Now they would hunt the murgu the way they hunted any deadly animal. The sammads were well out of sight when Herilak stopped the hunters at the top of the valley. Littered about among the scree here were large boulders.

“We will stop them at this place. Let them get in among us. Then shoot, kill. Wipe out the ones that lead. Drive them back. Seize their weapons and darts. What will they do after that happens, margalus?”

“The same as they did yesterday,” Kerrick said. “They will keep contact with us along this front, while at the same time they will send fargi out to swing around the the ridge, to take us from the sides and rear.”

“That is what we wish them to do. Before the trap is closed we will pull back—”

“And set more traps for them! Do it again and again,” Sorli cried out.

“That is correct,” Herilak said, and there was no humor in his cold smile.

They sought places to hide behind the boulders, along both sides of the valley. Many of them, including Kerrick, slept as soon as they lay down. But Herilak, the sacripex, lay unsleeping and alert, watching the track from behind two carefully placed slabs of rock that he had struggled into place.

When the first outriders appeared he passed the word back to wake the sleepers. Soon the valley rumbled with the heavy tread of the uruktop. Yilanè on tarakast rode out ahead of the main group, leading the way. They moved up the hill and past the unseen Tanu, and had reached the crest before the slower uruktop had moved well into the trap.

On the command the firing began.

The slaughter was terrible, far worse than that of the day before. The hunters fired and fired and screamed with joy as they did. The Yilanè above them were brought down, the corpses of their towering mounts falling and slithering into the deadly chaos below. The uruktop died. The fargi riding them died. Those that tried to escape were shot down. The front ranks of the attackers were destroyed and the enemy fell back to regroup. The hunters pursued them, sheltering among the fallen, using the weapons of the dead against the living.

Only when the warning was called out by the sentinel on the ridge did they retreat, running up the valley well out of range of the enemy weapons. They followed the ruts made by the travois, going higher, ever higher, into the hills.

Twice more they ambushed the murgu. Twice more trapped them, killed them, disarmed them. And fled. The sun was dropping towards the horizon then as they stumbled up the trail.

“We cannot go on much longer like this,” Kerrick said, swaying with exhaustion and pain.