Old Green World by Walter Basho

met the pause with worry and impatience. “I don’t like just sitting here. It feels like we’re a target.”
    “You don’t like it when we’re moving in, and you don’t like it when we’re staying still,” Albert said. “This is as good as it gets, Aengus. The only other direction is retreat, and if we’re moved to that, then things will be much worse.”
    Twelve days after the first attack, a group from the Old City arrived. Twenty more soldiers from the Green Island, all of whom looked older, stouter, and more grizzled than any soldiers Albert had ever seen. And two Old People: two women, one who was taller than Richard had been, and one who was much shorter. The Old People were accompanied by Niall.
    Albert first saw Niall on the horse-cart as it drove toward the camp. They approached from the northwest. Niall sat up front with one of the soldiers, laughing loudly and thumping the soldier on the back. Niall’s robes weren’t different materially from any other Adept’s, but they looked simpler for some reason. They were certainly wrinkled. He wore them loose to accommodate his prodigious belly. He talked to the soldier like he owned the world. He reminded Albert of the laughing Buddha from the sutras back in school.
    The cart pulled up to the perimeter; Niall had caught Albert’s eye about fifty feet back. Niall jumped off the cart and approached Albert directly. His head and face were covered with stubble, black as pitch. Albert had never seen eyes like his. They were blue and silver, like full midday sun trapped in ice.  
    “Do they have children in command?” he asked Albert. “Are you the child in command of this world-changing effort? Tell me who you are, and where the important people are staying.”
    Albert said nothing. He met Niall’s eye and held his gaze.
    Niall returned it, and they stared for a few moments. Then Niall laughed. “I like you,” he said. He walked off.
    The Old People in the group were Richard’s sisters. The first sister, Lucy, had wild hair and patchwork robes, nervous tics and desperate, craving eyes. She grieved loudly and heavily, wailing constantly: she could be heard throughout the camp. Susan, the second sister, was quiet, formal, and grave. Her hair hung to the middle of her neck and terminated in a perfectly straight horizontal line. She didn’t look much like Lucy, and neither of them looked much like Richard. She wore an immaculate robe, like Richard had. She alone seemed to keep Lucy in control. At one point, Albert watched Lucy work herself into a fever, barking and shaking, only to be suddenly and totally calmed by just a touch from Susan. They were always together.
    Albert patrolled constantly now. He vowed to miss nothing, to meet any savage or animal that came from the woods. Even more Baixans came now, swarms of them, and especially at night. They glowed all over at times, as if the green energy in them had filled to bursting. They came forth from the brush with screams and wails. They seemed not only hungry and desperate, but also possessed with their own mourning. Maybe they mourn the coming death of Terra Baixa , Albert thought. They seemed like grief itself, which infuriated Albert. He held his grief and guilt as precious, and hated the thought that these things could also suffer.
    Whenever they patrolled with an Adept, Albert would follow her lead and would let the Baixans be sedated and bound. “It’s ridiculous, though. They’ll just come back,” he said to Aengus.
    The Adepts had much to occupy them with the death of Richard and were often absent from the patrols. When he patrolled alone with the other troops, Albert ordered all Baixans put to death.
    Richard was wrapped from head to toe in a shroud and placed in state, in a glade just adjacent to the camp. He rested there for weeks, but his body didn’t change, and no animals came for him, nor did any savages.
    Finally, they held a ceremony. Richard’s family and the Adepts sat with him