The bones lie light in the fertile soil of Sunset Fields. You can prod them out with a few thrusts of your bare toes. The roots of the big luxurious tree ferns carry skulls and skins and back-bones up to the frond-filtered shining of day, and even the delicately questing purple tendrils of the burrowflower may drag an occasional finger or toe bone from its uneasy rest, so light they lie.

The bones do not decay. Nobody knows why. Animal bones decay. The skeletons of our own revered dead fall away to powder in a generation or two. But the bones of Sunset Fields are like the unchanging granite of the jagged cliffs, and of them we make our arrow points and lance heads, our hammers and our needles. It is more difficult to work the bones, to chip and flake them into form, than it is to shape our tools of metal; for we have ways of heating and molding these, subtle methods handed down from the far olden times of our fathers' fathers. There is no way to heat and mold a bone.

Our singers tell a legend that—oh, many years ago!—a man went by stealth and slew another man with his lance. Not many of us believed the legend even when we were children. To kill a man! Our singers say that he possessed a beautiful woman whom the slayer desired. Who would desire the woman of another man? Such a thing seems incredible and childish, even to a child. There are women for all men, men for all women, and do we not each love all others equally, reserving a special love only for our own mate? But the legend is sung that after this bloody deed was done, many men fought because of it, and their curst bones lie in the earth of Sunset Fields forever, a memorial to their fantastic stupidity.

It is a legend of the singers. Nobody really knows why the bones do not decay.

Beyond Sunset Fields run the three brooks: the Gray, the Blue, and the Crimson. Far to the south they meet, and there become the Wide River that flows turbulently on until it reaches the silver dusk that encircles the world. There was a man of our people who once set out to find the end of the Wide River, but he never came back.

Beyond the trio of brooks there rise the first grim ranks of the Fearful Forest, line after line of tall broad-leafed trees so evenly spaced you would think they had been planted by design. Pass the palisades of this forest and brave its terrors, its darkness and great angry beasts, and you will come after a time to the other side; and there, beyond a black plain where nothing grows save crawling vines and nauseous weed patches, you may see the towering cliffs of the country of The Nameless....

I am a hunter. My father was a singer, and his mate also; but I have a poor voice, good for little except to shout across the valleys to my friends, so my father, affectionately calling me Bear-throat, counseled me to become a hunter; and this I did.

I am strong, of course. My arms are brown as a deer's hide and they swell with muscle. My legs are sturdy and, though not thickset, can carry me at a run for the space of a day without tiring. I do not boast when I say this, for after all I am a hunter and my arms and legs are my tools as much as my lances and arrows and metal knife. My name is Ahmusk, though I am more generally hailed as Bear-throat, the nickname my father gave to me. I have eyes the color of Blue Brook where it runs into a deep pool. My hair, the pale golden hue of the earliest corn of autumn, is cut short in the fashion of hunters, falling scarcely to my shoulders in back, in front sliced off evenly just above my eyes. And I think this is all that need be said concerning the person of Ahmusk the hunter.

The day of which I would speak first was a day of cheerful sun and small breezes, with that crispness in the air that makes a man stand tall and blink once or twice, and perhaps shout for joy. I did just that, after I had wakened, and then I sat on the edge of my platform and looking down the tree's trunk at the grass below I was astonished at its bright new-seeming greenness. I sucked in a great chestful of air and shouted again. In the tree nearest mine there were two platforms, and now someone sat up on the higher and rubbed her eyes and grumbled. "What is it, Bear-throat?"

"The morning, girl, the morning," I said heartily.

"Need you be a herald of the dawn every day?" she asked, mock-petulantly. And I laughed.

"Throw off your furs and smell the wind, Lora," I told her. "In the changing of the moon to nothing and back to fulness, the snow will fly. Today is the best day of the year."

"To you, every day is the best of the year, or at least you say so each morning." She put back her sleeping furs and stood up, naked and young and beautiful. "When we are mated," she said, "I will see that you wake silently, and slide down the tree to find my breakfast while I sleep as long as I wish!"

"What a shrew," I said happily. "What a ruler of men."

"You will see." She slipped her light garment over her head. "I will quiet you down, young Bear-throat!"

"I hope the day is soon, then, for your mating," growled her father from the lower platform of their family's tree. "Perhaps good folk will then be allowed to rest."

