Planet Of Exile

CHAPTER TWO: In the Red Tent

"Tats SLOP'S COLD," he growled, pushing it away. Then seeing old Kerry's patient look as she took the bowl to reheat it, he called himself a cross old fool. But none of his wives—he had only one left—none of his daughters, none of the women could cook up a bowl of bhan-meal the way Shakatany had done. What a cook she had been, and young...his last young wife. And she had died, out there in the eastern range, died young while he went on living and living, waiting for the bitter Winter to come.

A girl came by in a leather tunic stamped with the trifoliate mark of his Kin, a granddaughter probably. She looked a little like Shakatany. He spoke to her, though he did not remember her name. "Was it you that came in late last night, kinswoman?"

He recognized the turn of her head and smile. She was the one he teased, the one that was indolent, impudent, sweet-natured, solitary; the child born out of season. What the devil was her name?"

"I bring you a message, Eldest."

"Whose message?"

"He called himself by a big name—Jakat-abat-bolter-ra? I can't remember it all."

"Alterra? That's what the farborns call their chiefs. Where did you see this man?" in'

"It wasn't a man, Eldest, it was a farborn. He sent greetings, and a message that he'll come today to Tevar to speak to the Eldest."

"Did he, now?" said Wold, nodding a little, admiring her effrontery. "And you're his messagebearer?"

"He chanced to speak to me ..."

"Yes, yes. Did you know, kinswoman, that among the Men of Pernmek Range an unwed woman who speaks to a farborn is ... punished?"

"Punished how?"

"Never mind."

"The Pernmek men are a lot of kloob-eaters, and they shave their heads. What do they know about farborns, anyway? They never come to the coast. ... I heard once in some tent that the Eldest of my Kin had a farborn wife. In other days."

"That was true. In other days." The girl waited, and Wold looked back, far back into another time: timepast, the Spring. Colors, fragrances long faded, flowers that had not bloomed for forty moonphases, the almost forgotten sound of a voice ... "She was young. She died young. Before Summer ever came." After a while he added, "Besides, that's not the same as an unwed girl speaking to a farborn. There's a difference, kinswoman."

"Why so?"

Though impertinent, she deserved an answer. "There are several reasons, and some are better than others. This mainly: a farborn takes only one wife, so a true-woman marrying him would bear no sons."

"Why would she not, Eldest?"

"Don't women talk in the sister-tent any more? Are you all so ignorant? Because human and farborn can't conceive together! Did you never hear of that? Either a sterile mating or else miscarriages, misf ormed monsters that don't come to term. My wife, Arilia, who was farborn, died in miscarrying a child. Her people have no rule; their women are like men, they marry whom they like. But among Manland there is law: women lie with human men, marry human men, bear human children!"

She looked a little sick and sorry. Presently, looking off at the scurry and bustle on the walls of the Winter City, she said, "A fine law for women who have men to lie with ...

She looked to be about twenty moonphases old, which meant she was the one born out of season, right in the middle of the Summer Fallow when children were not born. The sons of Spring would by now be twice or three times her age, married, remarried, prolific; the Fall-born were all children yet. But some Spring-born fellow would take her for third or fourth wife; there was no need for her to complain. Perhaps he could arrange a marriage for her, though that depended on her affiliations. "Who is your mother, kinswoman?"

She looked straight at his belt-clasp and said, "Shaka-tany was my mother. Have you forgotten her?"

"No, Rolery," he replied after a little while. "I haven't. Listen now, daughter, where did you speak to this Al-terra? Was his name Agat?"

"That was part of his name."

"So I knew his father and his father's father. He is of the kin of the woman ... the farborn we spoke of. He would be perhaps his sister's son or brother's son."

"Your nephew then. My cousin," said the girl, and gave a sudden laugh. Wold also grinned at the grotesque logic of this affiliation.

"I met him when I went to look at the ocean," she explained, "there on the sands. Before I saw a runner coming from the north. None of the women know. Was there news Is the Southing going to begin?"

"Maybe, maybe," said Wold. He had forgotten her name again. "Run along, child, help your sisters in the fields there," he said, and forgetting her, and the bowl of bhan he had been waiting for, he got up heavily and went round his great red-painted tent to gaze at the swarming workers on the earth-houses and the walls of the Winter City, and beyond them to the north. The northern sky this morning ! was very blue, clear, cold, over bare hills. : Vividly he remembered the life in those peak-roofed : warrens dug into the earth: the huddled bodies of a hun-dred sleepers, the old women waking and lighting the fires that sent heat and smoke into all his pores, the smell of boiling wintergrass, the noise, the stink, the close warmth of winter in those burrows under the frozen ground. And the cold cleanly stillness of the world above, wind-scoured or snow-covered, when he and the other young hunters ranged far from Tevar hunting the snowbirds and korio and the fat wespries that followed the frozen rivers^ down from the remotest north. And over there, right across the valley, from a patch of snowcrop there had risen up the lolling white head of a snowghoul... . And before then, before the snow and ice and white beasts of Winter, there had once before been bright weather like this: a bright day of golden wind and blue sky, cold above the hills. And he, no man, only a brat among the brats and women, looking up at flat white faces, red plumes, capes of queer, feathery grayish fur; voices had barked like beasts in words he did not understand, while the men of his Kin and the Elders of Askatevar had answered in stern voices, bidding the flat-faces go on. And before that there had been a man who came running from the north with the side of his face burnt and bloody, crying,

"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.

"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 kind. Wold let him go ahead. "We have time to prepare. If the men of Askatevar and the men of Allakskat and of Pern-mek will make alliance, and accept our help, we can make an army of our own. If we wait in force, ready for the Gaal, on the north border of your three Ranges, then the whole Southing rather than face that much strength might turn aside and go down the mountain trails to the east. Twice in earlier Years our records say they took that eastern way. Since it's late and getting colder, and there's not much game left, the Gaal may turn aside and hurry on if they meet men ready to fight. My guess is that Kubban has no real tactic other than surprise and multitude. We can turn him."

"The men of Pernmek and Allakskat are in their Winter Cities now, like us. Don't you know the Way of Men yet? There are no battles fought hi Winter!"

"Tell that law to the Gaal, Eldest! Take your own counsel, but believe my words!" The farborn rose, impelled to bis feet by the intensity of his pleading and warning. Wold felt sorry for him, as he often did for young men, who have not seen how passion and plan over and over are wasted, how their lives and acts are wasted between desire and fear.

"I have heard you," he said with stolid kindliness. "The Elders of my people will hear what you've said." "Then may I come tomorrow to hear—" "Tomorrow, next day ..." "Thirty days, Eldest! Thirty days at most!" "Alterra, the Gaal will come, and will go. The Winter will come and will not go.

What good for a victorious warrior to return to an unfinished house, when the earth turns to ice?

When we're ready for Winter we'll worry about the Gaal... , Now sit down again." He dug into his pouch again for a second bit of gesin for their closing whiff. "Was your father Agat also? I knew him when he was young. And one of my worthless daughters told me that she met you while she was walking on the sands."

The farborn looked up rather quickly, and then said, "Yes, so we met. On the sands between tides."