Free Planet Of Exile by Ursula K. LeGuin Page A

of the forest was full—full as the river in the flood-time, swarming, overrunning with people. They were moving southward, a sluggish, jumbled, dark flood, stretching and contracting, stopping and starting, with yells, cries, calls, creaking, snapping whips, the hoarse bray of hann, the wail of babies, the tuneless chanting of travois-pullers; the flash of color from a rolled-up red felt tent, a woman's painted bangles, a red plume, a spearhead; the stink, the noise, the movement—always the movement, moving southward, the Southing. But in all timepast there had never been a Southing like this, so many all together. As far as eye could follow up the widening valley northward there were more coming, and behind them more, and behind them more. And these were only the women and the brats and the baggage-train ... Beside that slow torrent of people the Winter City of Tevar was nothing. A pebble on the edge of a river in flood.
    At first Wold felt sick; then he took heart, and said presently, "This is a wonderful thing ..."
    And it was, this migration of all the nations of the north. He was glad to have seen it. The man next to him, an Elder, Anweld of Siok- man's Kin, shrugged and answered quietly, "But it's the end of us."
    "If they stop here."
    "These won't. But the warriors come behind."
    They were so strong, so safe in their numbers, that their warriors came behind. ...
    "They'll need our stores and our herds tonight, to feed all those," Anweld went on. "As soon as these get by, they'll attack."
    "Send our women and children out into the hills to the west, then. This City is only a trap against such a force."
    "I listen," Anweld said with a shrug of assent.
    "Now—quickly—before the Gaal encircle us."
    "This has been said and heard. But others say we can't send our women out to fend for themselves while we stay in the shelter of the walls."
    "Then let's go with them!" Wold growled. "Can the Men of Tevar,decide nothing?"
    "They have no leader," Anweld said. "They follow this man and that man and no man." To say more would be to seem to blame Wold and his kinsmen; he said no more except, "So we wait here to be destroyed."
    "I'm going to send my womenfolk off," Wold said, irked by Anweld's cool hopelessness, and he left the mighty spectacle of the Southing, to lower himself down the lad-. der and go tell his kinfolk to save themselves while there was some chance. He meant to go with them. For there was no fighting such odds, and some, some few of the people of Tevar must survive.
    But the younger men of his clan did not agree and would not take his orders. They would stand and fight.
    "But you'll die," said Wold, "and your women and children might go free—if they're not here with you." His tongue was thick again. They could hardly wait for him to finish.
    "We'll beat off the Gaal," said a young grandson. "We are warriors!" "Tevar is a strong city, Eldest," another said, persuasive, flattering. "You told us and taught us to build it well."
    "It will stand against Winter," Wold said. "Not against ten thousand warriors. I would rather see my women die of the cold in the bare hills, than live as whores and slaves of the Gaal." But they were not listening, only waiting for him to be done talking.
    He went outside again, but was too weary now to climb the ladders to the platform again. He found himself a place to wait out of the way of the coming and going hi the narrow alleys: a niche by a supporting buttress of the south wall, not far from the gate. If he clambered up on the slanting mud-brick buttress he could look over the wall and watch the Southing going by; when the wind got under his cape he could squat down, chin on knees, and have some shelter in the angle. For a while the sun shone on him there. He squatted in its warmth and did not think of much. Once or twice he glanced up at the sun, the Winter sun, old, weak in its old age.
    Winter grasses, the short-lived hasty-flowering little plants that would thrive between