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.