"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."
CHAPTER THREE: The True Name of the Sun
WHAT CAUSED the tides along this coast, the great diurnal swinging in and swinging out of fifteen to fifty feet of water? Not one of the Elders of the City of Tevar could answer that question. Any child in Landin could: the moon caused the tides, the pull of the moon... .
And moon and earth circled each other, a stately circle taking four hundred days to complete, a moonphase. And together the double planet circled the sun, a great and solemnly whirling dance in the midst of nothingness. Sixty moonphases that dance lasted, twenty-four thousand days, a lifetime, a Year. And the name of the center and sun— the name of the sun was Eltanin: Gamma Draconis.
Before he entered under the gray branches of the forest, Jakob Agat looked up at the sun sinking into a haze above the western ridge and in his mind called it by its true name, the meaning of which was that it was not simply the Sun, but a sun: a star among the stars.
The voice of a child at play rang out behind him on the slopes of Tevar Hill, recalling to him the jeering, sidelong-looking faces, the mocking whispers that hid fear, the yells behind his back—"There's a farborn here! Come and look at him!" Agat, alone under the trees, walked faster, trying to outwalk humiliation. He had been humiliated among the tents ot Tevar and had suffered also from the sense of isolation. Having lived all his life in a little community of his own kind, knowing every name and face and heart, it was hard for him to face strangers.
Especially hostile strangers of a different species, in crowds, on their own ground. The fear and humiliation now caught up with him so that he stopped walking altogether for a moment. /'// be damned if I'll go back there! he thought. Let the old fool have his way, and sit smoke-drying himself in his stinking tent till the Goal come. Ignorant, bigoted, quarrelsome, mealy-face, yellow-eyed barbarians, wood-headed hilfs, let 'em all burn!
"Alterra?"
The girl had come after him. She stood a few yards behind him on the path, her hand on the striated white trunk of a basuk tree. Yellow eyes blazed with excitement and mockery in the even white of her face. Agat stood motionless.
"Alterra?" she said again in her light, sweet voice, looking aside.
"What do you want?"
She drew back a bit. "I'm Rolery," she said. "On the sands—"
"I know who you are. Do you know who I am? I'm a falseman, a farborn. If your tribesmen see you with me they'll either castrate me or ceremonially rape you—I don't know which rules you follow.
Now go home!"
"My people don't do that. And there is kinship between you and me," she said, her tone stubborn but uncertain.
He turned to go.
"Your mother's sister died in our tents—"
"To our shame," he said, and went on. She did not follow.
He stopped and looked back when he took the left fork up the ridge. Nothing stirred in all the dying forest, except one belated footroot down among the dead leaves, creeping with its excruciating vegetable obstinacy southward, leaving a thin track scored behind it.
Racial pride forbade him to feel any shame for his treat- ment of the girl, and in fact he felt relief and a return of confidence. He would have to get used to the hilfs' insults and ignore their bigotry. They couldn't help it; it was their own kind of obstinacy, it was then- nature. The old chief had shown, by his own lights, real courtesy and patience. He, Jakob Agat, must be equally patient, and equally obstinate. For the fate of his people, the life of mankind on this world, depended on what these hilf tribes did and did not do in the next thirty days. Before the crescent moon rose, the history of a race for six hundred moonphases, ten Years, twenty generations, the long struggle, the long pull might end. Unless he had luck, unless he had patience.