fouled with smoke. Selver could scarcely see; he looked up to the east, wondering if it were nearing dawn. Kneeling there in the mud among the dead he thought, This is the dream now, the evil dream. I thought to drive it, but it drives me.
In the dream, Lyubov's lips moved a little against the palm of his own hand; Selver looked down and saw the dead man's eyes open. The flare of dying fires shone on the surface of them. After a while he spoke Selver's name.
'Lyubov, why did you stay here? I told you to be out of the city this night.'' So Selver spoke in dream, harshly, as if he were angry at Lyubov.
'Are you the prisoner?' Lyubov said, faintly and not lifting his head, but in so commonplace a voice that Selver knew for a moment that mis was not the dream-time but the world-time, the forest's night. 'Or am I?'
'Neither, bom, how do I know? All the engines and machines are burned. All the women are dead. We let the men run away if they would. I told them not to set fire to your house, the books will be all right. Lyubov, why aren't you like the others?'
'I am like them. A man. Like them. Like you.'
'No. You are different—'
'I am like them. And so are you. Listen, Selver. Don't go on. You must go back ... to your own ... to your roots.'
'When your people are gone, then the evil dream will stop.'
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'Now,' Lyubov said, trying to lift his head, but his back was broken. He looked up at Selver and opened his mouth to speak. His gaze dropped away and looked into the other time, and his lips remained parted, un speak ing. His breath whistled a little in his throat.
They were calling Selver's name, many voices faraway, calling over and over. 'I can't stay with you, Lyubov!' Selver said in tears, and when there was no answer stood up and tried to run away. But in the dream-darkness he could go only very slowly, like one wading through deep water. The Ash Spirit walked in front of him, taller than Lyubov or any yumen, tall as a tree, not turning its white mask to him. As Selver went he spoke to Lyubov: 'We'll go back,' he said. 'I will go back. Now. We will go back, now, I promise you, Lyubov!'
But his friend, the gentle one, who had saved his life and betrayed his dream, Lyubov did not reply. He walked somewhere in the night near Selver, unseen, and quiet as death.
A group of the people of Tuntar came on Selver wandering in the dark, weeping and speaking, overmastered by dream; they took him with them in their swift return to Endtor.
In the makeshift Lodge mere, a tent on the river-bank, he lay helpless and insane for two days and nights, while the Old Men tended him. All that time people kept coming in to Endtor and going out again, returning to the Place of Eshsen which had been called Central, burying their dead 5$;
mere and the alien dead: of theirs more than three hundred, of the others more than seven hundred. There were about five hundred yumens locked into the compound, the creechie-pens, which, standing empty and apart, had not been burnt. As many more had escaped, some of whom had got to the logging camps farther south, which had not been attacked; those who were still hiding and wandering in the forest or the Cut Lands were hunted down. Some were killed, for many of the younger hunters and huntresses still heard only Selver's voice saying Kill them. Others had left the night of killing behind them as if it had been a nightmare, the evil dream that must be understood lest it be repeated; and these, faced with a thirsty, exhausted yumen cowering in a thicket, could not kill him. So maybe he killed mem. There were groups of ten and twenty yumens, armed with Logger's axes and hand-guns, though few had ammunition left; these groups were tracked until sufficient numbers were hidden in the forest about them, then overpowered, bound, and led back to Eshsen. They were all captured within two or three days, for all that part of Sornol was swarming with the people of the forest, there had never in the knowledge of any man been half or a tenth so great a gathering of people in one place; some still coming in from distant towns and other Lands, others already going home again. The captured yumens were put in among the others in the compound, though it was overcrowded and the huts were too small for yumens. They were
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watered, fed twice daily, and guarded by a couple of hundred armed hunters at all times.
In the afternoon following the Night of Eshsen an airship came rattling out of the east and flew low as if to land, then shot upward like a bird of prey that misses its kill, and circled the wrecked landing-place, the smoldering city, and the Cut Lands. Reswan had seen to it that the radios were destroyed, and perhaps it was the silence of the radios that had brought the airship from Kushil or Rieshwel, where there were three small towns of yumens. Hie prisoners in the compound rushed out of the barracks and yelled at the machine whenever it came rattling overhead, and once it dropped an object on a small parachute into the compound: at last it rattled off into the sky. -
There were four such winged ships left on Athshe now, three on Kushil and one on Rieshwel, all of the small kind that carried four men; they also carried machine guns and flamethrowers, and they weighed much on the minds of Reswan and the others, while Selver lay lost to them, walking the cryptic ways of the other time.
He woke into the world-time on the third day, thin, dazed, hungry, silent. After he had bathed in the river and had eaten, he listened to Reswan and the headwoman of Berre and the others chosen as leaders. They told him how the world had gone while he dreamed. When he had heard them all, he looked about at them and they saw the god in him. In the sickness of disgust and fear that followed the Night of Eshsen, some of them had
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come to doubt. Their dreams were uneasy and full of blood and fire; they were surrounded all day by strangers, people come from all over the forests, hundreds of them, thousands, all gathered here like kites to carrion, none knowing another: and it seemed to them as if the end of things had come and nothing would ever be the same, or be right, again. But in Selver's presence they remembered purpose; their distress was quietened, and they waited for him to speak.
'The killing is all done,' he said. 'Make sure that everyone knows that.' He looked round at them. 'I have to talk with the ones in the compound. Who is leading them in there?*'
'Turkey, Flapfeet, Weteyes,' said Reswan, the ex-slave.
'Turkey's alive? Good. Help me get up, Greda, I have eels for bones. ...'
When he had been afoot a while he was stronger, and within the hour he set off for Eshsen, two hours' walk from End tor.
When they came Reswan mounted a ladder set against the compound wall and bawled in the pidgin-English taught the slaves, 'Dong-a come to gate hurry-up-quick!'
Down in the alleys between the squat cement barracks, some of the yumens yelled and threw clods of dirt at him. He ducked, and waited.
The old Colonel did not come out, but Gosse, whom they called Weteyes, came limping out of a hut and called up to Reswan, 'Colonel Dongh is ill* he cannot come out.'
121 'Ill what kind?'*
'Bowels, water-illness. What you want?'
'Talk-talk.—My lord god,' Reswan said in his own language, looking down at Selver, 'the Turkey's hiding, do you want to talk with Weteyes?'
'All right.'
'Watch the gate here, you bowmen!—To gats, Mis-ter Goss-a, hurry-up-quick!'
The gate was opened just wide enough and long enough for Gosse to squeeze out. He stood in front of it alone, facing the group by Selver. He favored one leg, injured on the Night of Eshsen. He was wearing town pajames, mudstained and rain-sodden. His greying hair hung in lank festoons around his ears and over his forehead. Twice the height of his captors, he held himself very stiff, and stared at them in courageous, angry misery. 'What you want?'
'We must talk, Mr. Gosse,' said Selver, who had learned plain English from Lyubov. 'I'm Selver of the Ash Tree of Eshreth. I'm Lyuboy's friend.'
'Yes, I know you. What have you to say?'
* 'I have to say mat the killing is over, if that be made a promise kept by your people and my people. You
