matters, but I must try to help her.”
He turned and hurried away. This was a day of many events. One who was perhaps moving towards death, one surely coming into life.
Darras looked up when he came in but never let go of Armun’s hand. Armun smiled wearily, her hair soaked and perspiration beading her face.
“Do not look so worried, my hunter. It is a late baby but a strong one. Do not worry.”
He was the one who should be comforting her, he realized, not the other way around. But this matter was beyond his knowledge. It was the women who always took care of it themselves.
“We should never have left the other sammads,” he said. “You should not be here on your own.”
“I do what many women have done before. My own mother, our sammad was small, no other women. This is the way things are, have always been. You must go, eat and rest. I will send Darras for you when it is time.”
Kerrick could say nothing, do nothing. He went out to the fire where Orhiar was cooking meat. He looked up, then hacked off a piece and gave it to Kerrick who chewed it in silence. Harl and Arnwheet, their faces well smeared with grease, sat across from him finishing their meal. Ortnar stared out at the gathering darkness, then signalled to Harl who rose and kicked sand over the fire. They must stay on their guard, particularly now.
The moon was out, the night warm, marsh birds calling quietly to each other as they settled down. Kerrick could just make out the dark form of Imehei where he rested half in and half out of the water at the lake’s edge. He knew that there was nothing he could do now for the males, nothing.
He heard a murmur of voices behind him in the tent and turned to look. But there was darkness, only darkness. Kerrick threw the unfinished meat away; he suddenly had no appetite. He blamed himself for what was happening now. The baby might die, worse, he dared not think about it, Armun might die, because of him. If he had returned to the sammads with the others they would all still be together. The other women knew how to take care of things like this. It was all his fault.
He climbed to his feet, unable to sit still, torn by fear and worry, walked under the tree to stare out at the lake in the moonlight. He looked but did not see it, saw only his inner fears. They should not be here. They should have been with the sammads now, safe in the valley of the Sasku, all safe.
CHAPTER FOUR
The poisonous murgu vines rimming the Sasku valley had turned brown, then died and fallen to the valley floor. They had been pushed into the river and washed away, vanished from sight along with the memories of the last murgu attack.
Herilak sat by the fire turning the shining knife over and over in his hands. Kerrick’s knife of skymetal. He had worn it always about his neck, hanging from the solid metal band the murgu had put there. Across the fire from him Sanone nodded and smiled.
“In my ignorance I thought it meant his death,” Sanone said.
“His life and our life, that is what it means.”
“At first I could not believe you, lived with the fear that Kadair had deserted us, that we had strayed from the path he prescribed for us.”
“I care nothing for your Kadair, Sanone, only for Kerrick who saved us. I hold this knife so I will not forget what he did…”
“I am not pleased when you talk of Kadair that way.”
Herilak stared across the fire at the old man, spoke his mind because the two of them were alone and had come to understand each other.
“I care as little for your Kadair as you do for Ermanpadar who guides the Tanu. That is the truth. Now we put aside this talk of the invisible powers that control our lives and talk instead of what we ourselves must do. I talk instead of two of my hunters…”
“I will not hear their names, do not speak them aloud for their offense was great. The porro sacred to Kadair, they stole it and drank it.”
“To you sacred, to them a very interesting thing to do. The other hunters envy them and have asked me to ask you for more of this drink.”
“You cannot mean this!”
“I do, and there is something else, still more important, that we must talk about. The hunters who drank your porro have been banished from this valley. They now have their tent far up the river. It comes to me that the sammads will join them there.”
Sanone looked back down at the flames, stirred them with a stick before he spoke. His voice was quiet again, the anger gone. “I have been waiting for you to say that, my friend. We will talk of that, not of the porro, never again must you speak of it. Has the time come for you to leave?”
“It has. When we fought together we lived in peace together. In the city by the ocean, then here in the valley. In the war against the murgu all else was forgotten. Now the battle is over, the murgu are gone, and my hunters grow restless. Drinking the porro was just a sign. To you this valley is a home. For them it is a trap that keeps them away from the plains and the forests, the freedom to move, stay, do as they will. And there is another reason for me.”
Sanone saw Herilak’s eyes drop to the knife again and he understood.
“It is Kerrick. You have spoken to me of the differences that grew between you. Do they still exist?”
Herilak shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. And that, I think, is what I must find out. He is alive, that I believe, or the murgu would have pressed their attack and we would all now be dead. But is Armun alive — and his son? If they are dead then it is my doing. I must tell him that. I no longer see him as my enemy, I wonder why I ever did. But he may still think of me as one who has wronged him greatly. That must be ended. It should never have happened at all. Now I have come to believe that it was all my doing. My hatred of the murgu filled me full, welled out and embraced any who thought different from me.”
“Do you still hold those hatreds within you?”
“No.” He held up the knife. “This is the difference. Despite what I have done to him, despite my treatment of his sammad, he did this. Stopped the murgu and made them send this to us to let us know that he had stopped the attacks.”
Herilak lowered the knife and looked across the fire. “Tell me, Sanone, have we done all that we promised to do? When our death-sticks died and we came to that city on the shore, Kerrick told us what must be done and all the sammadars agreed to do as he asked. We received new death-sticks only when we agreed that we would stay with you in the city and defend it. Have we done that?”
“It is finished. The city was well defended until we were forced out. The murgu who followed us you attacked with all the skills of the hunters of the Tanu. Now we are safe, for I believe as you do that this was the message of the knife. If yours is the wish to leave, and the wish of the hunters of the sammads as well, then you must leave.”
“And the death-sticks?”
“Yours by right. How do the other sammadars feel of this matter?”
“In agreement, all in agreement. It takes but your word to release us.”
“And where will you go?”
“North!” Herilak’s nostrils flared as he smelled the forests and the snow. “This warm land is not for us, not to spend all of the days of our lives.”
“Then go now to the others. Tell them what we both now know. That Kerrick released us from the murgu. So there is no more need for you to remain.”
Herilak sprang to his feet, held the knife high and shouted his pleasure, his voice echoing from the valley walls. Sanone nodded with understanding. This valley was the Sasku home, their refuge, their existence. But for the hunters of the north it was only a trap.
He knew that before the sun had set again they would be gone. Knew also that when the other sammads went to the forests to hunt as they always had, that Herilak would not go their way. He would go east to the
