Herilak pointed at the hills ahead when Kerrick came shuffling up to join him.
“They have found a wooded ridge up there,” he said. “Very much like the one we stopped them in yesterday.”
“Not… good enough,” Kerrick gasped, fighting to catch his breath. “There are too many of the enemy. They will get around us again, push us back.”
“They may have learned their lesson. Even murgu aren’t stupid. They will hold back. They know they will be killed if they attack.”
Kerrick shook his head in an unhappy no. “Tanu might do that. They might see others die, be afraid for themselves. But not the murgu. I know them, know them too well. The Yilanè who are riding the large beasts, they will stay to the rear all right. They will be safe. But they will order the fargi to attack just as they did before.”
“What if they refuse?”
“They can’t. It is impossible for them. If they understand a command they must obey it. That is the way it is. They will attack.”
“Murgu,” Herilak said, and his lips curled back from his teeth with distaste as he said it. “Then what are we to do?”
“What else can we do but keep going?” Kerrick asked helplessly, his mouth gasping open, his skin ashen with fatigue. “If we stop here in the open we will be slaughtered. We must go on. Find some hill that we can defend, perhaps.”
“A hill can be surrounded. Then we will surely die.”
The track they were following rose sharply. They needed all their breath now to scramble up it. When they reached the ridge above they were forced to stop. Kerrick was bent double, racked with cramps. Behind them the slow procession toiled up the slope. Kerrick straightened up, gasping, and looked ahead, up the rise, they must climb to the hills beyond. Then stopped motionless, mouth gaping, eyes wide.
“Herilak,” he shouted. “Look there, up ahead, up on those higher hills. Do you see that?”
Herilak shielded his eyes and looked, then shrugged and turned away. “Snow. Winter still holds fast up there.”
“Don’t you understand? These murgu can’t stand cold. Those creatures that they are riding on won’t walk in the snow. They can’t follow us up there!”
Herilak raised his eyes again—but this time there was the light of hope in them. “The snow is not that far away. We can reach it today—if we keep moving.” He called out to the hunters who were leading the way, waved them back, issued new instructions. Then sat down with a satisfied grunt.
“The sammads go on. But some of us must wait behind and slow down those murgu who follow after us.”
There was hope now, and a new chance for existence heartened the sammads. Even the mastodons sensed the excitement, raised their trunks, and bellowed. The hunters watched the column turn, start up the rise to the high hills, then they moved out after them.
Now they would hunt the murgu the way they hunted any deadly animal. The sammads were well out of sight when Herilak stopped the hunters at the top of the valley. Littered about among the scree here were large boulders.
“We will stop them at this place. Let them get in among us. Then shoot, kill. Wipe out the ones that lead. Drive them back. Seize their weapons and darts. What will they do after that happens, margalus?”
“The same as they did yesterday,” Kerrick said. “They will keep contact with us along this front, while at the same time they will send fargi out to swing around the the ridge, to take us from the sides and rear.”
“That is what we wish them to do. Before the trap is closed we will pull back—”
“And set more traps for them! Do it again and again,” Sorli cried out.
“That is correct,” Herilak said, and there was no humor in his cold smile.
They sought places to hide behind the boulders, along both sides of the valley. Many of them, including Kerrick, slept as soon as they lay down. But Herilak, the sacripex, lay unsleeping and alert, watching the track from behind two carefully placed slabs of rock that he had struggled into place.