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LEIGH BRACKETT

A Del Rey Book BALLANT1NE BOOKS • NEW YORK

A Del Rey Book

Published by Baliantine Books

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Baliantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada, Limited, Toronto, Canada.

ISBN 0-345-28594-8

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: October 1974 Third Printing: January 1980

First Canadian Printing: November 1974

Maps by Bob Porter

Cover art by James Steranko

For Michael and Hilary Moorcock

In her great hall, deep in the mountain heart of the glimmering Witchfires, Kell á Marg Skaith-Daughter sat upon the dais. Her throne was carved from rich brown rock the color of loam-the shape of it was a robed woman, seated to hold Skaith-Daughter on her knees, her arms curved protectively, her head bent forward in an attitude of affection. Kell á Marg sat with her hands on the hands of Skaith-Mother, and her slim white-furred body gleamed against the dark stone.

Below, at the foot of the dais, Yetko the Harsenyi sweated in his heavy garments, keeping his eyes averted from the Presence. He was overwhelmed by the crushing weight of mountain above him and by the labyrinthine strangeness of the House of the Mother, of which this luminous white chamber was the core and center. He was overwhelmed by being there at all. Yetko and his people had traded with these Children of Skaith-Our-Mother for generations, but the trading was done in a place outside the sacred House and never by such exalted ones as were gathered here-the Clan Mothers and the counselors, the Diviners, Skaith-Daughter herself-all glittering in their fine harness and jeweled badges of rank. No other Harsenyi had ever stood where he was standing. Yetko knew that his being here was neither right nor normal, and he was afraid. But this was a time for fear and for fearful happenings, a time of breaking and sundering. He had already beheld the unthinkable. His having been brought here was surely a part of the madness that walked upon the world. Kell á Marg spoke. Her voice was musical, with a sound of bells, but it was a voice of power nonetheless.

"You are the headman of the village?"

They both knew that she meant the permanent camp on the other side of the Plain of Worldheart. There was no other. The Harsenyi were nomads, carrying their houses with them as they moved. Yetko said:

"I am."

He was uneasy with these creatures, terrified lest he show it. Their forebears had been human, even as he was, but by some lost magic of the ancients their bodies had been altered so that they might live and be happy in these beautiful sunless catacombs, t the protecting womb of the goddess they worshipped. Yetko was a child of Old Sun and the wide cruel sky; he could not understand their worship. The fine white fur that covered them disturbed him. So did their smell, a faint dry pungency. Their faces were distorted subtly from what Yetko considered the human norm-noses too blunt, jaws too prominent, eyes too large and glowing in the lamplight.

"From our high northern balconies," said Kell á Marg, "we have seen flames and smoke on the other side of the plain, behind the mists. Tell us what has happened."

"One came," said Yetko. "He overthrew the Lords Protector. They fled from him through the passes of the Bleak Mountains, along the road to Yurunna; and he burned their Citadel that has been since before the Wandering, so that only the empty walls still stand."

A sigh went around the hall, a sound of astonishment and shock. Kell á Marg said, "Did you see this person?"

"I saw him. He was very dark and tall, and his eyes were like the ice that forms over clear water."

Again the sigh, this time with a note of vicious hatred.

"It was Stark!"

Yetko glanced sidelong at Skaith-Daughter. "You know him?"

"He was here, a prisoner of the Wandsman Gelmar. He has brought death to the House of the Mother,

killing two of our young men when he broke free by the northern gate."

"He will bring more death," said one of the Diviners. "The Eye of the Mother has seen this." He stepped forward and shouted at Yetko. "Why is it that the Northhounds did not kill him? Why, why? Always they guarded the Citadel from intruders. Why did they let him live?"

The Clan Mothers and the counselors echoed him, and Kell á Marg said:

"Tell us why."

"I do not know," said Yetko. "The Lords Protector told us that somehow he had slain the great king-dog Flay and taken control of the pack. They said he was more beast than man. Certainly the hounds went with him to the Citadel, and certainly they killed a number of the servants there." A deep shudder shook him as he remembered. "Certainly when he came to our camp to take riding animals from us, the Northhounds followed at his heels like puppies."

"He is not Skaith-born," said Kell á Marg. "He comes from another world. His ways are not ours."

Yetko shuddered again, partly because of her words, but mostly because of the tone in which she spoke them.

"He followed the Lords Protector?"

"Yes, with the hounds. He and another man. The other man came long before, up the Wandsmen's Road from the south. He was a captive in the Citadel." Yetko shook his head. "That one also was said to have come from beyond the sky. Mother Skaith is beset by demons."

"She is strong," said Kell á Marg, and laid her head against the breast of the brown stone woman. "There are many dangers, I believe, beyond the Bleak Mountains."

"Yes. The Hooded Men permit us to come only as far as the first wayhouse, but that is a week's journey and dangerous enough because of the Runners, which are terrible things, and because of the sandstorms. The 3

Hooded Men themselves are man-eaters; and the Ochar, who keep the road, are a powerful tribe."

"So that with good fortune the man Stark may die in the desert." Yetko said, "It is likely."

"What of the Wandsman Gelmar? He left the House of the Mother with two prisoners."

"He crossed the Bleak Mountains before the attack on the Citadel. He had a Southron woman with him, and a wounded man in a litter. There were also three lesser Wandsmen and the servants."

"Perhaps I was wrong," said Kell á Marg, speaking to herself aloud, "not to let Gelmar keep the man Stark, as he wanted. But Stark was in chains. Who would have believed that he could escape our daggers, and then survive even the Northhounds?"

For the first time Yetko understood that the Presence was afraid, and that frightened him more than her strangeness or her power. He said humbly,

"Please, if there is nothing more you require from me ..." Her dark unhuman eyes brooded upon him. "Now that the Citadel has fallen, your people are preparing to abandon the village?"

"We kept the village only to serve the Wandsmen and the Lords Protector. If they come again, so will we. In the meantime, we will only come for the trading."

"When do you go?"

"With Old Sun's next rising."

Kell á Marg nodded slightly and lifted a slender hand in a gesture of dismissal. "Take him to the outer cavern, but see that he stays there until I send word."

The two white-furred man-things who had brought Yetko from the camp to the great hall took him out again, through long hollow-sounding corridors with carved walls and ornamented ceilings and myriad doorways into dimly lighted rooms filled with half-glimpsed unknowable things. There was a smell of dust and of the sweet oil that fed the lamps. Yetko's thick feet went faster and faster, in a hurry to be gone.

Kell á Marg sat upon the knees of Skaith-Mother. She 4

did not move or speak; her courtiers stood waiting, silent and afraid. At last she said, "Fenn. Ferdic."

Two lordly men stepped forward. They wore shining diadems. Their eyes, too, shone with anguish, because they knew what she was about to say to them. Skaith-Daughter leaned forward. "The threat is greater than the man Stark. We must know the true nature and extent of the danger. Go with the Harsenyi as far south as you may, and as quickly. Go on to Skeg. Learn about these starships. Do ail in your power to have them sent away to whatever suns they came from."

She paused. They bent their furred and handsome heads.

"Seek out Gelmar," she said. "He will know if Stark has somehow managed to survive the desert. And if he has, do anything, pay any price, to have him killed."

Fenn and Ferdic bowed. "We hear, Skaith-Daughter. Even this we will do, in the service of the Mother."

Men condemned to death, they withdrew to make their preparations for the journey.

First of these was a ceremony in the Hall of Joyful Rest, where the Children were laid to sleep in the embrace of the Mother. It had been so long since anyone had been forced to leave the sacred House that the officiating Diviner had difficulty in finding the proper scrolls for the ritual. The stone knife and small jeweled caskets had been untouched for centuries. Still, the thing was done at last. The severed fingers were buried in hallowed ground, so that no matter where death might overtake them on the outside, Fenn and Ferdic could know that they were not lost entirely from the tender love of Skaith-Mother.

Gerd thrust his massive head against Stark's knee and said, Hungry. The Northhounds had been ranging ahead of the men. Born telepaths, they were able to communicate well enough for most needs; but sometimes their talk, like their minds, was overly simple.

Stark asked, Gerd is hungry?

Gerd growled and the coarse white fur bristled along his spine. He looked uneasily at the emptiness surrounding them.

Out there. Hungry.

What?

Not know, N'Chaka. Things.

Out there. Things. Hungry. Well, and why not? Hunger was the great constant over most of this world of Skaith, senile child of the ginger star that spilled its rusty glare out of a dim cold sky onto the dim cold desert.

"Probably a pack of Runners," Ashton said. Having been up this road as a prisoner some months before, he knew the hazards. "I wish we were better armed."

They had helped themselves to what they needed from the Citadel before Stark put it to the torch. Their weapons were of excellent quality, but Skaith's poverty-stricken technology, sliding backward through long centuries of upheaval and dwindling resources, could now offer nothing more sophisticated than the sword, the knife and the bow. Stark, being a mercenary by trade, was proficient with all these; the wars he fought in were small and highly personal affairs, involving tribes or small nations on as-yet-uncivilized worlds beyond the fringes of the Galactic Union. Simon Ash6

ton, who had done all his fighting years ago and in uniform, would have felt happier with something more modem.

"We have the hounds," Stark said, and pointed to a rise ahead. "Perhaps we can see something from there."

They had been driving hard ever since they left the smoking ruins of the Citadel. The passes through the Bleak Mountains led them first north and then east, and the mountain chain itself made a great bend to the southeast, so that the lower range now stood like a wall at their right hands. The Wandsmen's Road came up from Skeg straight across these eastern deserts, a much shorter route than the one Stark had followed on his own journey north from Skeg to find the hidden Citadel where Ashton was being held. He had had perforce to go first to Irnan, which was somewhat westerly, and then more westerly still, with his five comrades, to Izvand in the Barrens. After that he had made a long traverse in the creaking wagons of the trader Am-nir of Komrey, who had taken them to sell for a high price to the Lords Protector, through the darklands on an ancient road. Stark's way up from Skeg had described roughly the curve of a broken bow. Now he was going south again along the straight line of the bowstring.

He whacked his shaggy little mount to a faster pace. At first, where the frozen ground was hard and stony, they had made good time. Now they were among the dunes, and the Harsenyi beasts with their sharp little hoofs were laboring.

They topped the rise and halted. By the time the westerlies came across the barrier mountains, they had dropped most of their moisture. In place of the snows on the other side there was dun-colored sand with only a splotching and powdering of white. The air was no less cold. And in all that bitter landscape, nothing moved. The cairns that marked the Wands-men Road marched away out of sight. The Lords Protector were still well ahead.

"For old men," said Stark, "they're traveling well." 7

"They're tough old men. Let the beasts rest a bit, Eric. It won't help anyone if we kill them."

The exodus of the Lords Protector and their servants had taken more animals than the Harsenyi could well spare. Only fear of the Northhounds had induced them to part with three more, two for riding and one to carry supplies. They were strong little things, with thick hair that hung down as though they were wearing blankets. Bright button eyes peered through tangled fringes. Sharp horns were tipped with painted balls to prevent hooking. Their air of patient martyrdom was well spiced with malice. Still, they bore their burdens willingly enough; and Stark reckoned they would do, for the time being.

"We'll borrow some from Ferdias. But we must catch up with Gelmar before he reaches the first wayhouse. If we don't, we'll never see him, not in this desert."

"Gelmar won't be sparing his animals, either. Ferdias will have sent one of the Yur ahead to tell him what happened. He'll know you're coming after him." Stark said impatiently, "He's traveling with a badly wounded man." Halk, the tall swordsman, albeit no friend of Stark's, had come north with him for the sake of Irnan, and he was one of the two survivors of the original five. The other was the wise woman Gerrith. They had been caught with their comrades in Gelmar's trap at Thyra, and Halk was sorely hurt in that battle.

"He must be carried in a litter. Gelmar can't travel too fast."

"I don't think you can count on that. I believe Gelmar would sacrifice Halk to keep you from taking Gerrith back. She's a vital part of their whole strategy against Irnan." Ashton paused, frowning. "Even so, I think the Wandsmen would be willing to sacrifice Gerrith if they could take you. Ferdias had the right of it, you know. It was madness to try and turn an entire planet upside down for the sake of one man."

"I've lost two fathers," Stark said, and smiled. "You're the only one I've got left." He kicked his mount forward. "We'll rest farther on." 8

Ashton followed, looking in some wonderment at this great dark changeling he had brought into the world of men. He was able to remember with vivid clarity the first tune he had seen Eric John Stark, whose name then was N'Chaka, Man-Without-a-Tribe. That had been on Mercury, in the blazing, thundering valleys of the Twilight Belt where towering peaks rose up beyond the shallow atmosphere and the mountain-locked valleys held death in an amazing variety of forms. Ashton was young then, an agent of Earth Police Control, which had authority over the mining settlements. EPC was also responsible for the preservation of the aboriginal tribes, a scanty population of creatures kept so much occupied with the business of survival that they had not had time to make that last sure step across the borderline between animal and human. Word had come that wildcat miners were committing depredations. Ashton arrived too late to save the band of hairy aboes, but the miners had taken a captive. A naked boy, fierce and proud in the cage where he was penned. His skin was burned dark by the terrible sun, scarred by the accidents of daily living in that cruel place. His shaggy hair was black, his eyes very light in color-the clear, innocent, suffering eyes of an animal. The miners had tormented him with sticks until he bled. His belly was pinched with hunger, his tongue swollen with thirst. Yet he watched his captors with those cold clear eyes, unafraid, waiting for a chance to kill.

Ashton took him out of the cage. Thinking back on the time and effort required to civilize that young tiger, to force him to accept the hateful fact of his humanity, Ashton sometimes wondered that he had possessed enough patience to accomplish the task.

Records of Mercury Metals and Mining had given the boy's identity and his name, Eric John Stark. Supposedly, he had died along with his parents in the fall of a mountain wall that wiped out the mining colony where he was born. In fact, the aboes had found him and reared him as their own, and Ashton knew that

no matter how human his fosterling Eric might look on the outside, the primitive N'Chaka was still there, close under the skin. That was how Stark had been able to face the North-hounds and kill their king-dog Hay. That was why they followed him now, accepting him as their leader, beast to beast. Seeing the nine great white brutes running beside Stark, Ashton shivered slightly, sensing the eternal stranger in this, the only son he had ever had.

Yet there was love between them. Stark had come of his own free will, to fight his way across half this lunatic world of Skaith and free Ashton from the Lords Protector at the Citadel.

Now a long road lay before them, full of powerful enemies and unknown dangers. In his heart Ashton felt sure they would never make it back to Skeg, where the starport offered the sole means of escape. And he felt a moment of anger that Stark had put himself in this position. For my sake, Ashton thought. And how do you think I will feel when I see you die, for my sake?

But he kept this thought to himself.

When their mounts had begun to flag noticeably, Stark allowed a halt. Ashton watered the riding animals and fed them with cakes of compressed lichens. Stark fed the hounds sparingly with strips of dried meat brought from the Citadel. Gerd was still muttering about Things, though the landscape remained empty. The men chewed their own tough rations, moving about as they did so to stretch muscles cramped by long hours in the saddle.

