That evening Estrel stopped by his tent to tell him that it had begun to snow, and they were settling their plan in whispers when a voice spoke at the flap of the tent. Estrel translated quietly: "He says, 'Blind Hunter, do you want the Red Woman tonight?'" She added no explanation. Falk knew the rules and etiquette of sharing the women around; his mind was busy with the matter of their talk, and he replied with the most useful of his short list of Basnasska words—"Mieg!"—no.

The male voice said something more imperative. If it goes on snowing, tomorrow night, maybe," Estrel murmured in Galaktika. Still thinking, Falk did not answer. Then he realized she had risen and gone, leaving him alone in the tent. And after that he realized that she was the Red Woman, and that the other man had wanted her to copulate with.

He could simply have said Yes instead of No; and when he thought of her cleverness and gentleness towards him, the softness of her touch and voice, and the utter silence in which she hid her pride or shame, then he winced at his failure to spare her, and felt himself humiliated as her fellowman, and as a man.

"We'll go tonight," he said to her next day in the drifted snow beside the Women's Lodge. "Come to my tent. Let a good part of the night pass first."

"Kokteky has told me to come to his tent tonight."

"Can you slip away?"

"Maybe."

"Which tent is Kokteky's?"

"Behind the Mzurra Society Lodge to the left. It has a patched place over the flap."

"If you don't come I'll come get you."

"Another night there might be less danger—"

"And less snow. Winter's getting on; this may be the last big storm. Well go tonight."

"I'll come to your tent," she said with her unarguing, steady submissiveness.

He had left a slit in his bandage through which he could dimly see his way about, and he tried to see her now; but in the dull light she was only a gray shape in grayness.

In the late dark of that night she came, quiet as the windblown snow against the tent. They each had ready what they had to take. Neither spoke. Falk fastened his oxhide coat, pulled up and tied the hood, and bent to unseal the doorflap. He started aside as a man came pushing in from outside, bent double to clear the low gap—Kokteky, a burly shaven-headed Hunter, jealous of his status and his virility. "Horressins. The Red Woman—" he began, then saw her in the shadows across the embers of the fire. At the same moment he saw how she and Falk were dressed, and their intent. He backed up to close off the doorway or to escape from Falk's attack, and opened his mouth to shout. Without thought, reflex-quick and certain Falk fired his laser at pointblank range, and the brief flick of mortal light stopped the shout in the Basnasska's mouth, burnt away mouth and brain and life in one moment, in perfect silence.

Falk reached across the embers, caught the woman's hand, and led her over the body of the man he had killed into the dark.

Fine snow on a light wind sifted and whirled, taking their breaths with cold. Estrel breathed in sobs. His left hand holding her wrist and his right his gun, Falk set off west among the scattered tents, which were barely visible as slits and webs of dim orange. Within a couple of minutes even these were gone, and there was nothing at all in the world but night and snow.

Handlasers of Eastern Forest make had several settings and functions: the handle served as a lighter, and the weapon-tube converted to a not very efficient flashlight. Falk set his gun to give a glow by which they could read the compass and see the next few steps ahead, and they went on, guided by the mortal light.

On the long rise where the Basnasska winter-camp stood the wind had thinned the snowcover, but as they went on, unable to pick their course ahead, the compass West their one guideline in the confusion of the snowstorm that mixed air and ground into one whirling mess, they got onto lower land. There were four– and five-foot drifts through which Estrel struggled gasping like a spent swimmer in high seas. Falk pulled out the rawhide drawstring of his hood and tied it around his arm, giving her the end to hold, and then went ahead, making her a path. Once she fell and the tug on the line nearly pulled him down; he turned and had to seek for a moment with the light before he saw her crouching in his tracks, almost at his feet. He knelt, and in the wan, snowstreaked sphere of light saw her face for the first time clearly. She was whispering, "This is more than I bargained for…"

"Get your breath a while. We're out of the wind in this hollow."

They crouched there together in a tiny bubble of light, around which hundreds of miles of wind-driven snow hurtled in darkness over the plains.

She whispered something which at first he did not understand: "Why did you kill the man?"

Relaxed, his senses dulled, drawing up resources of strength for the next stage of their slow, hard escape, Falk made no response. Finally with a kind of grin he muttered, "What else…?"

"I don't know. You had to."

Her face was white and drawn with strain; he paid no attention to what she said. She was too cold to rest there, and he got to his feet, pulling her up with him. "Come on. It can't be much farther to the river."

But it was much farther. She had come to his tent after some hours of darkness, as he thought of it—there was a word for hours in the Forest tongue, though its meaning was imprecise and qualitative, since a people without business and communication across time and space have no use for timepieces—and the winter night had still a long time to run. They went on, and the night went on.

As the first gray began to leaven the whirling black snowrubble of the storm they struggled down a slope of frozen tangled grass and shrubs. A mighty groaning bulk rose up straight in front of Falk and plunged off into the snow. Somewhere nearby they heard the snorting of another cow or bull, and then for a minute the great creatures were all about them, white muzzles and wild liquid eyes catching the light, the driven snow hillocky and bulking with flanks and shaggy shoulders. Then they were through the herd, and came down to the bank of the little river that separated Basnasska from Samsit territory. It was fast, shallow, unfrozen. They had to wade, the current tugging at their feet over loose stones, pulling at their knees, icily rising till they struggled waist-deep through burning cold. Estrel's legs gave way under her before they were clear across. Falk hauled her up out of the water and through the ice-crusted reedbeds of the west bank, and then again crouched down by her in blank exhaustion among the snowmounded bushes of the overhanging shore. He switched off his lightgun. Very faint, but very large, a stormy day was gaining on the dark.

"We have to go on, we've got to have a fire."

She did not reply.

He held her in his arms against him. Their boots and leggings and parkas from the shoulders down were frozen stiff already. The woman's face, bowed against his arm, was deathly white.

He spoke her name, trying to rouse her. "Estrel! Estrel, come on. We can't stay here. We can get on a little farther. It won't be so hard. Come on, wake up, little one, little hawk, wake up…" In his great weariness he spoke to her as he had used to speak to Parth, at daybreak, a long time ago.

She obeyed him at last, struggling to her feet with his help, getting the line into her frozen gloves, and step by step following him across the shore, up the low bluffs, and on through the tireless, relentless, driving snow.

They kept along the rivercourse, going south, as she had told him they would do when they had planned their run. He had no real hope they could find anything in this spinning whiteness, as featureless as the night storm had been. But before long they came to a creek tributary to the river they had crossed, and turned up it, rough going for the land was broken. They struggled on. It seemed to Falk that by far the best thing to do would be to lie down and fall asleep, and he was only unable to do this because there was someone who was counting on him, someone a long way off, a long time ago, who had sent him on a journey; he could not lie down, for he was accountable to someone…