all across the slope. Arrows stormed downhill. Nomads squealed, shrieked, shouted. Dozens went down.

  Skiljan’s shafts, Marika noted, all flew toward the nomad Wise. And many found their marks.

  Gerrien arced her arrows toward the meth leader on the far slope. It was a long flight in tricky light, and meth with shields had materialized around that one. None of Gerrien’s shafts reached their mark.

  A wild-eyed meth in bizarre black clothing suddenly materialized a few paces from Skiljan. She pointed something like a short, blunt spear. Skiljan and Gerrien were astonished by the apparition’s appearance.

  The meth cursed in a strange dialect and glared at the thing in her paws. She hefted it as a club. A pair of poisoned arrows ripped into her chest.

  Gerrien then charged downhill. All the huntresses joined her. Javelins arced ahead of them. Nomads ran in circles. Already some were scattering into the darkness up the opposite slope. Only a handful dared counterattack. Their charge was met by huntresses with captured swords, and hurled back.

  The panic among the nomads heightened. On the slope opposite, the leader screamed in dialect, trying to stiffen resistance.

  Gerrien carried the charge two thirds of the way to the creek, then halted. Sheer numbers of nomads promised to make further going too difficult. After some bloody swordplay, spearplay, and javelin throwing, she loosed another ululating howl and withdrew.

  Confused, terrified, the nomads did not press.

  The Degnan huntresses loosed their remaining arrows. Every shaft that touched a nomad killed, for each was poisoned.

  Once their last arrows flew, the Degnan ran. They left more than a hundred nomads slaughtered. Awe at what they had done would not touch them for some time, for they were too involved with fighting and surviving. But battle and slaughter were not meth customs. There was no precedent for this in the upper Ponath. Fighting in the mass meant holding the stockade against northern raiders, not taking death to the nomads before they struck.

  Marika sensed the elation of the huntresses. They had done the nomads great damage while suffering no harm themselves. Perhaps this would compel them to seek easier looting. Now the Degnan needed do nothing but outrun their enemies.

  Marika scrambled down the tower, ran to the loghouse. “Pobuda,” she gasped. “They are coming back. The nomads are chasing them.”

  Pobuda asked no questions. Not then. She alerted the rest of the packstead. Everyone capable, males included, hurried to reinforce the palisade.

  And found there was nothing to see.

  Marika got up the tower again and tried to remain invisible. When she did look down she spied Pobuda staring up, paws on hips, looking angry.

  A shout rolled out of the distance. Gerrien and Skiljan. Marika could not tell which. As if to offset its earlier perfection, the touch would not open at all. Perhaps she was too excited.

  Those on the stockade heard. Weapons came to the ready. Dark shapes appeared on the snowfields, running toward the gate. The Degnan huntresses came in a compact group, with the strongest to the rear, skirmishing with a scatter of nomads darting around their flanks. The nomads were having no luck. But scores more now were pouring from the woods. It looked as though Skiljan and Gerrien would be caught against their own stockade.

  Arrows reached out. Nomads went down. Those most imperiled held up. Skiljan and Gerrien faced their huntresses around and retreated more slowly, backing into the now open gateway. Well-sped poisoned arrows kept the pursuit at bay. Marika saw that her dam carried the club that had been wielded by the strange meth in black.

  Skiljan was last inside. She slammed the gate. Gerrien barred it. The home-come huntresses rushed around the spiral and took their places upon the stockade, hurling taunts at the nomads.

  The enemy made one ragged rush. It fell apart before it reached the foot of the palisade. The survivors fled ignobly. From a safe distance nomads who had taken no part howled ferocious threats and promises.

  Marika abandoned the watchtower while all attention was concentrated elsewhere. She hastened to her loghouse and to her sleeping furs, where she tried to make herself vanishingly small against Kublin.

  III

  It was late fall, but not as late as the incident of Pohsit and Stapen Rock. The skies were graying and lowering with the promise of what was to come. The creeks often ran raging with runoff from small but virulent storms. All the portents were evil.

