“How do the books say? They make no sound. It is like the mindspeech you speak to me?”
One of the guards came running up to Agat, shouting, “Alterra, it must be the signal for an attack—” Another man, bursting out of the door of the College, interrupted him, “No, I saw it, it was chasing him, that’s why he was yelling like that—”
“Saw what? Did he attack like that all by himself?”
“He was running from it—trying to save his life! Didn’t you see it, you on the barricade? No wonder he was yelling. White, runs like a man, with a neck like— God, like this, Alterra! It came around the corner after him, and then turned back.”
“A snowghoul,” Agat said, and turned for confirmation to Rolery. She had heard Wold’s tales, and nodded. “White, and tall, and the head going from side to side…” She imitated Wold’s grisly imitation, and the man who had seen the thing from the window cried, “That’s it.” Agat mounted the barricade to try and get a sight of the monster. She stayed below, looking down at the dead man, who had been so terrified that he had run on his enemy’s lances to escape. She had not seen a Gaal up close, for no prisoners were taken, and her work had been underground with the wounded. The body was short and thin, rubbed with grease till the skin, whiter than her own, shone like fat meat; the greased hair was interbraided with red feathers. Ill-clothed, with a felt rag for a coat, the man lay sprawled in his abrupt death, face buried as if still hiding from the white beast that had hunted him. The girl stood motionless near him in the bright, icy shadow of the barricade.
“There!” she heard Agat shout, above her on the slanting, stepped inner face of the wall, built of paving-stones and rocks from the sea-cliffs. He came down to her, his eyes blazing, and hurried her off to the League Hall. “Saw it just for a second as it crossed Otake Street. It was running, it swung its head towards us. Do the things hunt in packs?”
She did not know; she only knew Wold’s story of having killed a snowghoul singlehanded, among last Winter’s mythic snows. They brought the news and the question into the crowded refectory. Umaksuman said positively that snowghouls often ran in packs, but the farborns would not take a hilf’s word, and had to go look in their books. The book they brought in said that snowghouls had been seen after the first storm of the Ninth Winter running in a pack of twelve to fifteen.
“How do the books say? They make no sound. It is like the mindspeech you speak to me?”