Grinning, I hung by my hands from the edge of my platform and dropped to the ground. Fifteen feet from toe to turf is no drop at all to a skilled hunter. The watchers were coming down the glen from their posts of the night, yawning and rubbing their eyes. I hailed them and they answered with waves of their arms.

"Any disturbances?"

"You would have heard, Ahmusk of the keen ears," said their leader. "No, we glimpsed a knifetooth bear traveling his solitary way to the Gray Brook, but if he killed thereafter we were too distant to hear it. No noises save the small animals going and coming, going and coming all night long."

"It is nearly a moon's change since old Halfspoor ranged near the valley," I said. "He will be coming back soon, if I know his ways; and then there will be disturbances in the night."

The leader of the watchers shivered. As far apart as we stood, I saw him shudder. "But do not lose your day's sleep over him," I shouted reassuringly. "This very moment I go to look for his track. If he ranges within our lands I shall know, and a pair of hunters will watch with you."

"Watching is our duty, not yours," he answered a little sullenly. "Beware of Halfspoor, or he will be using your pelt for a sleeping fur, Ahmusk."

I was angered, I suppose. A hunter's pride is a powerful thing. "Halfspoor is only a knifetooth bear," I told him. "He is not, after all, one of The Nameless."

They looked at me in horror; and then they turned and went to their trees without a word. I felt ashamed of myself. It was an evil thing to use that terrible name so lightly. Then Lora had clambered down her tree and was standing near me, looking up into my face, so that I forgot all that I had been saying and knew only that every day this girl became more lovely.

"Good morning, Lora," I said.

"Are you really going to look for Halfspoor?" she asked me, her eyes, that were like the purple bells of the burrowflower, all wide and wondering.

"I am."

"Perhaps he has left our lands."

"I have known Halfspoor for five years, Lora, or it may be six. I know his rangings and his times for killing; I recognize his track though it be on the hardest ground, and I could tell you which snuffling grunt was his if a full score of knifetooth bears were all talking at once. He is due to come back today, or tomorrow or the next day. He is old and wily, but set in his ways."

"I hope he has died on the banks of the Wide River," she said, brushing a strand of her onyx-black hair away from her face. "I hope his bones are gnawed by jackal-rats."

"And I hope your wish does not come true," I said lightly. "Because I have chosen his hide for our mating rug, young Lora."

"Oh!" she exclaimed suddenly, her great eyes going wide again. "I had forgotten to tell you. I was asleep when you returned last night."

"I trailed a wounded deer far down the Blue Brook, and caught him late. What had you forgotten, sleek Lora?"

"The guardian Laq asked me to be his mate. It was in the afternoon, and he asked me in the presence of my father. When I reminded him that you were to be my mate, he asked my father for me."

I was shocked, then angered above any anger I had ever known. "He asked you, and then your father!" I roared. "What had your father to do with it?"

"Laq says that in the far olden times it was the custom to ask a woman's parents. My father was enraged and told him that we were not living in the far olden times. Laq said it was a pity we were not, as then the people had respect for their guardians. And my father, fuming and rumbling until I thought he would begin to give off sparks like Ruddy Mountain, told Laq that even a guardian had no right to ask for the promised mate of another man. Laq then departed, saying he would ask me again after Halfspoor had killed you, dear Bear-throat. Halfspoor again! His cruel words had slipped my mind until I spoke them now. Must you go looking for Halfspoor?"

"I must." Taking my bow from my shoulder, I tested it from habit, and counted the arrows in my quiver to ascertain that there were fourteen of them, for fourteen arrows are accounted lucky for a day's hunt. "I do not understand Laq," I told her. "He has broken two of the strongest customs. To ask you when you are promised ... and then to ask your father for you, as though you were a bone hammer or a sleeping fur! Laq must be losing his wits."

"Perhaps he was drunk on tree fern juice." She dismissed Laq and all his works with a shrug. "The sun has lifted over the hills, Bear-throat. If Halfspoor is so much more attractive than I am, why then go to him, young hunter with blind eyes."

I patted her smooth cheek. "Young, but not blind. Did I not choose the prettiest girl of all our folk, when we two were scarcely older than sucklings?" And with this compliment, which made her preen, I left her and walked swiftly down the glen toward Sunset Fields.

By the time I had crossed Sunset Fields and come to the Gray Brook, I had forgotten Laq and pushed Lora to the back of my mind. The day was perfect. Every bird in the world was making merry on his twig, every small animal had left his burrow to romp drunkenly through the underbrush, intoxicated with the bright keen air of morning. I passed a doe with her fawn, trotting happily toward the water; and I did not bring her down, though she would have been easy prey and good eating, for we shared a joy that made us sib to one another.