Stark said, "How far have we come?"

Ashton looked at the faceless monotony of the dunes. "I'd guess we're more than halfway to the first shelter."

"You're sure there isn't any other way to go, to get ahead of Gelmar?"

"The road was laid out in the beginning along the shortest route between Yurunna and the Citadel. It hardly bends an inch in a hundred miles until it hits

those mountain passes. No shortcuts. Besides, if you lose the guideposts you're done for. Only the Hooded Men and the Runners know their way around the desert." Ashton drank water from a leather bottle and handed it to Stark. "I know how you feel about the woman, and I know how important it is to keep Gel-mar from taking her back to Irnan. But we've all got a long way to go yet."

Stark's eyes were cold and distant. "If Gelmar reaches the wayhouse before us, he will get fresh mounts. The tall desert beasts, which are much faster than these. Am I right?"

"Yes."

"He will also see to it that there are no fresh mounts for us, and the tribesmen will be warned to look for us."

Ashton nodded.

"Perhaps, with the hounds, we might overcome those difficulties. Perhaps. But the next wayhouse is seven days beyond?"

"Not hurrying."

"And Yurunna is seven days beyond that."

"Again, not hurrying."

"Yurunna is a strong city, you said."

"Not large, but it stands on a rocky island in the middle of a fat oasis-or what passes for a fat oasis hereabouts-and there's only one way up. The wild tribesmen look upon it with lust, but it's so well guarded they don't even raid much around the oasis. The Yur are bred there, the Well-Created. Some more of the Wandsmen's nastiness; I don't believe in breeding humans like prize pigs even to be the perfect servants of the Lords Protector. The Northhounds are bred there, too, and sent north along the road to the Citadel as they're needed. How would meeting their old kennelmates and the Houndmaster affect your friends?"

"I don't know. In any case, the hounds alone would not be useful against a city."

He put away the bottle and called the pack. The men climbed again onto the saddle-pads.

"There's another good reason for hurrying," Stark said. He looked at the wasteland, at the dim sky where Old Sun slid heavily toward night. "Unless we want to spend the rest of our lives on Skaith, we had better get back to Skeg before the Wandsmen decide to send the ships away and close the starport down for good."

Starships were a new thing on Skaith. Only in the last dozen years had they arrived, a shattering astonishment out of the sky.

Before that, for its billions of years of existence, the system of the ginger star had lived solitary in the far reaches of the galaxy, untouched by the interstellar civilization that spread across half the Milky Way from its center at Pax, chief world of Vega. The Galactic Union had even embraced the distant little world of Sol. But the Orion Spur, of which Skaith and her primary were citizens, had remained largely unexplored. In her young days, Skaith was rich, industrialized, urbanized and fruitful. But she never achieved space-flight; and when the ginger star grew weak with age and the long dying began, there was no escape for her people. They suffered and died, or if they were strong enough, they suffered and survived. Gradually, out of the terrible upheavals of the Wandering, a new social system arose.

The consul of the Galactic Union, who spent a few brief hopeful years at Skeg, wrote in his report:

The Lords Protector, reputed to be "undying

and unchanging," were apparently established long ago by the then ruling powers as a sort of

superbenevolence. The Great Migrations were be12

ginning, the civilizations of the north were breaking up as the people moved away from the increasing cold, and there was certain to be a time of chaos with various groups competing for new lands. Then and later, when some stability was reestablished, the Lords Protector were to prevent a too great trampling of the weak by the strong. Their law was simple: Succor the weak, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless-striving always toward the greatest good of the greatest number.

It appears that through the centuries this law has been carried far beyond its original intent. The Farers and the many smaller nonproductive fragments of this thoroughly fragmented culture are now the greater number, with the result that the Wandsmen, in the name of the Lords Protector, hold a third or more of the population in virtual slavery, to supply the rest. A slavery from which there was no escape, until the starships came. Skaith was starved for metals, and the ships could bring those, trading iron and lead and copper for drugs with fantastic properties that were grown in Skaith's narrow tropic zone and for antiquities looted from the ruins of old cities. So the Wandsmen let them stay, and Skeg became a marketplace for the off-worlders.

But the ships brought with them more than iron pigs. They brought hope. And that hope was a corrupting influence.

It led some folk to think of freedom.

The people of Irnan, a city-state in the north temperate zone, had thought of freedom so strongly that they asked the Galactic Union, through its consul, to help them emigrate to a better world. And that precipitated the crisis. The Wandsmen reacted furiously to dam this first small trickle, which they foresaw would turn into a flood as other city-states saw the possibilities of escape. They took Ashton, who had come out

from Pax as representative of the Ministry of Planetary Affairs to confer with the Irnanese, and sent him north to the Citadel for the Lords Protector to question and deal with. With his ready-made mob of Farers, Gelmar, Chief Wandsman of Skeg, shut down the GU consulate and made Skeg a closed enclave which no foreigner might leave. Other Wandsmen, under Mor-dach, punished the Irnanese, making them prisoners in their own city. And when Stark came to find Ashton, the Wandsmen were waiting for him.

Gerrith, wise woman of Irnan, had prophesied that a Dark Man would come from the stars. A wolf's-head, a landless man, a man without a tribe. He would destroy the Citadel and the Lords Protector for the sake of Ashton. For that prophecy the wise woman died, and Stark came very near to dying. He fitted the description. A mercenary, he owned no master. A wanderer of the space-roads, he had no land of his own. Orphaned on an alien world, he had no people. Gelmar and his Farers had done their best to kill him at Skeg before he could begin his search. Word of the prophecy had been carried far and wide among the scattered peoples of Skaith. It had dogged Stark all the way north, so that he was alternately considered a savior to be worshipped and encumbered, a blasphemy to be destroyed out of hand and an article of value to be sold to the highest bidder. The prophecy had not in any way helped him. Nevertheless, he had managed to do what the prophecy had said he would do. He had taken the Citadel and gutted it with fire. Because of the Northhounds and their inbred loyalty, he had not been able to kill the Lords Protector. But they would be destroyed in another sense when it became known to the people that they were not at all supernatural beings, undying and unchanging, but only seven Wandsmen who had achieved the positions of supreme authority for ordering the affairs of the Fertile Belt-seven old men cast out now upon the world by no greater power than that of an off-planet adventurer. 14

So far, so good. But the wise woman had not said what would follow the fulfillment of her prophecy.

Of the six who had left Irnan to find the Citadel, only three survived: Stark himself; Gerrith the daughter of Gerrith, who had become the wise woman in her mother's place; and Halk, that strong man and slayer of Wandsmen, comrade of the martyred Yarrod. The rest had died when the men of Thyra took Stark and the others captive for Gelmar. Thanks to Gerrith and the interference of Kell á Marg Skaith-Daughter, who had insisted that Gelmar bring the strangers into the House of the Mother so that she might learn the truth of the rumored starships, Stark had escaped from the Wandsman. He had almost died in the dark catacombs under the Witchfires, in endless rooms and corridors long abandoned and forgotten by the Children of Skaith themselves. But he had at last made his way out by the north gate, to face the Northhounds and take the Citadel. Gelmar still held Halk and Gerrith and was hurrying them south to be displayed before the walls of Irnan as evidence of the failure and folly of the revolt which had flared so suddenly into bloody violence. Irnan still stood against the anger of the Wandsmen, defying siege, hoping for allies and waiting for word from the north. When it became known that the Gtadel had truly fallen, that the Lords Protector were human and vulnerable even as other men, then other city-states would be encouraged to join with Irnan in striking out for the freedom of the stars.

Stark knew that he could count on the Lords Protector and the Wandsmen to do everything in their power to stop him. And their power was enormous. Here in the thinly populated north they maintained it by bribery and diplomacy rather than by strength. But in the Fertile Belt, the green girdle that circled the old planet's middle zones and contained the bulk of her surviving peoples, their power was based on long tradition and on the mob rule of the Farers, those wayward charges of the Lords Protector who lived only for joy beneath their dying sun. Where necessary, the

Wandsmen also employed well-armed and disciplined mercenary troops such as the Izvandians. The farther south Stark went, the more formidable his enemies would become.

Stark's mount was beginning to give out. He was just too big for it. Ashton's was in better case, having less to carry. In spite of his years Ashton retained the rawhide leanness Stark remembered from the beginning, the same tough alertness of eye and mind and body. Even after numerous promotions had landed him in a soft job with the Ministry of Planetary Affairs, Ash-ton had refused to become deskbound. He continued stubbornly to do his researches into planetary problems in the field, which was why he had come to Skaith and run himself head-on into the Wandsmen.

At least, Stark thought, he had gotten Ashton out of the Citadel alive and safe. If he did not get him back to Skeg and off-planet the same way, it would not be for lack of trying.

The wind blew stronger. The sand moved under it with a dreary restlessness. The hounds trotted patiently: Gerd, who would have been king-dog after Flay; Grith, the great grim bitch who was his mate; and the seven other survivors of the attack on the Citadel-hellhounds with deadly eyes and their own secret way of killing. Old Sun seemed to pause on the rim of the mountain wall as if to rest and gather strength for the final plunge. In spite of himself, Stark felt a passing fear that this descent might be the last one and that the ginger star might never rise again, a common phobia among Skaithians which he seemed to be acquiring. Shadows collected in the hollows of the desert. The air turned colder.

Gerd said abruptly, Things coming.

The hound had stopped in his trotting. He stood braced on forelegs like tree trunks, high shoulders hunched against the wind, coarse fur ruffling. His head, which seemed too heavy for even that powerful neck to support without weariness, swung slowly back and forth. The dark muzzle snarled. The pack gathered behind him. They were excited, making noises in their throats. Their eyes glowed, too bright, too knowing-the harbingers of death. There, said Gerd.

Stark saw them, strung along a rib of sand in the grainy light. A second before nothing had stood there. Now, in the flicker of an eyelid, there were eleven . . . no, fourteen bent, elongated shapes, barely recognizable as human. Skin like old leather, thick and tough, covered their staring bones, impervious to wind and cold. Long hair and scanty scraps of hide flapped wildly. A family group, Stark thought-males, females, young. One of the females clutched something between pendulous breasts. Other adults carried stones or thighbones.

"Runners," Ashton said, and pulled out his sword. "They're like piranha fish. Once they get their teeth in-"

The old male screamed, one high wild cry. The ragged figures stooped forward, lifted on their long legs and rushed out across the shadowed sand. They moved with incredible speed. Their bodies were drawn and thinned for running, thrusting heads carried level with the ground and never losing sight of the prey. The upper torso was all ribcage, deep and narrow, with negligible shoulders, the arms carried like

flightless wings outstretched for balance. The incredible legs lifted, stretched, spurned, lifted, with a grotesque perfection of motion that caught the throat with its loveliness even as it terrified with its ferocity. Gerd said, N'Chaka. Kill?

Kill.'

The hounds sent fear.

That was how they killed. Not with fang or claw. With fear. Cold cruel deadly mind-bolts of it that struck like arrows to the brain, drained the gut, chilled the blood-warm heart until it ceased beating. The Runners were like birds before the hunters when the guns go off. They dropped, flailing, writhing, howling. And the Northhounds went playfully among them.

Ashton still held the unnecessary sword. He stared at the pack with open horror.

"No wonder the Citadel remained inviolate for so long." His gaze shifted to Stark. "You survived that?"

"Barely." Once again he was back on the nighted plain, with the snow beneath him and the bitter stars above, and Play's great jaws laughing while he sent the killing fear. "I almost went under. Then I remembered being afraid before, when Old One was teaching me to live in that place where you found me. I remembered the rock lizards hunting me, things as big as dragons, with bigger teeth than Flay. It made me angry that I should die because of a hound. I fought back. They're not invincible, Simon, unless you think they are." The hounds were snapping the grotesque bodies back and forth like rags, playing toss and tug-of-war. Stark caught a glimpse of the female with the hanging breasts. What she had clutched between them was an infant, its tiny browless face snarling savagely even in death.

"There are some worse than that in the darklands on the other side of the mountains," Stark said, "but not much worse." Scraps and remnants of old populations left behind by the Great Migrations had solved the 18

problems of survival in numerous ways, none of them pleasant.

"The Hooded Men hate and fear the Runners," Ash-ton said. "They used to range much farther north, but now they're in bitter competition for what few resources are left in this wilderness. They can run down anything that moves, and anything that moves is food: humans, domestic animals, anything. The weaker tribes are suffering the most, the so-called Lesser Hearths of the Seven Hearths of Kheb. They've taken to raiding south, all the way to the cliff villages below Yurunna, along the Edge. The Ochar, who call themselves the First-Come, fare much better because of the supplies they get from the Wandsmen. The Lesser Hearths do not love them. There is war between them and between each other. And the Ochar will not love you, Eric. They're hereditary Keepers of the Upper Road, and their existence depends on the Wandsmen. With the Citadel gone and no more traffic between it and Yurunna ..." He made an expressive gesture.

"So far," said Stark, "I've found very few on Skaith to love me." Only one, in fact.

Her name was Gerrith.

When the hounds were done with their gamboling and their crunching, Stark called them to heel.

They came reluctantly. Good play, full belly, Gerd said. Now sleep. Later sleep, Stark answered, and looked into the bright baleful eyes until they slid aside. Now hurry.

They hurried.

The last dull glow faded. Stars burned in the desert sky, dimmed intermittently by the flaring aurora. Skaith has no moon, and the Three Ladies, the magnificent clusters that ornament the more southerly nights, gave no light here. Nevertheless, it was possible to follow the markers. The wind dropped. The cold deepened. Warm breath steamed white, froze on the faces of the men and the muzzles of the beasts.

Gerd said, Wandsmen. There.

The hounds could not distinguish between the different grades of Wandsmen, except that Gerd pictured white in his mind, which was the color of the robes worn by the Lords Protector.

Presently Stark made out a trampled track in the sand, and he knew that they were very close.

The riding animals had begun to stagger with weariness. Stark called a halt. They fed and rested and slept a while. Then they went on their way again, following the broad trail over the dunes.

The first coppery smudge of dawn showed in the east. It widened slowly, dimming the stars, staining the land like creeping rust. The rim of the ginger star crawled up over the horizon. And from somewhere ahead, Stark heard voices chanting.

"Old Sun, we thank thee for this day. For light and warmth we thank thee, for they conquer night and death. Abandon not thy children, but give us many days in which to worship thee. We worship thee with gifts, with precious blood ..." From the top of a dune Stark looked down and saw the camp: a score of servants, a huddle of beasts and baggage and, some distance apart by the remains of a fire, the seven old men-the Lords Protector, their rich robes of fur over white garments, offering the morning prayer. Ferdias was pouring wine onto the last of the embers.

