It was a bitterly cold day, nearing the end of winter. Sharp winds and densely overcast skies made it even more unpleasant. He and his friend Boro, both scrawny, undernourished boys of thirteen summers, were returning from yet another unsuccessful hunt. Hunger pangs gnawed their guts and weariness steeped their bones as they plodded homeward. As usual by this late in the cold months, the sparse winter game near the cave had been hunted out. Most big game had migrated anyway, and many of the animals that did stay nearby were hibernating. The stores of grain and roots put up in the cave during the previous summer were mostly eaten or spoilt. Meat killed at the beginning of winter and placed under rock cairns to freeze had almost all been eaten or else had been dug up by industrious scavengers. What was left was being rationed severely by Roley. The Aldans had used up the layers of fat they had built up by gorging themselves during the plentiful kills of summer. They desperately needed to move away from the cave area to a hunting ground that had not been exhausted, at least until the plentiful game of the warmer months returned.