Still, for me the pleasure of autumn was now only a background against which my thoughts of Halfspoor the bear marched in orderly fashion while I reviewed them one by one. I recalled his slayings of men, his occasional and very skillful stalking of the night watchers in their trees at either end of our valley. I remembered how on this morning he would be found asleep in his old lair under the two fallen petrified tree ferns downstream near the Blue Brook, while on that morning he would be gnawing the bones of bison or cave cat or perhaps even of jackal-rat (for he was a dirty feeder, was Halfspoor), far up the Crimson. I visualized his footprint, unique among knifetooth bears, measuring as long as my arm from wrist to shoulder, and with three outer toes gone from the right hind pug. As I waded through the Gray Brook's chilled waters I could almost imagine that I saw the maimed sign of his pad on the silver strand before me. "How well I know that track!" I exclaimed to myself, with an egotistic pride in my craft; and then I came out of the waters to find that, far from so clearly imagining it in all its enormous crippled particulars, I had actually been looking at the veritable track of Halfspoor himself. I was exultant and humiliated at the same time.

Halting above it, I tested my bow once more, and counted the fourteen bone-pointed arrows in their quiver that I had made from the paw and forearm pelt of another knifetooth bear, my lucky quiver with the claws still hanging from its tip. The metal knife was in its sheath at my hip, the bone hatchet dangled from a sling handy to my left hand. I took a deep breath and began to follow the great mutilated prints overland toward the second of the three streams.

Soon I had crossed the Blue and was approaching the Crimson Brook. Halfspoor was perhaps two hours ahead of me. Where he had trodden in sand, the water had filled his track, and where he had ambled heavily across grassy spaces, the blades had sprung nearly to uprightness again. He was traveling slowly, inspecting logs and coverts, probably talking to himself in the gruff complaining whine of his breed. Here and there he had lingered a moment or two, and in these places I could often catch a whiff of his rank ursine odor.

At first I had no desire to catch up with Halfspoor. Almost would I rather have come face to face with one of The Nameless! No hunter is a match for a full-grown knifetooth bear, standing as he does more than twice as tall as a man, with an unbelievable bulk that must outweigh twenty-five humans, every ounce of which is full of fight and choler and wickedness. His twin saber-tusks jut down in great deadly arcs, yellow and sharp and long as a hunting arrow. His head is larger than that of any animal, even than that of the cave cat who lives to the north and can be heard yowling a full day's journey away. When a knifetooth bear opens his maw it is like staring into a huge fang-rimmed scarlet well. His paws are swift gargantuan weapons that can enfold and crush the largest stag. Oh, a terrible beast is old knifetooth! And Halfspoor was the biggest, the angriest, the wisest and most hateful of his tribe.

I tracked him but did not hurry overmuch; when I had decided where he would spend the night, I would return to the glen, and persuade a dozen of our hunters to accompany me to find him. If he lay over a kill, stupid and drowsy with eating, we would attack him. Some of us might die, but Halfspoor also would die ... if we were lucky. By right of my trailing I would then lay claim to his pelt, and from it make a mating fur for Lora. And the watchers would feel happier as they sat the nights through in their trees at the ends of the valley, because Halfspoor would never trouble them again.

On this I thought as I crossed the Crimson Brook, and saw the first line of trees rising from gray tangled thickets that marked the beginning of the Fearful Forest. Halfspoor's pugmarks went straight toward them. And it was then that I began to form my daring plan. The bear was obviously going to go to ground somewhere in the woodland, and no hunter would follow me into that dreadful place after sundown.

Why not follow him and kill him myself?

Of all the folk, I alone had killed a knifetooth bear. Truly he had been but partially grown, and I had not deliberately stalked him to kill; no, I had blundered on him and it had been slay or be slain. But in that fight I had learnt much of a knifetooth's tactics, blind spots and weaknesses. His arm was now my quiver, his hide my sleeping rug. Halfspoor was only twice his size, at most, and surely the best hunter of the glen was a match for him? I who could loose four arrows and notch a fifth before the first struck its mark a hundred paces off—why should old tribal fears and the experiences of lesser men keep me from trying my hand at conquering this maimed brute?

I went into the dank dimness of the Fearful Forest.

