“You have journeyed a great distance to reach this valley,” Sanone said. Like the Tanu the Sasku came slowly to the subject at hand. “And you battled with the murgu who walk like men. We have never seen murgu like this so you must tell me of them.”
Kerrick had told him often about the Yilanè but he did so once again knowing that this was a step along the way to whatever reason Sanone had for this visit.
“Such killing, such creatures!” Sanone trembled when he thought about the evil the Yilanè had done. “And they killed not only Tanu but mastodon as well?” There was unconcealed horror in his voice when he said this.
“They did.”
“You know a little our reverence for the mastodons. You have looked at the painting above me. I will now tell why these great creatures are held in such esteem. In order to know this you must understand how the world came into being. It was the creator, Kadair, who made the world as you see it now. He made the water to run, the rain to fall, the crops to grow. He made it all. When he made the world it was solid rock and barren. Then he took the form of a mastodon. When the mastodon-who-was-Kadair stamped his feet the rock opened and the valley was formed. The mastodon’s trunk sprayed water and the river ran. From the mastodon’s dung the grass grew and the world was fertile. This was how the world began. When Kadair left, the mastodon stayed behind to remind us always of what he had done. This is why we worship the mastodon. Now you understand.”
“I do and am honored to hear of these things.”
“The honor is ours to have you here. For you lead the people who tend the mastodon and you have led them here. For this we are grateful. The manduktos gathered last night and talked of this, and then we watched the stars all the rest of the night. There were portents there, burning fire in the sky, trails of fire all pointing this way. There is meaning in these things. We know them to mean that Kadair had guided the sammads here for some hidden reason. Last night that reason became clear. You were guided here so that we could witness the birth of the mastodon calf.”
Now Sanone leaned forward and there was great concern in his voice when he spoke. “Can the cow be brought here? It is important that the calf be born here with the manduktos in attendance. I cannot tell you why this is important because that is a mystery we must not speak about. I can assure you there will be great gifts if you will permit this. Will you do it?”
Kerrick respected their beliefs, though he did not understand them, so he spoke with care. “I would say yes at once, but it is not for me to decide. The sammadar who owns the cow named Dooha will decide. I will talk with him and tell them of the importance of this.”
“It is of an importance that you cannot understand. Go to this sammadar. I will send manduktos with you, bearing gifts, so our sincerity will be clear.”
Armun was sleeping when he returned. Kerrick moved silently so as not to awaken her. He bound on his leggings with the thick soles and left. Sanone was waiting on the ground below. Two of the younger manduktos were with him, bent under the weight of the woven baskets on their backs.
“They will accompany you,” Sanone said. “When you have spoken with the sammadar you will tell them if our request has been granted. They will run here with the news.”
Kerrick was glad to stretch his legs; it had been a long time since he been to the campsite. At the rock barrier he saw that the river was high; the snow was melting in the distant valleys. Once past the barrier he pushed on at a steady pace, then had to stop and wait for the heavily laden manduktos to catch up with him. The sun was warm and the spring rains had turned the grass green. Blue flowers were springing up on the hillside. He pulled off a long stem of sweet grass and chewed on it while he was waiting for the manduktos.
They went on, through the small stand of trees and out into the meadow where he had first met Sanone. He could see the river from here and the campsite beside it.
It was empty, deserted.
The sammads were gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kerrick was surprised by the disappearance of the sammads, even a little disturbed, but the effect on the two manduktos was astonishing. They dropped to their knees and wailed pitifully. Their unhappiness was so great that they paid no attention to Kerrick when he spoke, and he had to pull at them to draw their attention.
“We will follow them, find them. They won’t have moved very far.”
“But they are gone, perhaps destroyed, vanished from this earth, the mastodons dead,” the younger one moaned.
“It is nothing like that. The Tanu of the sammads are not bound to one place like the Sasku. They have no fields or rock dwellings to live in. They must move always to find food, to search for better hunting. They have been in their camp all this winter. They will not have gone far or they would have sought me out and told me. Come, we will follow them, find them.”
As always, the tracks of a sammad on the move were easy enough to make out. The deep ruts first pointed north, then swung west into the low hills. They had been walking for only a short time when Kerrick saw the thin twists of smoke rising up ahead and pointed this out to the relieved manduktos. The grooves and tracks led back to the river, to a place where the high bank had been broken and trampled, leaving a trail down to the water. The manduktos, ther earlier fears now replaced by excitement at the sight of the mastodons, hurried forward. Some children saw their approach and ran shouting with the news. Herilak strode forth to greet them, smiling at Kerrick’s white clothing.
“Better than furs in the summer—but you would freeze in a real winter. Come, sit with us and smoke a pipe and you will tell me of the happenings in the valley.”
“That I will do. But first you must send for Sorli. These Sasku have gifts for him—and a request.”
Sorli was summoned and smiled with pleasure at the baked cakes of ground meal, the sweet, fresh roots, even some of the rare and highly regarded honey. The manduktos looked on anxiously while he poked through the baskets, were relieved at his smiles.