He looked up at the Northhounds and at the two Earthmen on the back of the dune. Stark saw his face clearly, a strong face, proud and implacable. The dawn wind stirred his robes and his mane of white hair, and his eyes were as cold as winter ice. His companions, six dark pillars of rectitude, looked up also.

The chant did not waver. ". . . with precious blood, with wine and fire, with all the holy things of life..."

Wine hissed into the hot ashes, steaming.

And Gerd whined.

What is it? Stark asked.

Not know, N'Chaka. Wandsmen angry. Gerd lifted 20

his head, and his eyes caught the light of Old Sun so that they burned like coals. Wandsmen want to kill.

Very quietly Stark said to Ashton, "Don't make any threatening moves. Stay close to me."

Ashton nodded, looking uneasily at the nine gaunt giants who stood almost as tall as the riding animals. He settled himself in the saddle and took a firmer grip on the rein.

Stark forgot him for the moment.

The Northhounds were incapable of understanding the complexities of their betrayal. According to pack law, they had followed a new leader, one who had established beyond doubt his right to lead. They had followed him to the Citadel; and the servants, the Yur, to whom they owed no loyalty, had attacked them with arrows. They did not understand why. They only understood the wounds, and their rage had been deadly. But they had offered no threat of harm to the Wandsmen, the Lords Protector. They had forbidden N'Chaka to touch them. As they saw it, they had been loyal to their trust. They were to prevent all humans from reaching the Citadel, but they did not regard N'Chaka as human. They saw nothing wrong in allowing him to go there. Yet, when Ferdias ordered Gerd to kill N'Chaka in the Citadel, Gerd had wavered dangerously. Only the knowledge of what N'Chaka had done to Flay decided the outcome.

Now there would be another test.

Stark thought of Flay, of the death of Flay, torn and 21

bleeding on the plain. He made the thoughts strong. And he said: Watch the servants. They may send more arrows to us.

Gerd's lips pulled back. He growled. The gash across his own hip was still raw and painful.

We watch.

Stark kicked his beast into a walk, down the slope of sand toward the Lords Protector. Ashton followed. The hounds padded beside Stark, carrying their heads low, snarling.

The Yur remained motionless, staring at the pack with their shining copper-colored eyes that were like the inlaid eyes of statues, reflecting light but no depth. Their faces were beautiful to see, but so alike that they were all the same face, a face totally lacking in expression. Yet Stark could smell the fear, the rank sweat of it upon them. They had not forgotten what the Northhounds had done to their brothers.

Old Sun had completed his rising. Ferdias poured out the last of the wine. The chanting stopped. The seven old men waited by the ashes of the fire. The Earthmen and the hounds reached the bottom of the slope and halted before the Lords Protector. Stark slid off the saddle-pad, coming to the ground with the easy grace of a leopard.

"We will have six of your beasts, Ferdias," he said. "The best and strongest. Have your servants bring them now, but bid them take care." He put his hand on Gerd's high shoulders.

Ferdias inclined his head slightly and gave the order. Nervous activity began among the Yur. Ashton dismounted carefully. They waited.

The Lords Protector looked at the Earthmen as at two incarnate blasphemies. Especially they looked at Stark.

Seven iron men, they were believers in a creed and a way of life, the only ones they knew. Skaith was their world, Skaith's peoples their people. They had served all their lives to the best of their considerable 22

abilities, honoring the ancient law-succor the weak, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, strive always for the greatest good of the greatest number. They were good men. Not even Stark could question their goodness. He could question the lengths to which that goodness had been carried. Lengths that had made the bloodbath at Irnan inevitable and had brought about the deaths of equally good men and women who wanted the freedom to choose their own path among the stars.

Despite his hatred, Stark felt a certain sympathy for the Lords Protector. A little more than a decade was hardly time enough in which to absorb the enormous implications of what had happened. Skaith's little sky had been a tight-closed shell for all the ages of its existence. Uncounted generations had lived and died within that shell, seeing nothing beyond. Now, with a single dagger-stroke, that sky was torn open and Skaith stared out upon the galaxy-stunning in its immensity, thronged with unimagined worlds and peoples, ablaze with the glare of alien suns, busy with life where Skaith was concerned only with her long dying.

Small wonder that new thoughts were stirring. And small wonder that these well-nigh all-powerful men were desperately afraid of what the future might hold. If Irnan succeeded in her revolt, and other stable populations, those who supplied the food and commodities to support the vast army of Farers, should join with her in emigrating to freer worlds, all the dependants of the Lords Protector would be left destitute and the whole order would be destroyed.

"It is not right or decent," said Ferdias slowly, "that any creature in human form should control the North-hounds on their own level, as a beast."

"He will not control them long," said a small lean man with intense black eyes. "They cannot live where Old Sun is stronger."

"That is true," said Ferdias. "They are bred for the cold north." Stark shrugged. He was not worried about that day. He was worried about this one. Gerd moved uneasily,

and Stark let his hand slide down to the hound's broad head.

"Why do we not kill this person here at once?" said the black-eyed man. "The hounds will not touch us."

"Can you be sure?" said Ferdias. "We have never killed a Northbound, and they regard him as one of their own."

"Besides," said Stark, "I'd set them on the Yur. Then you'd be alone, at the mercy of the Runners, the bellies without minds. Even the Lords Protector are not safe from them."

Another one of the six spoke up, a tall gaunt man whose wild hair was blowing across his face. His eyes glared out through it as from a thicket. He shouted at Stark.

"You cannot hope to live. You cannot hope to see Irnan again or the ships at Skeg."

Ferdias said, "I think it is useless to argue with Stark that he has no hope of doing whatever it is he intends to do. This was argued when he determined to fulfill the prophecy of Irnan."

"A prophecy of traitors!" cried the wild-haired man. "Very well, he has fulfilled it. He has taken back the man Ashton and burned our sacred roof over our heads. But that is the end of the prophecy, and the end of the Dark Man. He is no more fated."

"Unless there should be another prophecy," said Ferdias, and smiled without the slightest warmth or mirth. "But that is hardly likely. Gerrith goes to her own fate. And by her words, since Mordach destroyed the Robe and Crown, there is no longer a wise woman for Irnan."

"Wise woman or not," said Ashton, "and prophecies be damned, the change will come. Skaith herself will force it on you. The change can be peaceful, controlled by you, or it can be hideously violent. If you have the wisdom and the foresight to bring Skaith into the Union-"

Ferdias said, "We have listened to you for many months, Ashton. Our opinions have not been altered,

not even by the fall of the Citadel." His gaze dwelt again on Stark, and the hounds muttered and whined and were restless, "You hope to destroy us by revealing to the world that we are not immortals but only men, only Wandsmen grown older. Perhaps this may come about. It has not happened yet. The Harsenyi nomads will carry the tale of the Citadel's fall in their wanderings, but it will be a long time in the telling. No doubt you sent messengers of your own, or tried to, to take word swiftly to Irnan. Messengers can be intercepted. Irnan is under siege. We hold all the Fertile Belt. We hold Skeg, your only hope of escape, and the starport is under guard at all times-you can hardly hope to reach it without being captured. And Skaith herself is your enemy. She is a cruel mother, but she is ours, and we know her. You do not." He turned abruptly. "The beasts are ready. Take them and go." Stark and Ashton mounted.

Ferdias spoke aloud to Gerd, so that Stark too might hear him. "Go now with N'Chaka. You will come back to us when it is time." The Earthmen rode out of the camp with the hounds behind them. They rode for some distance. The camp was lost behind them in the dunes. Stark's muscles relaxed as the adrenaline stopped flowing. Sweat broke out on him, clammy beneath his furs. Ashton's face was a study in hard-drawn lines. Neither man spoke. Then at last Ashton sighed and shook his head and said softly, "Christ! I thought surely they'd try to turn the brutes against us."

"They were afraid to,'" Stark said. "But there will be another time." The hounds trotted peacefully.

"It seems such a primitive idea," Ashton said, "setting them to guard the Citadel."

"That's what they wanted. The Lords Protector had men-at-arms in plenty to defend them during the Wandering, but men will face other men and weapons they can see. The great white hounds appearing suddenly

out of the snow-wraiths with demon eyes and a supernatural power to kill-was something most men preferred to avoid, and of course the ones who didn't, died. In time the legend became even more effective than the fact."

"The Lords Protector must have killed many people who only wanted help."

"The Lords Protector have always been realists. The important thing was that the Citadel should remain sacrosanct, a mystery and a power hidden from men. A few lives had to be sacrificed for the good of the many." Stark's face hardened. "You weren't at Irnan, Simon, tied to a post, waiting to be flayed alive by the will of Mordach, the Chief Wandsman. You didn't hear the mob howl, you didn't smell the blood when Yar-rod was slaughtered and torn." Gerrith did. Gerrith was there, stripped naked but not shamed before the mob, defying Mordach, calling out to the people of Irnan in the clear strong voice of prophecy. Irnan is finished here on Skaith, you must build a new city, on a new world, out among the stars. She had waited there for death, beside him. As had Halk, and those three who had died at Thyra trying to reach the Citadel. Ashton had his own bitter memories of captivity and threatened death. He was only alive himself because the Lords Protector had not quite dared to be deprived of his knowledge of this new and unknown foe they had to deal with-the vast Outside.

"I know how they think," he said. "But they're not being realists about the future. The viable surface of this planet gets smaller every year. The marginal peoples are already beginning to move as the cold drives them and the food supplies dwindle. The Lords Protector are perfectly aware of this. If they don't act in time, they'll have another slaughter on their hands, such as they had at the time of the Wandering."

"It was the slaughter that gave them their power," Stark said. "They can accept another one as long as they retain their power which they will never give up."

"We're asking them to do more than give up power. 26

We're asking them to cease being. Where does a Lord Protector go when he has nothing left to protect? They have meaning only in the existing context of Skaith. If we take away that context, they disappear."

"That," said Stark, "is the best fate I could ask for them." He picked up the reins. The road markers marched away in the morning. Gelmar was somewhere ahead.

With Gerrith.

The men made much better time now, changing mounts frequently. The pack load was shared between two led animals. The beasts were by no means fresh, but they were stronger than the ones that had been left behind. Stark pushed them without mercy.

Gelmar was pushing, too. Three times they came upon dead animals. Stark half-expected to find Halk's body left by the wayside. The man had taken a great wound at Thyra, and this pace would no doubt finish him.

"Perhaps Halk is dead," Ashton suggested, "and they're carrying the corpse. They can display him just as well, pickled in wine and honey." The wind blew fitfully, veering with a kind of spiteful malice so that it could kick sand in their faces no matter how they turned them. Toward noon a haze came out of the north and spread across the sky. Old Sun sickened, and the face of the desert was troubled.

Ashton said, "The Runners often come with the sandstorms. In force." They drove their mounts to the limit and beyond, passing each marker as an individual triumph. The beasts groaned as they went. The hounds ran with their jaws wide and their tongues lolling.

The haze thickened. The light of the ginger star yellowed and darkened. The wind struck at the men with vicious little cat's-paws. Sky, sun and desert lost definition, became merged into one strange brassy twilight In that distanceless and horizonless half-gloom Stark and Ashton came to the top of a ridge and saw Gel-mar's party ahead, a line of dark figures clotted to27

gether, puffs of blowing sand rising beneath them as they moved. 6

Stark said to Gerd, Run. Send fear to the servants ii they fight. Hold them all until I come.

Gerd called his pack together. They fled away, nine pale shadows. They bayed, and the terrible voices rang down the wind. The people of Gelmar's party heard and faltered in their going.

Stark handed his lead-reins to Ashton and flogged his beast into a lumbering gallop.

A spume of sand had begun to blow from the tops of the dunes. The wind was settling into the northeast quandrant. Stark lost the voices of the hounds. For a time he lost sight of the party, because of a dusty thickness in the lower air that came down like a curtain on the flat below the ridge. When he saw them again, blurred shapes of men and animals rubbed with a dark thumb on an ocher canvas, they were standing perfectly still. Only the hounds moved, circling.

Stark rode up to the group. The face he was looking for was not the first one he saw. That was Gelmar's. The Chief Wandsman of Skeg sat his mount a little apart from the others, as though perhaps he had turned to intercept the hounds. The strain of the journey showed on him and on the three other Wands-men who accompanied him. Stark knew them all by sight but only one by name-that was Vasth, who had wrapped his ruined face in a scarf against the cold. Halk had struck him down at Irnan, on that day when the city rose and killed its Wandsmen. Vasth was apparently the only survivor. His remaining eye peered at Stark, a vicious glitter between the wrappings. 28

Gelmar had changed considerably since Stark first met him, tall and lordly in his red robe, secure in his unquestioned authority, ordering the mob at Skeg. The Wandsman had taken his initial shock that night, when Stark laid violent hands on his sacred person and made it clear to him that he could die as easily as any other man. He had received further shocks, all connected with Stark. Now he looked at the Earthman, not as would a superior being with power unlimited, but as a tired man, one who was exasperated, thwarted and quite humanly angry-seeing another defeat, but not beaten. Gelmar was not ever going to be beaten as long as he could breathe.

Gerd ranged himself at Stark's side. Wandsmen angry we follow N'Chaka. Angry with N'Chaka. Not you.

Gerd whined. Never angry at Flay.

Flay is dead. Ferdias say follow me, for now.

Gerd subsided, unsatisfied.

Gelmar smiled briefly, having understood Gerd's side of the exchange. "You'll have difficulty holding them. They're not equipped to serve two masters."

"Would you care to put it to the test now?" Gelmar shook his head. "No more than Ferdias did." The Yur, ten or eleven of them scattered along the line, were standing quiet. Some were on foot, and they seemed less tired than the mounted Wandsmen. But they were bred for strength. They stared at the hounds with their blank bright eyes, and Stark thought they were puzzled rather than afraid. They knew what had happened at the Citadel, but they hadn't seen it. They were armed with bows and light lances, swords and daggers at their belts.

"The servants," Stark said, "will lay down their arms, very carefully. If any hostile move is made, the hounds will kill."

"Would you leave us at the mercy of the Runners?" cried one of the lesser Wandsmen.

"That concerns me not at all," said Stark. "You 29

have a dagger at your own waist. Discard it." He motioned to Gelmar. "Give the order."

"The hounds will not harm us," said Vasth. His voice came muffled through the scarf.

Gelmar said with cold impatience. "There is a sandstorm blowing. We need the Yur." To Stark he said, "The Runners come with the storms, living where other creatures would die. They come in strength, devouring everything in their path."

"So I have heard," said Stark. "Give the order." Gelmar gave the order. The Yur dropped their weapons into the blowing sand. Gelmar loosened his own belt.

Stark kept his eyes on Vasth.

Gerd said, Wandsman throw knife, kill N'Chaka.

I know. Touch him, Gerd.

Not hurt Wandsman.

No hurt. Touch.

Gerd's baleful gaze turned to the Wandsman. Vasth was stricken with a sudden trembling. He made a strangled sound and let the dagger fall.

