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them the mothertree was Warmaker, the killer; to them it was everything alien in this world, the enemy who kept them inside a fence, the landlord who had arbitrarily restricted them to one small plot of land on a world so wide. The mothertree was all oppression and all authority, all strangeness and danger, and they had conquered it.
Grego recoiled from the screaming of the trapped men who watched the fire approaching, from the howls of the men the fire had reached, the triumphant chanting of the men who had done this murder. "For Quim and Christ! For Quim and Christ!" Almost Grego ran away, unable to bear what he could see and smell and hear, the bright orange flames, the smell of roasting manflesh, and the crackling of the living wood ablaze.
But he did not run. Instead he worked beside the others who dashed forward to the very edge of the flame to pry living men out from under the fallen trees. He was singed, and once his clothing caught on fire, but the hot pain of that was nothing, it was almost merciful, because it was the punishment that he deserved. He should die in this place. He might even have done it, might even have plunged himself so deeply into the fire that he could never come out until his crime was purged out of him and all that was left was bone and ash, but there were still broken people to pull out of the fire's reach, still lives to save. Besides, someone beat out the flames on his shoulder and helped him lift the tree so the boy who lay under it could wriggle free and how could he die when he was part of something like this, part of saving this child?
"For Quim and Christ!" the boy whimpered as he crab-crawled out of the way of the flames.
Here he was, the boy whose words had filled the silence and turned the crowd into this direction. You did it, thought Grego. You tore them away from me.
The boy looked up at him and recognized him. "Grego!" he cried, and lunged forward. His arms enfolded Grego around the thighs, his head pressed against Grego's hip. "Uncle Grego!"
It was Olhado's oldest boy, Nimbo.
"We did it!" cried Nimbo. "For Uncle Quim!"
The flames crackled. Grego picked up the boy and carried him, staggering out of the reach of the hottest flames, and then farther out, into the darkness, into a place where it was cool. All the men were driven this way, the flames herding them, the wind driving the flames. Most were like Grego, exhausted, frightened, in pain from the fire or helping someone else.
But some, many perhaps, were still untouched except by the inner fire that Grego and Nimbo had ignited in the square. "Burn them all!" The voices here and there, smaller mobs like tiny eddies in a larger stream, but they now held brands and torches from the fires raging in the forest's heart. "For Quim and Christ! For Libo and Pipo! No trees! No trees!"
Grego staggered onward. "Set me down," said Nimbo.