Sorli turned slowly to face the two manduktos, raising his hands palm outwards. “It shall be done as you ask. I will take Dooha there myself, today.”
Kerrick repeated his words in the language of the Sasku, and the manduktos bent low in honored acceptance.
“You will thank this sammadar,” the older mandukto said. “Tell him that our gratitude will never cease. Now we must return with the word.”
Sorli looked after their retreating backs and shook his head. “I don’t understand it — and I’m not going to try to. But we will eat their food and ask no more questions.”
There was a feast then, and all of the sammads shared the fresh food. Kerrick, who had eaten like this all of the winter, did not touch the Sasku food; instead he took great pleasure in chewing on a piece of tough smoked meat. When they were done, the stone pipe was lit and passed and Kerrick drew on it gratefully.
“Is this site better than the old one?” he asked.
“For now,” Herilak said. “The grazing is better for the beasts here, but the hunting is just as bad. We have had to go as far as the mountains to find game, and that is dangerous for the dark ones hunt there as well.”
“What will you do then? The hunting may be bad — but there is all the food we need from the Sasku.”
“That is good for one winter — but not for a lifetime. The Tanu live by hunting, not begging. There may be hunting to the south, but we have found that there are barren and waterless hills on the way and they are hard to pass. Perhaps we should try.”
“I have talked to the Sasku about these hills. There are some valleys there where there is good hunting. But the Kargu, that is what they call the dark ones, are already there. That way is closed. Have you looked to the west?”
“Five days once we walked out into the sand, then we had to turn back. It was desert still, nothing growing except the spine plants.”
“I have talked to the Sasku about that as well. They say that there are forests if you are able to reach the other side. Most important, I think that they may know the trail across the desert.”
“Then you must ask them. If we can cross and find a place that has good hunting, without murgu there, why, then the world will be as it used to be, before the cold, before the margu came.” Herilak’s face fell as he spoke and he stared, unseeing, at the dead fire.
“Do not think of them,” Kerrick said. “They will not find us here.”
“They will not leave my thoughts. In my dreams I march with my sammad. See them, hear them, the hunters, the women and children, the great mastodons pulling the travois. We laugh and eat fresh meat. Then I awake and they are dead, dust blowing on that distant shore, white bones in the sand. When I have these dreams, then all these sammads about me are strangers and I want to leave and go far away. I want to go east back over the mountains, to find the murgu and kill as many as I can, before I die as well. Then perhaps in the stars I will find peace. My tharm will not dream. The pain of memory will end.”
The big hunter’s fists were clamped tight, but his fingers only closed on empty air, for the enemies he fought were as invisible as his thoughts. Kerrick understood, for his hatred of the Yilanè had been just as strong. But now, with Armun, his child on the way, the life among the Sasku was as full as he had ever wished. He could not forget the Yilanè, but they were in the past and now he wanted only to live in the present.
“Come to the place of the Sasku,” he said. “We will talk with the manduktos. They have knowledge of many things, and if there is a way across the desert they will know about it. If the sammads do go there you will have the twin barriers of the desert and the mountains behind you. The murgu will never cross both of them. You can forget them then.”
“I would like to. More than I desire anything else I would like to put them from my mind during the day, from my dreams at night. Yes, let us go and talk with the dark ones.”
Herilak was not like the other hunters who laughed at the Sasku who worked here in the fields, strong males digging in the dirt like women instead of stalking game as real hunters should. He had eaten the food raised here, had lived well through the Winter because of it. When Kerrick showed him how the plants were grown and stored, he listened with close attention.
He saw how the tagaso was dried, with the tasseled, yellow ears still on the stalks, then hung from wooden frames.
There were rats here, mice as well, who would have grown fat on this provident food supply had it not been for the donsemnilla who kept their numbers down. These sleek, long-nosed creatures, many of them with their young hanging on their mother’s backs, tiny tails wrapped about her larger one, stalked the vermin in the darkness, killed and ate them.
They stopped to watch the women who were scraping the dried kernels from the ears, then grinding them between two stones. This flour was mixed with water and heated before the fire. Herilak ate some of the cakes, still hot enough to burn his fingers, dipping them in honey and biting on the hot peppers that brought pleasureful tears to his eyes.
“This is good food,” he said.
“And always abundant. They plant it, harvest it, and store it as you have seen.”
“I have. I have also seen that as they depend on the green fields, so do the fields depend on them. They must stay in this one place forever. That is not for everyone. If I could not roll my tent and move on I do not think I would find life worth living at all.”
“They might feel the same way about you. They might miss returning to the same fire in the evening, not seeing the same fields in the morning.”
Herilak thought about this and nodded agreement. “Yes, that is possible. You are the one who sees things in a different way, Kerrick, perhaps because of all those years living with the murgu.”
He broke off when he heard someone calling Kerrick’s name. One of the Sasku women was hurrying towards them, crying out in a shrill voice. Kerrick looked worried. “The baby has been born,” he said.
He ran off and Herilak followed at a more leisurely pace. Kerrick was concerned because Armun had been so upset of late. She wept daily and all of her earlier fears had returned. The baby would be a girl and would look like her, then it would be laughed at and scorned just as she had been. Kerrick could do nothing to change her mind; only the birth itself would remove her black doubts. The women here were skilled in these things, he had been told. He sincerely hoped that they were as he clambered up the notched log to their quarters.
One look at her face told him all that he need to know. All was well at last.
“Look,” she said, unwrapping the white cloths that swaddled the infant. “Look. A boy to make his father proud. As handsome and as strong.”
Kerrick, who had no experience of infants, thought it wrinkled, bald, and red, nothing like him at all, but had the intelligence to keep his opinions to himself.
“What is his name to be?” Armun asked.
“Whatever you like for now. He will be given a hunter’s name when he is grown.”
‘Then we will name him Arnwheet, for I wish him to be as strong as that bird, as handsome and as free.”
“A good name,” Kerrick agreed. “For the Arnwheet is also a good hunter with the best eyesight. Only an Arnwheet can hang from the wind, then drop and take its prey. Arnwheet will become a great hunter when he begins life with a name like that.”
When Kerrick called down to him Herilak climbed easily up the notched log to the rooms above. He went inside and saw that Armun was nursing the baby, surrounded by a circle of admiring women. Kerrick stood proudly to one side. The women brought her food, jugs of water, whatever she needed. Herilak nodded approval.
“Look at the strength in those hands,” he said. “How they clutch, the muscles working in those mighty arms. There is a great hunter there.”