"Stand quiet now," said Stark, and called. "Gerrith!" There was a covered litter slung between two animals. She came from beside it, shaking back the fur hood that covered her head. The wind picked up thick strands of hair the color of warm bronze. She smiled and spoke his name, and her eyes were like sunlight.

"Come here by me," he said.

She reined her beast to the side away from Gerd. Her face had been thinned by the long journeying, all the way from Irnan, across the Barrens and through the haunted darklands to the Citadel. The fine bones were clear under honed flesh and taut skin colored by the winds of Skaith to a darker bronze than her hair. Proud and splendid Gerrith. Stark was shaken by a stabbing warmth.

"I knew you were coming, Stark," she said. "I knew the Citadel had fallen, long before Ferdias' messenger reached us. But we must go on now, quickly."

"I have no mind to stay." The wind had strengthened, driving the sand. The weapons were already half30

buried. The world had become much smaller. The twilight had deepened so that even the faces of the Wandsmen and the Yur were indistinct. "Is Halk living?"

"Barely. He must have rest."

Ashton appeared dimly out of the murk with the led beasts. "Let them go, Simon," Stark said. "Gerrith, can you two handle the litter?" They went at once and took the places of the two servants who had been leading the animals. Then they rejoined Stark.

"Gelmar. Tell your people to move."

The cavalcade moved, reluctantly, thinking of weapons left behind. Riders hunched in saddles, covered faces from stinging sand. Little drifts piled on Halk's litter.

They passed a marker, and Stark was squinting ahead trying to see the next one when Gerd said:

Humans. There.

Stark rode closer to Gelmar. "What humans? Hooded Men? The wayhouse?" Gelmar nodded.

They went on.

When Stark reckoned they were far enough away from the buried weapons to make impractical any attempt to recover them, he reached out and caught Gelmar's bridle.

"We leave you here. Follow too closely and your servants die. Kill Yur? Gerd asked hopefully.

Not unless I tell you.

"After you have secured the wayhouse," Gelmar said, "what then?"

"He will leave us to die in the sand," said Vasth. "May Old Sun shrivel the men from the stars!"

The cavalcade had halted, bungling together behind Gelmar.

"I would prefer to show you the same mercy you have shown us," said Stark.

"But if you make it to the wayhouse, I'll not deny you shelter." 31

Gelmar smiled. "You could not. The hounds would force you to let us in."

"I know," said Stark. "Otherwise I might be less generous." He rode away from the party, with Ashton and Gerrith and the litter. Lead us to humans, he said to Gerd, knowing that Gelmar would be following the same mental beacon. They could forget about the markers. They plunged on, across whaleback dunes that blurred and shifted shape beneath them. The litter swayed and jolted. Stark was sorry for Halk, but there was no help for it. The desert cried out in torment, a great hissing gritty wail rose and circled and fell away again to a deep moaning.

Then, abruptly, the wind dropped. The lower air cleared in the sudden stillness. Old Sun shone raggedly above. From the top of a ridge they saw the wayhouse half a mile or so ahead, a thick low structure of stone with a series of drift-walls about it to keep the desert out.

Ashton pointed away and said, "God Almighty." A tsunami, a tidal wave of sand, rushed toward them out of the northeast. It filled the whole horizon. Its crest of dusty foam curled halfway up the sky. Below, it was a brightish ocher shading down through dirty reds and browns to a boiling darkness at the bottom that was almost black. Stark saw a scudding of many shapes that ran fleetly before the edges of that blackness.

For the second time Gerd said, Things come.

Gelmar's party appeared on the back trail, clear in the placid air. They paused and looked northeastward, then came on again at a run. Stark lashed the beasts forward. The wave had a voice, a roaring almost too deep for the human ear to register. The heart felt it, and the marrow of the bones, and the spasming gut. Even the animals forgot their weariness. All at once Gerd spoke urgently in Stark's mind. 32

Wandsman says come, N'Chaka. Come now or things Ml.

He turned with the pack and raced away down the back trail, answering Gelmar's call.

Stark said, Gerd, come back!

The hounds ran on.

Danger, N'Chaka. Guard Wandsmen. You come.

"What is it?" shouted Ashton, his voice a thin thread against the far-off roaring. "Where are they going?"

"To guard the Wandsmen." The overriding imperative, the instinct bred in the bone. And Gelmar's cry for help must have been urgent enough, what with his escort unarmed and the Runners coming. Stark swore. If he let the pack go without him, N'Chaka might never regain his authority. He could not make the hounds return to him. Neither could he afford to let Gelmar get control of them.

"I have to go with them." He waved the others on. "Get to the wayhouse, Simon." Gerrith's face, pale under the bronze, and framed in dark fur, stared at him. The litter careened wildly, the muffled form within it so still that Stark wondered if any life was left. "Go!" he yelled. "Go!" He reined his beast around and sent it staggering after the hounds, his thoughts as black as the base of the sand wave.

He met Gelmar's party in a space between two

dunes. All the Yur were on foot now, running more

strongly than the beasts. Two ran at the head of each Wandsman's mount, helping it along. The North hounds hovered on the flanks. Gelmar looked at Stark with a certain cruel amusement. "I wondered if you'd come."

Stark did not answer. He fell in at the head of the party, sword in hand. The crest of the wave, out-speeding the base, began to spread overhead. Dirty veils of grit trailed down from it. The air was thickening again. When they topped a dune, Stark could see the wall of sand sweeping nearer. The Runners scudded before it as if riding a sandstorm gave them even more pleasure than sex or feeding. It was a game, such as Stark had seen strong-winged birds play with storm winds, and there was a sinister beauty in the flickering movement of bending shapes, a sort of dark dance, swift and doomsome. He could not count the creatures, but he guessed at half a hundred. Perhaps more.

They were not moving at random. They had a goal. "The wayhouse?"

"There is food there. Men and animals." "How do they attack?"

"With the stormfront. While their victims are stunned and suffocating, they feed. They survive the dust, and they seem to enjoy the violence. They strike like Strayer's Hammer."

Strayer was a god of the forges worshipped by certain iron-working folk on the other side of the mountains. Stark had had some experience of that hammer.

"We must have shelter," he said, "before the sand wave hits, or we'll be so scattered that even the hounds won't be able to help us." From the next ridge Stark made out the smudged images of Ashton, Gerrith and the litter. They had reached the walls and begun to pass through a gate. Stark lost sight of them as he came sliding down to the flat. Flying grit blinded him. The ground shook. The huge solemn roaring filled the world. Half a mile. Seven and a half minutes walking. Half of that running flat out for your life. Stay close, Gerd! Lead to humans! Gerd's head pressed his knee. He felt the hound tremble.

No worse than snowblind storm on Worldheart. Lead, Gerd!

Grith came shouldering up beside her mate. We lead.

The air was a darkening turmoil. They fled across the face of the storm, toward the walls they could no longer see.

Things come, N'Chaka.

Kill?

Too far. Soon.

Hurry, then!

Wind plucked at them, trying to lift them into the sky. Stark counted seconds. At one hundred and seventy a wall loomed in the murk, so close that they almost came against it. The gate. The gate!

Here, N'Chaka.

An opening. They passed through it. Now that they were within the walls of the fury of the wind seemed to abate somewhat, or else there was a space of dead air just before the wave. They could see the squat stone house ahead, beyond an inner wall and forever out of reach. They could see, much closer to them, some long low pens for the sheltering of animals, roofed over and open to the south, empty.

They could see the wave burst over the northeast walls in great boiling spouts of sand, dun-colored against black.

The Runners came with the boiling sand spouts, skimming the ground with outstretched arms. They were filled with a demoniac energy, as though they drew strength from the dynamics of wind and erupting desert. Stark dropped from the back of his foundering beast and caught tight hold of Gerd's coarse neck-fur with his left hand. The Yur were behind him, fairly carrying the Wandsmen, the hounds hanging close, shoulders jostling. The pens offered no security but they were shelter of a sort, better than the open. They flung themselves under the nearest roof, against the nearest wall. The wave hit.

Black, roar, dust, cracking, shaking, world falling. The wind hated them for cheating it. The air beneath the roof was thick with sand, and the sand had faces in it, gargoyle faces, film-eyed and browless, with great snapping teeth.

Kill!

The hounds killed.

Part of the roof ripped away. Runners were there, kicking, tearing. Their strength was appalling. The hounds killed, but some of the Runners plummeted down through the holes, onto the prey beneath. The Yur had placed the Wandsmen in a corner and formed a human wall across their front. They had only their hands to fight with. Runner jaws clamped on the living flesh and did not let go.

Stark killed with a furious loathing, slashing at anything that moved in the blind dust. There was a foul stink. The screaming of the Runners in rage and hunger and deadly fear came thin and terrible through the storm. The hounds killed until they were tired.

Too many, N'Chaka. Strong.

Kill, kill, or Wandsmen die!

He did not care if the Wandsmen died. He only wanted to live himself. The hounds killed.

The last of the Runner pack went whimpering away after the passing storm, to seek easier prey. There were heaps of ugly bodies left behind. But the hounds were too weary for play. They sat and hung their heads and let their tongues loll.

N'Chaka, we thirst.

Spent and shaken, Stark stood staring at the pack.

"They have their limits," said Gelmar. His face was ashen. "Of course they have." One of the Yur was beside him. "Give him your sword." And again, impatiently, "Your sword, Stark! Unless you wish to do the thing yourself." The Wandsmen were unharmed. Two of the Yur were dead. Three others had been torn beyond hope.

Runner corpses were still attached to them, blood dripping from obscene jaws. Stark handed over his sword.

Quickly and efficiently the Yur gave each the mercy-stroke. The eyes of the victims watched without emotion and became only a shade less bright in the beautiful blank faces as death overtook them. The uninjured servants stood by impassively. When he was finished, the Yur wiped the blade and returned the sword to Stark.

And it had all happened in the space of a few minutes. The concentrated savagery of the attack had been shocking. Stark realized that Gelmar was looking at the Runner bodies with a sort of horrified fascination.

"Never seen them before?"

"Only from a distance. And never . . ." Gelmar seemed to hesitate over some inner thought. "Never so many."

"Each year they come in greater numbers, Lord." It was a new voice, authoritative and strong. Stark saw that four men had appeared in the open side of the pen. They were little more than shadows in the blowing dust. Hooded cloaks of leather, dyed the color of bittersweet, whipped about tall lean bodies. Faces were hidden behind wrappings of cloth of the same color, all but the eyes, which were blue and piercing. The man who had spoken stood jn the chief's place ahead of the others. Pendant upon his forehead, under the hood, was a dull orange stone set in gold, much scratched and worn.

"We saw you just before the storm struck, Lord, but we were not able to come." He was staring, as they all were, at the bodies of the Runners.

"The Northhounds did this?"

Gelmar said, "Yes."

The Hooded Man made a sign in the air and muttered something, glancing sidelong at the great hounds. Then he straightened and spoke to Gelmar. But his cold gaze had turned to Stark.

"In the house are two men and a woman who came 37

just before you. The gray-headed man we saw before, when the Wandsmen brought him north some months ago. They admitted they had been your prisoners. They told us that this stranger leads the Northhounds, so that they no longer obey you, and that we must take orders from him. We know, of course, that this is a lie."

He tossed back his cloak to show a sword, short and wickedly curved, and a knife whose iron grip looped over the knuckles for striking and was set with cruel studs.

"How do you wish us to take this man, Lord-alive or dead?" 8

Gerd moved his head and growled, catching the man's thought. N'Chaka?

Send fear. Him! Not kill.

Gerd's hellhound gaze fixed on this tall chief of the Ochar, First-Come of the Seven Hearths of Kheb, and crumpled him sobbing into the dust like a terror-stricken child. His companions were too astonished to move.

"No!" cried Gelmar. "Stop it, Gerd!" The hound whined irritably. N'Chaka?

Stark dropped his sword and caught Gerd's head, both sides, by the skin of his jowls.

Wandsmen not threatened. N'Chaka is. Who do you follow?

Have it out now, Stark thought. Now. Or we're back where we started, all of us-Gerrith, myself, Simon, Halk-all prisoners of the Wandsmen. 38

He drew houndskin tight between his fingers, stared into hot hound eyes. Send fear.

The Ochar chief gasped and groveled in the sand.

"No," said Gelmar, who came and put his hand on Gerd's shoulder. "I forbid you, Gerd. You belong to us, to the Wandsmen. Obey me." The Ochar chief ceased to struggle. He continued to sob. The three other men had moved away from him, as if he had been suddenly bewitched and they feared to be caught by the same spell. They appeared bewildered, unable to believe what they saw.

Gerd made an almost human cry. N'Chaka! Not know. He was tired, and the fight had left him edgy and upset. The smell of blood was strong. He pulled against Stark's hands. He threw himself from side to side, and his claws tore the dust.

Stark held him. Choose, Gerd. Whom do you follow?

A dangerous light had begun to kindle in Gerd's eyes. Abruptly the hound stood still, quivering in every muscle.

Stark braced himself.

The pack, by custom, would not interfere. The matter was between himself and Gerd. But they would see to it that no one else interfered, in a physical sense. There would be no danger of a knife in the back.

"Kill, Gerd," said Gelmar, his hand on the hound's shoulder. "This man will lead you all to death."

And Stark said, You cannot kill me, Gerd. Remember Flay. The bolt of fear struck him. It shriveled his brain and turned his bones to water. It set his heart pounding until it threatened to burst against his ribs. But he held his grip. And a fierce cry came from out of his deep past, I am N'Chaka. I do not die.

The fear kept on.

Stark's pale eyes changed. His mouth changed. A sound came from his throat. He was no longer seeing Gerd as Gerd. He was seeing older, faraway things, the Fear-Bringers-the eternal enemy with all his many

faces of dread, hunger, storm, quake, deadly night, deadlier day, the stalking hunter snuffling after heart-blood.

All life is fear. You have never felt it, hound. Death never feels it. Hound, I will teach you fear.

His grip shifted suddenly to Gerd's throat, gathered loose skin on either side, gathered and twisted, twisted and gathered, until the hound began to strangle, and still his fingers worked, and he said:

Do you see, Gerd, how it feels to die?

N'Chaka...!

The fear stopped.

Gerd dropped down, jaws wide, muzzle drawn in a snarling rictus. He put his chin on the ground.

Follow ... strongest.

Stark let go. He straightened up. His eyes were still strange, all the humanness gone out of them. Gelmar stepped back, as though retreating from something unclean.

But he said, "You will not always be the strongest, Stark. Human or beast, your flesh is vulnerable. One day it will bleed, and the hounds will tear you."

The Ochar chief had risen to his knees. He wept tears of rage and shame.

"Do not let me live," he said. "You have put disgrace upon me before my tribesmen."

Stark said, "There is no disgrace. Is one man stronger than all these?" He pointed to the Runner bodies.

The Ochar chief got slowly to his feet. "No. But just now you withstood."

"I am not of your world. No man born of Skaith can stand against the Northhounds. And lest your tribesmen think shame of you, I will show them the truth of that."

