“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.”