The dark shapes of other hunters moved under the trees as the sentries were replaced. Kerrick stood at the top of the slope and looked down at the darker outline of the stream.

“We have seen animals watering there,” Herilak said, “but there was no way of telling what they were.”

“As long as they leave us alone it does not matter.”

They waited in silence until the sky lightened in the east with approaching dawn.

“A day and a night and we are all still alive,” Herilak said. “It is said that a trek that begins well ends well. May that be true now.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The slow march continued south that day, then the next and the next again. The hunters still took the precaution of flanking the sammads during the daylight hours and posting guards at night, but they walked with less apprehension, slept without worry. The plain was rich with animal life, but most of the creatures were murgu herbivores who stayed well clear of the sammads and their mastodons. There were predators, and many of the largest of these carnivores did attempt to attack them. The hunters killed the ones that came close and the others saw this and stayed clear. But the hunters knew that without the weapons that they had captured they would have been long since dead. With their defense the sammads could penetrate deeper and deeper into the plain.

The course they took stayed well clear of the swamps along the river and the large creatures that could be seen wallowing there. They avoided the thick forest as well, whenever they could, because when they passed through it they were forced to go in single file which made the column much harder to guard.

Despite the ever-present dangers the hunters still looked forward each morning to what the new day might bring, while each night they talked late around the fires about what they had seen that day. For them the world about them was an essential part of their lives. Normally they knew every animal in the forest, every bird in the trees; they knew their habits and how they were to be hunted.