The Hunter Returns by David Drake, Jim Kjelgaard

The other tribe had not so much hunted the horses and camels themselves, as they had simply waited while the panicked herd ran into their spears. Even if the other tribe was very large, two or three adult animals would provide it with much more than its own members could eat.
    Unfortunately, what Heron said was true also. When one tribe was very much weaker than another, it was human nature to treat the weak ones as inferior—animals to be preyed upon, not human beings with whom to trade and exchange wives.
    Wolf’s stomach growled. The sound decided him.
    “All right,” he said. “All of you search for your spears. We can’t help the fact there aren’t many of us and we’re hungry, but we don’t have to meet another tribe while we’re unarmed. Boartooth, you go back to the camp and bring everyone here. We will go together, all of us, to greet them.”
    “I need to search for my spear too, Chief Hunter,” Boartooth said with unexpected boldness. “Send Heron back with the message.”
    “Heron will stay here,” Wolf said in his flinty voice. “I know where your spear is. It’s in the shoulder of the stallion that cost us our success today!”

    Wolf could hear the happy commotion long before he and his own people came in sight of the other tribe. The strangers were butchering out the animals their spears had brought down. The kill was a considerable one—at least half a dozen horses and camels, easily the equivalent in meat of a pair of giant bisons.
    The Chief Hunter’s plan had been a good one. It just had not worked out for him and his people.
    In broad daylight, with a quantity of meat on which to gorge, the other tribe was not keeping a close lookout. Predators would become a problem when the sun went down, but not even the great saber-tooths would barge openly into a full tribe of humans by daylight in order to hijack a kill.
    Wolf led his people openly to the site where the strangers cut up their kill. He didn’t want to look to the other larger tribe as though he were sneaking up, perhaps with hostile intent. Even though the meadow grass was no more than waist high to Wolf and his adult hunters, none of the strangers noticed them until the newcomers were within easy spear cast.
    The strangers must have been very hungry to concentrate so completely on the meat they were bolting raw. Wolf’s belly growled in sympathy.
    A child carried by a woman in Wolf’s tribe began to wail. A girl with a flint knife and a strip of camel tenderloin leaped to her feet. She stared at Wolf, then shouted in surprise. All of the strangers jumped to alertness. The men dropped chunks of meat and seized spears already bloody from the animals they had killed. Women whisked infants to the rear or gathered stones to throw as their part of the common defense.
    Wolf pointed his spear to the ground in his left hand and raised his right hand palm outward. “We come in peace,” he called. “My name is Wolf.”
    There were at least forty people in the other tribe, a larger number than in Wolf’s even before the troubles of the recent past. Fifteen of the strangers were adult males: hunters during normal times, warriors now if the need to fight arose.
    A grizzled, stocky man with eagle feathers in a headband of tanned hide stepped forward from the other tribe. He held his spear in both hands. He was not precisely threatening, but neither was he making a special effort to appear peaceful the way Wolf was doing.
    “My name is Bull,” he announced. “I am the Chief Hunter of my tribe. This is our kill. Go away and leave us to it.”
    Wolf continued walking forward. He could see the nearest of the animals brought down in the ambush. It was the roan stallion which Boartooth’s spear had wounded. “We come in peace,” he repeated. “But it is our kill also, Bull. You and we should share. There is plenty for all.”
    Several men from the other tribe shouted with anger at the suggestion, though it was obvious to all that there