He snarled, indecisive, measuring the man with the harsh smell; then backed a step away, misliking the situation, almost ready to run and leave his prey. He had hunted alone. He was apart from his pack. They were in theirs. Danger. Danger in this, and they outnumbered him.

Then the scent wafting on a wind-shift behind him set the hair bristling up again and flattened his ears to his skull… The human pack had closed behind him, surrounding him; and the man-leader held the spear-fang, muscles tensed-that meant-attack!

With a howl he charged straight at the man…

Kerthan's spear flashed in the sun, driving deep into the wolf's thick shoulder. The force of the blow spilled the beast to the ground. The humans behind him cried with one voice and surrounded the struggling animal. "Kill it," Kerthan cried, and did not cease to jab at the wolf with the keen-edged spear while the hunters with him hit it with clubs and sticks and fell at last to gashing it with knives, wounding each other in their frenzy.

Swift-Spear raced between the trees, his heart light with the freedom of his strength… freedom for the moment from the demands of the chieftainship his father Prey-Pacer had bequeathed him. He ran beneath the summer leaves, leaped up the gray rock outcrop that rose on the margin of the stream, and looked back grinning and panting at the elf- woman who ran behind him, at Willowgreen, whose hair flew and whose bare feet skipped lightly enough over the forest mold-but not the match for his speed, or his long stride. Tall herself, with the high ones' blood in her-she had their languor too; she was fair and pale and breathed now with great gasps while she laughed… " 'Show me a sight,' " she breathed as she climbed after him. " 'Show me a sight,' indeed! What is there to see here?"