Chapter Seven
Hector stood to one side of the clearing, watching as Mashtuk walked a slow circle of the swale. Alongside the injured canine, a rabble of young things kept pace. Mashtuk’s own cubs, Niccolò and Rhosyn, stepped along with him, one on either side. They were close enough to steady him if he needed it, but were also giving him the space to grow back into his own strength. Hector approved their care and the way they allowed their half-crippled father his dignity. Around them, the human twins gambolled in a most ineffective manner, sometimes crawling, sometimes staggering a few steps before falling either on their faces or on their swaddled behinds. A good notion, that was, of the tribesfolk—to clothe the infants in washable linen until they learned better how to relieve themselv
