Braan brandished his pike and pointed sternly, this time at Craag-the-warrior. With grave authority Craag sang out more names—the names of sixty warriors. One by one the sixty stepped forward, most grabbing salt bags. The first ten, master warriors, including Tinn'a and Bott'a of clan Botto, shouldered only their weapons. As scouts and guards, they formed the first rank. The next fifty warriors were experienced but less seasoned. Each would associate himself as an instructor to a novice, responsible for the sentry's survival and training. They formed ranks with the sentries.
The sentry common roiled with nervous movement and sound. Braan raised his arms. Silence fell; the gurgling noises of the nearby stream drifted across the redoubt. Braan screeched lustily,demanding praise, and the cliffside was drowned in ritual bedlam. With explosive volume the assembled hunters screeched the death song. All sang for death, a death of honor, a passage to final peace: the hunter's plaintive acknowledgment that life was over, that he had fought to the limits of his strength—that he was ready to die.
The hideous screaming built level upon level, to pitches and frequencies known only to dumb brutes and cliff dwellers. In the continuing din, Braan raised his pike and the drummers initiated a rhythmic marching tempo. The hunter leader glided from the hilltop and joined Craag at the formation head. The two hunters marched over the edge, cracking their wings with explosive power. The formation followed, one rank at a time, to the whistling cheers of the multitude. As the salt mission rose on fresh updrafts, their formation altered, the ranks sliding outwards and joining until a large vee formed, giving each hunter undisturbed air. The whistles and screams from those left behind increased in intensity and volume. Thousands of hunters followed the salt expedition into the air, leaping out over the river and rising vertically on convection currents heaving upwards against the face of the plateau. A billowing horde of black bodies soared majestically and noisily upwards, as the wavering vee of the salt mission faded to a faint line on the northern horizon.
"Look!" MacArthur shouted. He pointed ahead, toward the plateau's edge. A thin black cloud drifted skyward. Buccari lifted binoculars to her eyes while MacArthur and the other patrol members—O'Toole, Chastain, and Jones—stared at the ascending column.
"Our friends," Buccari said, taking the glasses down. "Thousands of them." She handed the binoculars to MacArthur. The humans took turns watching the wheeling mass. Gradually the clouds of animals thinned and spread, dissipating, individual motes gliding down the cliff face.
"What that's all about?" MacArthur asked.
Buccari glanced at the corporal and shrugged.
"Maybe they're waiting for your letter, Lieutenant," he persisted.
"It would be nice," Buccari replied. She was impatient to drop off the next batch of pictographs. Nothing had been received from the cliff dwellers since the initial tease. She scanned the skies to the north and west. The weather was changing. Her patrol was headed for MacArthur' s valley, a last foray before the snows of winter. Buccari stifled her frustration. She had wanted the entire crew moved to the valley before winter struck. According to MacArthur, in the valley tundra gave way to topsoil, temperatures were warmer, wildlife abundant, and the forests thicker and more diverse.
Yet Quinn had elected to winter on the plateau. Buccari worried about the commander's decision-making abilities, concerned that his emotional distress was infecting his judgment. He spent long hours alone and made decisions only when pressed. On most issues he seemed indifferent or distracted, but for some reason, he had taken a strong stance on not leaving the plateau. Two sturdy A-frame log structures and a solid meat house had been constructed downhill from the cave; a magnificent woodpile for the winter's heating and cooking requirements had been accumulated. And there was the cave. The cave provided an element of permanency and an essence of security. The crew was emotionally attached to their first campsite. Quinn, seconded by Sergeant Shannon, proclaimed they were prepared for winter.
The arrival of winter was mysteriously uncertain. There was already a bite in the wind, and the air smelled different, but Buccari had insisted on one last patrol before winter snowed them in, tugging at Quinn's mantle of leadership, cajoling and badgering. Quinn conceded, if only to stop her harping. Buccari organized the patrol and set out immediately. She was going to be prepared for the spring, and learning more about the valley was imperative to those preparations.
"We got some cold weather coming," she said now.
"It's damned cold now," Jones said.
"What's the matter, Boats?" O'Toole asked. "I thought you liked playing Marine."
"Yeah, Boats," MacArthur said. "Act like a man. Right Lieutenant?"
"Yeah, Boats," Buccari said. "Act like a man. Move out, Corporal!"
"Aye, Cap'n," MacArthur replied, stepping out toward the horizon.
Braan glided along, measuring altitude by the pressure in his ears. The thermals were unseasonably strong, and the autumnal southwesterlies pushed the hunters rapidly over the plains. An auspicious start.
Hours passed. Thermals lifted them high, yet Braan' s initial well-being was tempered by the changing elements. An innocent parade of puffy cumulus had exploded into a threatening line of towering nimbus. Concentrations of billowing turbulence blossomed upward, fluffy white tops curling ever higher, their bottoms black and heavy with rain—thunderstorms. Braan veered west, hoping to slide behind the rain giants. Hours of soaring remained, but flying into the crazed craw of a thunderstorm would not get them to the salt flats. Ominous booming of thunder rattled sensitive nerves in Braan' s sonar receptors, and searing blue streaks of lightning arced between the roiling mountains of moisture. The hunters pressed forward, skirting the bruised clouds, but the course ahead grew solid with storm. The hunter leader set a sinuous detour, descending slowly through a dark valley of rumbling behemoths. Braan screamed a command along each wing of the echelon, and Craag, leading half the hunters, descended, falling behind and forming a separate vee. Wispy vapors and occasional raindrops sailed through the formation, and high overhead, dark clouds cut off the last bright rays of the sun. The hunters accelerated their descent, fighting increasing turbulence and decreasing visibility.
Sonar pulses of frightened hunters discharged randomly, their locating organs firing off sonic feelers. Braan in the lead, with nothing to guide him except eyes and instincts, remained quiet. Turbulence rocked him. A pelting rain started. And then hail. Braan screamed: every hunter for himself. A nimbus cell had swallowed them. There was no telling which way the powerful and turbulent drafts would throw them. Braan held his glide straight ahead, increasing his rate of descent, hoping the formation would stay with him. His hopes evaporated. He felt powerful updrafts. The longer the hunters remained in the air the more scattered they would become. Braan repeatedly screamed the dive command and pulled in his membrane wings, bunching them behind his back. The elevator updraft pressed him but could not hold him; the lead hunter pointed his nose downward and knifed through upwelling winds.
He fell through the bottom of the clouds, black grayness suddenly brightening to the midnight green of rain-soaked plains, rising to meet him. Braan flattened his body and allowed his membranes to ease into the rushing slipstream, bleeding off vertical velocity. Halting his descent, he struggled to keep his wet body in the sky, beating the air with powerful strokes. He circled relentlessly downward in driving rain, screaming for rendezvous. Answering cries came from all around, and as he drifted to the hail-strewn tundra, other hunters hopped and glided to his location, marshaling to his cries. Miraculously, after a half hour of whistling searches, everyone was on the ground, regrouped and without serious injury. Their adventure had started.