"No hostility?" Winters asked.
"No." Little Lion replied with a smile.
"What kind of people are they?"
"Hunters, the hunting hunters from the Wicked Soil Department." Little Lion said with deep meaning: "Actually, they are more afraid of you."
A quarter of an hour later, Winters met the leader of the Wicked Soil Department.
"Batu, you don't know me." As soon as they met, the burly, dark-skinned leader of the Wicked Soil Department labored in his stiff common language to make an unconventional self-introduction: "But I have seen you, I am Koshach, your defeated subordinate."
...
[Day 10 after leaving the Flying Feather Tribe's overwintering pasture]
[Wilderness, an unknown small river valley]
Although identities had been confirmed, and they were "on the way," the delegation from Iron Peak County and the hunters from the Wicked Soil Department still tacitly maintained a certain distance from each other.