“This will be good eating after the winter. But why do they bring such gifts to my sammad?”
“I will tell you,” Kerrick said in a serious voice, pointing to the gifts and the manduktos while he spoke. “But you must not smile or laugh at what I say, for this is a serious matter to these people. Think of all the food they have given us, all the food to come. You know how they have great reverence for the mastodons?”
“I do. I do not understand it, but it must be of some importance or they would not act as they do.”
“Of greatest importance. Were it not for the mastodons I do not think they would have helped us at all. Now they have a request. They ask for your permission to bring the cow Dooha into the valley so that her calf will be born there. They promise to feed and tend to her during the birth. Will you agree to that?”
“They wish to keep her? I cannot let them to that.”
“They won’t keep her. She’ll just be there until her calf is born.”
“In that case she will go. Where the calf is born is of no importance.”
“But you must make it sound important, in the way that you talk. They are listening closely.”
Sorli turned slowly to face the two manduktos, raising his hands palm outwards. “It shall be done as you ask. I will take Dooha there myself, today.”
Kerrick repeated his words in the language of the Sasku, and the manduktos bent low in honored acceptance.
“You will thank this sammadar,” the older mandukto said. “Tell him that our gratitude will never cease. Now we must return with the word.”
Sorli looked after their retreating backs and shook his head. “I don’t understand it—and I’m not going to try to. But we will eat their food and ask no more questions.”
There was a feast then, and all of the sammads shared the fresh food. Kerrick, who had eaten like this all of the winter, did not touch the Sasku food; instead he took great pleasure in chewing on a piece of tough smoked meat. When they were done, the stone pipe was lit
and passed and Kerrick drew on it gratefully.
“Is this site better than the old one?” he asked.
“For now,” Herilak said. “The grazing is better for the beasts here, but the hunting is just as bad. We have had to go as far as the mountains to find game, and that is dangerous for the dark ones hunt there as well.”
“What will you do then? The hunting may be bad—but there is all the food we need from the Sasku.”
“That is good for one winter—but not for a lifetime. The Tanu live by hunting, not begging. There may be hunting to the south, but we have found that there are barren and waterless hills on the way and they are hard to pass. Perhaps we should try.”
“I have talked to the Sasku about these hills. There are some valleys there where there is good hunting. But the Kargu, that is what they call the dark ones, are already there. That way is closed. Have you looked to the west?”
“Five days once we walked out into the sand, then we had to turn back. It was desert still, nothing growing except the spine plants.”
“I have talked to the Sasku about that as well. They say that there are forests if you are able to reach the other side. Most important, I think that they may know the trail across the desert.”
“Then you must ask them. If we can cross and find a place that has good hunting, without murgu there, why, then the world will be as it used to be, before the cold, before the margu came.” Herilak’s face fell as he spoke and he stared, unseeing, at the dead fire.
“Do not think of them,” Kerrick said. “They will not find us here.”
“They will not leave my thoughts. In my dreams I march with my sammad. See them, hear them, the hunters, the women and children, the great mastodons pulling the travois. We laugh and eat fresh meat. Then I awake and they are dead, dust blowing on that distant shore, white bones in the sand. When I have these dreams, then all these sammads about me are strangers and I want to leave and go far away. I want to go east back over the mountains, to find the murgu and kill as many as I can, before I die as well. Then perhaps in the stars I will find peace. My tharm will not dream. The pain of memory will end.”
The big hunter’s fists were clamped tight, but his fingers only closed on empty air, for the enemies he fought were as invisible as his thoughts. Kerrick understood, for his hatred of the Yilanè had been just as strong. But now, with Armun, his child on the way, the life among the Sasku was as full as he had ever wished. He could not forget the Yilanè, but they were in the past and now he wanted only to live in the present.
“Come to the place of the Sasku,” he said. “We will talk with the manduktos. They have knowledge of many things, and if there is a way across the desert they will know about it. If the sammads do go there you will have the twin barriers of the desert and the mountains behind you. The murgu will never cross both of them. You can forget them then.”
“I would like to. More than I desire anything else I would like to put them from my mind during the day, from my dreams at night. Yes, let us go and talk with the dark ones.”
Herilak was not like the other hunters who laughed at the Sasku who worked here in the fields, strong males digging in the dirt like women instead of stalking game as real hunters should. He had eaten the food raised here, had lived well through the winter because of it. When Kerrick showed him how the plants were grown and stored, he listened with close attention.
He saw how the tagaso was dried, with the tasseled, yellow ears still on the stalks, then hung from wooden frames. There were rats here, mice as well, who would have grown fat on this provident food supply had it not been for the donsemnilla who kept their numbers down. These sleek, long-nosed creatures, many of them with their young hanging on their mother’s backs, tiny tails wrapped about her larger one, stalked the vermin in the darkness, killed and ate them.
They stopped to watch the women who were scraping the dried kernels from the ears, then grinding them between two stones. This flour was mixed with water and heated before the fire. Herilak ate some of the cakes, still hot enough to burn his fingers, dipping them in honey and biting on the hot peppers that brought pleasureful tears to his eyes.
