"Ah?" She did not seem shocked. "Maybe true for your people."
"We live in others," Paul said. "Sears lives so long as we remember him. That will be always...." It seemed to Paul there were scarcely a hundred in this worn line. "We mustn't try to hold them if they want to go. If you, Brodaa, or any others want to leave us, you know you are free."
Her answer was firm and considered: "I will not leave you...."
Wright had not spoken since the burial, nor had Pakriaa. They kept together; Paul was with them sometimes. Behind them Mijok carried his shield. It was Elis who heard the bleat of asonis and stole off to bring back meat for an afternoon meal. It was Elis, before that, who said, "We have done what we could, Paul. We could not have made these people retreat in time to save themselves. If we had abandoned them Lantis would have left no more than a fire leaves in the Red-Moon-of-Dry-Days. Pakriaa is too sick to understand that, yet. She carries a grief like a little one swelling in the womb: it must grow greater before she is delivered of it."
In the afternoon halt, it was Elis who tried to make Wright eat something and sleep, but Wright could do neither.
The giant women Elron and Karison also refused the meat. They sat apart with stout brown Tejron. She was eating, keeping close to her the still unconscious Vestoian, whom the pygmies had given no more than disgusted glares. Tejron might be listening to Karison's undertone—it was in the monosyllables of the old language. The girl Elron held her eyes downcast, fondling the rifle. She and Karison had been much together in a peculiar loneliness since the children were flown to the island: Karison was old, her children grown and gone away before the Charins came; Elron was too young to have given birth. Three of the children at the island were Tejron's; the others were children of Muson and Samis and of a mother who had died in the old life. Tejron wiped her lips and grunted impatiently; she took up her charge in careful arms and left the two. Paul sensed what was to come when Elron set her cherished rifle at his feet. Karison approached Wright, humble but determined: "We must leave you."
Before Wright could speak, Mijok answered her with a sullen anger Paul had never heard from him: "I brought you from the jungle with empty heads. We gave you the words, the beginning of the laws we must make together. You lived like the uskaran, furtive and cruel—"
"No," Wright said. "Mijok, no...."
Karison had winced, but she repeated: "We must go. The old way—we need it."
"Then you must go," Wright said, his spread fingers white-nailed on the ground. "And remember always that you go with our good will."