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Downstream, a sound.
    â€œUrs, come on, ” a woman’s voice cried, laughing.
    The call meant nothing to the wolves, but they all heard it, and now they could smell more humans approaching. They hesitated for a moment, but by the time a young man and woman came around the bend, the wolves were silently gone.
    *   *   *
    â€œThis is the place,” the woman announced, coming into Silex’s view. She appeared to be around his age, perhaps sixteen. She had large, pretty eyes, Silex saw, but it was her hair that caught his attention—it was tied in intricate knots, braided the way a leather string was braided to make rope. No Wolfen woman ever wore her hair like that.
    The man with her was older by a few years. He was taller than the woman—indeed, he was taller than nearly anyone Silex had ever seen, tall and slender. His beard was black and full, unlike Silex’s, which was tendril-thin.
    Silex’s skirt was short to allow him to run and was made of fox fur—like the wolf, his tribe viciously hunted the fox, though unlike wolves they did not tear the creatures apart and leave the carcasses strewn across the ground, but harvested the fur and what little of the tough meat they could get. These two people wore no fur at all—they were both dressed in animal hides tied around their waists, though the tall man’s skirt was longer, descending to midthigh and slit on each side. Where the woman’s upper garment was a simple tunic with slits for her arms and long enough to be tucked into the same belt, the man’s similarly cut top was short enough for some of his taut belly to show.
    All this Silex took in with a single glance, and then he was crouched down behind the rocks, scarcely breathing. They could not be Kindred; that tribe never ventured this far upstream. But who, then? The Cohort? Silex swallowed. If they were Cohort he was in great danger, but, though they were known to arrogantly wander where they wanted, the Cohort had never been seen in such a small group as two people, and their women never left the river valley.
    Silex reached for his spear. If they were Cohort, he would have to kill them.
    â€œAnd how did you find such a place?” the man, Urs, asked, mock-stern.
    â€œI did not find it, it was already here,” the woman, Calli, teased lightly. She held her face to the sun and beamed.
    â€œCalli Umbra,” Urs chided, addressing her with her formal name. One of the reasons the Kindred knew themselves to be superior to the other creeds was their naming convention. During the third summer of a young one’s life, the oldest woman in the family told a story about the child—the narrative that would guide the children into adulthood. The narrative ended with a legend name, which was a full sentence long, plus a formal appellation suggesting the legend. Thus Calli’s formal name—Calli Umbra—reflected her legend: “Her Thoughts Come from Mists and Shadows.” By giving her this legend, Calli’s grandmother had shrewdly put voice to what everyone suspected, which was that Calli’s brain was complex and calculating.
    â€œYou should not have come here. We should not have come here,” Urs scolded. “This is wild territory.”
    Urs’s legend told the story of how Urs grew so much more quickly than all the children his age, so that he was as tall as boys several years older, and how he would someday be as large as the great bear. And he was, indeed, tall, with the gangly look of a young man who needed to hang more flesh on his bones. His formal name was Ursus Collosus, but it was of course shortened to Urs, just as Calli was the diminutive of her own formal name.
    â€œI violated a rule,” Calli admitted cheerfully. “Now you do the same.”
    â€œI already have broken the rules by coming here,” Urs growled at her. But he was grinning, the sort of smile a man cannot help giving to a