A hunter stood beside the trail, leaning on his spear, waiting for Kerrick to come up to him.
“It is the sacripex,” he said. “It is his wish that you join him where he leads.”
With great effort, ignoring the throbbing pain in his leg, Kerrick broke into a shuffling run that took him up the column, past the travois and marching sammads. The small children were walking now, the babies being carried by the mothers and older children. Even partially relieved of their loads the mastodons still stumbled with fatigue. They would not keep going much longer.
Herilak pointed at the hills ahead when Kerrick came shuffling up to join him.
“They have found a wooded ridge up there,” he said. “Very much like the one we stopped them in yesterday.”
“Not… good enough,” Kerrick gasped, fighting to catch his breath. “There are too many of the enemy. They will get around us again, push us back.”
“They may have learned their lesson. Even murgu aren’t stupid. They will hold back. They know they will be killed if they attack.”
Kerrick shook his head in an unhappy no. “Tanu might do that. They might see others die, be afraid for themselves. But not the murgu. I know them, know them too well. The Yilanè who are riding the large beasts, they will stay to the rear all right. They will be safe. But they will order the fargi to attack just as they did before.”
“What if they refuse?”
“They can’t. It is impossible for them. If they understand a command they must obey it. That is the way it is. They will attack.”
“Murgu,” Herilak said, and his lips curled back from his teeth with distaste as he said it. “Then what are we to do?”
“What else can we do but keep going?” Kerrick asked helplessly, his mouth gasping open, his skin ashen with fatigue. “If we stop here in the open we will be slaughtered. We must go on. Find some hill that we can defend, perhaps.”
“A hill can be surrounded. Then we will surely die.”
The track they were following rose sharply. They needed all their breath now to scramble up it. When they reached the ridge above they were forced to stop. Kerrick was bent double, racked with cramps. Behind them the slow procession toiled up the slope. Kerrick straightened up, gasping, and looked ahead, up the rise, they must climb to the hills beyond. Then stopped motionless, mouth gaping, eyes wide.
“Herilak,” he shouted. “Look there, up ahead, up on those higher hills. Do you see that?”
Herilak shielded his eyes and looked, then shrugged and turned away. “Snow. Winter still holds fast up there.”
“Don’t you understand? These murgu can’t stand cold. Those creatures that they are riding on won’t walk in the snow. They can’t follow us up there!”
Herilak raised his eyes again — but this time there was the light of hope in them. “The snow is not that far away. We can reach it today — if we keep moving.” He called out to the hunters who were leading the way, waved them back, issued new instructions. Then sat down with a satisfied grunt.
“The sammads go on. But some of us must wait behind and slow down those murgu who follow after us.”
There was hope now, and a new chance for existence heartened the sammads. Even the mastodons sensed the excitement, raised their trunks, and bellowed. The hunters watched the column turn, start up the rise to the high hills, then they moved out after them.
Now they would hunt the murgu the way they hunted any deadly animal. The sammads were well out of sight when Herilak stopped the hunters at the top of the valley. Littered about among the scree here were large boulders.
“We will stop them at this place. Let them get in among us. Then shoot, kill. Wipe out the ones that lead. Drive them back. Seize their weapons and darts. What will they do after that happens, margalus?”
“The same as they did yesterday,” Kerrick said. “They will keep contact with us along this front, while at the same time they will send fargi out to swing around the the ridge, to take us from the sides and rear.”
“That is what we wish them to do. Before the trap is closed we will pull back—”
“And set more traps for them! Do it again and again,” Sorli cried out.
“That is correct,” Herilak said, and there was no humor in his cold smile.
They sought places to hide behind the boulders, along both sides of the valley. Many of them, including Kerrick, slept as soon as they lay down. But Herilak, the sacripex, lay unsleeping and alert, watching the track from behind two carefully placed slabs of rock that he had struggled into place.
When the first outriders appeared he passed the word back to wake the sleepers. Soon the valley rumbled with the heavy tread of the uruktop. Yilanè on tarakast rode out ahead of the main group, leading the way. They moved up the hill and past the unseen Tanu, and had reached the crest before the slower uruktop had moved well into the trap.
On the command the firing began.
The slaughter was terrible, far worse than that of the day before. The hunters fired and fired and screamed with joy as they did. The Yilanè above them were brought down, the corpses of their towering mounts falling and slithering into the deadly chaos below. The uruktop died. The fargi riding them died. Those that tried to escape were shot down. The front ranks of the attackers were destroyed and the enemy fell back to regroup. The hunters pursued them, sheltering among the fallen, using the weapons of the dead against the living.
Only when the warning was called out by the sentinel on the ridge did they retreat, running up the valley well out of range of the enemy weapons. They followed the ruts made by the travois, going higher, ever higher, into the hills.
Twice more they ambushed the murgu. Twice more trapped them, killed them, disarmed them. And fled. The sun was dropping towards the horizon then as they stumbled up the trail.
“We cannot go on much longer like this,” Kerrick said, swaying with exhaustion and pain.
