Th epredawn morning was good and quiet.  In the flickering light from the single torch, the groundcar was a featureless shadow humming quietly beside the dark guardtower.  Aleytys rubbed her hands along her arms, a little chilly but enjoying the crispness of the air.  She felt apprehensive and elated at the same time, anticipating the beginning of her first Hunt.  She glanced at Faiseh who was shifting uneasily from foot to foot, mustache twitching, watching the silent line of small individual houses where the teachers and apprentices lived.

"What's keeping us here?" Grey sounded impatient.  Aleytys smiled to herself.  He was as jumpy as she was, wanting to begin, resenting the need to hang around waiting uselessly.

"Manoreh," the Watuk Ranger said crisply.  His eyes lifted to the sky, paling very slightly along the line of roofs.  "I'll go see what's holding him up."  Without waiting for an answer he trotted off toward a house on the far end of the line.  Its shape was a dark smudge in the deep shadow beside the taller stable.

Aleytys watched the chunky little man fade into the shadow and felt another chill that had nothing to do with the bite of the air.  She walked briskly back and forth beside the groundcar with Grey watching quietly, saying nothing, standing deliberately still.  He kept his back to the green glow strengthening gradually above the roofs.  Aleytys smiled tentatively at him.  "Grey...."

"Get the back door open." Faiseh was coming back, supporting his taller friend.  Manoreh was moving with considerable difficulty.  The stiffness he'd counterfeited before was becoming real.  Faiseh muscled him along toward the groundcar.  "Move," he grunted.

As Aleytys set her hand on the latch, a slender figure came through the narrow crack in the gate and moved quickly, gracefully to the group by the car.  A watuk woman with shimmering silver highlights gleaming along her cheekbones and a long elegance of bone and a grace of movement that enchanted Aleytys and at the same time made her feel once more a lump of mud.  The woman wore a long rectangle of patterned material wound around her body and tied in a roll knot over her breasts.  "I'm going with you," she said quietly, Aleytys felt the intense emotion behind the smooth face, but the woman spoke without emphasis and stood gently relaxed as she confronted them.  "We both are."  A small boy came shyly around her and stood looking up at Manoreh.

Faiseh chewed at his mustache.  Manoreh scowled.  "No," he said harshly.  "You'll be safe here."