Tlantar stayed close to Longbow as the party of hunters crept quietly around the rocky outcrop. “Have you had much experience with crawling, Longbow?” he whispered.
“Some,” Longbow quietly replied. “It’s not usually necessary in the forest, though. The trees hide us when we’re creeping up on a deer herd.”
“We don’t have that advantage here in the meadowland,” Tlantar whispered. “Grass isn’t as tall as trees are, so we spend a lot of time on our hands and knees when we’re trying to get within range of a bison herd.”
“How far will your thrower hurl a spear?”
“About a hundred paces is the limit. The spearhead has to be heavy enough to cut through the hair and hide of an adult bison, and that cuts down the range considerably. What’s the outer range of your bow?”
“I’ve taken deer at 250 paces,” Longbow replied in a soft voice. “Tell me, where do you aim when you whip your spear-thrower toward a bison? Do you try for his head?”
“No. The horns of a bison are very thick and hard. Aiming at a bison’s head is a quick way to shatter a stone spearhead. This is my first hunt with a metal spearhead, so I might try for a head-shot just to see if it’ll work.”
“I’d wait until some other time, Two-Hands,” Longbow whispered. “Right now, you’re trying to impress people with the spear-thrower, so this wouldn’t be a good time for experiments. Do it the old way for now.”
“You’re probably right,” Tlantar softly agreed. He raised his head slowly and then sank back down. “About another twenty paces,” he murmured. “Then I’ll whistle, and we’ll all stand up at the same time and run toward the bison.”
“Run?”
“It adds speed to the spear if we’re moving when we cast, and the extra speed can make all the difference.”
“Ah. That makes sense, I guess.”
They crept on through the tall grass, and then Tlantar slowly raised his head again. “Close enough,” he muttered, and then he whistled.
The Matan spearmen rose up out of the grass in unison and started to run toward the bison who were drinking from the small stream. Then Tlantar gave another shrill whistle and the spearmen all launched their spears at the now-startled bison.
Several of the bison went down immediately, but a few of them staggered off quite a ways before they sank down into the grass. “I make it seven!” Tlantar cried out exultantly.
“Make that eight,” Longbow said, drawing back his bow. When he released the arrow, his bowstring made an almost musical “twang.” His arrow went straight and true and it struck a huge bison directly in the eye.
The bison dropped immediately.
“Did you do that on purpose?” Tlantar demanded in astonishment.
“Yes,” Longbow replied almost indifferently. “He wasn’t much more than seventy paces away, though, so it wasn’t really all that difficult.” His expression became just a bit apologetic. “Actually, friend Tlantar, it was an experiment of sorts. The bison’s horns protect his head—and what’s inside his head. The eye socket is an open path to the brain, though, so I thought it might be worth a try.”
“That was just a lucky shot, Longbow,” Tlantar said.
“Not really,” Longbow disagreed. “I’m not certain that it’d work with your spear-thrower, but it works very well when you use a bow. It’s called ‘unification,’ friend Tlantar. The archer must unify his eyes, his hands, and his bow with whatever he wants to hit. If he does it right, he’ll never miss.” Then he laughed. “Back when Rabbit had set up his arrow factory in Lattash, there was a smith called Hammer who thought that we were just wasting time and metal. I handed him a clamshell and told him to walk down the beach holding the clamshell up over his head. He was 250 paces on down the beach when I smashed that shell right out of his hand. He didn’t argue with us anymore after that.”
“How very peculiar,” Tlantar said. And then he laughed. “Do you think that concept might work with a spear-thrower instead of a bow?” he asked quite seriously.
“We might want to give it a try, I suppose,” Longbow replied a bit dubiously. “You’d have to include several other things in your unification, though, so it might be quite a bit more complicated. We can try it and see what happens, I guess, but I won’t make any promises.”
“This must be the place,” a bulky fellow with a long, red beard who was sitting on the back of a fairly large animal said as he pulled back on the straps that appeared to be attached to the animal’s mouth to make it stop walking.
“It was the last time I looked,” Longbow said. “Is that animal you’re sitting on one of those horses Ekial kept talking about?”
“No, Longbow, he’s just a cow who lost his horns.”
“Very funny, Red-Beard,” Longbow said in a flat voice. Red-Beard looked over his shoulder at several other men who sat on animals and were approaching. “Here comes Ekial now,” he said. “You might want to send word to Dahlaine that we’re here. Have the bug-people arrived yet?”
“Not their armies. The Vlagh has sent out its usual snoopers, though.” Longbow put his hand on Tlantar’s shoulder. “This is Chief Tlantar of the Matans. The Matans hunt bison rather than deer, and they use spears instead of arrows, since arrows aren’t heavy enough to penetrate the skin of the bison.”
“I’m honored to meet you, Chief Tlantar,” Red-Beard said rather formally.
Then Dahlaine and several others came out of the mouth of the cave and Dahlaine spoke briefly with his younger brother.
“She did what?” Dahlaine’s brother burst out.
Then their sister gave him a brief recounting of events in the Domain of their other sister. Tlantar didn’t entirely understand the astonishment of Veltan when Zelana told him that the children called the Dreamers shared their Dreams with each other. If the children could see the future, they could almost certainly do other impossible things as well. The young fellow seemed to be profoundly disturbed by his older sister’s behavior. Tlantar, on occasion, had noticed that even Dahlaine, the eldest of the gods, could be very startled when he discovered that someone was trying to deceive him. There were times when it seemed to Tlantar that the four gods of the Land of Dhrall were almost themselves as innocent as children.