They ran the ikkergak up onto the beach close to the body. Kerrick was first over the side, pushing through the surf toward the great, still form. Its trunk lay in the water, washing back and forth in the waves. Seabirds had already torn the creature’s eyes out. Kerrick was hidden by the mastodon’s bulk for a moment, then reappeared, walking slowly now. His face was as grim as death itself when he held up the Yilanè dart that he had plucked from the wrinkled hide.

“You must go back,” Armun said, shouting in Paramutan, her voice shaking with fear. “Go north, this night, keep going. We are going inland, away from the ocean.” She reached up for Arnwheet as Harl landed with a splash in the water beside her. Ortnar climbed painfully down from the bow. She explained what had happened to the horrified Paramutan, her words coming out in a rush. “Those creatures I told you about, the murgu, they have been here. They strike from the sea, from the south. You are safe if you go north.”

“The mastodon came down from there,” Kerrick said, pointing to the trees beyond the dunes. “You can still make out the tracks. They are two or three days old. Tell them to pass down our packs. Tell them to leave.”

The dead bulk of the mastodon made argument impossible. “We will go,” Kalaleq said, unable to keep the fear out of his voice. “We will go north and fish and bring the catch back to the paukaruts. Come with us or the murgu will kill you as well.”

“We must stay.”

“Then we will return. To this place. Before the winter comes again. We must catch more fish. You will come back with us.”

“Understand me, please, we cannot do that. This is where we must remain. Now—go, quickly, you must leave.”

She stood on the shore, their few possessions tumbled about them, her arms around the boys, as the ikkergak caught the wind and moved quickly away from the shore. The Paramutan had remembered to do the correct thing when they departed so were laughing and making loud jokes as they went, growing more distant until their sharp voices were drowned in the rustle of the waves upon the shore.

Ortnar went slowly ahead, leaning heavily on his spear, while they lifted the packs onto their shoulders. They followed his footsteps and caught up with him at the edge of the trees. At the place where this sammad had been slaughtered.

It was hideously familiar to all of them except for the four-year-old Arnwheet who fiercely clutched his mother’s hand in numbed silence.

The collapsed tents, the sprawled bodies, the dead mastodon.

“It is sammad Sorli. They were going north,” Ortnar said grimly. “Yet we met them last autumn, going south. What reason . . . ?”