When Kerrick woke at dawn the dream was still with him, pressing down on him like a great weight. It was just a dream, he kept telling himself, but the feeling of disaster stayed with him as they walked.
They made good time on their return journey. With their food and water gone they had less to carry and could move faster across the dry desert, then on to the grassy slopes of the foothills. It was late in the afternoon when they came over the last ridge, their mouths dry, looking forward with pleasure to the water that lay ahead. The track they were following led through thick undergrowth that crackled as they pushed by. Herilak was leading the way, climbing steadily. He saw that he was outdistancing the others and stopped to let them catch up.
As he did the arrow strummed past him and thudded into the ground.
He hurled himself to one side, calling out a warning as he did. Lying behind the bole of a tree he took an arrow of his own from his quiver and nocked it to the bowstring. A voice called from the slope above.
“Herilak, is that you? Did you cry out?”
“Who is that?”
“Sorli. Be on your guard. There is danger in the forest.”
Herilak looked carefully about but saw nothing. What danger was there here? He did not want to call out again. Kerrick appeared among the trees, moving warily. Herilak waved him forward, signaled to keep on up the trail. When Munan had passed as well he followed them, silent and alert.
Sorli was waiting for them, concealed from sight behind the large boulders. Other hunters from his sammad were close by, hidden from below, peering back down the hill. Sorli waved them past, then fell in behind them. Once over the ridge he took the arrow from his bow.
“I heard you moving through the brush, then just saw your outline. I did not know it was you, that is why I let fly the arrow. I thought it was the others. They attacked this morning, just after dawn. The hunters on guard were killed, but gave the warning. They killed one of the mastodons too, perhaps for the meat, but we drove them off before they could do anything to it.”
“Who were they?”
“Not Tanu.”
“Murgu!” Kerrick. heard the terror in his voice as he spoke the word. Not here, no, not here too.
“Not murgu. But not Tanu as we know Tanu. There is one we killed, you will see. They had spears but no bows. Once the arrows struck among them they broke and ran.”
They walked along the trail and Sorli stopped and pointed to a dead body.
The corpse lay where it had fallen, face down in the brush. There was a bloody hole in its back where the arrow that had made the mortal wound had been cut out. There were furs tied around the waist. The corpse’s skin was darker than theirs, the long hair black instead of light. Herilak bent and heaved the corpse over, pushed the furs aside with the butt of his spear.
“A hunter. He could be Tanu except for the skin and that hair.”
Kerrick bent and pulled up an eyelid; a misted black eye stared up sightlessly at his blue one. Munan leaned over to look as well, then spat with distaste.
“Harwan,” he said. “When I was small I used to be frightened when they told stories about the black men from beyond the high mountains who came in the dark to steal children and eat babies. They were called the Harwan and were ferocious and terrible. Some said that the stories were true. Others laughed.”
“Now you know,” Sorli said. “They were true. And there is another thing. Look at this.”
He led them a short distance up the hill to the dark form stretched under the trees. Herilak looked at it and grunted with amazement. “A longtooth, one of the biggest I have ever seen.”
It was immense, half again longer than a man. The creature’s mouth gaped in death, the two long teeth that gave it its name projecting, large, deadly, sharp.