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surprise, Prest's eyes going wide. Rafe responded, "YES!" They both began to strip.
    "Marcus! Where is that oil?" Keir called, having stripped down to his trous.
    "Here." Marcus led a pack horse close, and started handing out pots of a thick greenish paste. I grabbed one to look at. Keir took a handful from the pot I held and started rubbing it on his chest.
    "What is this?" I asked, dipping my finger in and holding it to my nose. A faint sweet smell caught me by surprise, since it felt almost like lard. "I haven't seen this before."
    "Sweetfat," Keir answered, stepping out of his trous, standing there naked. "Would you do my back?" With a nod, I looked up to discover myself in a crowd of naked men and women, in the process of rubbing this stuff all over themselves and each other. I flushed, moved behind Keir, and focused on his back, and his back alone. Which was no real sacrifice, since his bronze skin looked well with the gleam of the oil. I tried to keep my mind on other things. "Sweetfat?"
    Marcus came up beside me with another pot. "We use it for rough skin, or when the wind blows faces red and raw. Or to prevent the musk from sticking to skin."
    "Musk?"
    Keir was rubbing the oil into his face and hair. "Ehat musk is vile. We have to get the animal to empty its sac before we can kill it or the meat will be tainted."
    I scooped up a handful and smeared more on his back. There was a very faint greenish tinge to the fat.
    "What kind of grasses do you use in this?"
    Keir shrugged.
    Marcus had gone to another pack horse, and was handing out cloths and garments that were torn and tat tered. The warriors chosen for the musk teams were putting these on, tattered trous, or wrapping shirts and loose cloth about their loins. Old footwear as well was offered and everyone tried to find something that fit.
    "The clothes will be burned when we are done. Water does no good to remove the stink. Instead we will strip and rub ourselves with dirt and grasses afterwards," Keir explained.
    "It sounds unpleasant."
    Yers laughed. "Which is why the 'honor' goes to the highest ranked warriors, Warprize." I kept my eyes averted, but I pondered Yers's words. If that was the case, why had Iften refused a musk team?
    The horses were being led up and I decided it was time to beat a hasty retreat out of the way. Joden fol lowed, as did Ander and Yveni. By now most of the teams were covered, although they all shone from the fat they'd rubbed into their bodies. The decision made to hunt, the excitement and tension was starting to build.
    "Ander, just how dangerous are ehats?" I asked as the teams started to wrap thin cloths over the horses'
    eyes. The horses had been stripped of their tack, except for their headgear. The riders were going bareback. Keir was searching for a cloth thin enough for his eyes as well.
    "Very," Ander said.
    "The teams will harass from a distance, Lara, trying to get the creature to spray them." Joden sounded reassuring. "They use the lances to kill from a distance, since arrows can't pierce the wool and hide." Marcus had come up to us. "The scouts have found a place for us to watch this hunt. We need to leave now to be in position."
    I mounted Greatheart, and looked back to catch Keir's eye. But Marcus got us moving, and my last glimpse was of Keir mounting his black and gathering his team.
    No wonder they'd replaced the castles on the chess board with ehat figures. The animals were as big as castles.
    Huge, in fact, with thick dark wool that dangled from their bodies in long shaggy strings. The horns were massive, wide and sharp, and stuck out from each side of the beast's forehead. One sweep would easily knock a horse from its feet and impale the rider. I swallowed hard from the image in my head.
    "They're young." Marcus spoke softly. He was laying next to me on the rise, in the tall grass. We'd crawled here, he, Joden, and I, to watch the hunt. Ander and Yveni were down with the horses, keeping watch.
    "How can you tell?" I