What had happened here? Dead, all dead, an entire sammad, that was clear from the beginning. Skeletons of adults and children lay where they had dropped. But what had killed them? What enemy had fallen upon them and had butchered them? Another sammad? Impossible, for they would have taken weapons and tents, would have driven off the mastodons, not just killed them along with their owners. The tents were still there, most of them wrapped and loaded onto the travois that lay beside the mastodons’ skeletons. This sammad had broken its summer camp, had been leaving when death had sprung upon them. Herilak searched further, and it was in among the bones of the largest skeleton that he saw a glint of metal. He lifted the bones aside with respect and took up the red-rusted form of a skymetal knife. He brushed away the rust and looked at the patterns on the metal, patterns that he knew so well. His spear fell to the frozen ground as he held the knife with both hands, thrust it up into the sky and howled with grief. Tears filled his eyes as he bellowed aloud his pain and anger.
Amahast, dead. The husband of his sister, dead. Their children, the women, the tall hunters. Dead, all of them, dead. The sammad of Amahast was no more.
Herilak shook the tears from his eyes, growling with rage as hot anger burned away the sorrow. Now he must find the killers. Bent low he traced his way backwards and forwards, searching for what he did not know. But searching carefully and closely as only a hunter can. Darkness stopped him and he lay down for the night beside the bones of Amahast and searched for Amahast’s tharm among the stars. He would be there, that was certain, one of the brighter stars.
Next morning he found that which he was searching for. At first it appeared to be just another strip of torn leather, one among many. But when he pulled away the frozen black fragments he saw that there were bones inside. Carefully, so as not to disturb them to any greater degree, he picked away at the leathery hide. Long before he was finished it was obvious what he had found, nevertheless he continued until all of the tiny bones were uncovered.
A long, thin creature, with tiny and unusable legs. Many ribs, far too many ribs, and more bones in the spine than seemed possible.
A marag of some kind, there was no mistake, for he had seen their kind before. It did not belong here, no murgu could live this far away from the hot south.
South? Did that have a meaning? Herilak stood and looked west, where he had come from. No murgu there, that was impossible. He turned slowly to face the north and could see inside his head the cold ice and snow stretching away forever. The Paramutan lived there, very much like the Tanu although they spoke in a different manner. But there were very few of them, they rarely came south, and they fought against winter only, not Tanu or each other. East, out into the ocean — there was nothing there.
But south, from the hot south, murgu could come. They could bring death and leave again. South.
Herilak knelt in the frozen sand and studied the marag skeleton carefully, memorized all the details of it until he could have scratched its likeness in the sand and would remember forever every single bone of it.
Then he stood and ground its brittle fragments underfoot. Turned about and without once looking back started on the return trail.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kerrick never realized that it was age alone that had saved his life. Not that Vaintè had spared him because he was so young; she felt the most intense disgust for ustuzou of any age and would happily see them all dead. Ysel had been too old to respond naturally to a new language, particularly one as complex in construction as Yilanè. For her Marbak was the only way to speak and she used to laugh with the women when hunters from the Ice Mountains visited their tents and spoke so badly they could barely be understood. To her this was just stupidity, any intelligent one of the Tanu would of course speak Marbak. Therefore she had showed no interest in learning Yilanè, and was satisfied to memorize by rote some of the funny sounds just to please the marag and get food from it. Sometimes she even remembered to make body movements with her words. It was all just a stupid game — and she had died for believing that.
Kerrick never thought about language as a separate entity: he just wanted to understand and respond. He was still young enough to learn a language without conscious effort, by listening and watching. If he had had any idea that there were thousands of conceptual areas in the Yilanè language — that could be combined in over 125 billion ways — he would just have shrugged. The numbers were meaningless, particularly since he could not count nor visualize any number larger than twenty, the count of a man. What he learned he had learned without conscious effort. But now, as the lessons progressed, Enge did draw his attention to certain statements, ways of interpreting things, and made him repeat sloppy movements until he did them correctly.
Because of his inability to change areas of skin color he was learning what was referred to as graylight talk. In heavy jungle, or at dawn and dusk when there was very little light, the Yilanè communicated without color patterns, rephrasing expressions so that color was not necessary.
Each morning of their imprisonment he had expected death when the door had opened. He remembered the slaughter of the sammad far too well, the extinction of everything living, men, women, children — even the mastodons. He and Ysel would be killed one day as well; there was no alternative. When the ugly marag had brought food instead of death in the morning he knew that their slaughter had just been put off for one more day. After that he would watch in silence, trying not to laugh, as stupid Ysel made nothing but mistakes, day after day. But he had a hunter’s pride. He would not help her or the marag, would not answer when he was talked to, and he tried to accept the blows that followed in silence as a hunter should. After many days had passed he discovered that he could understand some of the things that Enge said when she spoke to the other marag that he hated the most, the one who beat him and tied him up. Keeping silent became more important after this, for it kept secret his knowledge; a small fragment of success where before there had only been total disaster.
And then Vaintè had killed the girl. He felt no remorse about that because she had been stupid and deserved to join the rest of the sammad. Only when Vaintè had seized him, the blood of murder still fresh on her jaw, only then had the hunter’s strength failed. He had only hunted once, had not been accepted as a hunter, that was what he told himself later, trying to explain away his failure to accept death from those sharp and terrible teeth. In all truth he had been just as frightened then as he had been when his spear drew the marag from the water. He had spoken out of dreadful fear, scarcely aware of what he was doing, and had spoken well enough to save his life.
Kerrick still knew that he would die some day, when the murgu had had enough of him. But that day was in the future and now, for the first time, he permitted himself a tiny bit of hope. Each day he could understand more and speak better. And he still had not been out of this room since the moment they had been brought here. Some day he would be let out of it, unless they intended him to spend his remaining days locked away, and on that day he would run. The murgu waddled, they did not walk, and he was sure he could run faster than they could — if they could run at all. This was his secret hope and because of it he did what he was asked and hoped that his rebelliousness had been forgotten.
Each day began the same way. Stallan would open the door and stamp in. Kerrick would carefully control his loathing of the violent creature. Even though he no longer fought back the hunter would still hurl him to the floor and kneel painfully on his back as it put the living shackles on his ankles and wrists. Stallan would then rub a string-blade over his head to remove the stubble of hair, usually cutting his skin at the same time. Enge would arrive later with the fruit and the gellid meat that he had finally forced himself to eat. Meat meant strength. Kerrick never spoke to Stallan, unless the creature struck him and demanded an answer, which was very rare. Kerrick knew better than to expect any compassion from this ugly, hoarse-voiced creature.