Others came, across the square, up the steps, shadows out of the storm.  Hlil gathered himself up to meet them.  "It is safe," he said to kel Dias, who commanded them, and looked beyond her to the ones who followed, sen'ein.  He set his face, assumed the assurance he did not feel, met the eyes of the gold-robes who were veiled against wind and dust.  "I secured the Pana first; that was my instruction."

They inclined their heads, accepting this, which comforted him.  They took charge of the Holy, one spreading his own robes to cover it, for the kel-veils blew and fluttered in the wind.

He left them and went inside with the others, where Taz began to share his light, where knot after knot of fiber flared into life.  "Haste," he urged them, "but walk lightly; there has been one collapse in here already."

They moved, no running, but swiftly.  He watched them scatter with their several leaders, one group to Kel, one to Kath, one to Sen, and another to the storerooms, and two to the she'pan's tower, so that in a brief time all the building whispered to soft, quick steps, the comings and going of those who had come to loot the House of all that was their own.

"Go," he murmured distractedly, finding Taz still by him.  "If there are any proper lamps at hand, get light in that middle corridor.  The rubble is unstable enough without someone falling."

"Aye, sir," the youth exclaimed, and made haste about it.

Even now some were beginning to come down with burdens, stumbling in the dark, having to choose between light and two hands to steady their loads.  Hlil stationed himself to guide them to the point where they could see the doorway; the flow began to be a steady to and fro.  There was no science in their plundering that he could see; he forbore to complain of it.  In their haste and dread of collapse they snatched what they could, as much as they could.

Taz managed lights, two proper lamps, set in the area of the fallen shrine; and to Hlil's vast relief the essential things to appear, the heavy burden of the tents, the irreplaceable metal poles, wrapped meticulously in twisted and able fiber; their vessels, their stores of food and oil; a sled of offworld metal; lastly hundreds of rolled mats, the personal possessions of the tribe.

And two sen'ein came inside, gathered up one of the lamps from the hall, passed out of sight into the entry of sen-hall.

He disliked that.  He walked a few steps in that direction, fretting with the responsibility he bore for them, and his lack of authority where it regarded sen-matters.  He stared anxiously after them, then turned for the door, where a diminishing trickle of kel'ein tended.  Shouts drifted down from the heights of the edun, that they had gotten all of it, to the very last.

Hlil walked out onto the steps and into the particle-laden wind, where the two sen'ein who had remained with the Pana struggled to load the Holy onto the sled, padding it with rolled mats below and above.  Merin and Dias and Ras had charge, directing the division of goods into bearable portions.  They were not going to leave any portion of it if they could help.

He stood idle, fretting with the matter, prevented by rank from lending a hand to it.  Perhaps, he thought, they should all have gone back to the relief of the tribe in the storm; or perhaps he should never have divided his force, and should have trusted the she'pan and kel Seras to do the necessary.  The load was no easier for the driving wind; and it was a long trek back.

Yet there seemed some lessening in the storm.  Excessive optimism, perhaps; the wind would diminish for a time and then return with double force.  He could see the top of the ruined building nearest, of many of the buildings, which he had not been able to do when they came.

And the dead, revealed in their numbers, stretching in a line from the bottom of the steps to the far side of the square.  Those he had to look on too.

"We might bury them, sir," said a young voice.  He looked to his left, at Taz.  The boy had lost all his kin in the rout.  All.