The Sasku girl was small, no bigger than her children were when they were little. Merrith wanted to reach out and touch her hair. But that was not right, not with a grown woman. The girl was better now. Merrith walked on along the fires, just wanting to be alone. Or maybe she did not want to be alone and that was the trouble. Her daughters grown, gone. Soled dead in the murgu city. Melde now with her hunter, with sammad Sorli. No one knew where they were for they had gone north when the others had fled to the west. Perhaps she was still alive somewhere. But Merrith’s own hunter, Ulfadan, wasn’t. She knew that the Tanu do not mourn the dead, knew that every hunter found his rightful place when his tharm was there in the stars. She looked up at the star-filled sky, then back at the fires and sighed. Better a hunter alive than a tharm in the sky. She was a strong woman. But she was also alone.

“Don’t walk too far from the fires,” a voice called out. “There are murgu out there.”

She squinted in the firelight to see who the guard was. “Ilgeth, I have killed more murgu than you have ever seen. Just keep your death-stick pointed out there and I will take care of myself.”

The sammads slept but the fires burned brightly. Guards watched the forest. Something crashed about in the darkness and there were shrill squeals of pain. It was always like this. Without the death-sticks they could not stay this far to the south. Only the tiny but deadly darts could kill the large murgu that hunted here.

The noises of death in the forest woke Herilak who had only been lightly asleep. He looked up at the starlit sky through the open tent flap. Something buzzed in his ear and he slapped the flying insect. The hunting would be good tomorrow. But he did not want to stay here too long. Kerrick was out there somewhere and he was going to find him. That meant searching carefully along the track as he went, to see if other tracks went off of it. There should be other sammads out here, perhaps Kerrick was with one of them. As soon as they had hunted and the mastodons had eaten their fill they must go on.

A bright line of fire struck across the sky, then died away. A new tharm perhaps. Not Kerrick’s, he hoped that it was not Kerrick’s.

Enge hantèhei, atè embokèka iirubushei kaksheisè, hèawahei; hèvai’ihei, kaksheintè, enpeleiuu asahen enge.

YILANÉ APOTHEGM

To leave father’s love and enter the embrace of the sea is the first pain of life—the first joy is the comrades who join you there.

NINE