Gerd squatted on his haunches, stretching his neck and hacking. Stark called the pack and they came around him, eyes averted lest they should seem to challenge him.

He gave an order, and the three Ochar were smitten with a palsy. They opened their mouths beneath the

orange wrappings and cried out. They ran stumbling away.

"Now," said Stark to the chief, "we will go to the house. Gelmar, take your people. Walk ahead of us." To the Ochar he said, "How are you called?"

"Ekmal."

"Stay by me, Ekmal. And remember that the hounds hear your thoughts." He ordered the hounds to watch but not to kill unless he told them to. The Wandsmen went ahead, hating him. The Yur, beautiful and blank, walked with the Wandsmen. Ekmal walked beside Stark, his hands well away from his girdle and the sharp blades. The hounds came at Stark's heels. The wind still blew and the air was brown, but a man could move in it if he had to. Men in cloaks of orange leather were bringing animals out of the house, where they had been taken for safety. The animals were tall, with long legs and wide paws splayed and furred for the sand. They stepped daintily. They were all colors, black and yellow and brown, barred and spotted. Their arched necks bore slender heads set with intelligent amber eyes.

The men leading them had met the three Ochar who were fleeing from the hounds. They stood shouting at each other with much gesticulating. Then they all turned and stared, and some of them reached for weapons. Stark said, "Speak to them, Ekmal."

"Put down your arms!" Ekmal cried. "These demon dogs have killed a hundred Runners. Obey this man or he will set them on us." The men muttered among themselves, but they took their hands from their hilts. Ekmal turned to Stark.

"What do you wish of us?"

"Water for the hounds. Have all your beasts brought out and fitted to carry us-myself and your three captives. Have food..."

"All the beasts? We cannot!"

"All the beasts. With food and water." 41

"But without beasts we're prisoned here!" Ekmal had the desert man's horror of being left afoot.

"Exactly," said Stark. "And so will the Wandsmen be, and the Lords Protector when they come, if they survived the storm."

Ekmal stopped. His eyes widened. "The Lords Protector? Coming here?" Gelmar said, "This off-worlder has pulled down the Citadel, Ekmal. He has burned it, and the Lords Protector are cast out." A stillness came over the Hooded Men. They stood stiff and stricken in the wind.

Ekmal wailed and lifted his hands to the sky. "The Dark Man has fulfilled the prophecy. He has destroyed the Citadel, and there will be no more keeping of the road above Yurunna. He has destroyed us, the hereditary Keepers, the First-Come of Kheb. Our wives and our sacred mothers, our tall sons and blue-eyed daughters, all will die. Our villages will disappear beneath the sands. Even the Fallarin will not remember us."

All the Hooded Men cried out. And from within the house came a new lamenting in the voices of women.

There was a shrill scream, and something fell with a clatter onto stone, beyond the open doorway.

He had a bow, N'Chaka. To send arrows.

"Wait!" said Gelmar in his strong far-carrying voice. "Do nothing now. The hounds will strike you down. But your day will come. The Lords Protector do not abandon their children. The Citadel will be rebuilt, and there are no more prophecies. Skaith is old and strong. No one man, not even a stranger from the stars, can prevail against her. Let him go now. He will find his death in her arms."

"May she bury him deep," said Ekmal. "May Old Sun shrivel his bowels. May Runners eat him."

Stark said, "Give the orders."

Ekmal gave them, shooting sharp words like darts through the cloth that hid his face. The men obeyed, but their eyes held death, or rather the hope of it, for Stark. There were eleven of them besides the chief. 42

They led out all the animals, to the number of eighteen. Ekmal said, "The well is inside."

Watch, Gerd.

The stonework of the house was solid and very old. Endless chafing of wind and sand had eroded it in whorls and pits. The edges of the doorway were worn round. On either side of the door, the wall wandered off to enclose a straggle of connected buildings that rose here and there to a second low story. Window places had been blocked up. At one corner was a little tower with many openings, and Stark could hear from within it a dim murmuring, as of birds. The wooden doors that worked on a pivot stone were enormously heavy and sheathed in iron brought by Harsenyi traders from Thyra beyond the mountains. The metal, far more valuable than pure gold, was scratched and scarred by Runner claws.

Inside, the air was still and warm, with pungent odors of animals and smoke and cooked foods. The stable area was off to the right, beyond a partition. The four Harsenyi beasts were there, standing with their heads down and their flanks heaving. The well had two stone troughs, one for the stable and one for humans.

The main room was large and neatly kept, with a dung fire smoking on a raised hearth. Weapons were ranged ready to hand. There were hangings and trophies on the walls, along with ornaments, some of them so exotic that they must have been brought up from the south over the Wandsmen's Road. Bags of grain, jars of wine and oil and other stores were kept in walled enclosures. At the back, the large room opened into a series of passageways leading to other quarters. The Wandsmen, Stark was sure, would have apartments fitted with every comfort. All in all, it was a pleasant place to rest from the rigors of travel. A group of women, some holding small children to them, was gathered just inside the door. They wore long bright-colored garments of wool, and they did not cover their faces, which were thin-featured and hand43

some and fiercely hostile. They were clustered about one woman who knelt on the floor comforting a boy of about eleven. He wore a woolen tunic with an orange girdle, and he had not yet hidden his face behind the man's veil. He was trembling, biting back his sobs, and when he saw Stark he reached out for the bow he had dropped on the stones.

"No!" said Ekmal, and snatched up the bow. He touched the boy's bright head.

"This is my son Jofr. I beg you-"

"Water the hounds," said Stark.

The women drew aside to let him pass. They bore themselves proudly. Their tawny necks and arms sounded when they moved with the soft clacking together of metal and darkling stones. Jofr rose to his feet and stood staring until his mother pulled him back.

Halk's litter had been set down close to the fire. Gerrith knelt beside it holding a cup. Ashton stood by her. Both had been watching, taut as bowstrings, to see who came in. They must have known something of what had gone on outside, but they could not be sure until they saw Stark and knew that he had survived the Runners and was somehow still in control. Halk was watching, too.

"Over there," Stark" said to Gelmar. "Sit down and be quiet." The hounds were lapping out of the trough. Hate and the death wish were as strong in the air around him as the smoke.

Watch, Gerd!

We watch, N'Chaka.

Stark walked to the fire, and the blue eyes of the women cursed him. Weariness gnawed at him, a corrosion in his bones. "Is there wine?" Gerrith poured from a clay jug and handed him the cup. Ashton's gaze moved uneasily from the Wands-men to the Hooded Men who came and went with gear and provisions.

"We must go on now," Stark said. "I can't stay awake forever, and I dare not risk the hounds." He bent over the litter. "Halk?" Halk looked up at him. A tall man, taller than 44

Stark, he lay under the furs like a withered tree. The bones of his face stuck out through folds of skin where the flesh had dropped away. His huge hands were stiff bunches of twigs bound with purple cords. But his eyes were as hard and bright and contentious as ever, and his bloodless lips still managed the old fleering smile.

"Dark Man."

Stark shook his head. "The Citadel is gone, so is the Dark Man. The prophecy is finished, and I am no more fated. This choice is yours, Halk. Will you go with us, or must we leave you here?"

"I'll go," said Halk. His voice came groaning and whispering out of his hollow chest like wind from a cave. "And I'll not die, neither. I've sworn before Old Sun's face that I'll live to make of you an offering to the shade of Breca." Breca had been Halk's shieldmate, struck down in the battle with the Thyrans. Those iron men had given her splendid body to the cannibal Outdwellers, mutton for the spit. Halk might have borne her death, but not that. And he blamed the Dark Man of the prophecy for having led them all to disaster.

"When do you plan to make this offering?" Stark asked.

"On the day when you are no longer useful to Irnan. Until then I'll fight beside you, for the city's sake."

Stark nodded. "I'll remember." To Gerrith and Ash-ton he said, "Gather your belongings." He called to two of the Hooded Men and told them to carry Halk's litter outside.

The hounds came dripping and slobbering from the trough. Gelmar said, "Stark. They will not follow you below Yurunna. Then you will be two men and a woman with a half-dead burden to bow your backs and only your six hands between you to fight with when the Yur come to take you." He turned suddenly to Gerrith. "Has the wise woman something to say?" She stood frozen in the act of pulling up her hood. She had the look of a prophetess once more, her eyes

at once seeing and not seeing, fixed on Gelmar, her lips open to form words. Stark said her name sharply. She started. Then for a moment she seemed bemused, like one waking suddenly from sleep in a strange place. Stark put his hand on her shoulder, guiding her toward the door. He did not answer Gelmar. There was nothing to say, except that what would happen would happen; and that they all knew anyway.

They passed the women and children. Jofr stood straight, a small thing of prey already shaped for Ms world.

Gerrith stopped. "Take the boy," she said.

The women screamed like eagles. Ekmal came, one hand for the boy and one for his dagger. Gerd growled.

Stark said, "I will not."

"No harm will come to him," Gerrith said, and her voice rang like a far-off bell. "Take him, Stark, or Mother Skaith will bury us all." Stark hesitated. Then reluctantly he reached out for the boy. Gerd growled louder.

"You heard the wise woman," Stark said. "No harm will come to him. Do not make me use the hounds."

The boy's mother spoke, one word, the deadliest one she knew. Ekmal's hand hovered over his knife. The hounds growled.

Stark said, "Come."

Jofr looked at his father. "Must I?"

"It seems so."

"Very well," said Jofr, and smiled. "I am an Ochar." He stepped forward alone to Stark's side.

They went out into the yard. The animals were ready, linked by leading lines, three of them saddled with the high desert saddles, covered in worked leather with designs of many colors tempered by sun and wind. The litter was suspended between two of the animals, and Halk was once more an inert bundle, his face hidden beneath the hood.

They mounted. Stark took Jofr before him in the 46

saddle. They rode away from the house, past the heaps of Runner bodies by the pens, past the gnawed and scattered bones of the Harsenyi beasts. Ekmal and the Hooded Men stood watching them until they vanished beyond the walls. Then Ekmal went into the house and spoke to Gelmar.

"Lord, is it true that he and that other are not born of Skaith-Mother?"

"That is true."

Ekmal signed the air. "Then they are demons. They have taken my son, Lord. What must I do?"

Without hesitation Gelmar said, "Bring the Swift-wing." Ekmal went along one of the tunnels of the house. The tower of murmuring birds lay to his right, but he did not go to it. They were base creatures, fit only for food. He turned to the left and climbed narrow steps to a high apartment with window slits that let hi the light of Old Sun and the wind of the desert. There were hangings of faded crimson on the walls, and trophies of weapons and skulls. Some of the skulls were brittle and yellow with age, crumbling dustily at the rims of the jaws and eyeholes.

In the center of the room, on an iron perch, sat a creature that seemed itself to be all of iron and bronze, a martial armor of shining feathers. Even with the great wings closed it had a look of speed and power, one sharp clean stroke from the crown of its snaky head to the last of its tapered tail. One of these dwelt in the house of every chief among the Ochar. Fed from the chief's table, with its slender collar of gold, it was the badge and sign and pride of chieftainship, ranking equally with honor and before life, wife, mother or child.

"Swiftwing," said Ekmal. "Sky-piercer. Wind-rider. Lightning-brother." The creature opened eyes like two red stars and looked at Ekmal. It opened its beak and cried out stridently the only word it knew:

"War!"

"Of course, war," said Ekmal, holding out his arm. 47

The beasts were fresh and strong, striding easily over the sand. The hounds trotted quietly. The wind continued to drop, diminishing the brownness of the air.

Stark rode like a thundercloud, one arm about the small ferocity of Jofr, who sat straight and unbending, his body yielding only to the motion of the beast. Gerrith said, "You are angry about the boy."

"Yes," said Stark. "I am angry about the boy. And I'm angry about something else-the visions."

"Let the boy go," Ashton said. "He can find his way back easily enough." Gerrith sighed. "Do that if you will. But none of us will ever see Yurunna." Ashton turned and studied her face. He had known many peoples on many worlds. He had seen many things that he could neither believe nor disbelieve, and he had acknowledged his ignorance.

"What did you see," he asked, "before Eric woke you?"

"I saw Eric . . . Stark ... in a strange place, a place of rocks. There were Hooded Men there, but their cloaks were of different colors, not the orange of the First-Come. They seemed to be hailing Stark, and someone . . . something .

. . was performing a ritual with a knife. I saw blood..." The boy had stiffened in the circle of Stark's arm.

"Whose blood?" Stark asked.

"Yours. But it seemed to be shed in promise, in propitiation." She looked at Jofr. "The boy was there. I saw upon his forehead that he was to be your guide. Without him you would not find the way."

"You're sure of this?" Ashton said.

"I'm sure of what I saw. That is all I can be sure of. Has Stark told you? My mother was Gerrith, the wise woman of Irnan. She prophesied in the fullness of power. I do not. My gift is small and fitful. It comes as it will. I see, and I do not see." She turned to Stark. "You are angry about visions! I'm sick of them. I'd prefer to go blundering ahead without sight, as you do, trusting nothing but my own hands and brain. Yet these windows open and I look through them, and I must tell what I see. Otherwise . . ." She shook her head violently. "All that time in the stone house, with those things clawing and screaming to get in at us, I kept seeing you being torn apart and I couldn't tell whether it was the true sight or only my own fear." Ashton said, "I had the same vision. It was fear."

"The hounds passed a miracle," Stark said. He was watching the boy's bright head, which was poised now with a new alertness.

Gerrith shuddered. "They'll come again."

"Not in such numbers, and the hounds will watch."

"If there's another sandstorm," said Ashton, "let's pray there's somewhere to hide. The next wayhouse is a week's journey."

"You'll not reach it," Jofr said. "My father will send the Swiftwing."

"Swiftwing?"

"The bird of war. All the clans of the Ochar will gather. Your demon dogs will kill many, no doubt, but there will be many more." He twisted around and smiled at Stark, his small white teeth showing sharp as a knife-edge.

"Um," said Stark. "And what of this place of rocks, and the Hooded Men who are not of the First-Come?"

"Ask the wise woman," said Jofr contemptuously. "It is her vision."

"Your father mentioned the Fallarin. Who are they?"

"I am only a child," said Jofr. "These things are not known to me." Stark let it go. "Simon?"

"They're a winged folk," said Gerrith suddenly. 49

Ashton glanced at her. "Yes. Undoubtedly a controlled mutation like the Children of the Sea and the Children of Skaith. They seem to be held in some sort of superstitious awe by the Hooded Men. They are important to tribal life but in what way I was never told. The Ochar are closemouthed with strangers, and the Wandsmen respect their tabus. Anyhow, I had other things to think about. But I do know one thing, Eric."

"What?"

"When that boy said I am an Ochar, he was doing more than stating a fact or making an affirmation of courage. He was also saying that an Ochar knows the ways of the desert, sharing its powers; that an Ochar destroys his enemies, never turning aside from sacred feud as long as he has breath. That's a blue-eyed viper you hold there, and never forget it."

