Modh kept up her pantomime: she lay down, lolled her head, and half opened her eyes, like a dead person; she leapt up with her hands held like claws and her face distorted, and pretended to attack Vui; she pointed at the sick baby.

The young men stood staring. It seemed she meant the baby was dying. The rest of her actions they did not understand.

Ralo pointed at the baby and said, “Groda,” which is what Dirt people who have no owner and work in the field teams are called-Nobody's.

“Come on,” ten Belen ordered, and they made ready to go on. Ralo walked off, leaving the sick child lying.

“Aren't you bringing your Dirt?” one of the others asked him.

“What for?” he said.

Modh picked up the sick baby, Vui picked up the other one, and they went on. After that the soldiers let the older girls carry the sick baby, though they themselves passed the well one about so as to make better speed.

When they got up on dry ground in the hills, away from the clouds of stinging insects and the wet and heavy heat of the marshlands, the young men were glad; they felt they were almost safe now; they wanted to move fast and get back to the City. But the children, worn out, struggled to climb the steep hills. Vui, who was carrying the sick baby, straggled along slower and slower. Ten Han, her owner, slapped her legs with the flat of his sword to make her go faster. “Ralo, take your Dirt, we have to keep going,” he said.

Ralo turned back angrily. He took the sick baby from Vui. The baby's face had gone greyish and its eyes were half closed, like Modh's in her pantomime. Its breath whistled a little. Ralo shook the child. Its head flopped. Ralo threw it away into the bushes. “Come on, then,” he said, and set off walking fast uphill.

Vui tried to run to the baby, but ten Han kept her away from it with his sword, stabbing at her legs, and drove her on up the hill in front of him.