8: Hunting
T
hrough
the heat of the day they ran, stopping only to lap water from the small streams that trickled down to the distant plain or to stand, hands over their searching eyes, sniffing the air like hounds.
They loped easily, hungrily, with little in their stomachs, as hunting-dogs should run. They would not eat until the sun went below the hill, for that was their habit until the full-belly time of the year when the rich barley had been baked and ground in the querns and made into cakes, and the full berries had come out on the bushes, and the cows could spare milk from their calves. Then there would be bread, and fruit and cheese in plenty for a while: and with good fortune, the meat of the red deer and the wild boar. But now they ran hungry and silent, their minds empty of
