Kerrick rubbed his jaw in thought before he spoke. Slowly and hesitatingly. “It is not easy to talk of. You will have to know about their city first, and how they are ruled. You must understand the fargi and the Yilanè and just how they go about doing things.”
“Then you will tell us,” Herilak said.
Kerrick found it difficult at first to speak of things in Tanu that he had never thought of in that language. He had to find new words for scenes he was familiar with, new ways of describing concepts totally alien to these hunters. They questioned him over and over again about things they could not understand. In the end they had some idea of how the Yilanè society worked, although they had little idea why it did so.
Herilak stared in silence at his clenched fists where they rested on his thighs, seeking to grasp the meaning of what he heard. In the end he had to shake his head.
“I will never understand the murgu and I think that I will not try. It is enough to know what they do. The large bird flies high to watch us, then returns and tells them where a sammad is so they can attack it. Is that right?”
Kerrick started to protest—then changed his mind and nodded agreement. The details were not important as long as they had some understanding of what the Yilanè were doing. “When they know where a sammad has stopped they prepare an attack. Fargi with weapons go out on the boats. They come from the sea suddenly and kill everything as you know.”
“But you spoke of more than that,” Herilak said. “Do they not camp on the shore the night before they attack?”
“Yes, that is the way that they do it. They stop as close as they can, spend the night, then leave their food supplies behind them in order to attack at dawn on the following morning.”
“Do they always do it this way?”
“Always? I don’t know. I’ve only been with them twice. But, just a moment, that doesn’t matter. The way they think, the way they do things, they would do it the same every time. As long as something is successful they will not change it.”
“Then we must find a way of using that knowledge to destroy them in turn.”
“How will you do that?” Ortnar asked.
“I do not know yet. We must think about it and plan until we find a way. We are hunters. We know how to stalk our prey. We will find a way to stalk and kill the murgu.”
Kerrick had been silent, lost in thought, seeing the destruction of a sammad as no one else could. He had once been on the shore when the attack had come, could still feel the horror when the dark forms had appeared from the sea. But he had also been there with the attackers, traveled from Alpèasak. He had watched the preparations for the attack, had listened to the orders and knew exactly how it all had been done. Now he had to combine these two opposite points of view and find some way of turning things around.
“Turn it around,” he said aloud. Then shouted it again when they looked up at him. “Turn it around! But in order to do that we will need Ulfadan and Kellimans and their sammads. We must explain to them, make them understand and help us. Here is what we will then do. We will march south with the sammads and hunt. The hunting will be good and there will be much food. But once we go south our presence is sure to be discovered by the murgu, for they will be told about us by the great bird. But we will keep close watch and when we see the great bird we will also know what is going to happen. When we see the bird we must send out hunters to watch the beaches. Then we will know when the attack is coming and we will be ready. Instead of running we will fight and kill them.”
“That is dangerous,” Herilak said. “If we take the sammads we will be risking the lives of the women and the children, all those who cannot fight. There must be a better plan or these sammads will not take the risk of coming with us. Think again. Wasn’t there something you told me that was very important, something about the night? The murgu don’t like to go about at night?”