Herilak looked at their grim and silent faces, could see them weighing his words. What he had proposed was something new and dangerous. But they would be hunting and killing murgu, murgu that had attacked and slaughtered the entire sammad of Amahast. Had butchered the women and children, the mastodons, everything. When they thought of this the anger grew within them and they were ready. Herilak nodded and took up his weapons and they took up theirs as well and followed him into the jungle.
It was dark under the trees where the dense foliage blocked out the sun, but the trail was well-trodden and easy to follow. They went in silence, bright birds calling out above them in the canopy of the forest. More than once they stopped, spears ready, as something heavy and unseen crashed in the undergrowth nearby.
The trail they followed twisted up through sandy hillocks set with towering pine trees, fresh-smelling with the morning breeze rustling their needles above. Herilak raised his hand suddenly and they stopped in rigid silence. He raised his head and sniffed the air, then cocked his head to listen. They could all hear the sound now, a faint crackling like burning twigs, or waves upon a stony shore. They crept forward then, to a place where the trees opened out upon grassy meadows. Meadows filled with movement.
Murgu, a giant herd of them, stretching out into the distance. Four-legged, round, each twice as big as a man, small eyes rolling as they tore at the grass and pine-cones. One reared to seize a branch in its duck-like bill, sharp claws on its small forelegs, sharper claws on its long hindlegs. Herilak signaled a retreat; they would have to work their way around the herd. Before they could move there was a scream from the jungle and a great marag appeared among the trees, leaping forward onto one of the grazing beasts. It was armored and scaled, its teeth white daggers now dripping with blood. Its forelegs were tiny and useless—but the claws of its great hind legs tore the life from its prey. The rest of the herd squealed and ran; the hunters hurried on before the marag took notice of them as well.
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.