"Your parents?"
"No," said Torin. "They are still trying to catch our beasts in the forest."
"Look out and see who has come, Torin."
He flattened himself in the corner behind the door. The boy opened it and peered.
"Two men," he whispered. "A hunter whose name is Kurat—and a Vardda." He drew back and looked at Trehearne. "They were hunting you?"
Trehearne nodded. His face had tightened and grown cruel. "Give me a knife."
Torin handed him a skinning blade of crystal chipped to a razor edge. Trehearne said, "Go and tell them I am dead from the hounds' tearing. Tell the Vardda to come and help you carry out my body."
Torin hesitated, then he went. Trehearne heard him calling across the clearing. The gabble of voices increased and Yann's familiar laughter sounded. The boy was talking, telling the details of Trehearne's dying.
Yann strode into the hut.
He came confidently. He had nothing to fear. And then Trehearne's arm was around his throat and the point of the knife was biting in under the angle of the jaw.