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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.
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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
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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 remaining 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."
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Marika and Kublin exchanged glances behind Skiljan's back, meaning they would
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