That next night was spent in a hollow between rocks a good way from the travellers. Ruff lay close to Dann, who was glad of the warmth.
More days passed, and then a wide enough track ran off south through marshes that were shallower here, not so dangerous. Part of the refugee stream turned off on the track, which lay on a route through Tundra to its frontier. Well, they wouldn’t find much comfort there, and he tried to tell them so, but one after another they turned sullen and uncomprehending eyes on him. Those who still kept to the path on the cliff’s edge were, it seemed, because there were fewer of them, relieved of the necessity for keeping the peace. They began quarrelling and fighting, if they suspected one had food hidden. They surrounded Dann and the snow dog, for Dann’s sack, which was much depleted now, but still had a promising bulge. Ruff barked and made short rushes at them, and they fell back; Dann led off the track into a path that went south-west, still through bogs and marshes, but they were not so bad. The ground soon became a little higher, there were some bushes and clumps of tall reeds. There came into sight a building, not more than a shed, on the right of the track. On the door of this shed was scrawled ‘No Refugees Here. Keep off’. He knocked and shouted, ‘I’m not a refugee. I can pay.’ No sound or movement from inside. He knocked again, a shutter moved and the face of a scowling old woman appeared.
‘What do you want?’
‘Let me in. I’ll pay for food and shelter.’
‘I’m not having a snow dog here.’
‘He’s tame, he won’t hurt you.’
‘No, go away.’
‘He can keep guard,’ shouted Dann.
At last the door, which was made of thick reeds held together by leather thongs, moved open and an old man’s voice said, ‘Be quick, then.’
Two old people stood facing him, but looking at the great beast, who sat down at once and looked at them.
The room was not large, and it was dark, with a single fish-oil lamp on a rough table. The walls were of turves and the roof of reeds.
Dann said, ‘I’ll pay you for some food for me and the animal.’
‘Then you must leave,’ said the old woman, who showed that she was afraid of Ruff.
‘I’ll pay you for letting us sleep here, on the floor.’
At this moment there were shouts and knocks on the door, which would give way in another instant. The old woman swore and shouted abuse. The old man was peering out through cracks in the shutter.
‘Bark, Ruff,’ said Dann. Ruff understood and barked loudly. The people outside ran off.
‘He’s a guard dog,’ said Dann.
‘Very well,’ said the old woman. She said something to the old man, and Dann didn’t recognise the language.
‘Where are you from?’ asked Dann. Their faces, under the dirt, were pallid, and their hair pale too. ‘Are you Albs?’
‘What’s that to you?’ demanded the old man, afraid.
‘I have friends who are Albs,’ said Dann.
‘We are half Albs,’ said the old woman. ‘And that half is enough to make us enemies, so they think.’
‘I know the trouble Albs have,’ said Dann.
‘Do you? That’s nice for you, then.’
‘I am from Rustam,’ said Dann casually, to see what they would say.
‘Rustam, where’s that?’
‘A long, long way south, beyond Charad, beyond the river towns, beyond Chelops.’
‘We hear a lot of travellers’ tales – thieves and liars, that’s what they are,’ said the old woman.
Outside, moonlight showed that some refugees had found this higher drier track and were lying on it, sleeping.
‘There are quite a few children out there,’ Dann said – to see what they would say.
‘Children grow up to be thieves and rascals.’
Dann was given a bowl of marsh fish, muddy and grey, with a porridge of vegetables thickened with meal. Ruff got the same: well, he didn’t have much better at Kass’s house.
Then the old woman said, ‘Now, you and that animal sit near the door and if there’s knocking, make him bark.’
Dann settled near the door, the dog beside him. He thought that there would probably not be disturbances now it was late. But once knocks did rouse them all, and the dog barked and the intruder left.
‘We don’t like snow dogs,’ said the old woman, from her ragged bed on the floor. ‘We kill them if we can.’
‘Why don’t you make one into a guard dog?’
But in the corner she muttered and gloomed and the old man, who clearly did what he was told, said that snow dogs were dangerous, everyone knew that.
Dann slept sitting, with the snow dog lying close, both glad of the warmth. They must be very cold out there, those poor people … Dann surprised himself with this thought. He did not see the use of sympathising with people in trouble, if he could not make cause with them, in some way. But he was thinking that once he and Mara had been – often enough – two frightened youngsters among refugees and outcasts, just like those out there in the cold moonlight that sifted over them from wet cloud.
In the very early morning, as the light came, he woke and looked at the mud floor, the turf walls, the low reed roof that leaked in places, and thought that this was called a house. It was worse by far than Kass’s. Under the marshes were the marvellous great cities that had sunk through the mud. Why was it such cities were not built now? He remembered the towns he and Mara had travelled through, fine towns, but far from the drowned cities around him – and such a longing gripped him for the glories of that lost time that he groaned. Ruff woke and licked his hands. ‘Why?’ he was muttering. ‘Why, Ruff? I don’t understand how it could happen. That – and then this.’
He coughed, and Ruff barked softly, and the two old ones woke.
‘So, you’re off, then?’ said the old woman.
‘Not without our breakfast.’
Again they got a kind of porridge, with vegetables.
‘Where are you going?’ the woman wanted to know.
‘To the Centre.’
‘Then what are you doing in a poor place like this?’
Dann said he had come from the east, had been down in the islands, but the old people