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Gribardsun wanted. The Englishman told the Silversteins to return to the campsite with the natives. He
and the German, and some of the men, if they would agree, would track the robbers.
'But we can't get involved in the quarrels of these people!' Drummond said. 'We don't want to get
into the position of having to take sides! Maybe even having to kill their enemies!'
'We'll have to play favorites,' Gribardsun said. 'There's no way of getting away from it. Moreover,
the more deeply these people are in our debt, the sooner they'll open up for us. We can't stay neutral.'
'You have no right to shoot those men!' Drummond Silverstein said.
'Who said I would shoot them?' Gribardsun said, staring hard at Silverstein. 'Why don't you ask me
what I intend to do instead of making your assumptions?'
'I'm sorry,' Silverstein said. 'Perhaps I'm wrong. But I don't see how you can attempt to take all that
meat away from these savages without having to fight them.'
'I have to re-establish our prestige,' the Englishman said. 'Otherwise we'll never be able to know
these people inside and out. I've said that twice. Once should be enough.'
He turned away. 'Come on, Robert.'
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Four of the tribesmen joined them, among them Thammash and the giant Angrogrim. They set out
northward with the Englishman in the lead. He trotted along, looking to both sides for signs. After a mile
he saw a track, and a little farther on where a man had spit. Then they entered a morass which held many
prints. Gribardsun thought that the party was composed of fourteen men.
They crossed a plain while going toward some hills about a hundred feet high on the horizon. In the
distance, to both left and right, were herds of gray-brown mammoths and brownish reindeer. A pack of a
dozen hyenas skulked along behind the reindeer. A brown-gray fox sped across the plain after a hare
and presently caught it. And then Gribardsun saw their quarry far across the plain. They were all, except
for six rearguard men, half covered with parts of the bears.
Gribardsun slowed his pace to allow von Billmann to draw even with him. Von Billmann was panting,
though he had gone through the rigorous yearlong physical training prior to the launching. The hunters
trotted along, their breaths slightly steaming as the late afternoon turned even colder, the slush splashing
over their bare legs. They did not seem in the least hard pressed.
'The two tribes would have come into contact sooner or later anyway,' Gribardsun said. 'One of
them probably has only recently moved into this territory. I intend to scare this one away so our
subject-study will be left alone.'
'But we want to study their war patterns, too,' von Billmann said.
'That can come later.'
As he ran he was taking films of the men ahead, the area around, and of the men trotting along
behind. He ran backward as swiftly as he ran forward while he filmed those behind. By the time they got
across the plain, they had lost their quarry, vanished up a pass between two low hills. Here were dead
winter grasses with lichen on the rocks and dwarf birches and pines and some beds of saxifrage. A
black-and-white badger waddled away from them as they ran into the pass.
Gribardsun supposed that the men they were following had seen them, so he halted his party after it
had gone a few yards into the pass. Ahead, the hills grew taller and started to move closer. A brook
about five feet wide followed the middle of the pass downward toward the plain, where it suddenly
turned and followed the edge of the hills toward the west.
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Gribardsun in the lead, his express rifle ready, the party moved slowly up the pass. He expected an
ambush, but they got through the pass without incident. They came out onto a small valley which had
been formed by a small river. Across the river, up near the top of the hill opposite, was an overhang. This
was walled on two sides with piles of stones, and in between were skin tents, tiny at this distance, and a
blue haze of smoke under the projecting rock. The robbers were fording the river, and the rearguards
were waving at those under the overhang. And, no doubt, they were shouting an alarm.
By the time the invaders reached the bottom of the valley, they could hear the shrilling of bone
whistles and flutes and the beat of skin-and-wood drums.
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