“This is good food,” he said.
“And always abundant. They plant it, harvest it, and store it as you have seen.”
“I have. I have also seen that as they depend on the green fields, so do the fields depend on them. They must stay in this one place forever. That is not for everyone. If I could not roll my tent and move on I do not think I would find life worth living at all.”
“They might feel the same way about you. They might miss returning to the same fire in the evening, not seeing the same fields in the morning.”
Herilak thought about this and nodded agreement. “Yes, that is possible. You are the one who sees things in a different way, Kerrick, perhaps because of all those years living with the murgu.”
He broke off when he heard someone calling Kerrick’s name. One of the Sasku women was hurrying towards them, crying out in a shrill voice. Kerrick looked worried. “The baby has been born,” he said.
He ran off and Herilak followed at a more leisurely pace. Kerrick was concerned because Armun had been so upset of late. She wept daily and all of her earlier fears had returned. The baby would be a girl and would look like her, then it would be laughed at and scorned just as she had been. Kerrick could do nothing to change her mind; only the birth itself would remove her black doubts. The women here were skilled in these things, he had been told. He sincerely hoped that they were as he clambered up the notched log to their quarters.
One look at her face told him all that he need to know. All was well at last.
“Look,” she said, unwrapping the white cloths that swaddled the infant. “Look. A boy to make his father proud. As handsome and as strong.”
Kerrick, who had no experience of infants, thought it wrinkled, bald, and red, nothing like him at all, but had the intelligence to keep his opinions to himself.
“What is his name to be?” Armun asked.
“Whatever you like for now. He will be given a hunter’s name when he is grown.”
“Then we will name him Arnwheet, for I wish him to be as strong as that bird, as handsome and as free.”
“A good name,” Kerrick agreed. “For the Arnwheet is also a good hunter with the best eyesight. Only an Arnwheet can hang from the wind, then drop and take its prey. Arnwheet will become a great hunter when he begins life with a name like that.”
When Kerrick called down to him Herilak climbed easily up the notched log to the rooms above. He went inside and saw that Armun was nursing the baby, surrounded by a circle of admiring women. Kerrick stood proudly to one side. The women brought her food, jugs of water, whatever she needed. Herilak nodded approval.
“Look at the strength in those hands,” he said. “How they clutch, the muscles working in those mighty arms. There is a great hunter there.”
Herilak admired the luxury of the surroundings as well. The clay pots holding water and food, the woven mats and soft cloth. Kerrick took a finely carved wooden box from a ledge and held it out to him.
“Another secret that the Sasku have is here. Let me show you. With this you no longer need to drill wood or carry fire with you.”
Herilak looked on in wonder as Kerrick took a lump of dark rock from the box, then another polished stone with grooves scratched in its surface. He next took up a pinch of powdered wood. With a quick motion he struck one stone with the other—and a spark flew into the wood. He had only then to blow on it and it burst into flame. Herilak took the two lumps of rock in his hand and wondered at them.
“There is fire captured in this rock,” he said, “and the other stone releases it. The Sasku do indeed have strange and powerful secrets.”
Kerrick carefully put the box away. Herilak went to the ledge outside and marveled at all the activity below, and when Kerrick joined him he pointed and asked Kerrick to tell him about it. Herilak listened closely as he explained the
spinning and weaving, then showed him where the smoking oven was, the oven where the pots were fired.
“And there, on those racks, those red spots are the chilies that brought tears to your eyes. They are dried then crushed. Inside the bins are the sweet roots, different kinds of squash as well. They are good when baked, and even the seeds are ground into flour. There is always food here, no one is ever hungry.”
Herilak saw his enthusiasm and happiness. “Will you remain here?” he asked.
Kerrick shrugged. “That I do not know yet. It is familiar to me, living in a place like this, for I lived for many years in the city of the Yilanè. There is no hunger and the winters are warm.”
“Your son will dig in the ground like a woman instead of following the deer.”
“He doesn’t have to. The Sasku hunt deer, with their spear-throwers they do it very well.”
Herilak said nothing more about this, but his feelings were clear in the way he held his head when he looked about him. This was all very interesting, good enough for those born here, but in no way comparable to the life of a hunter. Kerrick did not want to argue with him. He looked from Herilak to the Sasku digging in the fields and could understand them both—even as he had understood the Yilanè. Not for the first time did he feel suspended in life, neither hunter nor tiller of fields, Ter or marag. They went inside then and his eyes went to Armun holding their son and knew that he had a base now, a sammad of his own no matter how small. Armun saw this look in his face and smiled at him and he smiled back. One of the women came from the cave mouth and whispered to him.
“A mandukto is here and would talk to you.”
The mandukto stood on the ledge, wide-eyed and trembling. “It has been as Sanone said. The mastodon is born—as is your son. Sanone asks to talk with you.”
“Go to him. Say that I come with Herilak.” He turned back to the big hunter. “We will see what Sanone wants. Then we will talk to the manduktos, find out if there really is a way across the desert to the west.”
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