  But a spirit of excitement filled the Degnan packstead. Runners from other packs came and went hourly. Wide-ranging huntresses brought in reports which Degnan just out of puphood sped off to relay to neighboring packs.

  No sighting, said the reports. No sighting. No sighting. But each negative message only heightened the anticipation.

  Marika was more excited than any of her packmates. This was a landmark autumn. This would be the first of her apprentice runs with the hunting pack.

  “Soon, now. Soon,” the Wise promised, reading the portents of wind and sky. “The herds must be on the move by now. Another day. Another two days. The skies are right. The forerunners will appear.”

  Up in the Zhotak a month or more ago, the kropek would have begun to gather. The young would be adolescent now, able to keep up during the migration south. The nomads would be nipping the flanks of the herds, but they seldom cooperated enough to take sufficient game to see themselves through their protracted winter.

  The autumn kropek hunt was the major unifying force of the settled upper Ponath culture. Some years there were fairs. Occasionally two, three, even four packs gathered to observe an important festival. But only during the kropek hunt did the Degnan, Greve, Laspe, and other packs operate in unison—though they might not see one another at all.

  The herd had to be spotted first, for it never followed the same route southward. Then an effort had to be made to guide it, to force it into a course that would allow a maximal harvest beneficial to all the Ponath packs.

  Ofttimes the post-hunt, when the packs skinned and butchered and salted and smoked, became a gigantic fair of sorts. Sometimes tradermales arrived to take advantage of the concentration of potential customers. Frequently, charitable dams made arrangements on behalf of favored male offspring, saving them the more dangerous search for a new pack.

  The kropek was not a large beast, but it was stubborn and difficult prey. Its biggest specimens stood three feet high at the shoulder. The animal had stubby legs and a stiff gait, and was built very wide. It had a thick skin and a massive head. Its lower jaw was almost spadelike. The female developed fearsome upthrust tusks as she matured. Both sexes were fighters.

  In summer the kropek ran in small, extended-family herds just below the tundra, subsisting on grubs and roots. But the kropek was a true omnivore, capable of eating anything that did not eat it first. They did not hunt, though, being lazy as a species. Vegetables neither ran nor fought back. The only adventure in a kropek’s life was its long vernal and autumnal migrations.

  The meth of the upper Ponath hunted kropek only in the fall. In the spring, for the months bracketing the mating season, kropek flesh was inedible. It caused vomiting and powerful stomach cramps.

  A young huntress raced into the packstead. The forerunners of the migration had been spotted in the high Plenthzo Valley, following that tributary of the east fork of the Hainlin. The near part of that valley lay only twenty miles east of the Degnan packstead. Excitement reached new heights. The kropek had not passed down Plenthzo Valley in generations. The good broad bottomland there made travel easy but gave meth room to maneuver in the hunt. There were natural formations where the migration could be brought under massed missile fire, the hunters re
maining safe from counterattack.

  Kropek were feisty. They would charge anything that threatened them—meaning mainly meth, for the meth were their most dangerous natural enemy. A meth caught was a meth dead. But meth could outrun and outsmart kropek.

  Most of the time.

  Huntresses double-checked weapons held ready and checked a dozen times since the season began. Messengers went out to the neighbors, suggesting meeting places. Males shouldered packs and tools. Pups being taken out to watch and learn scooted around, chattering at one another, trying to stay out of sight of those who ordered chores.

  Skiljan finally gave Marika the light bow she had been hoping was meant for her. “You stay close, pup. And pay attention. Daydream around the kropek and you will find yourself dreaming forever. In the embrace of the All.”

  “Yes, Dam.”

  Skiljan wheeled on Kublin. “You stay close to Bhlase. Hear me? Do not get in the huntresses’ way.”

  “Yes, Dam.”

  Marika and Kublin exchanged glances behind Skiljan’s back, meaning they would do what they wanted.

  A paw slammed against Marika’s ear. “You heard your dam,” Pobuda said. Her teeth were bared in amusement. “Put those thoughts out of your mind. Both of you.”

