The next day, he rode out with Kwint, Puko, and two others. They headed toward where the kromp herd had been reported, hoping for horn trophies that might be traded to the Raydower tribe of the great mountains. As with the Sea People, the Hunters relied largely upon wool from their wollies for trading, but other items helped. The Raydowers were sometimes difficult to get along with because of their bent toward mysticism, but they made knives and buckles of hard bronze.
Toward noon, they brought down a loppa, a fleet animal smaller than a wolly but excellent eating. Yorgh lost when they drew straws, and stayed to do the skinning as the others hunted back along a brook toward camp, having promised to send him the first cart. The plain thereabouts was dotted by clumps of thick brush, and Yorgh decided to have a steak after he had ridden over to the brook, two hundred yards away, to wash up. He got out his sparking stones from the mountains and made a fire.
He had just wiped his mouth on his wrist, careful not to soil the sleeves of his prized crimson tunic, when a drumming thunder rolled across the flatland. He leaped to his feet.
"Kromps!" he exclaimed.
It was the herd he had seen the day before. Something had aroused them, and they pounded across the grassland in a black mass studded with sweeping horns. They would go for miles, leaving a trail like a dozen tribes on the march with all their wagons.
They're heading for the brook, Yorgh thought. If they don't cross, but swing and follow it down to the creek and the camp—
He reached his grazing wolly in three bounds and vaulted into the saddle. The animal protested bleatingly at the impact.
As Yorgh grabbed the end of the guide rope he saw the frenzied kromps swerve away from the glint of water and turn parallel to the brook.
"Can't gain fast enough to ride ahead," he muttered. "Why in the name of the Three Moons do they act so scary, when every other thing on The World is scared of them?"
Reaching down from the saddle, he pulled up a handful of the long grass already turning brown from the summer rays of The Star. When he held it over the fire, it flared into ashes too quickly.