“I will be plainer. Not only do we Outliers wish no quarrel with you but we wish never to set eyes on you again, nor so much as to happen on the places where you have been. Therefore if you will choose you out a quarter of this land, which, as you say, is large enough, you and your people will have leave to go seven days in that direction, after which you shall see no more of us. But all this part where we have been, from the Ledge to Broken Tree, is forbidden ground. Neither you nor any generation of yours to set foot in it. We will see to that.”
He spoke with a controlled and quiet energy that fell on the old man’s fury of defeat like steady rain.
“As for us, we shall go south from here a great distance. So,” said Persilope, “if you choose, to-morrow my men will set you on your way, and you shall have no more to do with us except of your own seeking.”
Oca looked back over his people standing sullen and attentive, and read but one thought in them.
It was a generous offer, but perhaps Persilope knew his man. Oca looked north and south: he must have had by his wild instinct the better knowledge of the country. He might have seen in that unstinted gaze some trace—pale smoke ascending or pointed roof—that advised him of the neighborhood of men, men to be plotted against, evaded, pilfered from, to give to his life the zest of cunning that it craved. He stretched his hand northward.
“From those three far peaks, then, to this broken headland, and from thence as the crow flies to the sea. Do you accept the conditions?”
On the motion of Persilope stepping back all the Outliers fell back a little also to give them room. We saw the Far-Folk set in motion. Oca himself went a few paces, but he was, after all, a king; words of thanks stuck in his throat no doubt. He dragged them out, perhaps by the process of tugging at the locks of his beard.
“Your offer is just. We will keep faith with you. My thanks to you,” he said, and when Persilope had dismissed the subject with a gesture, he turned his back in departing and did not look our way again.
We saw them go down the hill and drown in the lake of mist, and after an interval come out on the other side rounding a hill front, after which we saw them no more. It was a visible relief to the Outliers to be rid of them. We moved a space down the headland, made cover from the rain and slept quietly.