Herilak looked to the north and shook his head. “Then that way is sealed to us. So is the way west, at least at this place. We do not know how many of these dark Tanu there are, or how many longtooth run at their sides. We do not want to fight them. That leaves us only one direction to go.”

“South,” Kerrick said. “South through these hills. But there may be murgu there.”

“There may be anything there,” Herilak said, his face set in hard lines. “It does not matter. We must go. The desert may end there, the hunting may be good. Now let us go drink the sweet water. Keep guards out during the night. We leave at sunrise tomorrow.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

A child could have read the signs of the sammads’ passage, so clearly were they marked in the soft turf. The deep ruts cut by the poles of the travois, the large footprints of the mastodons, their high-heaped dung. Herilak made no attempt to obliterate these tracks—but hunters waited in hiding, some of them a two-day march behind the sammads, to make sure they were not being followed. Days passed and there was no evidence that the dark Tanu or their longtooth companions were behind them. Despite this Herilak still made certain that there were guards ready and watching, day and night.

Since all of the valleys and ridges led down from the high mountains, flattening out and vanishing on the arid plain, they went down from the hills to the plain itself. Instead of working their way across the ridges, the march continued along the edge of the desert. Hunters went ahead, scouting the valleys for water. When they camped each evening the mastodons would be led up the valley to drink and browse.

The march continued. The hunting was sparse in the foothills and on the plain. The grasslands at the foot of the hills began to extend further and further into what had been only arid desert, cut now and again by dry watercourses. But there was no water upon the grassy plain, little or no animal life. They could only go on.

It was only after the moon had waxed and waned twice that they reached the river. The water must have drained from the high mountains for the current here was strong and the channel that it had cut was very deep. They stopped at the brink, seeing the water tumbling over the rocks below, sending up white spray.

“There is no way to cross the river here,” Kerrick said. Herilak nodded and looked away downstream.

“It might be wisest not to cross it—but to follow it instead. With all this water there must be an end to the desert. Where the desert ends we will find game. This we must do for even the murgu meat is coming to an end. We have to find a place where there is food to gather and animals to hunt.”