Although the sky above was clear blue, fine snow was blowing fiercely up through the mountain pass. The biting north wind that tore across the mountains was picking it up from the slopes below, then sending it hurtling through the pass in great frigid waves.

Herilak struggled with its fury, almost leaning against it as he pushed the last stumbling steps through the heavy drifts. Part of his left snowshoe had broken and it slowed him down. Yet if he stopped to mend it he would be dead before he finished. So he pressed stumbling on, a large man made even bulkier by the layers of furs wrapped about him. He could feel the change in the slope now as he entered the pass, went through it, tripping and falling again and again, but rising each time to shake the snow from him, then staggering on. As he passed the rocky scarp, the gray bones of stone rising from the drifts and kept free by the wind, he felt that wind lessen. He was through. Just a few paces further on and he was out of the wind completely, shielded by the rock. He dropped down with a sigh, his back against the rough stone, for the climb had taxed even his great strength.

His outer mittens were glazed with ice and snow and he had to beat them together before they were supple enough to remove. With his warm inner glove he wiped the caked snow from his eyebrows and eyelashes and blinked down at the valley below.

It was a sheltered place where some greatdeer still wintered; he could see the dark specks of their herds further up the valley. Below him was a stand of tall trees that gave shelter to the meadow beside the stream. A stream that never froze at its source where it welled up from beneath the ground. It was a fine spot to camp and to winter, and was known as levrelag Amahast, the camping place of the sammad of Amahast. Amahast married to Aleth sister of Herilak.

But the valley below was empty.

Herilak had heard this from a hunter of his own sammad, who had met a hunter of sammad Ulfadan who swore that he had been here, and that he was speaking only the truth. Herilak knew that he had to see for himself. He had taken his spear and his bow and his arrows, rubbed his body thickly with goose grease, then put on the soft furs of the beaver with the fur against his body, then the suit of coarse fur of the greatdeer over that. With the snowshoes lashed to the heavy fur boots he was ready for the winter. He traveled light for he must travel fast, and the bag over his shoulder held little more than a supply of dried meat and some of the mashed nuts and berries of ekkotaz.