A shift in the slight breeze carried a faint hint of animals mixed in a pack. The wrong animals. Tware, sconta, and garrel did not travel together, did not feed or birth their young anywhere close to each other. Kantu jerked his head from side to side and inhaled short bursts of air. The draft rolled and turned as if a child at play in a stream’s mud, and the scent escaped his track. He closed his eyes and slowly faced the four corners of the winds in the hope the beings above and below would give him the wisdom to understand why these plant feeders had gathered without reason. Or had they come together?

At the base of his neck, a ball of heat bore into his body and slithered to his brain where it crumbled and floated through him until lingering once more under the skin on his forehead. With the sensation came the scents. The odd mix of smells dripped like melting icicles into his nose. Kantu quickly layered the traces. Garrel to his left, tware in front, sconta right. A stench remained. Sweat. Man sweat.

Kantu opened his eyes and shifted his gaze to the gray sky rocks where he had left his people…and Sanda...more than a day ago in the caves, in safety while he found a garrel herd’s trail. His tribe weren’t warriors. Man hunters would find the caves and feast on his people, then wear the hides and skins Kantu and his hunters provided the clan. That was the mix of the animals—man hunters clad in their stolen hides and skins. He traced his fingers over the long, bumpy lines from his left shoulder to his right hip. Only he bore the three claw marks of a warrior.

“Sanda!” he screamed to the sky rocks. Kantu gripped his spear sticks and ran.