"The Gaal, the Gaal! They came through our camp at Pekna! ..."
Clearer than any present voice he heard that hoarse shout ring across his lifetime, the sixty moonphases that lay between him and that staring, listening brat, between this bright day and that bright day. Where was Pekna? Lost under the rains, the snows; and the thaws of Spring had washed away the bones of the massacred, the rotted tents, the memory, the name.
There would be no massacres this time when the Gaal came south through the Range of Askatevar. He had seen to that. There was some good in outliving your tune and remembering old evils. Not one clan or family of the Men of all this Range was left out in the Summerlands to be caught unawares by the Gaal or the first blizzard. They were all here. Twenty hundreds of them, with the little Fall-borns thick as leaves skipping about under your feet, and women chattering and gleaning in the fields like flocks of migratory birds, and men swarming to build up the houses and walls of the Winter City with the old stones on the old foundations, to hunt the last of the migrant beasts, to cut and store endless wood from the forests and peat from the Dry Bog, to round up and settle the harm in great byres and feed them until the wintergrass should begin to grow. All of them, in this labor that had gone on half a moonphase now, had obeyed hun, and he had obeyed the old Way of Man. When the Gaal came they would shut the city gates; when the blizzards came they would shut the earth-house doors, and they would survive till Spring. They would survive.
He sat down on the ground behind his tent, lowering himself heavily, sticking out his gnarled, scarred legs into the sunlight. Small and whitish the sun looked, though the sky was flawlessly clear; it seemed half the size of the great sun of Summer, smaller even than the moon. "Sun shrunk to moon, cold comes soon ..." The ground was damp with the long rains that had plagued them all this moonphase, and scored here and there with the little ruts left by the migrating footroots.
What was it the girl had asked him—about farborns, about the runner, that was it. The fellow had come panting hi yesterday—was it yesterday?—with a tale of the Gaal attacking the Winter City of Tlokna, up north there near the Green Mountains. There was lie or panic in that tale. The Gaal never attacked stone walls. Flat-nosed barbarians, in their plumes and dirt, running southward like homelsss animals at the approach of Winter—they couldn't take a city. And anyway, Pekna was only a little hunting camp, not a walled city. The runner lied. It was all right. They would survive. Where was the fool woman with his breakfast? Here, now, it was warm, here in the sun ...
Wold's eighth wife crept up with a basket of steaming bhan, saw he was asleep, sighed grumpily, and crept away again to the cooking-fire.
That afternoon when the farborn came to his tent, dour guards around him and a ragtag of leering, jeering children trailing behind, Wold remembered what the girl had said, laughing: "Your nephew, my cousin." So he heaved himself up and stood to greet the farborn with averted face and hand held out in the greeting of equals.
As an equal the alien greeted him, unhesitating. They had always that arrogance, that air of thinking themselves as good as men, whether or not they really believed it. This fellow was tall, well-made, still young; he walked like a chief. Except for his darkness and his dark, unearthly eyes, he might have been thought to be human.
"I am Jakob Agat, Eldest."
"Be welcome in my tent and the tents of my Kin, Al-terra."
"I hear with my heart," the farborn said, making Wold grin a little; he had not heard anybody say that since his father's tune. It was strange how farborns always remembered old ways, digging up things buried in timepast. How could this young fellow know a phrase that only Wold and perhaps a couple of the other oldest men of Tevar remembered? It was part of the farborns' strangeness, which was called witchery, and which made people fear the dark folk. But Wold had never feared them.
"A noblewoman of your Kin dwelt in my tents, and I walked in the streets of your city many times in Spring. I remember this. So I say that no man of Tevar will break the peace between our people while I live."
"No man of Landin will break it while I live."
The old chief had been moved by his little speech as he made it; there were tears in his eyes, and he sat down on his chest of painted hide clearing his throat and blinking.
Agat stood erect, black-cloaked, dark eyes in a dark face.
The young hunters who guarded him fidgeted, children peered whispering and shoving hi the open side of the tent. With one gesture Wold blew them all away. The tentside was lowered, old Kerly lit the tentfire and scurried out, again, and he was alone with the alien. "Sit down," he said. Agat did not sit down. He said,
"I listen," and stood there. If Wold did not ask him to be seated in front of the other humans, he would not be seated when there were none to see. Wold did not think all this nor decide upon it, he merely sensed it through a skin made sensitive by a long lifetime of leading and controlling people.
He sighed and said, "Wife!" in his cracked bass voice. Old Kerly reappeared, staring. "Sit down,"
Wold said to Agat, who sat down crosslegged by the fire. "Go away,"
Wold growled to his wife, who vanished.
Silence. Elaborately and laboriously, Wold undid the fastenings of a small leather bag that hung from the waist strap of his tunic, extracted a tiny lump of solidified gesin- oil, broke from it a still tinier scrap, replaced the lump, re- tied the bag, and laid the scrap on a hot coal at the edge of the fire. A little curl of bitter greenish smoke went up; Wold and the alien both inhaled deeply and closed their I eyes. Wold leaned back against the big pitch-coated urine basket and said, "I listen."
"Eldest, we have had news from the north." "So have we. There was a runner yesterday." Was it yesterday?" 1 "Did he speak of the Winter City at Tlokna?"
The old man sat looking into a fire a while, breathing deep as if to get a last whiff of the gesin, chewing the ; inside of his lips, his face (as he well knew) dull as a piece of wood, blank, senile.
"I'd rather not be the bearer of ill news," the alien said in his quiet, grave voice.
"You aren't. We've heard it already. It is very hard. Al-terra, to know the truth in stories that come from far away, from other tribes in other ranges. It's eight days' journey even for a runner from Tlokna to Tevar, twice that long with tents and hann. Who knows? The gates of Tevar will be ready to shut, when the Southing comes by. And you in your city that you never leave, surely your gates need no mending?"
"Eldest, it will take very strong gates this time. Tlonka had walls, and gates, and warriors. Now it has none. This is no rumor. Men of Landin were there, ten days ago; they've been watching the borders for the first Gaal. But the Gaal are coming all at once—"
"Alterra, I listen ... Now you listen. Men sometimes get frightened and run away before the enemy ever comes. We hear this tale and that tale too. But I am old. I have seen autumn twice, I have seen Winter come, I have seen the Gaal come south. I will tell you the truth."
"I listen," the alien said.
"The Gaal live in the north beyond the farthest ranges of men who speak our language. They have great grassy Summerlands there, so the story says, beneath mountains that have rivers of ice on their tops. After Mid-Autumn the cold and the beasts of the snow begin to come down into thenlands from the farthest north where it is always Whiter, and like our beasts the Gaal move south.
They bring their tents, but build no cities and save no grain. They come through Tevar Range while the stars of the Tree are rising at sunset and before the Snowstar rises, at the turn from Fall to Winter. If they find families traveling unprotected, hunting camps, unguarded flocks or fields, they'll kill and steal. If they see a Whiter City standing built, and warriors on its walls, they go by waving their spears and yelling, and we shoot a few darts into the backsides of the last ones... . They go on and on, and stop only somewhere far south of here; some men say it's warmer where they spend the Winter—who knows? But that is the Southing. I know. I've seen it, Alterra, and seen them return north again in the thaws when the forests are growing. They don't attack stone cities. They're like water, water running and noisy, j but the stone divides it and is not moved. Tevar is stone." I The young farborn sat with bowed head, thinking, long j enough that Wold could glance directly at his face for a ' moment.