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have they won’t share with us.’
    ‘They won’t know anything about it,’ Talker said. ‘Not if they don’t see us.’
    Shaper said, ‘We could wait for night, and then sneak up.’
    Talker said, ‘Have you ever tried butchery in the dark? No. We will go in while there is still light. I’m a hunter. I can sneak up on a deer. I can certainly get close enough to those animals, with the noise and the stink of them, without disturbing the dreams of fat, lazy Cowards.’ He pointed. ‘See that part of the valley, away from the circle of fires? If we head that way we will be concealed by the slope of the land, and can get to the herd where nobody is working.’
    ‘It’s a risk,’ Dreamer said. ‘If we’re seen—’
    ‘If we’re seen we run,’ said Talker with supreme confidence. ‘Those Cowards with their bellies full of meat will never catch us. And then we’ll wait for another chance.’
    It looked terribly dangerous to Dreamer, who had been on hunts herself, and knew how to read a landscape. ‘Let’s wait and see if a better chance offers itself.’
    ‘If we wait we’ll be discovered. I told you, I scouted this out, I know what I’m doing. You people do nothing but argue, argue. Now we act.’ He got on his haunches, preparing to move. ‘Follow me. Step where I step. Don’t kick a pebble, don’t break wind - don’t make a sound.’ He glared at them until they all nodded, even wide-eyed Reacher.

    Talker moved out of the shelter of the bluff. In the open he kept low, running in a crouch.
    Dreamer’s heavy belly made it difficult for her to copy him, but she did her best, and, padding in his footprints in the dust, stayed as silent as he was.
    They came to a kind of tributary, just as dry as the main valley. They crept into this, and then scrambled to lie flat behind a worn boulder that hid them from the kill site. The smell of blood and ordure was strong here, and the noise of the animals was a continual lowing wail. With great care Talker levered himself up until he could see around the boulder. He dropped back, grinning. ‘Get your blades ready. We are only paces from the animals, but we must be a hundred paces from the Cowards and their nearest fire.’
    Dreamer frowned. ‘Really, as far as that?’ She tried to remember the land as she had seen it from the bluff.
    ‘Don’t argue with me,’ he snapped. ‘I will go first.’ He dug into his wrap and produced a cutting tool, a block of flint with a single sharp edge. He held this in his right hand, and hefted his spear in the left. ‘I will take as much meat as I can. Then I will come back here, and we will decide what to do next.’
    ‘I’m not sure—’
    ‘Woman! Do you want to eat? Then do as I say.’ And with that, silent as a cloud, he crept around the rock and was gone.
    ‘We are closer than a hundred paces to the Cowards,’ Shaper whispered, quietly enough that Reacher couldn’t hear. ‘I am no hunter but I have a good sense of place.’
    Dreamer didn’t reply.
    For an unmeasured time they huddled behind the rock. Dreamer strained, trying to hear Talker’s butchery, or his returning footsteps - or the tread of a Coward band. The hunger and the strain began to make her feel light-headed, and she felt the tension winding up inside her, coiling her guts.
    It was too long. She had to see.
    She got up to a squat and slowly, carefully, lifted her head above the lip of the stone. She winced at every blade of dead grass that rustled under her legs.
    Reacher and the priest-boy watched her wide-eyed.
    There was Talker. Beyond him she saw the bison struggling in their heap, dead or dying. Talker had walked just a few paces down the valley slope and cut open a dead animal. Its innards were spilled, a haunch of liver lay on the ground beside him, and there was blood around Talker’s mouth. He hadn’t been able to resist taking the rich delicacy immediately, the traditional prize of the successful hunter. Too long, Talker, you are