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liked to shock people; he always had. That was why he had always been running off to the farborns in the old days. And this gesture freed him in his mind, from the vague shame he suffered since speaking before the other men of the farborn girl who had so long ago been his wife.
    Agat, calm and grave as before, accepted and ate enough to show he took the hospitality seriously; he waited till they were all done eating, and Ukwet's wife had scuttled out with the leavings, then he said, "Eldest, I listen."
    "There's not much to hear," Wold replied. He belched. "Runners go to Pernmek and Allakskat. But few spoke for war. The cold grows each day now: safety lies inside walls, under roofs. We don't walk about in timepast as your people do, but we know what the Way of Man has always been and is, and hold to it."
    "Your way is good," the farborn said, "good enough, maybe, that the Gaal have learned it from you.
    In past Winters you were stronger than the Gaal because your clans were gathered together against them. Now the Gaal too have learned that strength lies in numbers."
    "that news is true," said Ukwet, who was one of Wold's grandsons, though older than Wold's son Umaksuman.
    Agat looked up at him in silence. Ukwet turned aside at once from that straight, dark gaze.
    "If it's not true, then why are the Gaal so late coming south?" said Umaksuman. "What's keeping them? Have they ever waited till the harvests were in before?"
    "Who knows?" said Wold. "Last Year they came long before the Snowstar rose, I remember that. But who remembers the Year before last?" "Maybe they're following the Mountain Trail," said the other grandson, "and won't come through Askatevar at all."
    "The runner said they had taken Tlokna," Umaksuman said sharply, "and Tlokna is north of Tevar on the Coast Trail. Why do we disbelieve this news, why do we wait to act?"
    "Because men who fight wars in Winter don't live till Spring," Wold growled.
    "But if they come—"
    "If they come, we'll fight."
    There was a little pause. Agat for once looked at none of them, but kept his dark gaze lowered like a human.
    "People say," Ukwet remarked with a jeering note, sensing triumph, "that the farborns have strange powers. I know nothing about all that, I was born on the Summer-lands and never saw farborns before this moonphase, let alone sat to eat with one. But if they're witches and have such powers, why would they need our help against the Gaal?"
    "I do not hear you!" Wold thundered, his face purple and his eyes watering. Ukwet hit his face.
    Enraged by this insolence to a tent-guest, and by his own confusion and in-decisiveness which made him argue against both sides, Wold sat breathing heavily, staring with inflamed eyes at the young man, who kept his face hidden.
    "I talk," Wold said at last, his voice still loud and deep, free for a little from the huskiness of old age. "I talk: listen! Runners will go up the Coast Trail until they meet the Southing. And behind them, two days behind, but no farther than the border of our Range, warriors will follow—all men born between Midspring and the Summer Fallow. If the Gaal come in force, the warriors will drive them east to the mountains; if not, they will come back to Tevar."
    Umaksuman laughed aloud and said, "Eldest, no man leads us but you!"
    Wold growled and belched and settled down. "You'll lead the warriors, though," he told Umaksuman dourly. Agat, who had not spoken for some time, said in his quiet way, "My people can send three hundred and fifty men. We'll go up the old beach road, and join with your men at the border of Askatevar."
    He rose and held out his hand. Sulky at having been driven into this commitment, and still shaken by his emotion, Wold ignored him. Umaksuman was on his feet in a flash, his hand against the farborn's. They stood there for a moment in the firelight like day and night. Agat dark, shadowy, somber, Umaksuman fair-skinned, light-eyed, radiant.
    The decision was made, and Wold knew he could