The trail led down from the trees into low, brush-covered land. The ground was getting softer, water pushing up between their toes as they walked; the sun burned on their backs while here in the open, away from the shelter of the forest, the damp heat was suffocating. They were running with sweat, panting for air, by the time Herilak signaled a halt.

“Up ahead, do you see it?” He spoke so quietly that they could barely make out his words. “That open stretch of water. That is where I saw them. Go forward in silence and do not show yourselves.”

They moved like shadows. No blade of grass rustled, no leaf moved to show that they had passed. One by one they slid up to the water’s edge where they peered unseen from the darkness. Then there was the quiet gasp of indrawn breath from one of the hunters; Herilak scowled in his direction.

Although the sammadar had told them what he had seen, and of course they had believed him, the reality was another thing altogether. They could only watch in horrified silence as the two dark forms slid silently through the water towards them. The first of them came close, passed by before the concealed hunters.

A boat—but not a boat—for it moved without oars. It had been decorated with a large shell at the front. No, not decorated, the shell grew there, was part of the living creature that was the boat itself. And on its back it carried other creatures, murgu. They could only be the ones that Herilak had told them of. But his words had not prepared them for the disgusting reality. Like deformed Tanu they stood erect, or unlike Tanu squatted back on their thick tails. Some of them held strange objects, while others had long dark sticks that must be the weapons Herilak had described. The hunters watched in frozen silence while the creatures passed, not a short arrow flight away. One of them was making clacking, growling sounds. Everything about the scene was alien and repellent.

Then the dark forms were past, had stopped on the far bank and the murgu were climbing ashore.

“You have seen,” Herilak said. “It is as I told you. They did this same thing yesterday, then they returned. Now you must move without being seen and find places along the bank where there is space to draw your bows. Lay your arrows on the ground before you. Wait in silence. When they return I will give the order to be ready. Choose your targets. Wait. Bend your bows but do not loose your arrows. Wait. When I give the command—kill them all. Not one must escape to warn the others. Is this understood?”