  Damned old Pobuda, Marika thought. She might be wide and ugly, but she never forgot what it was like to be young. You could not get away with anything with her around. She always knew what you were thinking.

  Skiljan, and Barlog from Gerrien’s loghouse, led the way. They set a pace the pups soon found brutal. Marika was panting and stumbling when they reached the Laspe packstead, where the Laspe huntresses joined the column. Marika did not, as she usually did, study the odd structure of the Laspe stockade and wonder why those meth did things so differently. She hadn’t the energy. She had begun to realize that carrying a pack and bow made all the difference in the world.

  Pobuda trotted by, mocking her with an amused grunt. Though Pobuda’s pack weighed thrice what Marika’s did, the huntress was as frisky as a pup.

  Marika glanced back at Kublin, among the males. Her littermate, to her surprise, was keeping pace with Zambi. His face, though, betrayed the cost. He was running on pure will.

  The pace slackened as they went up into the hills beyond the Laspe packstead. The scouts raced ahead, carrying only their javelins. The huntresses moved in silence now, listening intently. Marika never heard anything.

  An hour later the Degnan and Laspe joined three packs coming up from the south. The enlarged party continued eastward on a broad front, still listening.

  Marika finally surrendered to curiosity and asked why.

  Skiljan told her, “Because kropek were spotted in the Plenthzo Valley does not guarantee that that is the route to be followed by the main herd. It could come some other way. Even over these hills. We do not want to be caught off guard.” After walking some dozens of yards, she added, “You always hear the herd before you see it. So you always listen.”

  The pace remained slow. Marika recovered from her earlier strain. She wanted to drop back and lend encouragement to Kublin, but dared not. Her place was with the huntresses now.

  The day began to fail as the packs descended toward the floodplain of the Plenthzo. Scouts reported other packs were in the valley already. The main herd was still many miles north, but definitely in the valley. It would be nighting up soon. There would be no hunting before tomorrow.

  They came to the edge of the floodplain in the last light of day. Marika was amazed to see so much flat and open land. She wondered why no packstead stood on such favorable ground.

  Only Pobuda felt inclined to explain. “It looks good, yes. Like a well-laid trap. Three miles down, the river enters a narrows flanked by granite. When the snows melt and the water rushes down, carrying logs and whatnot, those narrows block. Then the water rises. This land becomes one great seething brown flood, raging at the knees of those hills down there. Any packstead built on the plain would be drowned the first spring after it was built.”

  Marika saw the water in her mind, and the image suddenly became one of angry kropek. She began to comprehend the nervousness shown by some of the huntresses.

  She did not sleep well. Nor did many huntresses, including her dam. There was much coming and going between packs, plotting and planning and negotiating. Messengers crossed the river, though meth disliked swimming intensely. Packs were in place on the far bank, too, for it was not known which way the kropek would follow, and those beasts had no prejudices against water.

  Dawn arrived with unexpected swiftness. Pursuant to Skiljan’s instructions, Marika placed her bedroll in a tree and memorized its location. “We will be running the herd,” her dam said.

  Marika expressed her puzzlement.

  “The herd leaders must be kept moving. If we let them stop, the herd stops. Then there is no cutting individuals out or getting to those we might drop with arrows. They would not let us near enough.”

  The packs with which they had traveled moved out. Since first light scores of huntresses and males had been at work some distance down the plain, erecting something built of driftwood, deadwood, and even cut logs. Marika asked her dam about that.

  “It is to scatter the herd. Enough for huntresses to dart in and out of the fringes, planting javelins in the shoulders of the beasts, or hacking at hamstrings.” Skiljan seemed impatient with explanations. She wanted to listen, like the others. But her duty as dam was to relay what she knew to her young.

  “They are coming,” Pobuda said.

  And a moment later Marika heard them, too. More, she felt them. The ground had begun to tremble beneath her feet.

