THE FLITTING, AND THE FORERUNNER
"Dêh-Yān, we must be going!"
"And thy leg?"
"Ah, yes,—but, stronger or weaker, we must go, or there will be no legs of mine, or of thine, to go upon!"
"Dreams again?—that hare?"
The man nodded sagely and swept the white waste below the cave with apprehensive eyes. There was nothing to be seen. A delaying spring had hardly made itself evident at their height. The lammergeiers in a cleft high overhead, were feeding a single clamorous youngster, a fat, downy chick, but the lammergeier lays its egg in the last days of the old year. The ravens were hard at work upon their nest, the wool was in (winter coat of stone-buck), the first green egg would be laid within the week, for March was wearing according to our modern calendar.
The stream had begun to trickle, the water-ousels were at work, but the larch was still untasselled, and not a flower had yet broken the snow-crust, not even the fringed purple soldanella, or the small pale crocuses at the edges of the drifts. The passes would still be piled deep with soft new falls.
The crossing would be a desperate business as Pŭl-Yūn knew very well. Such a feat had never been essayed so early within human memory; all crossings (and such were rare events) had ever been made in the late autumn when the snows were hard. Yet he was in a fever to be gone, and the woman knew why.
"Thy Little Moons will make an early start of it—some of them at least will be up here presently looking for their lost braves."