He dropped the cross to the smooth ice floor, knelt and smashed the cross into pieces with one swift blow of his hammerstone.
When he looked up the people were silent and unmoving. Perhaps he had been a fool. Perhaps he had told them nothing they didn't know. Perhaps they had already given up and knew that they would die here in the cave and that he could produce no magic to help them.
"Will you take another god?" one of the scouts asked.
"I see no other god to take."
"Then do you think we can be delivered without a god?"
Wasn't it evident? Surely they must know. Should he tell them there was no deliverance, with or without a god?
"I don't know," he lied. "I don't know."
Ark's woman drew a strip of leather from the mouth of a sleeping child and put it in her own mouth. "Then you'll have to deliver us yourself," she said and lay down to go to sleep.
A sudden rage burned in Atanta's brain. The muscles in his square jaw trembled as he glared at the sprawling furry figures, who would lie there and die while they waited like children for him to provide for the future.
Abruptly he turned and left the cave, and walked out under the yellow sun that made the ice-covered mountains shimmer. He felt that he must get away from them. He did not want to die with fools.