"I've known desert men before," said Stark. "Now let me think." The wind dropped. The face of the desert became peaceful. The veils of dust fell away from Old Sun, and the rusty daylight showed the markers of the Wandsmen's Road marching on ahead, never so far apart that if one was buried the next one, or the one beyond that, could not be seen. Stark said, "Simon, what lies beyond Yurunna? You spoke of something called the Edge."

"The plateau we stand on drops away, four thousand feet or so. It's much warmer below, and there are places where springs make cultivation possible. There are cliff villages-"

"Where the Hooded Men raid?"

"Not the villages themselves, they're out of reach, but they try to catch people in the fields, or steal their harvest. Beyond that is more desert until you come to the Fertile Belt."

"The good green land of the Farers."

"I was brought straight up the road from Skeg, so I didn't see too much of the country. The only city I saw was Ged Darod, the city of the Wandsmen. It was quite a place."

"A place of pilgrimage," Gerrith said. "Sanctuary, whorehouse, foundling home, spawning ground of more Wandsmen. That's where they're trained and taught, and every scrap of windblown rubbish in the world that drops there is made welcome."

"The whole of the lower city is crammed with Farers and pilgrims from all over Skaith. There are pleasure gardens-"

"I've heard of it," Stark said. "But first comes Yu-runna." Happy as a bird, Jofr's clear voice said, "You will not reach Yurunna." He flung his arm skyward, a gesture of triumph. Where he pointed, high up, a winged shape of bronze and iron glinted and was quickly gone.

"It will go first to the nearest clan chiefs, and then to the farther ones. From its collar they will know that it belongs to my father. They will raise up their men at once, to come to him. You cannot pass through them on the way to Yurunna."

"Then we must go another way," said Stark. "And if there's no safety for us among the Ochar, we'll have to seek it among their enemies. Perhaps Gerrith's vision has purpose after all."

Ashton said, "You'll go to the Lesser Hearths?"

"It seems the only choice."

Jofr laughed. "The Ochar will still come after you. And the folk of the Lesser Hearths will eat you."

"Perhaps. What about you?"

"I am of the blood. I am man, not meat."

"What will they do to you?"

"I am a chiefs son. My father will buy me back."

"Then will you guide us to the Lesser Hearths? Or at least to the nearest one."

"Gladly," said Jofr. "And I myself will share in the feasting." Stark said to Gerrith, "This guide you have chosen for me does not inspire trust."

"I did not choose him," Gerrith snapped. "And I did not say he would guide you out of love."

"Which way?" asked Stark of Jofr. 51

Jofr considered. "The Hearth of Harm Is nearest." He indicated a northeasterly direction, frowning, "I must wait for the stars."

"Does that sound right to you, Simon?"

Ashton shrugged. "Judging from where the Ochar lands are. They have the best, of course."

"The Lesser Hearths are weak," said Jofr. "The Runners eat them. When they are gone, we shall have all the land and water."

"But that time is not yet," said Stark. "Let's go." They left the markers of the road behind them.

They moved on across boundless desolation while Old Sun slid down to the mountaintops and vanished in a cold brassy glare that streaked the land and then gave way to blackness and starshine and the dancing aurora. Jofr studied the sky. "There. Where the big white one hangs under a chain of three. That is the way we must go."

They altered course toward the star.

"Have you been this way before?" asked Ashton.

"No," said Jofr. "But every Ochar knows the way to the hearths of his enemies. The Hearth of Harm is five days' journey. The Hann wear purple cloaks." He said it as though "purple cloaks" was a scatological term. Stark said, "Do you know the name of that star?"

"Of course. It is Ennaker."

"The folk who live on its third world call it Fregor. Those who live on the fourth world call it Chunt. The folk of the fifth world also have a name, but I cannot shape their speech with my mouth. All the names mean sun." Jofr set his jaw. "I do not believe you. There is only one sun, ours. The stars are lamps he has set to guide us."

"All those lamps are suns. Many of them have planets, and many of the planets support life. Did you think that Skaith was all alone, and you the only people in the universe?"

"Yes," said Jofr passionately. "That is the way it 52

must be. There have been stories about flaming eggs that fall from the sky and hatch demons in the form of men, but they are not true. My mother said they were only idle tales and not to be listened to." Stark bent his head above Jofr, dark and grim in the night. "But I am a demon, boy, out of a flaming egg."

Jofr's eyes widened, reflecting the starlight. He caught his breath sharply, and his body seemed to shrink within the circle of Stark's arm.

"I do not believe," he whispered. He turned his face away and rode huddled and silent until they made camp.

Halk was still alive. Gerrith fed him wine and broth, and he ate and laughed at Stark. "Take a dagger to me, Dark Man. Else I shall live, as I told you." They tied Jofr as comfortably as possible. Stark set the hounds to watch and said good night to Ashton, who looked up at him with a sudden unexpected grin.

"I'll tell you true, Eric. I don't think we'll make it, and I don't think I'll ever see Pax again; but it's good to get back to the old ways. I never was much for office work."

Stark said, "We'll fill you up with the other kind." He put his hand on Ashton's shoulder, remembering other nights by other fires on other worlds a long time ago. Ashton had learned about the pacific administration of wild worlds by doing, and Stark had gained his early knowledge of tactics and the art of dealing with all manner of peoples from his growing-up years with Ashton along the frontiers of civilization.

"Set your superior mind to work, Simon, and tell me: how do three men and a woman and a pack of hounds take over a planet?"

''I'll sleep on it," Ashton said, and did.

Stark went and stood by the fire. Halk was asleep. Jofr lay curled in his furs with his eyes shut. Gerrith sat watching the smoke rise from the glowing embers. She stood up and looked at Stark, and they went away a little from the fire, taking their furs with them. Gerd and Grith roused and followed. When they lay down together, the two hounds lay beside them. 53

There were many things to be said between them, but this was not a time for words. This was the coming together after separation, after captivity and the fear of death. They did not waste life in talking. Afterward they slept in each other's arms and were happy, and did not question the future. The deep-shared warmth of being was enough, for as long as they could have it. On the second day after leaving the Wandsmen's Road, the character of the desert began to change. Underlying ridges rose up and became hills. The restless dunes gave place to eroded plains gashed with old dry riverbeds. Stark and his people rode through a haunted land.

There had been cities here. Not so many as in the darklands, which had been rich and fertile in their day, nor so large, but cities nonetheless, and their bones still lay along the riverbanks. Runners nested in them. Jofr seemed to have an instinct for cities. He seemed almost to smell them on the wind. But he said it was only that every Ochar boy was made to memorize the ancestral maps as well as the star-guides, so that no Ochar could ever be lost in the desert no matter what befell him. Stark tried to make him draw a map in the sand. He refused. Maps were tabu except for the Ochar. The boy had been given a beast of his own to ride, and not the swiftest. He appeared to be content to lead. Stark trusted him not at all but he was not afraid. Gerd would tell him when the boy's mind contemplated treachery. In the meantime Stark brooded, riding long hours without speaking, and then talking far into the night with Ashton and sometimes with Gerrith and Halk. It was after all their world.

Twice they waited until dark to skirt the ruins of a city, because the Runners did not hunt by night. At other times they saw roving bands of the creatures, but the hounds killed them or drove them off. And on a morning, suddenly, when they had been no more than two hours on the way and Old Sun was barely above the horizon, Gerd said:

N'Chaka. Boy think death.

At the same moment Jofr made an excuse to dismount and go apart. "Go straight on," he said. "I'll follow in a moment." Stark looked ahead. There was nothing but a flat place of sand between two low ridges, and nothing unusual about the sand except that it was perfectly smooth and the color perhaps a shade lighter than the surrounding desert. Stark said, "Wait."

The party halted. Jofr paused in the act of hiking up his tunic. Gerd came and stood beside him, dropping his huge jaw onto the boy's shoulder. Jofr did not move.

Stark dismounted and climbed one of the ridges. He picked up a large flat stone and threw it out onto the smooth sand.

The stone sank gently and was gone.

Gerd said, Kill, N'Chaka?

No.

Stark came back and looked at Gerrith, and Gerrith smiled. "I told you Mother Skaith would bury us all if you didn't take the boy." Stark grunted. Much subdued, Jofr mounted again. They went around the sinking sand, and after that Stark kept an eye out for smooth places. He knew that they were entering the territory of the Harm when they came upon the remains of a village. There had been wells and cultivation not so long ago. Now the small beehive houses were broken and gutted by the wind, and there were bones everywhere. Bones crushed and snapped and fragmented until there was no telling what sort of flesh they had once supported. The sand was full of gray-white chips.

"Runners," Jofr said, and shrugged.

"Surely the Runners attack Ochar villages," said Ashton. "How will your people hold all this land when you take it?"

"We're strong," said Jofr. "And the Wandsmen help us." 55

They passed two more villages, dead and disemboweled. Beyond the third one, in midafternoon of the fifth day, with Halk propped up in his litter wide-awake, they saw ahead of them, on the top of a hill, a knot of riders in dusty purple.

Jofr whipped his beast forward, his voice screaming high and thin.

"Slay these men! Slay them! They are demons, come to steal our world!" 10

Stark said to the others, "Wait." He went forward slowly. Gerd paced at his right knee. Grith trotted out of the pack and came on his left. The seven other hounds came behind him. He rode with his right hand high and his left holding the rein well away from his body. Up on the hill one of the men snatched the yelling boy from his beast.

Stark went half of the distance between them and stopped. He counted eight purple cloaks. They did not move for a long while, except that the man who held Jofr cuffed him once, hard. The hounds sat in the sand and lolled their tongues, and no one reached for a weapon.

They know us, N'Chaka. They fear us.

Watch.

One of the men on the hill picked up his rein and moved down the slope. Stark waited until the man halted before him. He was much like Ekmal, sinewy and blue-eyed, sitting his tall beast with the limber grace of the desert man whose life is made up of distances. His face was cov56

ered. The pendant stone on his brow that marked him a chief was a lighter purple than his leather cloak.

Stark said, "May Old Sun give you light and warmth."

"You are in the country of the Harm," said the chief. "What do you want here?"

"I wish to talk."

The chief looked from Stark to the Northhounds and back again.

"These are the deathhounds of the Wandsmen?"

"Yes."

"They obey you?"

"Yes."

"But you are not a Wandsman."

"No."

"What are you?"

Stark shrugged. "A man from another world. Or if you wish, a demon, as the little Ochar said. In any case, no enemy to the Hann. Will you make truce according to your custom and listen to what I have to say?"

"Suppose I do that," said the chief, "and my people do not like what they hear."

"Then I shall bid them good-bye and go in peace."

"You swear this?"

"By what? The word of a demon? I have said what I will do." The chief looked again at the hounds.

"Have I a choice in the matter?"

Stark said, "No."

"Then I will make truce and the Hann shall hear you. But the hounds must not kill."

"They will not unless weapons are drawn against us."

"None shall be drawn." The chief held out his right hand. "I am Ildann, Hearth-Keeper of the Hann."

"I am Stark." He clasped the chief's wiry wrist, felt his clasped in return and knew that Ildann was testing his flesh to see what it was made of.

"From another world?" said Ildann scornfully. "Many tales have come up from the south and down

across the mountains, but they're no more than tales told round a winter fire. You're flesh and blood and hard bone like myself-no demon, and not a man either by our standards, but only meat from some Southron sty." Stark's fingers tightened on the man's wrist. He said softly, "Yet I lead the Northhounds."

Ildann looked into Stark's eyes. He looked away. "I will not forget that." Stark released his grip. "We will go to your village." The two groups joined uneasily together, side by side but not mingling. And Jofr said incredulously, "Are you not going to kill them?"

"Not immediately," said Ildann, watching the hounds. Gerd gave him one baleful glance and a warning growl.

The village was in a wide valley, with a glimpse of mountains farther on beyond its rim of hills; not great mountains like the barrier range, but a curiously gnawed-looking line of peaks. In old times there had been a river here. Now it was dry except at the spring flooding, but there was still water in deep tanks dug in the riverbed. Beasts walked patiently around great creaking wheels, and women were busy with the preparation of the soil for the spring sowing. Herds of beasts cropped at some dark scanty herbage that looked more like lichen than grass; perhaps it was something in between, and Stark wondered what sort of crops grew in this place.

The women and the beasts alike were guarded by bowmen in little watchtowers set about the fields. And Stark saw the outlines of old cultivation abandoned to the sand and wrecks of old waterwheels beside dry holes.

"Your land draws in," he said. "It does for all of us," said Ildann, and glanced bitterly at Jofr. "Even for the Ochar. Old Sun grows weaker, no matter how we feed him. Every year the frosts are with us longer, and more water stays locked in the mountain ice, so that there is less for our fields. The summer pastures shrink-"

"And every year the Runners come in greater numbers to eat up your villages."

"What have you, a stranger, to do with our troubles?" Ildann's gaze was fiercely proud, and the word he used for "stranger" bore connotations of deadly insult. Stark chose to ignore them.

"Is it not the same for all the Lesser Hearths of Kheb?" Ildann did not answer, and Jofr said impudently, "The Green Cloaks are almost wiped out, the Brown and the Yellow are-"

The man whose saddle he was sharing slapped him hard across the side of his head. Jofr's face screwed up with pain. He said, "I am an Ochar, and my father is a chief."

"Neither statement is a recommendation," said the man, and cuffed him again.

"Among the Harm little whelps are silent unless they are told to speak." Jofr bit his lips. His eyes were full of hate, some for the Hann, most of it for Stark.

The village was protected by a wall that had watch-towers set at irregular intervals. The beehive houses, little more than domed roofs over cellars dug deep in the ground for warmth and protection against the wind, were painted in gay designs, all worn and faded. Narrow lanes dodged and twisted among the domes, and in the center of the village was an open space, roughly circular, with a clump of gnarled, dusty, leather-leaved trees growing in the middle of it.

In the grove was the mud-brick house that held the Hearth and the sacred fire of the tribe of Hann.

Ildann led the way there.

People came out of the houses, away from the wells and wineshops, the market stalls and the washing stones. Even those who had been in the fields came in, until the space around the Hearth-grove was filled with the purple cloaks of the men and the bright-colored skirts of the women. They all watched while Ildann and Stark and the others dismounted and Halk's litter was set carefully on the ground. They watched the grim white hounds, crouching with their eyes half59

closed and their jaws half-open. The veiled faces of the men were shadowed beneath their hoods. The faces of the women were closed tight, expressing nothing. They merely watched.

Ildann spoke. A tall woman with proud eyes came out of the Hearth-house, bearing a golden salver on which lay a charred twig. Ildann took up the twig.

"Hearth-right I give you." He marked Stark's forehead with the blackened end of the twig. "If harm befalls you in this place, the same must befall me." He replaced the twig, and the woman went back to tending the Hearth. Ildann spoke to the crowd.

