“Living creatures even smaller than that, so small that you cannot see them. I know it is hard to believe, but I am just telling you what I was told. So perhaps what is killing the death-sticks passes from one to the other. I don’t know. But if we can stop it by washing ourselves then we must do it.”

“Surely we must. And any hunter would smell better for a good washing. It will be you and I then. We will go.”

“No,” Kerrick said with sudden firmness. “You are a sammadar and I cannot tell you what to do. I will take one who will obey me, who will do as I order. We will go in silence and avoid the murgu. Avoid killing if we see any of them. If you were there, and that should happen, would you obey an order not to kill?”

“I would not. You speak the truth in that. But who would you take? Your sammad is small, the boy Harl the only hunter you have.”

“He is skilled and silent in the forest. He will go with me. That is the way it must be.”

“You are making a mistake—”

“I might be—but it is my mistake.”

Herilak frowned angrily but could think of nothing more to say. The decision had been made. “When do you leave?”

“Very soon. This time we must go there and get the death-sticks, bring them back before the others that we have here die. They must be ready for us when we need them.”

There was little to add after this and they parted in silence.

Kerrick was still awake the next morning at first light, had slept little during the night. He lay unmoving, listening to Armun’s gentle breathing, until sunlight touched the wall of the tent. Only then did he slip out quietly and go to the shelter where he kept the hèsotsan, to unwrap it carefully and hold it up in the light. The dead area was there, bigger now, still there.

The flap of the hunters’ tent had been thrown back and Ortnar sat in the morning sunlight. His dead leg was stretched out before him on the ground, his perpetual scowl etched with deep lines into his face.

“I want to talk with Harl,” Kerrick said.

“I still slept when he left, well before light. He knows a place by the stream where deer come at dawn. He will be a good hunter one day.”

“I will speak with him when he returns.” There was nothing to add, Ortnar was never one for small talk. Kerrick turned away and went to his own tent. Armun was awake, stirring the fire to life.

“I saw you looking at the death-stick. You worry too much about it.”

“It is more than a worry. It has the sickness.”

“Not again!” The words were a cry of pain, wrenched from her.