“They feel the same as you do.”

“Then what must we do? The summer will be a short one. The hunting may be good, we don’t know. But then the next winter will be upon us and what will we do then? If we go east to the coast to hunt, the murgu will find us there. South again, well, we know what happened in the south. And the north remains frozen.”

“The mountains,” Har-Havola said, the voices pulling him awake. “We must go beyond the mountains.”

“But your sammad is from beyond the mountains,” Herilak said. “You came here because there was no hunting.”

Har-Havola shook his head. “That is your name for my sammad, from beyond the mountains. But what you speak of as mountains are merely hills. Beyond them are the true mountains. Reaching to the sky with unmelting snow upon their summits. Those are mountains.”

“I have heard of them,” Herilak said. “I have heard that they cannot be passed, that it is death to try.”

“It can be. If you do not know the high passes, then winter will come and trap you and you will die. But Munan, a hunter of my sammad, has been past the mountains.”

“The murgu do not know of these mountains,” Kerrick said, sudden hope in his voice. “They never spoke of them. What lies beyond them?”

“A desert, that is what Munan has told us. Very little grass, very little rain. He says he walked two days into the desert then had to return because he had no water.”

“We could go there,” Kerrick said, thinking out loud. Herilak sniffed.

“Cross the ice mountains to die in the empty desert. The murgu are better than that. At least we can kill murgu.”

“Murgu kill us,” Kerrick said angrily. “We kill some and more come because they are as numberless as the drops of water in the ocean. In the end we will all be dead. But deserts do not go on forever. We can take water, search for a way across. It is something worth thinking about.”

“Yes,” Herilak agreed. “It is indeed something that we should know more about. Har-Havola, call your hunter, the one named Munan. Let him speak to us about the mountains.”

Munan was a tall hunter with long scars scratched onto his cheeks in the manner of his sammad and the other sammads from beyond the mountains. He puffed on the pipe when it was passed to him and listened to their questions.

“There were three of us,” he said. “All very young. It was a thing you do when you are young to prove that you will be a good hunter. You must do something very strong.” He touched the scars on his cheekbones. “Only when you have been very brave or very strong can you get these to show that you are a hunter.”

Har-Havola nodded agreement, his own scars white in the firelight.

“Three went, two returned. We left at the beginning of summer and climbed the high passes. There was an old hunter in my sammad who knew about the passes, knew the ones to take, and he told us and we found the way. He told us what sign to watch for, which passes to climb. It was not easy and the snow was deep in the highest passes, but in the end we were through. We walked always towards the sunset. Once beyond the mountains there are hills and here the hunting was good. But beyond the hills the desert begins. We went out into it but there was no water. We drank what we had carried in water bags and when this was gone we turned back.”

“But there was hunting?” Herilak asked. Munan nodded.

“Yes, there is rain on the mountains, then snow in the winter. The hills close to the mountains stay green. Once beyond them the desert begins.”

“Could you find the high passes again?” Kerrick asked. Munan nodded. “Then we could send a small party out. They could find the path, find the hills beyond. Once they had done this they could return to guide the sammads there, if all is as you say.”

“The summers are too short now,” Herilak said, “and the murgu too close. If one goes — we all go. That is what I think should be done.”

They talked about it that night, the next and the next again. No one really wanted to climb the ice mountains in summer; winter would come quickly enough without going to it voluntarily. But they all knew that something had to be done. There was a little hunting here so they had some fresh meat. There were also roots to be dug, plants and seeds to be found, but these would not last the winter. Their tents were gone and many other things that they had prized. The one thing they still had was the meat they had taken from the murgu, unchanged in the bladders. No one liked the taste of it very much and as long as there was something else to eat it had not been touched. But — it could sustain life. Most of it remained.

Herilak watched and waited patiently while they hunted and ate all that they desired. The women were curing the few deerskins they had and there would be tents again when they had collected enough. The mastodons grazed well and their wrinkled hides soon filled out again. Herilak saw this and waited. Waited until they had fed well and the children were strong. He looked at the sky each night and watched the dark moon wax bright, then wane again. When it was dark once again he filled the stone pipe with pungent bark and called the hunters together around the fire.

When they had all smoked he rose to his feet before them and told them the thoughts that had been in his head all of the time since they had returned here to the bend in the river.

“Winter will come as it always does. We must not stay here to meet it. We must go where there is good hunting and no murgu. I say that we cross the high mountains to the green hills beyond. If we go now it will still be summer and we will be able to get through the high passes. Munan has told us that is the only time we can cross. If we go now we will travel light as we did when we escaped the murgu. If we go now we will not have to worry for food for we can eat the murgu meat. If we go now we can be in the green hills beyond the mountains before winter. I say that now is the time when we must pack the travois and start towards the west.”

No one wanted to leave; no one could find reason to stay. Between the ice and the murgu they had no choice. They talked about it far into the night, but search as they might they could find no other course open to them. It must be the mountains.

In the morning the travois were assembled and old traces repaired with new leather. Small boys searched the woods for the compact balls of fur and bones that the owls regurgitated and Fraken poked them open and read the omens.

“Not today, but tomorrow,” he said. “That will be the time we must leave, at first light. Then when the sun is over the hills and shines here it will see nothing. We must be gone.”

That night, after they had eaten, Kerrick sat by the fire tying bits of grass to long thorns from a berry bush. The supply of darts for the hèsotsan were running low, and there were none of the special trees here on which the darts grew. They were not needed. Any bit of material of the same size would be expelled by the hèsotsan. The darts that they made worked just as well, even better if they were carefully done. Kerrick bit the knot off with his teeth. Armun passed by him and threw the food scraps into the fire, then began to tie their few possessions into bundles. She was silent all the time that she did this and Kerrick suddenly realized she had reverted to her old habit of holding her hair over her face.

When she came close he took her by the wrist and pulled her down beside him, but she still turned away from him. Only when he took her chin in his hands and turned her face to him did he see the tears that filled her eyes.

“Have you hurt yourself? What is wrong?” he asked, puzzled.

She shook her head and tried to keep silent but he was worried and made her speak. In the end she turned her head away, held her hair before her face, and told him.

“There is a baby coming. In the spring.”