"This man called Stark has come to speak to you. I do not know what he has to say. We will hear him at the second hour after Old Sun's setting." The crowd made a muttering and rustling. Then it parted as Ildann led his guests away to a house that was set apart from the others. It was larger than most and had two sides to it, one for the chief, the other for guests. The Hooded Men were seminomadic, herdsmen and hunters spending much of the summer on the move after game or pasturage. The bitter winters shut them perforce between walls. The rooms of the guesthouse were small and sparsely furnished, gritty with the everlasting dust but otherwise clean and comfortable enough.

"I'll keep the boy with me," said Ildann. "Don't worry, I'll not waste a fat ransom just to satisfy my spite. Your beasts will be cared for. Everything needful will be brought to you, and I'll send a healer if you wish, to see to your friend there. He looks like a fighting man."

"He is," said Stark, "and I thank you." The small room had begun to smell strongly of hound, and the minds of the pack were uneasy. They did not like being closed in. Ddann seemed to sense this.

"There is a walled enclosure through that passage, where they can be in the open. No one will disturb them." He watched them as they filed out. "Doubtless 60

you will tell us how it is that these guardians of the Citadel have left their post to follow at your heels."

Stark nodded. "I wish the boy to be there when I speak."

"Whatever you say."

He went out. Halk said, "I wish to be there, too, Dark Man. Now help me out of this damned litter."

They got him onto a bed. Women came and built fires and brought water. One came with herbs and unguents, and Stark watched over her shoulder as she worked. The wound in Halk's side was healing cleanly.

"He needs only rest and food," the woman said, "and time." Halk looked up at Stark and smiled.

At the second hour after Old Sun's setting, Stark stood under the trees again. Gerd and Grith flanked him to right and left. The remaining seven crouched at his back. Ashton and Gerrith were close by, with Halk in the litter. Ildann stood with the principal men and women of the village, one hand resting firmly on Jofr's shoulder. The Hearth-grove and the open space were lighted by many torches set on poles. The cold dry desert wind shook the flames, sent light snapping and flaring over the folk gathered there, waiting silently, all of them now cloaked and hooded against the chill so that even the faces of the women were hidden.

Ildann said, "We will hear the words of our guest." His eyes, in the torchlight, were intensely alert. Stark knew that he had spent the last few hours pumping Jofr dry of all the information he possessed. The boy's cockiness had gone; he now appeared angry and doubtful, as if the water had got far too deep for him.

The faceless, voiceless multitude stood patiently. Wind rubbed their leather cloaks together, rattled the tough leaves of the trees. Stark rested his hand on Gerd's head and spoke.

"Your chief has asked me how it is that the North-hounds, the guardians of the Citadel and the Lords Protector, have left their posts to follow me. The answer is plain. There is no longer a Citadel for them to guard. I myself put it to the torch."

A wordless cry went round the crowd. Stark let it die away. He turned to Ildann.

"You know this to be true, Hearth-Keeper."

"I know," Ildann said. "The Ochar boy heard, and saw. This man is the Dark Man of the prophecy of Irnan, which has been fulfilled. He and his hounds brought four Wandsmen captive into the wayhouse, and they told Ekmal and his folk that the Lords Protector are fugitives and homeless. There will be no more keeping of the Upper Road by the Ochar, and their lament is very loud." The cry that came now from the crowd was one of savage pleasure. Jofr shouted at them furiously. "The Wandsmen have promised us! The Citadel will be rebuilt. My father has sent the Swiftwing, and all the clans of the Ochar will come against you"-he stabbed his finger at Stark-"because of him!"

"That is likely," Stark said. "And I tell you that the Wandsmen would pay a high price for me and for my comrades." He placed his left hand on the head of Grith. "But you would first have to overcome the hounds. Ildann, ask the boy how many Runners were killed by the pack? He saw the bodies."

"I have asked him," Ildann said. "At least half a hundred."

"So you see," Stark said, "that reward would not be easily won. But I can offer you another and greater reward. I offer you freedom from the greed of the Ochar, who want your lands. I offer you freedom from the oppression of the Wandsmen, who support the Ochar. I offer you freedom from the Runners, who eat up your villages. I offer you freedom from hunger and thirst. I offer you Yurunna."

There was a startled silence. Then every tongue began to wag at once.

"Yurunna!" said Ildann fiercely. "You think we have not looked at that place, and often? You think we have not tried? In my father's time, in my grandfather's time . . . The walls are strong. There are many Yur to defend the walls, and they have great machines

that scatter fire to bum men where they stand. They have the kennels where the demon hounds are bred, and even the whelps are deadly. How should we take Yurunna?"

"For the Hann alone, or for any of the Lesser Hearths alone, it would not be possible. For all the Lesser Hearths banded together..." Voices rose, shouting about old enmities and blood feuds, raids and killings. The crowd became turbulent. Stark held up his hands.

"If your blood feuds are more important to you than the survival of your tribe, then cling to them! Let the last ember perish from your Hearth, for the sake of them. But why be so foolish? All together, you could be powerful enough to fight the Ochar, to fight anyone except Mother Skaith herself, and you have no choice but to run from her, and that is south. The cold drives the Runners down on you, and you in turn are driven to raid even as far as the Edge. Why should you suffer all this when Yurunna is there for the taking?

Would it not be better for Yurunna to feed you, rather than the servants of the Wandsmen?"

There was an uneasy, mumbling quiet while they thought about that. Ildann voiced the vital question. "Who would lead? No chief of the Lesser Hearths would endure to be made less than any other." Stark said, "I would lead. I wear no cloak of any color and am at feud with none. I want neither land nor loot, and when my task is done, I leave you." He paused. "It has been foretold that a winged being will blood me among the Hearth-Keepers of Kheb."

Again he waited until the reaction subsided.

"The decision is for you to make. If you decide against me, then I will go and speak to the others. And now I have finished." He turned courteously to Ddann.

"What will you have us do?"

"Return to your quarters and wait. We must talk among ourselves." Back in the guesthouse, they did little talking among themselves. This was the strategy that had been dis63

cussed and agreed upon. As fugitives with no resources of their own, they could hope for very little in the way of success, or even survival. With a base of power, even a small one, the odds improved significantly. Yurunna was the bait. Stark had offered it. Now they could only wait and see what the tribesmen would do with it.

"It will go your way," said Gerrith. "Don't worry."

"If it does," said Halk, "well and good. If it doesn't, what has Stark got to worry about? He is no longer the Dark Man, no more fated He can leave us and run alone back to Skeg. Animal that he is, he might make it. Or again, he might not. No matter. Bring me food and wine. I'm hungry." He lifted his hands and flexed them stiffly. "If we do march south, these must be ready to hold a sword again."

All that night Stark kept waking to hear the sounds of the village, droning and stirring like a disturbed wasp's nest. After Old Sun had been sung up and given wine and fire to begin his day, the summons came from Ildann. Stark went to the house of the chief, and Ash-ton and Gerrith went with him, as did the two hounds, who would not be left behind.

Ildann had sat all night with his village leaders, both men and women. His eyes were red-rimmed and blinking, but Stark saw in them a glitter of ambition and excitement.

There was something else, too, and its name was fear.

"What do you know of the Fallarin?"

"Nothing," said Stark, "except that the name means 'Chained.'"

"They are the true rulers of this desert. Even the Ochar must bend their stiff necks and pay tribute, as we do."

He brooded. Stark stood patiently.

"They're a blighted race, the Fallarin. In old times the wise men knew how to change people in some sort. They became different-"

"It's called controlled mutation," Stark said. "I've met others. The Children of the Sea-Our-Mother, who

live in the water, and the Children of Skaith, who burrow under the Witchfires. Neither meeting was pleasant."

Ildann lifted his shoulders in a peculiar motion of distaste. "The Fallarin wished to be Children of the Sky, but the change was not . . . not as they wanted it. For centuries they have sat in their dark bowl in the mountains, talking to the winds. They are great sorcerers, with power over all the moving air when they wish to use it. We pay them when we sow, when we harvest and when we go to war. All of us. Otherwise they send the sandstorms-" He looked up sharply. "Is it true, the foretelling of the winged man with the knife?"

"It is true," said Gerrith.

"Well, then," said Ildann, "if the Fallarin will blood you chief, giving you windfavor, the Lesser Hearths will follow wherever you lead."

"Then," said Stark, "I must find the Fallarin." Ildann nodded. "Tomorrow I go on the spring pilgrimage to the Place of Winds. The Keepers of all the Hearths gather there, under truce. It is forbidden to anyone not of the blood to come there, but I will break custom and take you, if you wish. However, I tell you this."

He leaned forward. "The Fallarin have powers to overcome even your hellhounds, and if they decide against you, you'll end in the flames of the Springfire which is lighted there for Old Sun."

"That may be," said Stark. "Nonetheless, I will go."

"You alone," said Ildann. "The other men have no reason to go, and women are not permitted there. The occasion of the Springfire involves death, and according to our custom women have to do only with the things of life." Stark did not like the separation, but there seemed no help for it, and Gerrith said:

"All will be well."

Wishing that he could believe that, Stark rode out of the village with Ildann and Jofr and sixty warriors, the Northhounds, a meager string of pack-beasts and two

condemned men in cages, to follow the pilgrim standard to the Place of Winds. 11

The pilgrim standard led the way east. A man whose hereditary honor it was rode ahead of the company with the tall staff that bore a pair of outstretched wings. They were wrought in gold with fine workmanship, but they had grown frail with long use, and the wings had been several times broken and clumsily mended. The standard rendered the party safe from attack by members of other tribes. The purple cloaks of the riders drew a streak of somber color across the drab land. They made excellent time. The winds touched them gently. It was always so, Ildann said, when they rode to the gatherings. Jofr was quiet, glancing frequently at Stark with a certain pointed hopefulness.

Old Sun watched Stark, too, a dull eye full of senile malice. I'm none of yours, Stark thought, and you know it, and you're thinking of the Springfire, like the boy. He laughed at his own fancy. But the primitive N'Chaka did not laugh. The primitive N'Chaka shivered and was cold, smelling danger on the dim air.

The primitive N'Chaka did not place much faith in visions. He let the Northhounds run pretty much as they would, keeping Gerd or Grith always by him. Before many miles a pack of Runners appeared. The party was too strong for them to dare an attack. They hung on beyond bowshot, hoping for a straggler or an injured beast. Stark let the eager hounds go at them, and the Harm were impressed. That was the first time the

hounds killed along the way. It was not the last. The Runners cared nothing for the pilgrim standard.

Early on the third day a grim wall of mountain rose out of the plain, dark and jagged and alone. It had a look of thunder about it even though the sky was clear, and there was a cleft in the middle of it, like a narrow gate. At the foot of the cleft, enclosing a kind of bay, a thick stone wall had been erected. Within the wall were the tents and banners of a considerable encampment.

The cavalcade halted, straightened lines, shook dust from cloaks. Purple banners took the wind. A trumpeter set a curved horn to his lips and blew a harsh neighing call of three notes. Stark called the pack to heel. The company moved on toward the wall.

In the wide space between it and the cliff five camps were set up, each one separate with its own staff and its banners, red, brown, green, white and burnt orange for the Ochar. Jofr leaped and cried out; his mount was held tightly so that he could not run.

In the center of the space was a structure of stone slabs perhaps six feet high and twice as broad, with three upright stones set in it, and the whole blackened and stained and cracked from the heat of Old Sun's spring feasting. At least ten cages were dropped haphazardly around the base of the structure, each one holding a man.

Cloaks of the five colors turned out to see the Hann come in. It was a minute or two before they saw Stark and the hounds, and a minute or two more before they believed what they had seen. Then a great cry of anger burst out, and the motley-colored crowd surged forward. The hounds bristled, close around Stark. Kill, N'Chaka?

Not yet. ..

Ildann held up his arms and shouted. "Wait! It is for the Fallarin to say what shall be done. It has been foretold that they will blood this man a chief . .

. Listen to me, you sons of offal! This is the Dark Man 67

of the Southron prophecy, do you hear? The Dark Man! He has brought down the Citadel!"

The crowd stopped its surging and began to listen.

Ildann's voice rang against the cliffs, crying the good news.

"The Citadel has fallen. There'll be no more keeping of the Upper Road-it's dead as a lopped branch above Yurunna, and the Ochar are lopped with it!" Red, brown, green and white roared with fierce, astonished joy. The roar was followed by a babble of voices. And then, out of a knot of orange cloaks, a tall man spoke.

"You lie."

Ildann thrust Jofr forward. "Tell him, boy. Tell the almighty Romek, Keeper of the Hearth of Ochar."

"It is true, Lord," said Jofr, and bowed his head. "I am Ekmal's son, from the north house-" He stammered out what he knew, and the whole crowd listened.

"But the Wandsmen promised, Lord!" he finished. "The Citadel will be rebuilt. And my father has sent the Swiftwing among the clans ..." He was drowned out by another roar from the folk of the Lesser Hearths. Stark could see that each of their numbers was less than that of the Ochar. He estimated some hundred and twenty of the orange cloaks, with Ildann's sixty the next largest. All together, the Lesser Hearths did not greatly surpass the Ochar. The Yellow Cloaks were not in yet, but he doubted that they would add more than another twenty or so. These were chief's escorts, the men of honor, but they were probably a fair reflection of the relative numbers of fighting men available to the tribes.

The Ochar closed their ranks, groups of them flowing together out of the press until they formed a solid block of color. They spoke among themselves; and the eyes of Romek, hard cold blue above his facecloth, sought Stark's. The Lesser Hearths were stirred by currents of motion as men discussed and questioned and thought about the meaning of Ildann's words. Behind them all was the cleft. Shadows clotted thick 68

there. Stark could not see into it. The wind made strange sounds passing through. Stark could imagine that it talked a secret language of its own, telling all that happened below. And if the wind talked, surely someone listened.

Romek stepped forward. He questioned Jofr, making him tell again the story of how Stark and the hounds came to the wayhouse. Then he said:

"It seems certain that this outlander has done a great wrong. Since it touches us, it is for us to deal with him."

"And take him back to the Wandsmen, no doubt," said Ildann, "to make your masters happy."

"He is nothing to you," said Romek. "Stand aside."

"You're forgetting the Northhounds," said Ildann. "Surely you know them? But try if you like."

Romek hesitated. Nine pairs of baleful eyes regarded him. Ildann shouted again to the red cloaks and the white, the brown and the green.

"The Dark Man has brought down the Citadel. Now he will bring down Yurunna."

"Yurunna!" they cried. "How? How?"

"If we will join our forces together, he will lead us. If the Fallarin blood him. Only if the Fallarin blood him! He is not of our race, and his feud is only with the Wandsmen. Because of that feud he offers us Yurunna. Yurunna!

Food, water, safety from the Runners. Life! Yurunna!" It sounded like a battle cry.

When he could make himself heard, Romek said, "That would mean war with the Ochar. We would sweep the desert clean."

"Perhaps not!" shouted the chief of the Brown Cloaks. "And if we should take Yurunna, the First-Come would be the Last!"