“We must. We have no other choice,” Herilak told him grimly, putting one foot steadily in front of the other. Even his great strength was feeling the strain. He could go on, but he knew that soon some of the others might not be able to. The wind was cold against his face. He slipped, steadied himself, and looked down.
Herilak’s victorious shout cut through the fatigue that gripped and numbed Kerrick. He looked up, blinking, then his gaze followed the pointing finger towards the ground.
The track was muddy, churned, and there was a massive mound of mastodon dung heaped upon the deep footprints. He could not understand what Herilak was shouting about. But there were white flecks in the mud and more white on the ground around.
Snow.
It stretched up the hillside before them. Cut with the muddy track the sammads had made. Snow. Kerrick ran, stumbled, to a snowbank beside the track, dug out handfuls of cold white snow and threw them into the air while the others laughed and shouted.
On the top of the ridge they paused, knee deep in the drifts. Looking down at the first of the Yilanè outriders. They reined back their mounts when they reached the sloping field of white.
Behind them the horde of attackers stopped as well. They milled about as the mounted Yilanè joined, conferred, separated again.
They moved then. Not forward, but back down the slope. Slowly and steadily until they had vanished from sight.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The ice that had covered the river had broken, had piled up in jams, until these in turn had been carried away in great floes that had been washed down to the sea. Though spring had arrived there was still ice rimed along the shore in shielded places, snow drifted into the hollows of the banks. But in the meadow, where the river made a wide loop, a small herd of deer were already grazing the thin blades of new yellow-green grass. They looked up, ears twitching, sniffing the air. Something disturbed them for they made off among the trees in long, graceful bounds.
Herilak stood in the shadow of the tall evergreen, smelling the pungency of its needles, looking out at the campsite that they
had left in the autumn. The grip of winter was broken; spring was earlier this year than it had been for a long time. Perhaps the ice-winters were over. Perhaps. There was the creak of leather bindings behind him in the forest, the quick trumpet of a mastodon. The beasts knew the landscape, they could tell where they were; journey’s end.
The hunters came silently from the trees, Kerrick among them. They could stop moving now, make camp here at this familiar place, build brushwood shelters. Stay in one place for awhile. With winter just ended, they could put off thinking about the next winter for some time yet. Kerrick looked up at the white bird passing high overhead. Just another bird.
Perhaps. Dark memories pushed in and clouded the sunny day. The Yilanè were out there, would always be out there, a threatening presence like a storm forever ready to break. Whatever the Tanu did now, whatever they wanted to do, their actions were colored by that deadly presence to the south. The loud, triumphant trumpeting of a mastodon cut through his thoughts. Enough. The time for concern would come later. Now was the time to set up camp, build the fires high, and roast fresh meat. Time to stop moving.
They met that night around the fire, Kerrick, Herilak, old Fraken, the sammadars. Their stomachs were full and they were content. Sorli stirred the fire so that sparks rose up, flared, and vanished in the darkness. A full moon was rising from beyond the trees and the night was still. Sorli pulled out a glowing branch, blew on it until it burned brightly, then pushed it into the stone bowl of the pipe. He inhaled deeply, blew out a gray cloud of smoke, then passed the pipe on to Har-Havola who also breathed deep, at peace. They were a sammad of sammads now and no one laughed any more at the way he and the others from beyond the mountains spoke. Not after the last winter together, not after battling the murgu. Three of his young hunters already had women from the other sammads. That was the way to peace.
“Fraken,” Herilak called out. “Tell us about the battle. Tell us about the dead murgu.”
Fraken shook his head and pretended fatigue, but when they all pleaded with him, and he saw others gathering around the fire, he let himself be persuaded. He hummed a bit to himself nasally, swayed in time to the humming, then began chanting the history of the winter.
Although they had all been there, had been involved in the events he was reciting — it was better when he told about what had occurred. His story improved with each telling. The escape was more tiring, the women stronger, the hunters braver. The fighting unbelievable.
“… again and again came up the hill, again and again the hunters stood and faced them, killed them and killed them again and again. Until each hunter had bodies about him so high that they could not be seen over. Each hunter killed as many murgu as there are blades of grass on a mountainside. Each hunter speared through and through murgu, as many as five at one time on his spear. Strong were the hunters that day, high were the mountains of the dead.”
They listened and nodded and swelled with pride in what they had done. The pipe passed from hand to hand, Fraken chanted the story of their victories, his voice rising and falling with passion as everyone, even the women and small children, grouped around, listening intently. Even when he had done they were silent, remembering. It was something to remember, something very important.
The fire had died down; Kerrick reached out and threw more wood on it, then sat back dizzily. The smoke from the pipe was strong and he was not used to it. Fraken wrapped his furs about him and went wearily to his tent. The sammads drifted away as well until Kerrick saw that only a few hunters remained. Herilak staring into the fire, Har-Havola at his side, nodding and half asleep. Herilak looked up at Kerrick.
“They are happy now,” he said. “At peace. It is good that they feel that way for awhile. It has been a long and bitter winter. Let them forget this winter before they think of the next one. Forget the death-stick murgu too.”
He was silent then for a long time before he looked up at Kerrick and spoke. “We killed many. Perhaps now they will forget about us too. Leave us alone.”
