Renegade returned to the swamp with Rampage, while Dasrylion went with another boy to check the new traps.

Renegade noticed a few of the bright tree-climbers, but could not lure them close enough for a bowshot. He was feeling his hunger now, and his attitude was beginning to change.

Rampage meanwhile had failed to take any waterbirds, and the mammals had unaccountably disappeared, Frustrated, he rigged a trolling line and was fishing the deep waterhole under an overhanging tree, about two bowshots away. Both boys felt the bite of failure at their backs.

Renegade’s stomach started to get on his nerves. Youngsters of the People eat more often than their elders, at least once or twice a day---and his empty ache was disturbing his vigil.

He found himself thinking of the kai on the trail – forbidden deer, now – still beautiful; but suddenly he caught himself wondering how good they would taste. He didn’t know whether to be amused or disgruntled with himself for his quick change of interests. His lofty attitude had flown away when hunger crawled in….

So much for your fine ideals, he thought.

At that moment he heard a noise below. Brush crashing and dry leaves crackling. Rampage must be done fishing. But he was making enough noise for ten hunters. Renegade was going to call down to him for quiet—

--When the kai stepped out of the thicket below him.

It was a fine buck, its cup-shaped antlers fuzzy with new growth, its dappled coat shining in the sun. It held its head high and seemed to feel no fear as it walked with long graceful strides toward the water.

Renegade dared not breathe. Slowly, so slowly, his hand slipped an arrow into place. The kai stopped; Renegade froze. He waited until it resumed walking, its back toward him. Then, with exquisite care, he lifted the bow.

The buck bent its neck to drink. Renegade let it have some water—he had the crazed idea it shouldn’t die thirsty. He sighted on it, held his shot. A carnivore from birth, he had never killed before.

His traitor stomach growled. The kai jerked its head up. Its legs bent. In sudden panic at losing it, Renegade let the arrow go.

The kai sprang straight up as if on springs. Then it leaped into the water in two great splashing bounds. Suddenly it dropped and vanished from sight, as if someone had pulled on a rope and yanked it under.

Frantic, Renegade leaped from his tree, forgetting everything he’d ever learned about arrowstruck prey. He plunged into the water after it.

Rampage, coming in at that moment, heard a splashing and thrashing, and he halted, calling, “Renegade? Is that you?”

“Rampage? Rampage!” came a wild shout from the reeds. He saw Renegade surge up, wet and disheveled, then sink back into the water again. He sprang forward.

“Renegade—h’vack? Are you in trouble?" Up to his knees in swamp water, Rampage plowed into the weeds and saw his friend sitting there, with something large and ginger-spotted across his lap.

Renegade stared at him with a wild eye. “Rampage – the kai! It—it’s a buck, Rampage.”

“I’ll say it is,” his friend responded. “Lucky hunter! All I got was a few fish…wh-what’s wrong?”

Renegade looked up at him with sorrow, still cradling the buck. “It--it’s dead, Rampage. I killed it and saw its life leave…”

Rampage paused again. He saw his friend was in distress, but he had no idea what to say to him.

“I…guess you did, Renegade,” he managed at last.

Brush crackled again, from the shore behind them.

“That must be Broken Spear,” Rampage said with relief. “He’ll know what to do.”

But what parted the thick scrub was not their teacher.

A furry and flattened rectangular head, a square, broad snout, with two small, glittering eyes…

….At the end of a long raddled-fur neck, attached to a short, stocky body with four heavily-clawed feet…

A small-bear, one of their planet’s native carnivores, only a third the size of the great Sloth-bear—

…But big enough.

It had trailed the buck itself, and now, suddenly, other creatures had interfered with its kill.

The boys were petrified. They were caught unprepared: Renegade sitting in the muck with a dead kai on his lap, Rampage with his hands full of fish and trolling lines. At seven years old, the two together were not a match for a small-bear.

It deduced the same. With an angry “Chuff!” and mouth agape, it plunged into the water. It would drive off the intruders, or kill them.

Several things happened at once. Renegade slid out from under the deer and fisted out his knives; Rampage dropped his fish with a splash, and fumbled for a vai-ator disc; the small-bear lunged at them with heavy splashing bounds, reared up as it reached Renegade, who fell back on his haunches, toeclaws slipping in the muck---

When a bolt of solid blue light sizzled into the beast at mid-back.

It fell, with a hole in it the width of its ribcage.