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studying footprints. The slavers had worn heavy boots, not the soft moccasins of the Pwi, and their tracks were easy to follow. “There were only ten slavers,” Ayuvah said after several moments. “They knew that we would hunt them if they took captives; they did not want to fight us.”
    Fava hissed, “We should hunt them like wolves anyway!” Tull could barely restrain himself from leaping into the trees to follow their trail.
    Ayuvah studied the faces of the boys.
    Tull realized that the slavers would have the advantage if they were not hindered by captives. Against experienced swordsmen, the boys would easily be cut down.
    “The slavers are probably waiting for us,” Tull said. “If we follow them, we’ll walk into their trap.”
    Indeed, a creeping worry hit him. There were few Pwi here in Hotland at this time of the year. His little band of honey gatherers were probably the only ones. So why were the slavers here—unless they had come specifically to hunt Tull and his friends?
    The implications worried him. The only people who knew he was here were people from his hometown of Smilodon Bay. There were only a few hundred people in town, and he knew them all, had known them all of his life.
    Could someone back home be in league with slavers?
    He peered at Ayuvah, who had painted his face blue and wore a necklace of teeth from a great bear. His friend was huge and strong, but there was wisdom on his brow. Ayuvah let out a breath and said, “ Tcho-oh-fenna-ai.” It grieves me like death that we can do nothing.

    The Neanderthals carried the bodies of Denni and Tchar down to the river. In a brief ceremony, the Pwi threw flowers upon their corpses, and then gave them to the water.
    The young boys cried bitterly. With these two dead, it meant that the Neanderthals of Smilodon Bay had lost five men to the slavers so far this summer.
    The three others had simply been carted away at night after working in the fields.
    When the comrades finished with the funeral, they crept back to the fort, packed their kegs of honey, and prepared for the trip home. With slavers about, they could linger no longer.
    As a last act, they burned their little wooden fortress. It had served the honey harvesters and egg hunters for many seasons, but now that the slavers knew where it lay, the Pwi could never return.
    Tull felt empty and horrified. Always in the past, Hotland had seemed like a place of escape, a place of adventure and freedom, but now the memories of it would be forever tainted with the kwea of murder and mourning.
    Tull suspected that some of the slavers had been Neanderthals, thralls who had lived so long under the domination of the Slave Lords that they no longer minded enslaving their own. Neanderthals were stronger than humans, with a much keener sense of smell. Slavers used such thralls as trackers, so Tull worried that the slavers might hunt them at night by scent.
    Tull’s party retreated at a grueling pace, racing day and night over a range of hills, carrying their load of honey and watching for slavers.
    In the pass at Froth River, Ayuvah topped a hill and stood for a long moment, surveying the trail below. Dinosaurs had trampled the vegetation along the river, and Ayuvah spotted a pack of raptors, tan with green spots—some breed of allosaur—stalking through the trees along the river with their heads hunched low. The raptors, vicious predators about twelve yards long, were heading south into the wind. Tull’s heart nearly stopped at the sight of them. He would never have spotted them on his own.
    “This way,” Ayuvah said, pointing west to give the raptors a wide berth. But when the rest of the party followed Ayuvah up a side path, Tull headed down the original trail, scuffing the dirt, snapping twigs. He hoped that the slavers were following them, and that they’d stumble into an ambush.
    Nothing can ruin your day like a pack of raptors, Tull thought. They attacked in lunges from three or four directions at