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river that did not sparkle beneath the scudding clouds of spring.
And then I turned and looked to the west at a vast grassland and
white-topped mountains beyond and clouds roiling titanic in the
grey sky. And I looked one last time at the village where I was born
and where, had I not climbed that hill on just such a morning, I
might well have died; and I turned my face to the west and I went
from that place forever.
The summer was easy. The plain yielded food in plenty to a young
adventurer with the legs to chase it and the appetite to eat it - no
matter how tough or poorly cooked. And in the fall I came upon a
vast encampment of people whitened as if by the touch of frost.
They took me in and wept over me, and many came to touch me
and to look at me, and they wept also. But one thing I found most
strange. In the entire encampment there were no children, and to
my young eyes the people seemed most terribly old. They spoke a
language I did not understand, but they fed me and seemed to
argue endlessly among themselves over who might have the privilege
of keeping me in his tent or pavilion.
I passed the winter among these strange people, and, as is so
frequently the case with the young, I learned nothing in that season.
I can not remember even one word of the language they spoke.
* These old people are those Ulgos who chose not to follow Gorim to Prolgu. 'As
the
branch that is cut off, they are withered and dying.' (Because their women are
barren.)
When the snow melted and the frost seeped up out of the ground
and the wind of spring began to blow again, I knew it was time to
leave. I took no joy in the pampering of a multitude of grandparents
and had no desire to become the pet of a host of crotchety old people
who could not even speak a civilized language.
And so, early one spring morning, before the darkness had even
slid off the sky, I sneaked from the camp and went south into a low
range of hills where their creaky old limbs could not follow me. I
moved very fast, for I was young and well-fed and quite strong,
but it was not fast enough. As the sun rose I could hear the wails
of unspeakable grief coming from the encampment behind me. I
remember that sound very well.
I loitered that summer in the hills and in the upper reaches of the
Vale to the south beyond them. It was in my mind that I might - if
pursued by necessity - winter again in the camp of the old people.
But, as it happened, an early storm caught me unprepared to the
south of the hills, and the snow piled so deep that I could not make
my way back across to my refuge. And my food was gone, and my
shoes, mere bags of untanned hide, wore out, and I lost my knife,
and it grew very cold.
In the end I huddled behind a pile of rock that seemed to reach up
into the very heart of the snowstorm that swirled around me and
tried to prepare myself for death. I thought of my village and of the
grassy fields around it and of our small, sparkling river, and of my
mother, and, because I was still really very young, I cried.
Why weepest thou, boy?' The voice was very gentle. The snow
was so thick that I could not see who spoke, but the tone made me
angry
'Because I'm cold and I'm hungry,' I said, 'and because I'm dying