Now he had found that which he sought and he was very displeased. He sucked a mouthful of snow as he bent to repair the snowshoe. Every once in awhile he would look up from the work to the empty valley below, as though to remind himself of the unpleasant truth. It remained empty.

It was midday before he was finished. He chewed on some dried meat while he pondered on what to do next. He had no choice. When he had finished eating he climbed to his feet, a big man who stood a head taller than even the tallest in his sammad, rubbing grease from his flowing beard and looking down the valley in the direction he must go. South. He started that way, along the slope, and once he began walking he never looked back once at the empty camping place.

All that day he walked and only stopped when the first stars began to sparkle in the darkness. He rolled himself in his furs and stared up at the night sky before closing his eyes to sleep. But he had a thought then and opened them again and searched among the familiar patterns. The Mastodon charging at the Hunter who held his spear ready. The bent row of stars in the Hunter’s belt. Was there a new one there, next to the center star? Not as bright as the others, but just as clear in the cold transparency of the winter sky. He could not be sure. It would have to be the tharm of a strong warrior to be in that honored place, adding strength to the Hunter. He was not certain if it had been there before. While he thought about it he closed his eyes again and slept.

On the afternoon of the third day, three days of marching from first light to early darkness, Herilak came through the trees beside a fast-flowing river, the current so swift that it still had an open channel in its center. He went quietly as a hunter always does, once surprising a small herd of deer, sending them jumping away between the trees, bounding high with sprays of snow flying about them. One at least would have been easy prey—but he was not hunting now. Not for deer. Pushing through a thicket he stopped suddenly, then bent to look at the ground. At the gut rabbit snare strung between two boughs.

After that he chanted as he went and let his spear rattle against the low branches that he passed. This was a new thing that had started with the frozen winters. In none of the stories that the old ones told was there any mention of the need. There was the need now. Tanu had killed Tanu. The world was not the free place it once had been, where hunters did not fear hunters.