The gods were silent.
This was not unusual to them. In fact, I didn't really believe they would answer.
I was sure that they heard my prayers, but chose to ignore them, not to waste their precious influence on talking with me. Or perhaps because they thought my idea wasn't even worth bothering.
Either way, I didn't give in to despair.
Although I continued to repeat the same prayer to the gods daily, I also talked with my wife about what else we could do to prepare for a war against the other half of the continent.
After what my scouts have discovered, I believe that we should spend our effort on hunting the evolved deer first of all. But they were much more dangerous (and distant) opponents than ice-hole trees.
