“Do you understand, Enge? See—it is doing it again.”
Clumsily, but clearly now, clear enough to understand, the ustuzou was speaking.
“I very much don’t want to die. I want very much to talk. Very long, very hard.”
“You did not kill it,” Enge said as they left the chamber and Stallan bolted the door behind them. “Yet you had no mercy at all for the other…”
“The other was worthless. You will now train this last one for it may be of use to us some day. Other packs of the creatures could be marauding out there. But you told me it never spoke?”
“Never. It must have been more intelligent than the other. It watched me all of the time, yet it never spoke.”
“You are a better teacher than you know, Enge.” Now sated, Vaintè was magnanimous. “Your only mistake was in teaching the wrong ustuzou.”
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Although the sky above was clear blue, fine snow was blowing fiercely up through the mountain pass. The biting north wind that tore across the mountains was picking it up from the slopes below, then sending it hurtling through the pass in great frigid waves.
Herilak struggled with its fury, almost leaning against it as he pushed the last stumbling steps through the heavy drifts. Part of his left snowshoe had broken and it slowed him down. Yet if he stopped to mend it he would be dead before he finished. So he pressed stumbling on, a large man made even bulkier by the layers of furs wrapped about him. He could feel the change in the slope now as he entered the pass, went through it, tripping and falling again and again, but rising each time to shake the snow from him, then staggering on. As he passed the rocky scarp, the gray bones of stone rising from the drifts and kept free by the wind, he felt that wind lessen. He was through. Just a few paces further on and he was out of the wind completely, shielded by the rock. He dropped down with a sigh, his back against the rough stone, for the climb had taxed even his great strength.
His outer mittens were glazed with ice and snow and he had to beat them together before they were supple enough to remove. With his warm inner glove he wiped the caked snow from his eyebrows and eyelashes and blinked down at the valley below.
It was a sheltered place where some greatdeer still wintered; he could see the dark specks of their herds further up the valley. Below him was a stand of tall trees that gave shelter to the meadow beside the stream. A stream that never froze at its source where it welled up from beneath the ground. It was a fine spot to camp and to winter, and was known as levrelag Amahast, the camping place of the sammad of Amahast. Amahast married to Aleth sister of Herilak.
But the valley below was empty.
Herilak had heard this from a hunter of his own sammad, who had met a hunter of sammad Ulfadan who swore that he had been here, and that he was speaking only the truth. Herilak knew that he had to see for himself. He had taken his spear and his bow and his arrows, rubbed his body thickly with goose grease, then put on the soft furs of the beaver with the fur against his body, then the suit of coarse fur of the greatdeer over that. With the snowshoes lashed to the heavy fur boots he was ready for the winter. He traveled light for he must travel fast, and the bag over his shoulder held little more than a supply of dried meat and some of the mashed nuts and berries of ekkotaz.
Now he had found that which he sought and he was very displeased. He sucked a mouthful of snow as he bent to repair the snowshoe. Every once in awhile he would look up from the work to the empty valley below, as though to remind himself of the unpleasant truth. It remained empty.
It was midday before he was finished. He chewed on some dried meat while he pondered on what to do next. He had no choice. When he had finished eating he climbed to his feet, a big man who stood a head taller than even the tallest in his sammad, rubbing grease from his flowing beard and looking down the valley in the direction he must go. South. He started that way, along the slope, and once he began walking he never looked back once at the empty camping place.