It took almost the entire day to search the bay. After that they started up the river through large, sweeping bends. For the first time Vaintè began to worry that their search would be in vain. She knew that Gendasi* was large, but had never truly appreciated the size of this new continent. Always before she had followed on the track of the ustuzou, going where they led. Now, on her own, she was beginning to realize that even something as large as an uruketo would be difficult to find—when she had no idea of where to look. The river was still wide and deep, moving inland in lazy loops. The other uruketo could have easily come this way. Should they search further? It was a great relief to discover that sandbars soon blocked the channel and they had to return. There was no need to follow the river any more. Those they searched for must still be somewhere along the ocean’s shore.

It was late afternoon before they returned to the rocky headland. Fafnepto was nowhere to be seen.

“Is this the place where she landed?” Gunugul asked. Vaintè signed assuredness of location. “Then she is still hunting. We will all enjoy pleasure/satisfaction to have fresh meat. I will have bladders floated ashore so we may leave when she returns.”

Vaintè watched the crewmembers bring up the bladders and slide into the river with them. The water looked cool, the forested shore inviting. She had been in the smell-filled confines of the uruketo too long. A moment later she was slipping down from the uruketo’s back and swimming strongly towards the beach.

“Excitement of discovery,” one of the crewmembers called out, pointing to the corpses of five large deer lying in the tall grass.

Vaintè admired them, then looked up as Fafnepto herself appeared from under the trees. She signed urgency of speaking as Vaintè began to compliment her on her kill.

“There is a thing I would have you see Vaintè. This way.”

“Has it to do with those we seek?”

“No. But I think it is the ustuzou you told me of. They are beyond these trees.”

“They can be dangerous!”

“Not now. All dead.”

The skin tent was on the far side of the small meadow near the stream. Two large ustuzou were crumpled on the ground before it, a third smaller one was lying nearby.

“I killed them before they saw me,” Fafnepto said. “You said they could be deadly.”

“You searched the structure?”

“Yes. None there. Many hides—and a hèsotsan.”

One of the ustuzou lay face upwards. Vaintè turned the other one over with her foot claws, hopefully, but it was not Kerrick. “You were right to kill them,” she said.

“Is this the stone tooth of which you spoke?” Fafnepto asked, pointing to the spear in the dead hunter’s hand.