There is something I do not like about a deep tangled forest, and that is the lack of sunshine. The light is green and cool, and at intervals you will see a thin beautiful shaft of yellow spearing down from an opening far above; but unless you come to a glade there is no chance of catching a glimpse of the sun in its glory riding the blue fleece-clouded sky, and without the sun I feel lonely and somehow half-lost. It is why I would make an indifferent watcher, for they must wake by night and sleep by day. I am a sun-worshipper of the first order. I need its blazing all about me in order to be wholly myself.

Of all woodlands, the least lovely is the Fearful Forest. As I have said, its trees are spaced evenly as though they had been planted by someone in the far olden times. Their wide leaves are dark blue-green with emerald veins running beneath the surface. Their boles are thick and have rough hard bark, unlike the smooth-skinned tree ferns of Sunset Fields. Between their roots orange and black mushrooms and strange pale sick-looking fungi lurk, and crawling upward toward the invisible sun go lichens of every hue from mauve to sanguine. Where the branches begin there is a riot of parasitical growths, thick vines and murderous mistletoe, climbing plants that bear huge trumpets of orchids, every sort of disagreeable creeper that lives on the energy of its stronger brethren. All this vile vegetation makes an almost impenetrable roof over the whole Fearful Forest. On the ground between the trees lie heaps of long-decayed touchwood, squat thickets of brier, lightning-blasted limbs only beginning to crumble, and a deep soft carpet of dead things, from the half-dissolved flora of which peer white rib cases and gleaming, grinning skulls. The Fearful Forest reeks of death, of murdered animals and plants, of life that is not healthy nor productive of anything save more death.

There are trails through the depths of this dismal woodland, paths made by bears or stags or the giant dogwolves that range in packs of a hundred. Smaller aisles are made by jackal-rats and the other lesser animals. Halfspoor was following a deep trench of a trail that ran almost straight toward the opposite side of the forest.

For a long while I followed this pathway, glancing at the ground now and again to be sure the knifetooth bear had not turned off; and my mind was oppressed against my will by thoughts of horror, generated, doubtless, in the dreary sunless vistas about me. Indeed, I would have gone back had it not been for the bold and idiotic plan I had conceived, of slaying Halfspoor single-handed. Several times a jackal-rat crossed my road, snarling at me, its scurfy brown hackles lifted. The third such loathsome beast I skewered with an arrow out of sheer dislike, retrieving my shaft before I passed on.

Suddenly I halted. Before me on a patch of mold lay the print of the bear, and within its great outline was a second track, that of a man. Another human was following Halfspoor! I was astonished. I knew where every hunter of the glen-folk ranged today, and none should be near the Fearful Forest. Kneeling, I stared closely at the footmark. I knew it well, as I knew the spoor of every man in this region. Laq the guardian was before me in the woodland.

Laq! He who had so oddly broken two of the oldest customs—say rather immutable laws—of humanity. We are supposed to love one another equally, and for the most part we do; reserving, as I have said, a special love for our mates and a heightened reverence for our guardians. But I could not feel any very powerful affection for the guardian Laq that day. I was disgruntled and wrathful to find that he was somewhere ahead.

Certainly he had a perfect right to be in the Fearful Forest. The guardians passed this way with some frequency, and no hunter or singer or watcher of the night envied them their solitary journeys ... nor their mysterious and appalling duties at their destination!

For the guardians were the only barrier, as we all had been told from childhood, that stood between mankind and The Nameless. The calling was hereditary, limited to certain families. Dedicated at birth to their lifelong task, the guardians learned their secrets from their fathers, and imparted not a syllable of them to anyone outside the craft so long as they lived. It was thought that perhaps only those of select blood lines had minds capable of holding these secrets without going insane; it was thought—oh, many many things were thought of the guardians! Generally aloof, wrapped in the cloak of esoteric knowledge, they lived among us as superior beings, complex where we were simple, sober where we were light-hearted, supremely important where any one of us could be replaced by a score of others.

Over The Nameless the guardians had power, and kept them confined to their stark and blighted-seeming country beyond the Fearful Forest. I never knew a man so daring or so rash as to ask any sort of impertinent question of a guardian, whether about his work or his cabalistic secrets or his terrible charges. The less said or even thought of The Nameless, the better.

So the guardians moved between the glens and the jagged cliffs, revered by men and shunned by beasts of prey, accepting food and comforts and at times a mate from our ranks; the sole protection of humanity from their age-old enemies....

The Nameless!