Herilak was very still for a long time. When he finally spoke the grim unhappiness was back in his voice.

“It had to happen some day. We all knew that it would. This time we must get new death-sticks before the old ones die, keep them apart.”

“You mean go to the city again? Steal more of them? Kill more murgu?”

“Can you think of any different thing to do?”

Kerrick had no quick answer for this. He sat in silence, his hands clasped before him, wringing his fingers together so hard that his knuckles cracked. The moon rose above the trees and drenched the clearing with cool light. An owl drifted silently above their heads: a night creature called distantly in the forest.

“No,” Kerrick said with great reluctance. “I can think of nothing else. We know now where the death-sticks are. But if we are seen again . . .”

“You need not go this time. I know where the pit is now.”

“I am not afraid of going there!”

“I did not say that you were. I meant only that others can take the risk. You have done your part, and more, many times over.”

“That is also not important. What I fear most is our dependency on the murgu and the city. We will go now because we must, then one day we will have to go again. But one time when we go it will happen. Once when we are in the city we will be seen by the murgu. And what then?”

“You worry too much. Life is to be taken one day at a time.”

“That is no longer true. When we lived in the mountains and followed the deer you could say that. No longer. We are in a trap and there is no way out.”

“We will be a bigger hunting party this time. We will bring back many death-sticks.”

“No. Impossible. The risk is too great. Two hunters at most. And we will leave our own death-sticks behind here. Then, when we are distant from the sammads, we must wash ourselves and the skins we wear, many times. If there is a sickness it must not spread to the death-sticks we bring back.”

“I do not understand your talk of washing and sickness.”

“Neither do I,” Kerrick said with a twisted smile. “But I was told about it by one who knew. This was before we met and I had been very sick . . .”

“Then it was a marag who told you this?”

“Yes. And after the attack on the city, then the valley where they grew special plants just to kill us, you can see clearly how much they know of living things. This marag of great knowledge told me that disease, infections, are spread by small living things.”

“I have seen grubs in wounds.”