“I knew one like this in our sammad, when I was small,” Armun said. “She was like this with the eye closed, the arm and the leg on the same side unmoving. It is called the falling curse and the alladjex said it was because she had a spirit of evil inside her.” Kerrick shook his head.

“It is the wounds in his feet. He pushed himself too hard. He should have rode.”

“He will now,” Armun said, calmly practical. “We will spread some of the branches on the travois, then tie him on. We will be able to go faster.”

Ortnar was too ill to make any protests about being carried. For some days he lay as one dead, waking only to drink and eat a bit. As the days grew warmer the game became more plentiful—and more dangerous. There were murgu here. They killed and ate the small ones—but knew that the giant flesh eaters were out there as well. Kerrick walked always with his bow ready and an arrow notched—and wished often that their hèsotsan had survived the winter.

Ortnar could sit up now and hold his meat with his right hand. He could even hobble a few steps leaning on a crutch Kerrick had cut for him, dragging his useless left leg.

“I can hold a spear in my right hand still—that is the only reason I stay with you. If there were other hunters here I would sit under a tree when you left.”

“You will get better,” Kerrick said.

“Perhaps. But I am a hunter, not a drag-leg. It is Herilak who has killed me. Before I fell my head was on fire, here, where he struck me. It burned there and through my body, then I fell. Now I am half-dead and useless.”

“We need you, Ortnar. You are the one who knows the forest. You must guide us to the lake.”

“I can do that. I wonder if your pet murgu are still alive?”

“I wonder, too.” Kerrick was glad to talk of something else. “Those two are like—I don’t know what. Children who have never grown up.”

“They look grown up enough to me—and ugly.”

“Their bodies, yes. But you saw where they were kept. Locked away, fed, watched over, never allowed out. This must be the first time that they have been alone and on their own since they came out of the sea. The murgu take the males and lock them away even before they learn to talk. If those two are still alive after the winter it will be something to see.”

“It will be something better to see them dead,” Ortnar said bitterly. “All of the murgu dead.”