Kerrick wanted to answer differently but knew that he could not. He shook his head unhappily and Herilak sighed.
“They will come again,” Kerrick said. “I know these murgu. They hate us just as much as we hate them. If you could, would you destroy them all?”
“Instantly. Filled with great pleasure.”
“They feel the same as you do.”
“Then what must we do? The summer will be a short one. The hunting may be good, we don’t know. But then the next winter will be upon us and what will we do then? If we go east to the coast to hunt, the murgu will find us there. South again, well, we know what happened in the south. And the north remains frozen.”
“The mountains,” Har-Havola said, the voices pulling him awake. “We must go beyond the mountains.”
“But your sammad is from beyond the mountains,” Herilak said. “You came here because there was no hunting.”
Har-Havola shook his head. “That is your name for my sammad, from beyond the mountains. But what you speak of as mountains are merely hills. Beyond them are the true mountains. Reaching to the sky with unmelting snow upon their summits. Those are mountains.”
“I have heard of them,” Herilak said. “I have heard that they cannot be passed, that it is death to try.”
“It can be. If you do not know the high passes, then winter will come and trap you and you will die. But Munan, a hunter of my sammad, has been past the mountains.”
“The murgu do not know of these mountains,” Kerrick said, sudden hope in his voice. “They never spoke of them. What lies beyond them?”
“A desert, that is what Munan has told us. Very little grass, very little rain. He says he walked two days into the desert then had to return because he had no water.”
“We could go there,” Kerrick said, thinking out loud. Herilak sniffed.
“Cross the ice mountains to die in the empty desert. The murgu are better than that. At least we can kill murgu.”
“Murgu kill us,” Kerrick said angrily. “We kill some and more come because they are as numberless as the drops of water in the ocean. In the end we will all be dead. But deserts do not go on forever. We can take water, search for a way across. It is something worth thinking about.”
“Yes,” Herilak agreed. “It is indeed something that we should know more about. Har-Havola, call your hunter, the one named Munan. Let him speak to us about the mountains.”
Munan was a tall hunter with long scars scratched onto his cheeks in the manner of his sammad and the other sammads from beyond the mountains. He puffed on the pipe when it was passed to him and listened to their questions.
“There were three of us,” he said. “All very young. It was a thing you do when you are young to prove that you will be a good hunter. You must do something very strong.” He touched the scars on his cheekbones. “Only when you have been very brave or very strong can you get these to show that you are a hunter.”
Har-Havola nodded agreement, his own scars white in the firelight.
“Three went, two returned. We left at the beginning of summer and climbed the high passes. There was an old hunter in my sammad who knew about the passes, knew the ones to take, and he told us and we found the way. He told us what sign to watch for, which passes to climb. It was not easy and the snow was deep in the highest passes, but in the end we were through. We walked always towards the sunset. Once beyond the mountains there are hills and here the hunting was good. But beyond the hills the desert begins. We went out into it but there was no water. We drank what we had carried in water bags and when this was gone we turned back.”
“But there was hunting?” Herilak asked. Munan nodded.
“Yes, there is rain on the mountains, then snow in the winter. The hills close to the mountains stay green. Once beyond them the desert begins.”
“Could you find the high passes again?” Kerrick asked. Munan nodded. “Then we could send a small party out. They could find the path, find the hills be
yond. Once they had done this they could return to guide the sammads there, if all is as you say.”
“The summers are too short now,” Herilak said, “and the murgu too close. If one goes — we all go. That is what I think should be done.”
They talked about it that night, the next and the next again. No one really wanted to climb the ice mountains in summer; winter would come quickly enough without going to it voluntarily. But they all knew that something had to be done. There was a little hunting here so they had some fresh meat. There were also roots to be dug, plants and seeds to be found, but these would not last the winter. Their tents were gone and many other things that they had prized. The one thing they still had was the meat they had taken from the murgu, unchanged in the bladders. No one liked the taste of it very much and as long as there was something else to eat it had not been touched. But — it could sustain life. Most of it remained.
Herilak watched and waited patiently while they hunted and ate all that they desired. The women were curing the few deerskins they had and there would be tents again when they had collected enough. The mastodons grazed well and their wrinkled hides soon filled out again. Herilak saw this and waited. Waited until they had fed well and the children were strong. He looked at the sky each night and watched the dark moon wax bright, then wane again. When it was dark once again he filled the stone pipe with pungent bark and called the hunters together around the fire.
When they had all smoked he rose to his feet before them and told them the thoughts that had been in his head all of the time since they had returned here to the bend in the river.
“Winter will come as it always does. We must not stay here to meet it. We must go where there is good hunting and no murgu. I say that we cross the high mountains to the green hills beyond. If we go now it will still be summer and we will be able to get through the high passes. Munan has told us that is the only time we can cross. If we go now we will travel light as we did when we escaped the murgu. If we go now we will not have to worry for food for we can eat the murgu meat. If we go now we can be in the green hills beyond the mountains before winter. I say that now is the time when we must pack the travois and start towards the west.”
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