Then he remembered his grain bags.
After five nights of frenzied activity he was ready to begin again. He led the olz of village number One to a cache of grain bags and distributed them, an armful to each adult ol. They marched into the night. At the next village he redistributed the bags, did so again at the third and the fourth—in the straight lane he looked back at an unending procession of torches. Village Five, village Six, another cache of bags—through the night Farrari’s army marched with slouching, dragging footsteps and grew village by village. At dawn a thousand olz were dutifully trailing after him and several durrlz were finding, to their consternation, that their work force had disappeared.
He brought his gril to a stop where the lane opened onto a durrl’s headquarters and waved his olz forward, telling them to drink and eat. As they moved up the slope toward the buildings, the durrl appeared and for a moment stood staring down the slope.
Farrari jerked his gril behind the zrilm, cursing himself for his monumental stupidity. If a word from a synthetic assistant durrl would set an army of olz in motion, a word from a genuine durrl would certainly send it home again.
When next he looked, the durrl, his assistants, their families and servants, were fleeing in panic. As the olz advanced up the slope they disappeared down the far side, obviously running for their lives, and took refuge in a zrilm hedge. Farrari recovered his composure and opened the grain and tuber stores and set the olz to raiding the durrl’s stocks of quarm. Soon the circle of buildings was filled with ol fires, everything Farrari could find in house or barn that could serve as a cooking utensil was in use, and the olz were gathered in mute circles waiting for their food. Farrari kept a wary eye on the zrilm where the rascz had disappeared. After a time they realized that there was no pursuit, and they emerged from hiding and hurried away.
Farrari rushed the olz through their meal, and before moving on he issued rations to them: a tuber and a measure of grain for each ol. There would be other durrl headquarters to raid, but this gave the olz something to carry in their grain bags.
The march resumed, with Farrari climbing stiles to recruit olz who were at work in the fields, and instead of avoiding the durrlz he began to seek them out—but every headquarters was deserted. The first fugitives must have sounded the alarm, and word of the marching olz had spread with a swiftness Farrari hesitated to believe.
At dusk they reached the highway, and Farrari left his swollen army resting around nightfires and sent his gril scampering east. At dawn he was back with another, smaller group of olz, and while they rested and ate he marched the first olz onto the highway and turned them south.
He could not have imagined a shoddier-looking army. It slouched forward, a motley, unarmed crowd lacking even the demented sense of purpose that chacterized a mob. The second group followed the first, and in the wake of both came a straggling tail of enfeebled sick, young children, and women carrying children, and these Farrari halted where the highway crossed a rippling stream of clear water. He left them in the shade of a zrilm hedge to await the return of the others. Then he rode along the marching column grunting orders to keep the olz moving.
They met no traffic, nor did any overtake them. For some reason Farrari never expected to understand, the rascz saw his farcical army as a sinuous monster flowing with irresistible force, and they had carried the warning in all directions.
At midafternoon they reached the deserted granary. Farrari attacked the huge grain crocks with a thick piece of quarm, and as each shattered, the lustrous, red-tinted grain gushed forth. A word and a gesture from Farrari, and the olz began filling their bags. As each ol emerged Farrari spoke two words. “Home Quickly!” The olz had only one speed, but impressed with the need for haste they would at least keep moving tirelessly.
Darkness fell. Olz stood by with torches, and at regular intervals Farrari dispatched one to light the way for the olz with full grain bags. “Home! Quickly!” Finally most them were gone. Stragglers kept arriving, but Farrari left them to figure out for themselves what they were do.
After formulating so many unsuccessful experiments, he could not believe that this one had worked. It seemed utterly unreal to him, never happened, but the depot supervisor would have only shattered crocks to show for a vast quantity of vanished grain and on the highway the torches were marching north. It would be morning before the first word of the uprising could reach anyone capable of dealing with it, two additional days before the army could arrive, and long before then the olz would be peacefully at work in their fields or wandering about hopelessly lost. In either case the rascz would be befuddled, a lengthy investigation would be required, and with any luck at all a portion of the kru’s army would be occupied indefinitely. As a bonus, the olz in the lower hilngol would eat well that summer and might even have a reserve of grain for winter. It was, Farrari told himself, a most successful beginning.
He filled his own grain bags, strapped them to his extra grilz, and took the south fork of the highway.
At dawn he changed mounts and rode at top speed until he sensed that his gril was tiring. Then he stopped to feed and water the grilz before he raced on. He still met no traffic, but he began to overtake refugees. He happened onto the first group unexpectedly as he topped a hill—a durrl and his dependents, the women and children in wagons with a few belongings, the men riding grilz. It was too late to turn aside, they had already seen him, so he swept past them and quickly left them far behind.
Later he passed other groups without arousing so much as a questioning look. To the fastidiously law-abiding rascz, the mere fact of a durrl’s assistant racing along the highway with four grilz was proof enough of his right to do so.
A surge of wild exhilaration displaced his alarm. The rascz were fleeing from the olz! They seemed to be taking their time about it, as though they knew that even a narmpf could keep ahead of walking olz, and they obviously had the air of people going somewhere, rather than of running away from something, but even this sober afterthought could not diminish his satisfaction. The rascz were refugees!
On the second day he saw the highway ahead of him filled with the kru’s cavalry. He turned aside and waited in the safety of a lane until the column had passed, not wanting to find out whether soldiers might have a more highly developed sense of curiosity than ordinary citizens. Later he met more cavalry, and on the following day he made a wide circle to avoid the garrison town that was the refugees’ objective.