Return to Eden

agreement. "And I am tired of killing murgu. Some of them are good for eating, but nothing tastes like deer. You saw the fields below. We need skins too—most of you look like Sasku with woven charadis tied about you instead of warm furs."
    "Fur is too hot in the summer," said Kellimans, humorless and unimaginative as always.
    "Of course," Herilak said. "But the hunting is good here, winter will come, it might be that we will hunt north in the cold. Many things can happen. I am stopping here with my sammad to hunt. Then we will go on."
    There were shouts of agreement, not a dissenting voice. The women who were listening agreed as well.
    Here they could find familiar things to eat that they had almost forgotten about, roots and berries, mushrooms, tubers in the ground if you knew which were the right plants to dig up. There were already young girls who had never done this: they must learn. A stop here would be a very good thing.
    Merrith wanted to stay here just as much as the others. But she found one who was unhappy.
    "You have been beaten, that is why you cry," she said to the girl. "No hunter should do that to you. Take a piece of wood and hit him back. If he is stronger than you are, then you hit him when he is asleep."
    "No, it is nothing like that," Malagen said, the tears glistening in her dark eyes. Like all Sasku she was far thinner and shorter than the Tanu, her olive skin and black eyes a contrast to their blond hair and pale skin. "Newasfar to me is good, that is why I come with him along. I am foolish to act like this."
    "Nothing foolish. You miss your friends, your sammad, even the way we speak is different."
    "I learn."
    "You do. Me, I never learned a word of your Sasku."
    "It is called Sesek, what we speak. And what you say is not true. I have heard you say tagaso, that is Sesek."
    "That is because I like to eat it, easy to remember."
    "I have some of it dried that I can cook for you."
    "Save it. You will want it for yourself. And tomorrow we will have many new things for you to try. We will take the berries and make ekkotaz. You are going to like that."
    The Sasku girl was small, no bigger than her children were when they were little. Merrith wanted to reach out and touch her hair. But that was not right, not with a grown woman. The girl was better now. Merrith walked on along the fires, just wanting to be alone. Or maybe she did not want to be alone and that was the trouble. Her daughters grown, gone. Soled dead in the murgu city. Melde now with her hunter, with sammad Sorli. No one knew where they were for they had gone north when the others had fled to the west. Perhaps she was still alive somewhere. But Merrith's own hunter, Ulfadan, wasn't. She knew that the Tanu do not mourn the dead, knew that every hunter found his rightful place when his tharm was there in the stars. She looked up at the star-filled sky, then back at the fires and sighed. Better a hunter alive than a tharm in the sky. She was a strong woman. But she was also alone.
    "Don't walk too far from the fires," a voice called out. "There are murgu out there."
    She squinted in the firelight to see who the guard was. "Ilgeth, I have killed more murgu than you have ever seen. Just keep your death-stick pointed out there and I will take care of myself."
    The sammads slept but the fires burned brightly. Guards watched the forest. Something crashed about in the darkness and there were shrill squeals of pain. It was always like this. Without the death-sticks they could not stay this far to the south. Only the tiny but deadly darts could kill the large murgu that hunted here.
    The noises of death in the forest woke Herilak who had only been lightly asleep. He looked up at the starlit sky through the open tent flap. Something buzzed in his ear and he slapped the flying insect. The hunting would be good tomorrow. But he did not want to stay here too long. Kerrick was out there somewhere and he was going to find him. That meant searching carefully along the track as he went, to see if other tracks went off of it. There should be other sammads out here, perhaps Kerrick was with one of them. As soon as they had hunted and the mastodons had eaten their fill they must go on.
    A bright line of fire struck across the sky, then died away. A new tharm perhaps. Not Kerrick's, he hoped that it was not Kerrick's.
    CHAPTER NINE
    Enge hantèhei, ate embokèka iirubushei kaksheisè, hèawahei; hèvai'ihei, kaksheintè, enpeleiuu asahen enge.
    Yilanè