  The noise swelled. The earth shuddered ever more. And Marika’s excitement evaporated. Her eagerness went away, to be replaced by growing apprehension. That sound grew and grew like endless thunder….

  Then she spied the herd, a stain of darkness that spanned most of the plain.

  “Both sides of the river,” Pobuda observed. “Not running yet.”

  “The wind is with us,” Skiljan replied. “Thank the All.”

  Pobuda spied Marika’s nervousness, despite her effort to conceal it. She mocked, “Nothing to it, pup. Just dash up beside a male, leap onto his shoulders, hold on with your legs while you lift his ear, and slide a knife in behind it. Push it all the way to the brain, though. Then jump clear before he goes down.”

  “Pobuda!” Skiljan snapped.

  “Eh?”

  “None of that. Not from anyone of my loghouse. We have nothing to prove. I want everyone able to carry meat home. Not one another.”

  Pobuda frowned, but did not argue.

  “Do they do that?” Marika asked her dam.

  “Sometimes,” Skiljan admitted. “To show courage. Behind the ear is a good spot, though. For an arrow.” Skiljan cocked her head, sniffed the breeze. A definite, strong smell preceded the kropek. “Only place an arrow will kill one of them. Not counting a low shaft upward into the eye.”

  “Why use bows, then?”

  “Enough hits will slow them down. It will be stragglers mostly, that we get. The old, the lame, the stupid, the young that get confused or courageous or foolish.” She looked at Marika with meaning. “You stay outside me. Understand? Away from the herd. Use your bow if you like. Though that will be difficult while running. Most important, make plenty of noise. Feint at them when I do. It is our task to keep them running.” As an afterthought, “There are some advantages to hunting in the forests. The trees do keep them scattered.”

  Skiljan had to speak loudly to be heard over the kropek. Marika kept averting her gaze from the brown line. So many of them!

  The tenor of the rumble changed. The herd began moving faster. Faintly, over the roar, Marika heard the ululation of meth hunting.

  “Ready,” Skiljan said. “Just after the leaders come abreast of us. And do what I told you. I will not carry you home.”

  “Yes, Dam.” All those venturesome thoughts she had had back at the
packstead had abandoned her. Right now she wanted nothing more than to slink off with Kublin, Zambi, and the males.

  She was scared.

  Pobuda gave her a knowing look.

  The roar of hooves became deafening. The approaching herd looked like a surge in the surface of the earth, green becoming sudden brown. Lean, tall figures loped along the near flank, screaming, occasionally stabbing with javelins.

  “Now,” Skiljan said, and dashed toward the herd.

  Marika followed, wondering why she was doing such a foolish thing.

  The Degnan rushed from the woods shrieking. Arrows arced in among the herd leaders, who put on more speed. Skiljan darted in, jabbed a male with her javelin. Marika made no effort to follow. At twenty feet she was as close as ever she wanted to be. The eyes of the ugly beasts held no fear. They seemed possessed of an evil, mocking intelligence. For a moment Marika feared that the kropek had plans of their own for today.

  Distance fled. With speed came quick weariness. The meth who had been running the herd fell away, their hunting speed temporarily spent. They trotted while they regained their breath. The kropek seemed incapable of tiring.

  There was endurance and endurance, though. Meth could move at the quick trot indefinitely, though they were capable of only a mile at hunting speed.

  A male feinted toward Skiljan. Pobuda and Gerrien were there instantly, ready to slip between it and the herd if it gave them room. It moved back, ran hip to shoulder with another evil-eyed brute. Marika shuddered, imagining what would become of someone unlucky enough to fall in their path.

  Another male feinted. Again huntresses darted in. Again the beast faded back.

  Marika tried launching an arrow. She narrowly missed one of the huntresses. Her shaft fell with no power behind it, vanished in the boil of kropek. She decided not to try again.

  Her lungs began to burn, her calves to ache. And she was growing angry with these beasts who refused to line up and die.

  A third male feinted. And she thought, Come out of there, you! Come out here where I can—

  It wheeled and charged her, nearly falling making so sudden a turn.