Ursula Guin - Planet Of Exile

They had stayed North too long. Wold suddenly cackled out loud, and turned from the darkening window. He had out-lived his chiefdom, his sons, his use, and had to die here on a rock in the sea; but he had great allies, and great warriors served him—greater than Agat, or any man. Storm and Winter fought for him, and he would outlive his enemies.

He strode ponderously to the hearth, undid his gesin-pouch, dropped a tiny fragment on the coals and inhaled three deep breaths. After that he bellowed, "Well, women! Is the slop ready?" Meekly they served him; contentedly he ate.

ALL THE FIRST DAY of the siege Rolery's job had been with those who kept the men on the walls and roofs supplied with lances—long, crude, unfinished slivers of holn-grass weighing a couple of pounds, one end slashed to a long point. Well aimed, one would kill, and even from unskilled hands a rain of them was a good deterrent to a group of Gaal trying to raise a ladder against the curving landward wall. She had brought bundles of these lances up endless stairs, passed them up as one of a chain of passers on other stairs, run with them through the windy streets, and her hands still bristled with hair-thin, stinging splinters. But now since daybreak she had been hauling rocks for the katapuls, the rock-throwing-things like huge slingshots, which were set up inside the Land Gate. When the Gaal crowded up to the gate" to use their rams, the big rocks whizzing and whacking down among tern scattered and rescattered them. But to feed the katapuls took an awful pile of rocks. Boys kept at work prising paving-stones up from the nearby streets, and her crew of women ran these eight or ten at a time on a little roundlegged box to the men working the katapuls. Eight women pulled together, harnessed to ropes. The heavy box with its dead load of stone would seem immovable, until at last as they all pulled its round legs would suddenly turn, and with it clattering and jolting behind, they would pull it uphill to the gate all in one straining rush, dump it, then stand panting a minute and wipe the hair out of their eyes, and drag the bucking, empty cart back for more. They had done this all morning. Rocks and ropes had blistered Rolery's hard hands raw.

She had torn squares from her thin leather skirt and bound them on her palms with sandal-thongs; it helped, and others imitated her.

"I wish you hadn't forgotten how to make erkars," she shouted to Seiko Esmit once as they came clattering down the street at a run with the unwieldy cart jouncing behind them. Seiko did not answer; perhaps she did not hear. She kept at this grueling work—there seemed to be no soft ones among the farborns—but the strain they were under told on Seiko; she worked like one in a trance.

Once as they neared the gate the Gaal began shooting fire-brands that fell smoking and smoldering on the stones and the tile roofs. Seiko had struggled in the ropes like a beast in a snare, cowering as the flamingo things shot over. "They go out, this city won't burn," Rolery had said softly, but Seiko turning her unseeing face had said, "I'm afraid of fire, I'm afraid of fire . .."

But when a young crossbowman up on the wall, struck in the face by a Gaal slingshot, had been thrown backwards off his narrow ledge and crashed down spread-eagled beside them, knocking over two of the harnessed women and, spattering their skirts with his blood and brains, it had been Seiko that went to him and took that smashed head on her knees, whispering goodbye to the dead man. "That was your kinsman?" Rolery asked as Seiko resumed her harness and they went on. The Alterran woman said, "We are all kinsman hi the City. He was Jonkendy Li—the youngest of the Council."

A young wrestler in the arena in the great square, shining with sweat and triumph, telling her to walk where she liked in his city. He was the first farborn that had spoken to her. She had not seen Jakob Agat since the night before last, for each person, human and farborn, left in Landin had his job and place, and Agat's was everywhere, holding a city of fifteen hundred against a force of fifteen thousand. As the day wore on and weariness and hunger lowered her strength, she began to see him too sprawled out on bloody stones, down at the other main attackpoint, the Sea Gate above the cliffs. Her crew stopped work to eat bread and dried fruit brought by a cheerful lad hauling a roundleg-cart of provisions; a serious little maiden lugging a skin of water gave them to drink. Rolery took heart. She was certain that they would all die, for she had seen, from the rooftops, the enemy blackening the hills: there was no end to them, they had hardly begun the siege yet. She was equally certain that Agat could not be killed, and that since he would live, she would live. What had death to do with him? He was life; her life. She sat on the cobbled street comfortable chewing hard bread. Mutilation, rape, torture and horror encompassed her within a stone's throw on all sides, but there she sat chewing her bread. So long as they fought back with all their strength, with all their heart, as they were doing, they were safe at least from fear.

But not long after came a very bad time. As they dragged their lumbering load towards the gate, the sound of the clattering cart and all sounds were drowned out by an incredible howling noise outside the gate, a roar like that of an earthquake, so deep and loud as to be felt in the bone, not heard. And the gate leaped on its iron hinges, shuddering. She saw Agat then, for a moment. He was running, leading a big group of archers and dartgunners up from the lower part of town, yelling orders to another group on the walls as he ran.

All the women scattered, ordered to take refuge in streets nearer the center of town. Howw, howw, howw! went the crowd-voice at the Land Gate, a noise so huge it seemed the hills themselves were making it, and would rise and shake the city off the cliffs into the sea. The wind was bitter cold. Her crew was scattered, all was confusion. She had no work to lay her hand to. It was getting dark. The day was not that old, it was not time yet for darkness. All at once she saw that she was in fact going to die, believed hi her death; she stood still and cried out under her breath, there hi the empty street between the high, empty houses.

On a side street a few boys were prising up stones and carrying them down to build up the barricades that had been built across the four streets that led into the main square, reinforcing the gates. She joined them, to keep warm, to keep doing something. They labored in silence, five or six of them, doing work too heavy for them.

"Snow," one of them said, pausing near her. She looked up from the stone she was pushing foot by foot down the street, and saw the white flakes whirling before her, falling thicker every moment.

They all stood still. Now there was no wind, and the monstrous voice howling at the gate fell silent. Snow and darkness came together, bringing silence.

"Look at it," a boy's voice said hi wonder. Already they could not see the end of the street. A

feeble yellowish glimmer was the light from the League Hall, only a block away.

"We've got all Whiter to look at the stuff," said another lad. "If we live that long. Come on!

They must be passing out supper at the Hall."

"You coming?" the youngest one said to Rolery.

"My people are in the other house, Thiatr, I think."

"No, we're all eating hi the Hall, to save work, Come on." The boys were shy, gruff, comradely.

She went with them.

The night had come early; the day came late. She woke in Agat's house, beside him, and saw gray light on the gray walls, slits of dimness leaking through the shutters that hid the glass windows.

Everything was still, entirely still. Inside the house and outside it there was no noise at all. How could a besieged city be so silent? But siege and Gaals seemed very far off, kept away by this strange daybreak hush. Here there was warmth, and Agat beside her lost hi sleep. She lay very still.