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.
'All you say, Eldest, is truth, entire truth, and has always been true in past Years. But this is
... a new time ... I am a leader among my people, as you are of yours. [ I come as one chief to another, seeking help. Believe me— listen to me, our people must help each other. There is a great man among the Gaal, a leader, they call him Kub-ban or Kobban. He has united all their tribes and made an i army of them. The Gaal aren't stealing stray hann along : their way, they're besieging and capturing the Whiter Cities . in all the Ranges along the coast, killing the Spring-born men, enslaving the women, leaving Gaal warriors hi each city to hold and rule it over the Whiter. Come Spring, when the Gaal come north again, they'll stay; these lands will be then: lands—these forests and fields and Summerlands and i cities and all their people—what's left of them ...'
The old man stared aside a while and then said very heavily, in anger, 'You talk, I don't listen. You say my people will be beaten, killed, enslaved. My people are men i and you're a farborn. Keep your black talk for your own black fate!'
'If men are in danger, we're in worse danger. Do you know how many of us there are in Landin now, Eldest? Less than two thousand.'
; 'So few? What of the other towns? Your people lived on t the coast to the north, when I was young.' ' 'Gone. The survivors came to us.'
'War? Sickness? You have no sickness, you farborns.'
'It's hard to survive on a world you weren't made for,'
Agat said with grim brevity. 'At any rate we're few, we're weak hi numbers: we ask to be the allies of Tevar when the Gaal come. And they'll come within thirty days.'
'Sooner than that, if there are Gaal at Tlonka now.
They're late already, the snow will fall any day. They'll be hurrying.'
'They're not hurrying, Eldest. They're coming slowly because they're coming all together—fifty, sixty, seventy thousand of them!'
Suddenly and most horribly, Wold saw what he said: saw the endless horde filing rank behind rank through the moun tain passes, led by a tall slab-faced chief, saw the men of Tlonka—or was it of Tevar?—lying slaughtered under the broken walls of their city, ice forming in splinters over puddled blood. ... He shook his head to clear out these visions. What had come over him? He sat silent a while chewing the inside of his lips.
'Well, I have heard you, Alterra.'
'Not entirely, Eldest.' This was barbarian rudeness, but the fellow was an alien, and after all a chief of his own
