She was halfway down the hill when the snap of a twig behind her startled her. She missed a step and her nostrils caught a familiar scent just as a gust of warm breath tickled her ear.
**Leafchaser!** Her sending held mingled relief and annoyance, but she knew that she could never have evaded her wolf-friend for long. But where Leafchaser could follow, others could trace her as well. What if the rest of the Wolfriders refused to let her leave?
**Old friend, I don't know where I'm going. Are you sure you want to come along?**
Whether or not the she-wolf had properly understood the sending, her determination to stay with Goodtree was clear, and the elf felt her heart imperceptibly lightened. It was not natural for either wolf or Wolfrider to hunt alone. She let the wolf find a way through the thick trees, but when they came to the river she forced the complaining animal to follow her upstream through the water. Even wolves would be thrown off the scent by that, at least for a little while.
But both the wolves and the Wolfriders had gorged to satiation, and bellies shrunken by winter's scarcities needed time to digest the considerable quantities of meat on which they had feasted. It was not until midmorning that they realized that Goodtree and Leafchaser were gone and began to search for them.
For two days Goodtree pressed onward, pausing only to hunt. Behind her was the deep forest and the ever deepening river that flowed downhill toward the Muchcold Water to the north. Before her the trees grew thinner, and at the end of the second day, she saw through the last outlying pines wind-ruffled grasses furring the long slope of plain that rose toward a blue etching of mountains, sharp against the sky.
They camped that night at the edge of the forest, listening to the incessant whispering of grasses in the wind. -When morning came, Goodtree and Leafchaser shared the last of the meat. Then she sprang onto the wolf's narrow back, clutching at the thick neck fur and laughing joyously as Leafchaser leaped forward across the plain.
In the forest behind her, Lionleaper stilled as his wolf-friend Fang barked out the short call that told him that the animal had found the scent they were looking for. He tipped back his own head then and gave tongue, and heard the nearest elf echoing. From one to another the call carried back to the hurst where the fighting strength of the Wolfriders was waiting. They had been getting ready for the spring hunt in any case, and needed little preparation. Before another hour had passed, everyone who was fit for a long ride—a good two-thirds of the tribe—was mounted and ready to follow Goodtree's trail.
The first release of energy carried Goodtree and Leafchaser a half-day's journey across the plain. Leapers soared out of their way as they approached, but the little beasts sensed that they were not hunting, and would settle to cropping the rich grass again before they had quite passed. The first scattered bands of branch-horns did not even bother to do that much, knowing well that they were in no danger from a solitary hunter, whether it went on four legs or two. Goodtree stared admiringly at the play of muscle in their shaggy flanks and the immense sweep of horns that gave them the appearance of ambulant trees.
A walking forest ... she thought then, wondering if elves could ever find the same sense of kinship with creatures like this as they did with the Everwood's trees. As the thought came to her she was aware of an odd sense of dislocation, as if she had lost something important. But she could not remember what it had been.
A few hours later they came over a rise, and Goodtree nearly fell off as Leafchaser halted suddenly. She felt the hair rising along the wolf's spine and sniffed at the wavering wind, questioning silently.
**Longtooth hunting,** came the wolf's answer.
The land fell away before them in a series of gentle ridges covered by a varicolored carpet of green and tawny grasses where the new growth was pushing through the old. The occasional small patches of brush made it hard to judge size or distance, and except for a rippling in the grass as the wind touched it, nothing moved.
Leafchaser started to circle around, but Goodtree stopped her, gripped by an unexpected sense of anticipation. The wolf snorted then and sat down, and Goodtree slid off her back and moved to the rim of the hill, where she squatted, becoming as still as the rest of the scene.
Then she felt a vibration in the earth beneath her. An outraged trumpeting split the air, and suddenly a hairy brown shape that even at this distance seemed the size of a moving mountain, heaved over the next rise. For something that big it moved astonishingly quickly, and Goodtree half rose, ready to run if it neared her, for one step of that flat-bottomed foot could have turned her into a stain on the soil. As it approached she saw the gleam of huge tusks and the sinuous upflung trunk and recognized a beast that she had half-believed a legend.
But the dun-colored shape that flashed after it was faster still, coiling and uncoiling in great bounds across the grass. And at the moment when the serpent-nose slowed and started to swing those murderous tusks toward its pursuer, a second longtooth exploded suddenly out of invisibility in the dead grasses, leaped to the great beast's shaggy shoulders, and clung, snarling furiously as it sought for a killing grip on the spine.
The first cat leaped for the huge haunches and fell back again as the serpent-nose spun. But now two more lions magically appeared, leaping and slashing with claws sharper than the Wolfriders' knives. But this prey was not to be taken easily. The serpent-nose bucked and stamped, flexible trunk seeking to capture one of its tormentors.
As Goodtree forced herself to take a breath, one of the lions missed its leap, and as it rebounded the huge head swung and caught the cat on its tusks, lifted and flung it in a squalling arc to land with a sick thud a good distance away. But the movement had opened the way to the first longtooth's savaging jaws, and in that moment the sword teeth pierced through muscle and sinew and snapped the spine.
The serpent-nose reared upward, blasting its agony, looming against the sky. For a moment it seemed impossible that something that big could ever fall. And then, with the ponderous inevitably of some great tree uprooted by a winter storm, the giant beast swayed and toppled to the ground.
Goodtree felt the ground shake beneath her as it fell. Dying, the serpent-nose continued to struggle, but with its spinal cord cut, its movements were purposeless. Ignoring them, the big cats pounced upon the twitching carcass and began to feed. She sensed from Leaf chaser a rather wistful approval, for even the full wolf-pack with riders would have hesitated to tackle something that size.
Goodtree herself was admiring the perfect teamwork and discipline with which the longtooth pride had caught enough meat to feed them all for several days. Her stomach rumbled as the hot blood smell came to her on the shifting wind. She only wished the tribe could do so well. The wolves' way was to run down their prey, but she wondered if perhaps the Wolfriders could learn something from the big cats she had just seen. Riderless, the wolves could chase their chosen prey until it was exhausted, then herd it into the elves' ambush where a well-placed arrow or lucky cast of a spear might reach a vulnerable throat or eye. She would have to ask Joygleam if that had ever been tried—
—And at the thought, Goodtree remembered why she was here, alone. Tasting bitterness, she stood up. The longtooth male lifted his head from the kill to look at her, decided that something so puny was no competition, and returned to his meal.
He was probably right, Goodtree thought unhappily.
Lionleaper had fought one once, an old cat weakened by the winter snows, and taken one of its great fangs for a hunting knife. But he had been badly wounded in the battle, and roundly scolded by Tanner as well. Foolish feats of individual valor were not the Wolfriders' Way—elf lives were too valuable to be wasted. Elves did not kill each other, but far too many died defending the tribe from other enemies.