“I have talked to the Sasku about that as well. They say that there are forests if you are able to reach the other side. Most important, I think that they may know the trail across the desert.”

“Then you must ask them. If we can cross and find a place that has good hunting, without murgu there, why, then the world will be as it used to be, before the cold, before the margu came.” Herilak’s face fell as he spoke and he stared, unseeing, at the dead fire.

“Do not think of them,” Kerrick said. “They will not find us here.”

“They will not leave my thoughts. In my dreams I march with my sammad. See them, hear them, the hunters, the women and children, the great mastodons pulling the travois. We laugh and eat fresh meat. Then I awake and they are dead, dust blowing on that distant shore, white bones in the sand. When I have these dreams, then all these sammads about me are strangers and I want to leave and go far away. I want to go east back over the mountains, to find the murgu and kill as many as I can, before I die as well. Then perhaps in the stars I will find peace. My tharm will not dream. The pain of memory will end.”

The big hunter’s fists were clamped tight, but his fingers only closed on empty air, for the enemies he fought were as invisible as his thoughts. Kerrick understood, for his hatred of the Yilanè had been just as strong. But now, with Armun, his child on the way, the life among the Sasku was as full as he had ever wished. He could not forget the Yilanè, but they were in the past and now he wanted only to live in the present.

“Come to the place of the Sasku,” he said. “We will talk with the manduktos. They have knowledge of many things, and if there is a way across the desert they will know about it. If the sammads do go there you will have the twin barriers of the desert and the mountains behind you. The murgu will never cross both of them. You can forget them then.”

“I would like to. More than I desire anything else I would like to put them from my mind during the day, from my dreams at night. Yes, let us go and talk with the dark ones.”

Herilak was not like the other hunters who laughed at the Sasku who worked here in the fields, strong males digging in the dirt like women instead of stalking game as real hunters should. He had eaten the food raised here, had lived well through the winter because of it. When Kerrick showed him how the plants were grown and stored, he listened with close attention.