“The others gave her none, Ortnar. You were her only friend.”
“I told Herilak what I had done. He struck me down and I lay as one dead for two days, this I have been told. Here is where he struck in his anger.” Ortnar’s fingers crept to the crown of his head, fingered the scar there on his scalp. “I am no longer of his sammad; he has not spoken to me since.”
He raised his face and interrupted before Kerrick could speak. “I had to tell you this first, so you would know what happened. Since then I have looked for traces of her, scouting as we came east. I could find nothing — no bones or skeletons of any of them. There were three of them who left together, Armun and your son, and a boy who she took with them. There should have been some trace. I asked all the hunters we met but none had seen them. But there was one, a hunter who traded stone knives for furs, who traded with the Paramutan to the north. He understands some of their talk. He was told that a woman with hair like ours was with them in their place, a woman with children.”
Kerrick seized him by the arms, pulled him to his feet and shook him wildly.
“What are you saying — do you know what you are saying?”
Ortnar smiled and nodded his head. “I know. I came south to tell you this. Now I go north while it is still summer to find the Paramutan, to find Armun if I can. I will bring her to you…”
“No, no need for that.”
In an instant everything had changed for Kerrick. He straightened up as though an invisible weight had slipped from his shoulders. The future was suddenly as clear as a path, stretching sharply marked out ahead of him, like Kadair’s footsteps stamped into stone that Sanone always talked about. He looked past Ortnar, to the city street that led to the north.
“There is no need for you to go — I will do that myself. The sammads will stay here; the city will be defended. Herilak knows how to kill the murgu — he won’t need any instructions from me for that. I will go north and find her.”
“Not alone, Kerrick. I have no sammad except yours now. Lead and I will follow. We will do this together for two spears are stronger than one.”
“You are right — I will not stop you.” Kerrick smiled. “And you are the better hunter by far. We would go hungry if we depended upon the skill of my bow.”
“We will go fast with little time for hunting. If there is the gray murgu meat we will take that to eat.”
“Yes, there is still a good supply. Fresh meat is much preferred by the Sasku.”
Kerrick had found a large stock of bladders of preserved meat, had been bringing it to the hanalè for the males. And what would become of them? Certain death if he left them, that was clear. They deserved better than that. He must think about that as well. Much had to be decided.
“We will leave in the morning,” he said. “We will meet here when it is light. By that time the sammadars will have come to an agreement since they have little choice.”
Kerrick went to the hanalè, closed the heavy door behind him and called out his name. Nadaske hurried down the corridor toward him, claws clattering on the wood, making motions of greeting and happiness.
“Days without number have passed, loneliness and starvation batter at us.”
“I will not ask which comes first, hunger or companionship. Now where is Imehei? There is important talking to be done before I leave the city.”
“Leave!” Nadaske wailed with agony and signed death-by-despair. Imehei heard the sounds and came hurrying up.
“I’ll not leave you to die,” Kerrick said, “so stop your bad imitation of a mindless fargi and listen closely. We are going for a walk around the city now. The Sasku will take no notice, they have seen us walking before and have been ordered not to harm you. They obey their mandukto far better than you obey me. We will walk to the edge of the city and beyond. Then you will go south by yourselves until you see the island I have told you about, and the place of death. You will find Yilanè and uruketo there and you will be safe away from ustuzou forever.”
Nadaske and Imehei looked at each other, signed agreement and firmness of purpose. It was Nadaske who spoke, indicating that what he said was spoken for both of them.
“We have talked. In the many hours alone we have talked. We have seen the city and the ustuzou here and walked about it and have talked. I will tell you what we have talked about. How strange it has been to be away from females and to walk with Kerrick-ustuzou-male-female. Very strange. We have marveled at what we have seen, eyes as wide as fargi fresh from the sea, for we have seen ustuzou living as Yilanè in this city. Strangest of all we have seen the ustuzou males with hèsotsan and the females with the young. We have talked and talked about this…”
“And you talk too much,” Imehei interrupted. “Not only did we talk, we decided. Decided that we did not want to go to the beaches ever again. Decided that we never wanted to see a female-grasping-painly-deadly Yilanè ever again. We will not walk south.”
They signalled firmness-of-decision together and Kerrick marveled. “You have a braveness I have never seen — for males.”
“How can it be seen when our lives are in the hanalè,” Nadaske said. “We are as much Yilanè as the females.”
“But what will you do?”
“We will stay with you. We will not go south.”
“But I am leaving here in the morning. Going north.”
“Then we go north as well. It will be better than the hanalè, better than the beaches.”
“There is cold, certain death to the north.”
“There is warm, certain death on the beaches. And this way we will at least have seen something more than the hanalè before we die.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kerrick slept little that night; there was too much to think about. The sammads would come south, that had been decided; the hunters with their new hèsotsan were leaving in the morning to bring them back. With the hunters here the city was safe — or as safe as it might possibly ever be. Kerrick must turn his back on it now and think of his own sammad. He had left Armun behind with the sammads, and she had tried to join him. He would not even think of the possibility that she was dead; she was alive in the north, she had to be. He would find her, with Ortnar’s aid they would seek out the Paramutan. They would find her, and the baby too — which left only a single thing to be concerned about. The two male Yilanè.
But why should he bother about them? They were nothing to him. But that was wrong. They were important. They had been imprisoned as he had been imprisoned. He had been tied by the neck — his fingers touched the iron ring about his neck at the thought — and they had been locked in the hanalè. It was the same thing. And they had a courage that he did not have, wanting to go bravely forth into a world they knew nothing about. Ready to follow him — because they had faith in him. They wanted to be part of his sammad. At this thought he laughed into the darkness. A strange sammad it would be! A sammadar who could rarely shoot an arrow straight, a hunter with a hole in his skull put there by his former sammadar, a woman, a baby — and two frightened murgu! A sammad indeed to strike fear into the hearts of others — if not into that of the sammadar himself.
What else could he do with the poor, helpless creatures? To leave them here would mean certain death; better to kill them himself than abandon them to that. And they would not return to the female Yilanè, which was very understandable. Yet if they went north with him they would surely die in the snow. Then what could he do? Take them out of here — then what?