The easy, unassuming acceptance seems to please him, the Beastmaster's grip soft when it withdraws and leaves the meats behind. Frail hunting, but his creatures have toiled for the result, and they curl and ebb and flow beside him, satisfied.

"Dry season. But the village will feed. Too many young." And they all want their dinners, their bellies filled. "Huntsmen provide."

He speaks it almost as if it were a precept, a lesson more than learned — ingrained, and its fruit serving him for the duration of his maturity.