“Go back to your caves,” he said to the boys. “Go to bed and rest.”

He looked at Bemmon. Bemmon’s eyes flickered away, refusing to meet his.

“What few blankets we have are for babies and the very youngest children,” he said. His tone was coldly unemotional but he could not keep his fists from clenching at his sides. “You will return them at once and sleep on animal skins, as all the men and women do. And if you want grass for a mattress you will carry it yourself, as even the young children do.”

Bemmon made no answer, his face a sullen red and hatred shining in the eyes that still refused to meet Lake’s.

“Gather up the blankets and return them,” Lake said. “Then come on up to the central cave. We have a lot of work to do.”

He could feel Bemmon’s gaze burning against his back as he turned away and he thought of what John Prentiss had once said:

“I know he’s no good but he never has guts enough to go quite far enough to give me an excuse to whittle him down.”

Barber’s men arrived the next day, burdened with dried herbs. These were given to the seriously ill as a supplement to the ration of fruit and vegetable foods and were given, alone, to those not yet sick. Then came the period of waiting; of hoping that it was all not too late and too little.

A noticeable change for the better began on the second day. A week went by and the sick were slowly, steadily, improving. The not-quite-sick were already back to normal health. There was no longer any doubt: the Ragnarok herbs would prevent a recurrence of the disease.

It was, Lake thought, all so simple once you knew what to do. Hundreds had died, Chiara among them, because they did not have a common herb that grew at a slightly higher elevation. Not a single life would have been lost if he could have looked a week into the future and had the herbs found and taken to the caves that much sooner.