For Armun this was a bad thought, a tearing thought. Must she leave her son here and cross the sea? Was there no alternative? She could think of none. It would have to be done this way. It was not a good answer—but it was the only answer. She would have to be the strong one and the practical one now. She considered carefully before she spoke.

“You yourself have said how safe it is here. Harl will hunt, he is no longer a child. Ortnar is needed to watch over everything until we return. Arnwheet and the girl will be no trouble—she is already learning to find plants in the forest, to cook and to do woman’s work.”

“You would leave the boy?” he asked, stunned. This is not what he would have expected.

“I would. He is everything to me and I do not wish to be parted from him—but I will leave him. I can go away from him, leave him in another’s care until I return, I can do that. It is you whom I will never leave.”

“I must think about this,” Kerrick said, shocked by the granite-like hardness of her feelings, her resolve.

“There is nothing to think about,” she said with steadfast determination. “It has been decided. Now you will make the detailed plans and we will do as you say.”

The strength of her support forced him to believe that it could be done. What were the alternatives? Follow the sammads to the valley? And if they did not die during the march they would die there when Vaintè brought her poison thorns and darts, her numberless fargi. Stay here? It was a life with no future. There would only be a lifetime hiding here with the Yilanè city close by, and they would surely be discovered one day. It was all right for the two males, they had no choice, had nowhere else to go. Yet he would have to think about them as well; he must talk to them about his plan.

Imehei moaned aloud when he went to speak to them. “Do not leave again, too terrible to consider.”

“Satisfactory here, desire you stay,” Nadaskè said firmly.

Kerrick shaped his limbs into orders from her-on-high to lowest-creatures-below. “You will not be eaten or killed. Now all I ask you to do is simply to cross over with me to the other camp now and talk about this thing. I want you all there when I speak of the future. You do not fear fresh-from-sea, Arnwheet, and have marched with Ortnar. Nothing will happen to you. Now come.”