Days later. How many they did not know. The skern do not measure such trivial lengths of time.

Guff had noticed something bad. Very bad. Every morning he and Venn slithered from their burrow with the other yearlings, warmed themselves in the first sun atop the smooth rocks at the summit of the hill just to the east, and then they came back down to the meat pile to feast.

At first, there was plenty to go round. Soon they had tussled for the last of the levin.

Now only a wretched heap of cussock scraps remained.

There were no trials of strength any more, no fierce tussles to divide the best spoils. Now Akkh, one of the master’s monstrous burrow mates, slept with a paw upon the drying flesh. One piece a morning for all.

It was not the way of the skern.

“No more levin hunts,” Venn mused. They were lying in wait at the mouth of the little brook that emptied into the marsh a short walk down the bank. Sometimes, if they were quick, they could snap up the odd mudfish as they strove for their breeding grounds in the soggy reeds beyond.

“Until master allows,” muttered Guff. “They have to start again.”

“Not us,” said Venn. “The others too. The seasoned hunters.”

Guff was silent. It was true. The older skern were sliding out mainly west now, towards the creaking mangroves on the deeper side of the marsh. That was the domain of the cussocks, and it was only their gnarled, bony carcasses that lay now upon the drying field. Cussock meat was tough and meagre, nothing like the sweet morsels from the mouse-men. Yet that was not the most concerning part.

“How can we prove ourselves against tree-rats?” Guff snapped. His spines bristled angrily. Cussocks were slow and stupid. Once spotted, there was nothing they could do to shelter from the might of the skern. There was no honour in their killing. And honour is what they would need, come next year, when the females would return to gift their precious batch of eggs to the most skilled of hunters as selected by master Skrenn.

Venn lunged. The mudfish he had traced down the current from beneath the saplings upstream wriggled away from his jaws and moved ever closer to fulfilling its quest. The skern snorted a foghorn boom from his nostrils, and looked outwards into the marsh. He wondered what the females were eating out there.

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“Our egg-kin cannot prove themselves either,” he pointed out.

“But we cannot surpass the elders,” Guff retorted. “The passing of strength has halted.” He hesitated. “Our whole life has halted.”

They regarded the bank solemnly. It seemed to have grown eyes. They felt the power of the levin ready to roll down upon them, encircle them in slippery borders, hem them in with spears, lead them to scratching a living off rats forever more.

But that is not the way of the skern.

“Have you ever wondered who your egg-father is?” Guff said suddenly. “Your egg-mother?”

“No.” Venn pawed lazily at a passing sliver of silver in the water. He peeked at his friend from the corner of his eye. “But after our performance in the first hunt, I don’t think I’m of the master.”

They hissed laughter. Then, Guff grew serious again. “What I mean is, whoever they are, they’re hunters. And their egg-fathers and egg-fathers before them. Not scavengers of those beneath us. Real fighters, who took what they wanted and scattered the mice before them. You’ve seen their conquests on the walls of the master’s burrow. What have we got to show for ourselves? We’re slow and lazy. No wonder the levin are gathering.”

Venn was giving him a curious look. His tail wagged slowly in the gravel. Guff snorted. “We can’t do this, can we Venn?”

“Master says to wait,” he replied dubiously. “We can never, ever disobey again.” They both knew what would happen if they did.

Guff pressed closer. “Don’t you feel it, friend? The hunger.” Venn did. It had seeped into his limbs like a quivering, maddening heat. His teeth dripped saliva.

“We’d be exiles,” he said. “Never to return to our clan.” But now he understood that the heat he had longed to hide beneath Skrenn’s warning had woken, an ancient ancestral hunger that could not be ignored, and the heat could only be doused in mouse-blood.

He felt his ancestors’ anger too. Levin were meat, and nothing else. Certainly not equal foes. His claws dug into the bank. Perhaps Master Skrenn was becoming docile, overcautious. They had to be put in their place before it was too late.

He saw movement from the stream. This time, he did not think. With a great thrash of energy, Venn plunged his muzzle into the depths and plucked the mudfish from its path. The thrill of the hunt throbbed in his bones.