But why should he bother about them? They were nothing to him. But that was wrong. They were important. They had been imprisoned as he had been imprisoned. He had been tied by the neck—his fingers touched the iron ring about his neck at the thought—and they had been locked in the hanalè. It was the same thing. And they had a courage that he did not have, wanting to go bravely forth into a world they knew nothing about. Ready to follow him—because they had faith in him. They wanted to be part of his sammad. At this thought he laughed into the darkness. A strange sammad it would be! A sammadar who could rarely shoot an arrow straight, a hunter with a hole in his skull put there by his former sammadar, a woman, a baby—and two frightened murgu! A sammad indeed to strike fear into the hearts of others—if not into that of the sammadar himself.

What else could he do with the poor, helpless creatures? To leave them here would mean certain death; better to kill them himself than abandon them to that. And they would not return to the female Yilanè, which was very understandable. Yet if they went north with him they would surely die in the snow. Then what could he do? Take them out of here—then what?

An idea began to form and the more he thought about it the more possible it became. It was clear by morning and he slept on it.

Ortnar was waiting for him in the ambesed, with all of his weapons, his pack upon his back.

“We go later today,” Kerrick said. “Leave your things here and come with me for I want to study our track north.” They went to the still-intact model that the Yilanè had built, of the land on all sides of the city, and Kerrick looked at it closely.

“There is no need,” Ortnar said. “I know the track well, have been over it many times.”

“We will go a different way, at least at the beginning. Tell me, Ortnar, will you obey my orders, even if they do not suit you, or will you go to another sammad?”

“It may be that one day I will, since a hunter only obeys a sammadar who is right in what he says. But not now, not until we have gone north to find Armun and your son. For I feel I did wrong in not helping her when she first asked for aid. Because of that I will follow wherever you lead until we have done that thing.”

“Those are hard words to say and I believe every one of them. Then you will go north with me—even though the two murgu males come with us?”

“They mean nothing to me. They will die in the snow in any case.”