“Here, you do it.” Kerrick handed over the ring he was carrying and smiled as Ortnar sawed uselessly at the transparent lead with the edge of his spear point.
“It is smooth and soft — yet I cannot cut it.”
“The Yilanè can do many things that we cannot. If I told you how it was made you would not believe me.”
“You know their secrets? Of course, you must. Tell me of the death-sticks. We captured one but could do nothing with it. Finally it began to smell and we cut it open and it was a dead animal of some kind.”
“It is a creature called a hèsotsan. They are a special kind of animals. They can move around like other animals when they are young. But when they grow old they become as you saw. They must be fed. Then darts are placed within them and when they are pressed in the correct manner the darts are fired out.”
Ortnar’s mouth hung open as he fought to understand. “But how can that be? Where are there animals like that?”
“Nowhere. That is the murgu secret. I have seen what they do, but I do not understand it myself. They can make animals do strange things. They know how to make them breed to do anything. It is hard to explain.”
“Even harder to understand. It is time to go. Now it is your turn to carry the deer.”
“Herilak ordered you to carry it.”
“Yes — but you are going to help eat it.”
Ortnar smiled as he said this and in spite of himself Kerrick smiled back. “All right, give it to me. But you’ll get it back soon enough. Didn’t Herilak say we would have a fire?” His mouth was suddenly wet with spittle at the memory. “Cooked meat — I had forgotten what it was like.”
“Then the murgu eat all their meat raw?” Ortnar asked as they started up the track again.
“No. Well, yes and no. It is softened in some way. You get used to it.”
“Why don’t they roast it properly?”
“Because…” Kerrick stopped in his tracks at the thought. “Because they don’t make fires. I never realized that before. I guess they don’t need fires because where they live it is always warm. Sometimes at night when it is cool, or on wet days, we wrap — there is no word for it — warm things around us.”
“Skins? Fur robes?”
“No. Living creatures that are warm.”
“Sounds disgusting. The more I hear about your murgu the more I detest them. I don’t know how you could bear living with creatures like that.”
“I had little choice,” Kerrick said grimly, then walked on in silence.
Herilak joined them soon after they had reached their stopping place for the night.
“The trail behind is empty. They have turned back.”
“Cooked meat!” Ortnar said, smacking his lips together. “But I wish we had brought the fire with us.”
These words touched a memory that Kerrick had long forgotten. “I used to do that,” he said. “Keep the fire in the bow of the boat.”
“That is a boy’s work,” Herilak said. “As a hunter you must make your own fire. Do you know how to do it?”
Kerrick hesitated. “I remember seeing it done. But I have forgotten. It was so long ago.”
“Then watch. You are Tanu now and must know these things if you are to be a hunter.”
It was a slow process. Herilak broke a branch from a long-dead and dried tree, then carefully cut and rounded a length of stick from it. While he did this, Ortnar searched deeper in the forest and returned with a handful of dry and moldy wood. He shredded and pounded this into a fine powder. When Herilak had finished the stick to his satisfaction he scraped another length of the wood flat, then drilled a shallow hole in it with his spearpoint.
When the preparations were done Herilak took Ortnar’s bow and wrapped the bowstring about the carefully fashioned stick. He sat on the ground, held the length of wood steady with his feet, then placed the pointed tip of the stick into the hole in the wood and began to draw the bow back and forth to make it spin. Ortnar pushed some of the powdered wood into the hole while Herilak spun the stick as fast he could. A tiny thread of smoke twisted up, then died away. Herilak gasped with the effort and sat back.
The next time he spun the stick the wisp of smoke became a tiny spark of flame. They dropped more wood-dust upon it, blew carefully, cupped it between their hands as the flame grew, laughing with pleasure. They built the fire high, adding more and more wood, then let it die back to a bed of glowing coals. Soon the meat was roasting in the coals and Kerrick breathed in the cooking odors that he had completely forgotten.
They burnt their fingers on the hot meat, hacked off great pieces, ate and ate until their faces ran with grease and sweat. Rested, then ate some more. Kerrick could not remember having eaten anything so good in his entire life.
That night they slept with their feet to the banked fire, warm and content, their stomachs full.
Kerrick woke during the night when Herilak got up to put more wood on the fire. The stars were bright points of light in the black sky, the star-group of the Hunter just above the horizon in the east. For the first time since their escape Kerrick was at peace, feeling the security of the hunters on both sides of him. They had not been followed. They were safe from the Yilanè.
Safe from the Yilanè? Would that ever be possible? He knew as these hunters did not how ruthless their enemy was. How strong. The raptors would fly and find every Tanu in every valley and meadow; nowhere could they be safe. The armed fargi would attack again and again until all the Tanu were dead. There was no possible escape. Nor could he sink back again into the blank escape of sleep.
Kerrick lay there awake, possessed by the knowledge of certain destruction. He watched as the sky lightened in the east and the stars vanished one by one. The new day had begun. The first day of his new life.
CHAPTER THREE
Kerrick’s feet were swollen and sore after the long walk the day before. Sitting on a large boulder, chewing a lump of tough yet delicious meat, he bathed them in the cool water of the stream. Although his soles were thickly callused and tough he was unaccustomed to walking on stony ground. Now his feet were scratched and cut and he was not looking forward to the strenuous day that lay ahead. Herilak saw what he was doing and pointed to the long gash that cut through the callus of Kerrick’s right foot. “We must do something about that.” He and Ortnar were wearing flexible but strong madraps, made from two pieces of cured leather that had been carefully sewn together with lengths of gut. They did not have the materials here to fashion anything for him this complex — but there were other raw materials close to hand. Herilak found stones that would chip correctly and hammered off small, sharp flakes. Under his direction Ortnar removed the deer’s skin, then scraped the adhering flesh from it in the running water. Herilak cut squares and strips from this, put the larger pieces around Kerrick’s feet and bound them into place with the thin lengths.
“Good enough for now,” he said. “By the time the skin gets stiff and starts to stink we will be far away from here.” Kerrick picked up the rest of the discarded deerskin and found that it would just fit around his waist, where it could be held in place with a prong of the deer’s horn. He scraped it clean of flesh, as he had seen Ortnar do, then took off the soft skin pouch that he had worn for so many years. It lay limply in his hand, the adhering suckers inside it gleaming wetly. With sudden revulsion he hurled it into the stream. That life was behind him forever; he was Tanu now.
But when he turned he tripped over the ring that had been around Inlènu*’s neck for all those years, that was still attached to the ring about his own neck. He held it out before him, loathing its smooth transparency and its solid strength. In sudden anger he smashed it down on the rock that rose from the stream bed, seized up another rock and beat at it until the anger died. It was not even scratched.