Planet Of Exile by Ursula K. LeGuin Page B

ready, at their posts and duties. If the clansmen of Tevar had been ready, if they had marched north to meet the Gaal, if they had looked ahead into a coming time the way Agat seemed to do ... No wonder people called far-borns witchmen. But then, it was Agat's fault that they had not marched. He had let a woman come between allies. If he, Wold, had known that the girl had ever spoken again to Agat, he would have had her killed behind the tents, and her body thrown into the sea, and Tevar might still be standing ... She came out of the door of a high stone house, and seeing Wold, stood still.
    He noticed that though she had tied back her hair as married women did, she still wore leather tunic and breeches stamped with the trifoliate dayflower, clan-mark of his Kin.
    They did not look into each other's eyes.
    She did not speak. Wold said at last—for past was past, and he had called Agat "son"—"Do you go to the black island or stay here, kinswoman?"
    "I stay here, Eldest."
    "Agat sends me to the black island," he said, a little vague, shifting his stiff weight as he stood there in the cold sunlight, in his bloodstained furs, leaning on the spear.
    "I think Agat fears the women won't go unless you lead them, you or Umaksuman. And Umaksuman leads our warriors, guarding the north wall."
    She had lost all her lightness, her aimless, endearing insolence; she was urgent and gentle. All at once he recalled her vividly as a little child, the only little one hi all the Sum-merlands, Shakatany's daughter, the summer-born. "So you are the Alterra's wife?" he said, and this idea coming on top of the memory of her as a wild, laughing child confused him again so he did not hear what she answered.
    "Why don't all of us in the city go to the island, if it can't be taken?"
    "Not enough water, Eldest. The Gaal would move into this city, and we would die on the rock."
    He could see, across the roofs of the League Hall, a glimpse of the causeway. The tide was in; waves glinted beyond the black shoulder of the island fort.
    "A house built upon sea-water is no house for men," he said heavily. "It's too close to the land under the sea ... Listen now, there was a thing I meant to say to Arilia—to Agat. Wait. What was it, I've forgotten. I can't hear my mind ..." He pondered, but nothing came. "Well, no matter.
    Old men's thoughts are like dust. Goodbye, daughter." He went on, shuffling halt and ponderous across the Square to the Thiatr, where he ordered the young mothers to collect their children and come. Then he led his last foray—a flock of cowed women and little crying children, following him and the three younger men he chose to come with him, across the vasty dizzy air-road to the black and terrible house.
    It was cold there, and silent. In the high vaults of the rooms there was no sound at all but the sound of the sea sucking and mouthing at the rocks below. His people huddled together all hi one huge room. He wished old Kerly were there, she would have been a help, but she was lying dead hi Tevar or in the forests. A couple of courageous women got the others going at last; they found grain to make bhanmeal, water to boil it, wood to boil the water. When the women and children of the farborns came with their guard of ten men, the Tevarans could offer them hot food. Now there were five or six hundred people in the fort, filling it up pretty full, so it echoed with voices and there were brats underfoot everywhere, almost like the women's side of a Kinhouse in the Winter City. But from the narrow windows, through the transparent rock that kept out the wind, one looked down and down to the water spouting on the rocks below, the waves smoking hi the wind.
    The wind was turning and the dirtiness in the northern sky had become a haze, so that around the little pale sun there hung a great pale circle: the snowcircle. That was it, that was what he had meant to tell Agat. It was going to snow. Not a shake of salt like last time, but snow, winter