Pismire said things like, "Correct observation followed by meticulous deduction and the precise visualization of goals is vital to the success of any enterprise. Have you noticed the way the wild tromps always move around two days ahead of the sorath herds? Incidentally, don't eat the yellow-spotted mushrooms."

Which didn't sound magical at all, but worked a lot better and conjured up good hunting. Privately some Munrungs thought good hunting was more due to their own skill. Pismire encouraged this view. "Positive thinking," he would say, "is also very important."

He was also the official medicine man. He was a lot better, they agreed (but reluctantly, because the Munrungs respected tradition) than the last one they had had, whose idea of medicine was to throw some bones in the air and cry "Hyahyahyah! Hgn! Hgn!" Pismire just mixed various kinds of rare dust in a bowl, made it into pills, and said things like "Take one of these when you go to bed at night and another one if you wake up in the morning."

And occasionally he offered advice on other matters.

Grimm was chopping sticks outside his hut. "It'll never work," said Pismire, appearing behind him in that silent way of his. "You can't send Snibril off to Tregon again. He's a Munrung. No wonder he keeps running away. He'll never be a clerk. It's not in the blood, man. Let him stay. I'll see he learns to read."

"If you can learn him, you're welcome," said Grimm, shaking his head. "He's a mystery to me. Spends all his time moping around. His mother used to be like that. Of course, she got a bit of sense once she got married."

Grimm had never learned to read, but he had always been impressed by the clerks at Tregon Marus. They could make marks on bits of parchment that could remember things. That was power, of a sort. He was quite keen to see that an Orkson got some of it.