“He beat me,” he said, dry-eyed now. “My father beat me with my own bow when I told him what you had said. He did not want to hear it. He shouted that Kerrick knew all about murgu because he was half murgu himself…” His voice died away and he lowered his head. “Just like you, he said. Then he beat me again and I ran away.”

Armun burnt with anger; not for herself, she had heard worse insults. “Old Fraken could read the future better from murgu turds. And your father is as bad, listening to stupidities like that. Kerrick who saved the sammads, now he is away they are quick to forget. How old are you?”

“This is my eleventh winter.”

“Old enough to beat, too young to be a hunter and fight back. Lie there until morning, Harl, until your father wonders where you are and comes to find you. I’ll tell him about murgu!”

Armun went out in the morning and walked among the tents of sammads and listened to what the women were saying. There was concern over the missing boy and hunters were out looking for him. Good, she thought to herself, they only get fat lying around their tents and doing nothing. She waited until the sun was low on the horizon before she went out and stopped the first woman she met.

“Go to the tent of Nivoth, and tell him that the boy Harl has been found and he is in my tent. Hurry.”

As she expected the woman was not in that much of a hurry that she did not have time enough to stop along the way to tell others — which was what Armun had expected. She went back to her tent and stayed there until she heard her name being called. Then she went out and closed the flaps behind her.

Nivoth had a scar from an old wound on his cheek that pulled his mouth into a perpetual scowl; his temper matched his face.

“I have come for the boy,” he said rudely. Behind him the growing crowd listened with interest: it had been a long and boring winter.

“I am Armun and this is the tent of Kerrick. What is your name?”

“Move aside woman — I want that boy.”

“Will you beat him again? And did you say that Kerrick was half murgu?”

“He is all murgu for what I know. I’ll beat the boy rightly enough for carrying tales — and beat you too if you don’t stand aside.”

She did not move and he reached out and pushed her. This was a bad mistake. He should have remembered what happened when she was younger and they called her squirrel-face.

Her closed fist caught him squarely on the nose and he went over backward into the snow. When he struggled up to his knees, blood dripping from his chin, she hit him again in the same place. This was greatly appreciated by the crowd — and by Harl who was peeking through a slitted opening in the tent.

Hunters do not strike women, other than their own women, so Nivoth was not certain what to do. Nor did he have much time to think about it. Armun was as big as he was — and stronger in her wrath. He fled beneath the hail of her blows. The crowd dispersed slowly regretting the end of the fascinating encounter.

It did end with that. Harl stayed on in her tent and no one came for him, nor was the matter discussed in Armun’s presence. Harl’s mother had died in the last hungry winter and his father seemed to care nothing of the boy. Armun was glad of his companionship and the whole matter rested there.

Spring was late, it was always late now, and when the ice finally cracked on the river and floated away in great floes Armun looked to the east for Kerrick. Each day it was harder and harder to control her impatience, and when the flowers were in full blossom she left Arnwheet playing on the river-bank with Harl and went to find Herilak. He sat in the sun before his tent, restringing his bow with fresh gut for the hunting they had all been awaiting. He only nodded when she spoke to him and did not look up from his work.

“Summer is here and Kerrick has not come.”

His only response was a grunt. She looked down at his bowed head and controlled her temper.

“This is now the time to travel. If he does not come to me I will go to him. I will ask some hunters to accompany me who know the track.”

There was still silence and she was about to speak again when Herilak lifted his face to her. “No,” he said. “There will be no hunters, you will not go. You are in my sammad and I forbid it. Now leave me.”

“I want to leave you,” she shouted. “Leave you, leave this sammad and go to the place where I belong. You will tell them…”

“I will tell you just once more to leave,” he said, standing and towering over her. This was not Nivoth. She could not strike Herilak — nor would he listen to her. There was nothing more to be said. She turned on her heel and left him and went to the river, sat and watched the boys playing and rolling in the new grass. She could expect no help from Herilak, the opposite if anything. Then who could she turn to? There was only one she could think of. She went to his tent and found him alone and called the hunter away from the fire.

“You are Ortnar and are the only one still alive from the first sammad of Herilak, you who were of that sammad before it was killed by the murgu.”

He nodded agreement, wondering why she was here.

“It was Kerrick who freed your sammadar when the murgu captured him, Kerrick who led us all south when there was no food, who led the attack on the murgu.”

“I know these things, Armun. Why do you tell me them now?”

“Then you also know that Kerrick remains in the south and I would be with him. Take me to him. You are his friend.”

“I am his friend.” Ortnar looked around, then sighed heavily. “But I cannot help you. Herilak has spoken to us of this and has said that you will not go.”

Armun looked at him with disbelief. “Are you a little boy who pisses in his skins when Herilak talks? Or are you a hunter who is Tanu and does as he himself sees fit?”

Ortnar ignored the insult, waving it away with a slice of his hand. “I am a hunter. Yet there is still the bond of the dead sammad between Herilak and myself — and that cannot be broken. Neither will I go against Kerrick who was our margalus when we needed him.”

“Then what will you do?”

“I will help you, if you are strong enough.”

“I am strong, Ortnar. So tell me what this help is that will need my strength.”

“You know how to make the death-stick kill murgu, I have seen you use one when we were attacked. You will have my death-stick. And I will tell you the way to the murgu city. It is an easy track to follow after you have reached the ocean. When you get to the shore, you must decide then what you will do next. You can wait at that place until Kerrick returns. Or you can go to him.”

Armun smiled — then laughed aloud. “You will send me alone into the land of the murgu! That is a wonderful offer — but still better than any other I have received. I am strong enough to do that, brave Ortnar, and I believe that you are also very brave to risk Herilak’s wrath in this manner, because he is sure to find out what has happened.”

“I will tell him myself,” Ortnar said with grim determination.

Armun left him then, but returned when it was dark to meet him and get the death-stick and all the darts that he had made that winter.

Because her tent was away from the others, and she did not move among the sammads very much, Armun’s tent was laced tight and silent for two days before it was discovered that she was gone.

After some days the hunters that Herilak had sent out to find her returned empty-handed. Her woodcraft was too good; there was no trace of her to be found, no trace at all.