The dim glow in the murk that was the sun had inclined halfway down the sky and no one had stirred. Marak, Marak, Marak, his voices said, and he began to fear that Luz was holding the whole caravan for him. On the one hand they might be wiser to rest this storm out, and on the other it was loss of time, precious time, time that was worth lives, if there was any chance of moving at all. He had no foreknowledge of better coming, only of worse, and when he shut his eyes, now, which were crusted with dust and sand and running tears, he saw the ring of fire, over and over and over, worse and worse as he grew more tired.

Once he had been terrified of the visions for themselves. Now he had a warm weight against his side, and village lords telling him, if he asked, that they understood everything, oh, yes, and all their precautions were enough.

He began to understand a diffuse sort of fear, not acute, but widespread, a sense of disaster shaping about them. He began to understand he cared in more than the abstract, that he cared for the weight in his arms, and that it was all too large. He had not been able to ride all the way to the back of this mass of people, and that there was more to be done to save the people than one man could do, more to be done than any ten men could suffice to do.

His father had one answer. The Ila might have one. Luz had, and moved to execute it. There were all these competitors, when the vermin were gathering to feed on their corpses.

The best thing he could ask was for his father to gather all the discontent, the core of the abjori, and trail the column, so that perhaps the fact that the column reached refuge and the fact that the things Luz warned of came about would make Tain understand, and change his tactics, because after the caravan entered sanctuary, there would be no caravans to prey on. Ever.

And no one out here yet understood that. No one understood that where the producers of affluence went, those that ate the scraps would follow after, more and more desperate. The land would not be the same, and such as Lelie would not inherit anything her elders would recognize.

That was what he held in his arms. That was what breathed and wriggled and fretted against his heart. It was time-to-come. It was After. It was what-next, insistent with its sole question and tearful in its protests about its situation.