Tarrin had to chuckle ruefully. He kept thinking of Var and Denai as younglings, people much younger than him, when the truth was that he was only eighteen, while Denai was probably in her twenties, and Var was probably in his late thirties. Selani lived on average to be one hundred and fifty years old-some had lived as long as two hundred and fifty-so Allia told him, so those ages corrosponded to someone in her late teens for Denai, and someone in his mid twenties for Var. He was much younger than them, but his experiences and his trials had aged him mentally, made him feel much older than he really was. Not two years ago, he would have been in that pond with them, splashing and carrying on and acting foolish. Now it seemed very foolish to him, a waste of time and energy.

A lifetime ago.

Maybe Shiika's draining touch had aged him more than physically. Maybe it truly had aged him, in body and mind, giving him a mental state to match his unnaturally accelerated years. Or maybe it was just the Cat in him. The Cat wasn't above acting the fool in play, but that was for kittens, or when the Cat felt totally at ease. The rest of the time, it felt proper to act in a dignified manner.

Tarrin crossed his arms and watched as the play died down, and the business of cleaning off got under way. A scent on the wind caught his attention, a rocky, earthy smell that he knew was a kajat, and that turned him away from the Selani. It was faint, but the faint wind hadn't scattered it, and he could tell from the texture of it that it was moving in his direction. He couldn't see it yet, but the kajat was probably smart enough to stay off the hills, to not give away its position. He had little experience with kajat, but it was probably a good bet that Var and Denai's carrying on had made enough noise to attract the predator. He had had enough experience with them to know that they were so heavy that their steps made shivers in the ground, so he knelt down and put his sensitive paw on the ground, feeling for that telltale quivering. If he could feel it, then the kajat was close.

There it was. And another, and another. It was moving slowly and carefully; it was stalking, moving in for the attack. He couldn't tell direction, but a change in the wind made the scent much stronger, and he realized that the monster was approaching from along the canyon wall, and it was coming more or less right at him. He was between it and the pond, meaning that it would have to go through him to reach the Selani. That was a good thing. Var and Denai were still washing, and he let them go on without telling them. If they changed their patterns of behavior, the kajat may alter its path or plan, and Tarrin didn't want that. As it was, the Selani were safe, and that was really the only issue here.

He saw it. It was a huge kajat, so large that it peeked up and over a small hillock about five hundred spans from Tarrin's position. It looked right at him, and stared right back at it defiantly, his eyes erupting from within with their baleful greenish radiance as soon as it made eye contact. He'd been charged by a kajat twice before, so he already knew exactly what the animal was going to do. It had lost the element of surprise, but it was close enough to make a run at a meal. So it would abandon stealth and attack.

And that was exactly what it did. The reptile was about twice as big as the one that bit off his leg, much larger than the first one he encountered, and the entire land shook with each of its rapid footsteps as it quickly accelerated to a full run and came around the small hillock behind which it was hiding. Tarrin rose up to his full height and reached behind him, drawing his sword slowly, easily, as Var and Denai noticed the rippling of the water and concluded quickly that a kajat was on the move very close to them. They started scrambling out of the water, calling out in alarm, but Tarrin kept his eyes locked on the reptile as it charged right at him. He was curiously without fear, watching a monster that weighed more than a house bear down on him with a speed that was shocking, given the raw size of this monster. Tarrin simply stood his ground on the crest of that hill, and he waited for it to come to him.

It didn't disappoint him. With an ear-splitting bellow, it opened those massive jaws and showed him a virtual forest of pitted ivory teeth, then started up the hill. Tarrin crouched down and lowered his weapon, ears back, eyes watching the monster intently for the little signs that would tell him when it was going to lunge at him. The other two had done the same thing, lunged when they got close and turned its head sideways enough to catch its prey in those huge jaws. This one would do the same, he was sure of it, and he knew how to counter that move, counter it and turn it into a fatal mistake.

He saw its head shiver. That was it. Tarrin crouched down, then immediately vaulted straight up just as the monster lunged out at him, striking with that big head and those deadly jaws like a snake, trying to catch the little Were-cat between its jaws. But those jaws closed on empty air as Tarrin rose over them, and its momentum carried it under and past the Were-cat as he descended. He landed on its back, just past its neck, and whirled with his sword out the instant his feet came down on its scaly hide. The monster hadn't registered that Tarrin was on top of it, and it rose up its head and caught sight of the two Selani, who had retrieved their swords from their clothes and stood in defiant challenge to it. They knew that they couldn't outrun the monster, and there was nowhere to hide. So they preferred to fight. They would not give it an easy meal.

The monster came over the hill, bellowing in triumph as Var and Denai raised their swords-

– -and then it crashed to the ground, an impact so powerful it made the pond's surface jump from the shock of it, sliding down the hill on its belly and coming to a stop not thirty spans from the pond, its eyes open and glazed.

Var and Denai looked at it in confusion, then Var laughed as Tarrin stood up from behind the kajat's head. His sword was buried in the back of its neck. The blow had been precise and true, going right between the bones of the neck to sever the spinal nerve. It wasn't dead yet, but it could no longer move anything below its neck, so death was a matter of suffocation now, since the muscles that caused the lungs to fill with air were now paralyzed.

Tarrin wrenched his sword free of it as Var and Denai approached him. They looked a bit silly, standing there naked as the day they were born, dripping wet, and with swords in their hands, but they didn't seem to care. And in reality, he didn't either. He wiped the blood off the blade on the hide of the monster as Denai came up to where he was, a large grin on her face. "Wait til my tribe hears about this," she proclaimed. "You killed a kajat! That's a matter of tremendous honor!"

"It's easy, if you know what you're doing," Tarrin told her dismissively. "They all seem to make the same mistake."

"If it's alright with you, I'd like to take a couple of its teeth," Var said. "They make great trophies, and I can use them to demonstrate this one's size when I tell my tribe of this."

"It's yours," he grunted. "I don't want to eat it. Do whatever you want with it." He glanced at Denai, who had her head about halfway into the kajat's open mouth. "I wouldn't do that," he warned her.

"Why?"

"It's not dead yet, and if it really tried, it could probably close its mouth. You'll lose your head if you keep going."

Denai flinched back from it quickly, then laughed. "I should have realized that. How long?"

"Give it a few moments, then it'll be safe," he replied. "By the time you're dry and dressed, it'll be dead."

He stood by the dying giant as Var and Denai dressed, and he decided that it had been long enough. He stepped back and let them inspect the great beast, Var taking its four largest teeth and Denai taking the massive claw on one of its feet, a claw nearly as long as her forearm. "I think I could make something of these," Var said curiously, looking at the teeth. "A medallion or figure, a reminder of our time together."