Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 56

silence.
Falk reached across the embers, caught the woman's hand, and led her
over the body of the man he had killed into the dark.
Fine snow on a light wind sifted and whirled, taking their breaths with
cold. Estrel breathed in sobs. His left hand holding her wrist and his right
his gun, Falk set off west among the scattered tents, which were barely
visible as slits and webs of dim orange. Within a couple of minutes even
these were gone, and there was nothing at all in the world but night and
snow.
Handlasers of Eastern Forest make had several settings and functions:
the handle served as a lighter, and the weapon-tube converted to a not very
efficient flashlight. Falk set his gun to give a glow by which they could
read the compass and see the next few steps ahead, and they went on,
guided by the mortal light.
On the long rise where the Basnasska winter-camp stood the wind had
thinned the snowcover, but as they went on, unable to pick their course
ahead, the compass West their one guideline in the confusion of the
snowstorm that mixed air and ground into one whirling mess, they got
onto lower land. There were four– and five-foot drifts through which
Estrel struggled gasping like a spent swimmer in high seas. Falk pulled out
the rawhide drawstring of his hood and tied it around his arm, giving her
the end to hold, and then went ahead, making her a path. Once she fell and
the tug on the line nearly pulled him down; he turned and had to seek for a
moment with the light before he saw her crouching in his tracks, almost at
his feet. He knelt, and in the wan, snowstreaked sphere of light saw her
face for the first time clearly. She was whispering, "This is more than I
bargained for…"
"Get your breath a while. We're out of the wind in this hollow."
They crouched there together in a tiny bubble of light, around which
hundreds of miles of wind-driven snow hurtled in darkness over the plains.
She whispered something which at first he did not understand: "Why
did you kill the man?"
Relaxed, his senses dulled, drawing up resources of strength for the
next stage of their slow, hard escape, Falk made no response. Finally with
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