Hate was in the laughter that followed. Old and bitter hate. Romek heard it. He took it as a thing of pride. He looked at the Northhounds, and he looked at Stark, and he nodded his cowled head.

"All this will happen only if the Fallarin blood him. Very well. Let him go to the Fallarin and ask them

for windfavor. And when they've heard him out, we shall see where he goes-to Yurunna, or to the Spring-fire."

"He will go to the Fallarin when he is bidden," said Ildann.

"No," said Stark. "I will go now."

"But you cannot," said Ildann, all bravery gone from his voice. "No one enters there without permission."

"I will," said Stark.

He rode forward with the hounds beside him. The sound in their throats was like muted thunder, and the Hooded Men stood back to let them pass. Stark did not look back to see whether Ildann came with him. He moved without haste past the place of the Spring-fire and the cages where the victims waited, stripped of cloaks and wrappings so that he could see their despairing faces white as snow except for a ludicrous band of brown across the eyes. He moved toward the cleft, the narrow gateway in the cliff. Ildann did not follow him into that windy darkness.

The way was only wide enough for a single rider, and very steep. The soft furred paws of the beast and the pads of the hounds made only the smallest scuffling on bare rock. It was cold there, with the tomb-chill of sunless places, and the wind talked. Stark thought that he could understand the words. Sometimes the wind laughed, and the laughter was not friendly. Things, said Gerd.

I know. There were galleries high up under the ragged streak of sky. He was aware of movement there, crouchings and scuttlings. He knew, although he could not see them, that there were piles of boulders ready to be sent crashing on his head.

Watch.

N'Chaka! Cannot watch. Minds not speak. Cannot hear!

And the wind talked.

The cleft ended at a wall of rock that had a single opening through which one man might pass.

Stark left the beast. Beyond the opening was a stair that spiraled sharply upward into darkness.

Stark climbed, the hounds behind him, alarmed, muttering, their breathing loud in the closed space. At length he saw the top of the stair and a tall thin doorway with light on the other side.

A creature sat in the doorway looking down at him from under slitted eyelids. 12

It was hairless and horny; and it had four arms that appeared to be very limber and strong, without joints, each arm ending in three tentacular fingers. It opened a beaky mouth and said:

"I am Klatlekt. I keep the door. Who comes to the Place of Winds?"

"I am Stark," he said. "A stranger. I seek audience with the Fallarin."

"You have not been bidden."

"I am here."

The blinking green-gold gaze shifted to the hounds. "You have with you four-footed things whose minds are black and burning." N'Chaka! It does not fear. Mind not touch.

"They will do no harm," Stark said, "unless harm is done."

"They can do no harm," said Klatlekt. "They are harmless." N'Chaka. Strange ...

The hounds whimpered. Stark mounted one more step.

"Never mind the hounds. Your masters wish to see me. Otherwise we would not have reached this door."

"For good or ill," said the doorkeeper. "Come, then." 71

It rose and led the way. Stark followed, through the tall thin door. The hounds padded after, reluctant.

Cannot touch, N'Chaka. Cannot touch.

They stood in a great bowl surrounded by cliffs of somber rock that shaded from gray to slaty black. The cliffs were high, so that Old Sun never saw the bottom of the bowl, which was carpeted with a moss that felt gravelly rather than soft underfoot.

All around the bowl the rock of the cliffs had been cut and carved into free-standing forms that pulled the gaze upward to the sky, so that Stark felt giddy, as if he might fall that way. It seemed that all the winds of the desert and the currents of the high air had been caught as they passed by and frozen here into stony rising thermals and purling waves and circling whirlwinds that seemed in that twilight to spring and flow. But they did not. They were firmly anchored, and the true air was utterly still. There was no sign of living things except for Stark and the hounds and the one called Klatlekt.

Yet there were living things, and Stark knew it, and so did the hounds. Things. Watch.

The rock behind the carved wind patterns was honeycombed with secret openings. The hounds growled and shivered, pressing close. They were fearful now for the first time in their lives, their power of death useless against nonhuman minds.

Klatlekt pointed three slender fingers to a raised round platform of stone blocks in the center of the bowl. At the king-point of the circle stood a great carved seat shaped like a wind-devil.

"Go there."

Stark mounted broad steps, the hounds slinking at heel. Minds up there can touch. Kill?

No!

Klatlekt had disappeared. Stark stood. He listened to the silence that was not quite silent, and the hairs rose at the back of his neck. A little wind came. It fingered his hair. It went 72

snuffling lightly down the height of him and across the breadth of him, and then it flickered cold across his face, and he thought that some of it went in at his eyes and blew swiftly through the windings of his brain. It pulled free of him with a tiny chuckle and went to pluck at the hounds and set them whimpering with their fur all awry.

N'Chaka!

Still. Still.

It was not easy to be still.

The small wind went away.

Stark waited, listening to sounds he could not quite hear. All at once there was sound and enough; the rushing susurration of half a thousand pairs of wings a-beat on the air. The Fallarin flitted from their doorways, to stand among their rising thermals and graceful whirlwinds. Stark continued to wait.

One came alone, from between two curling ribbons of stone that overarched the largest opening. He wore a brief kilt of scarlet leather. A golden girdle clasped his waist, and a king's torque circled his neck. Otherwise he was clad in close dark fur against the cold. His body was small and spare and light. The wings that sprang from his shoulders were dark-leathered and strong, and when he descended to the platform his movement was assured, if not beautiful. But Stark knew why they were called the Chained. The genetic alteration their ancestors had undergone, hoping to give their descendants new life on a dying world, had cheated them cruelly. That inadequate wingspan would never know the freedom of the high air.

"Yes," said the Fallarin, "we are clipped birds, a mockery above and below." He stood before the high seat, looking straight up into Stark's eyes; his own were yellow as a falcon's, but too full of a dark wisdom for even that royal bird. His face was narrow and harsh, too strong for beauty, with a sharp nose and jutting chin. But when he smiled he was handsome, as a sword is handsome. 73

"I am Alderyk, and king in this place."

Round the circumference of the bowl, from lower galleries, a considerable number of the four-armed things had appeared. They stood quietly, watching. They were not being menacing. They were merely there.

"The Tarf," said Alderyk. "Our excellent servants, created by the same hands that made us, though not of human stock, and with greater care, for they function admirably." His gaze dropped. "You also have your retainers." The hounds felt the force in him and growled uneasily. Alderyk laughed, a sound not entirely pleasant.

"I know you, hounds. You were made, like us, though you had no choice in that making. You are Skaith-born, like us, and I understand you better than J do your master."

The yellow eyes, somber-bright, returned to Stark.

"You are the future standing there, a strange thing, full of distances I cannot plumb. A black whirling wind to break and scatter, leaving nothing untouched behind you, not even the Fallarin."

His wings spread wide, rustling, then clapped shut. A buffet of air came from nowhere and struck Stark's face like an open palm.

"I do not altogether like you."

"Liking is neither here nor there," said Stark mildly. "You seem to know me."

"We know you, Stark. We live solitary here in our eyrie, but the winds bring us news from all the world."

And perhaps they do, thought Stark. And there are also the Harsenyi and the Ochar to peddle whatever tales go up and down the roads of Skaith. The whole north had known about Ashton being brought to the Citadel, a man from another world, and the prophecy of Irnan had followed hard on his heels. The Wandsmen themselves had spread knowledge of Stark throughout the darklands in their eagerness to capture him. It would have been strange if the Fallarin did not know all about the events that were beginning to shake the foundations of their world.

"We knew of the prophecy," said Alderyk. "It was interesting to speculate on the possibility of its fulfillment."

"If the winds bring you news from as far away as Skeg and the city-states, surely there's a breeze that whispers from your own doorstep."

"We heard all that was said there. And perhaps . . ." He cocked his dark head birdwise and smiled. "Perhaps we heard you speak by the Hearth of Harm. Perhaps, even, we heard the sun-haired woman talk of blooding in a place of rocks."

That startled Stark, though not greatly. The Fallarin had the power to move winds-s orcery or psychokinet-ics, the name mattered little-and it was not unlikely that they could see and hear farther than most, even if it was simply a matter of reading his mind.

"Then you know why Ildann brought me here. You know what I want from you. Tell me what you want from me."

Alderyk ceased smiling. "That," he said, "we have not yet decided." He turned and signaled to one of the Tarf. It scuttled quickly into a doorway, and up on their high perches the Fallarin clapped their thousand wings, and an angry gale whirled snarling around the cliffs. The hounds whined dismally. The Tarf came back, bearing something on one of its arms. It climbed to the platform and came to Alderyk, who said:

"Let him see the thing clearly."

The thing was a huge proud bird, feathered all in bronze and iron. It fretted because its feet were bound and its head hooded with a bit of cloth. Ever and again it opened its beak and cried out harshly, and Stark understood the word it spoke.

"It is a Swiftwing," he said, remembering the bronze-and-iron flash in the sky, "and it calls for war. It belongs to a chief named Ekmal."

"I think it is his son you have out there."

"I was told that he would be my guide to this place. No harm has come to him."

"Nonetheless, Ekmal calls the clans to war." 75

Stark shook his head. "The Wandsmen call for war because of the Citadel. They

"are determined to have me prisoner, or dead, along with my friends. The boy is safe enough, and Ekmal knows it."

"A fine witches' brew you've set boiling in our northland," Alderyk said. The Fallarin hissed, and again the wind surged angrily. "The Swiftwing came to seek out Romek, the Ocbar Hearth-Keeper. We brought it here instead. The creatures are winged powerfully, but they cannot fly against our currents. We wished to know more before we let Romek have its summons." He motioned the Tarf away. It withdrew to the east point of the platform, gentling the great bird. Alderyk's eyes held Stark's, yellow and cruel.

"You ask for windfavor as war chief of all the Lesser Hearths, to take Yuranna from the Wandsmen. Why should we grant it, when it means war with all the Ochar? Why should we not give you to Romek for the Wandsmen, or to the Springfire to feed Old Sun?"

Stark said, "Old Sun will grow no stronger no matter how you feed him. He is dying, and the north closes in. This is true for you as it is for the Lesser Hearths, and for the Ochar, too, though they don't accept it-they think the Wandsmen can keep them fed forever."

"And can they not?"

"The Wandsmen will decide that, not the Ochar. There is revolt in the south. Things have changed with the coming of the ships to Skeg. Too many folk hate the Wandsmen and wish to find better worlds to live in. There may be a breaking of power."

"Will be," said Alderyk, "if you have your way. Why should we let you use the Lesser Hearths to gain your own ends?"

"You live on the tribute from these people. Surely you know better than I how scant it grows."

There was a rustling of wings and a sigh from the high perches. Alderyk's eyes were two points of yellow fire, burning into Stark's mind.

"Are you saying that we too must leave our place 76

where we have lived for centuries and find ourselves a better world?" Wind buffeted Stark from all sides, deafened him, caught the breath from his mouth. The hounds cowered. When the wind died away he said, "The north-folk must move sooner or later for their lives. The Lesser Hearths are dying out. The Wandsmen are interested only in retaining their power, and where they must sacrifice to do so, they will. Make your own choice, but you would be wise to leave a road south open for yourselves when you choose to take it. In the meantime there is enough at Yurunna for all, if you control it." Silence. The stillness of dead air.

"And you would lead?"

"Yes."

There was a sudden commotion among the Tarf, and one of them came rushing across the open and onto the platform, to crouch at Alderyk's feet.

"Lord," it said, clicking and rattling in its shocked haste, "there has been a killing below. The pilgrim truce is broken, and the Ochar hold the entrance to the cleft."

For one long moment Alderyk neither moved nor

looked away from Stark.

"A black wind, to break and scatter ..."

Up along the high perches the ranks of the Fallarin

moved and shifted, with a hissing of wings and voices. Stark braced himself for an assault. None came. Yet

the air was so charged that he looked for lightning

bolts to play between the twilit cliffs.

As though he had come to some decision, Alderyk turned abruptly to the Tarf.

"Bid Romek come to me with no more than six of his men of honor. And say that if the peace is not kept, I will send such wrath upon them as they have never seen."

The Tarf went away.

Stark wondered what had happened below, and how many were dead, and whether Ildann was among them.

"Stand back," said Alderyk. "There. And keep your hellhounds quiet." He sat himself on the high seat that was like a wind devil, and there was thunder on his brow.

Stark went where he was told, to the west point of the circle, opposite the place where the Tarf still gentled the Swiftwing. The hounds were unhappy, sensing great forces about them that they could neither understand nor fight. It was all Stark could do to hold them. His own muscles were tight with strain, and the sweat ran on him. He was acutely aware of the high cliffs and the one narrow door. If things went against him, it was not going to be easy to fight his way out.

He hated the Tarf with their round unhuman heads and their unhuman brains that cared not a fig for Northhounds.

The Ochar, at least, were no more than human.

They entered the bowl, bright orange cloaks dulled in that sunless gloom. They walked across the mossy open ground and mounted the steps to the platform. Romek saw the Swiftwing and checked. Then he spoke angrily to Alderyk.

"Why have you held this summons from me?"

"Because I wished to," Alderyk said, "and why have you broken truce?"

"Ildann stirred up mischief among the Lesser Hearths. There were high words, and then blows, and some hot head drew a knife. My man only defended himself." It crossed Stark's mind that if the Fallarin knew all that happened on their doorstep, Alderyk must have

known this, too. Had he been unable to prevent it? Or had he let it happen?

"How many are dead?"

"One only." Romek's shoulders lifted slightly. "A Brown Cloak."

"One or a hundred, it's death and forbidden." Alderyk's head went sidewise, in the way Stark was beginning to know. "What are your men defending now?" A wind, very soft and tigerish, prowled the cliffs.

"The peace," said Romek, and looked at Stark.

"Ah," said Alderyk. "You think there might be trouble if Stark is brought to the Springfire."

In a cold flat unflinching voice Romek said, "There will be worse trouble if he is not. You see the Swift-wing. All the clans of the Ochar are rousing for war, and this man is the cause. If he dies now in the Springfire, with the Keepers of the Lesser Hearths there to see it, then the threat will end."

"But suppose," said Alderyk, "just suppose that we have decided to give Mm windfavor?"

"You would not be so foolish," Romek said.

"Wise Romek. Tell me why."

"Because it is on the tribute of the Ochar, more than all the others, that you stay alive-and that tribute comes from the Wandsmen more than it does from us." The orange cloth hid Romek's face, but even so it was plain that a smile was on his mouth and that the smile was insolent. "No matter how the winds blow, the Ochar will be fed."

"I see," said Alderyk. "And we will not?" Romek's hand made a sweeping gesture. "I didn't say that."

"True, you didn't say it."

"There can be no such talk between allies. Give us the man, Alderyk, and we'll see that the peace is kept."

Stark held tight to Gerd's bristling neck on the one side and Grith's on the other.

Wait. Wait...

Alderyk stood up. In spite of his smallness he 79

seemed to overtop the towering Ochar. He spoke to big people, calmly and without passion.

"You have heard all that has passed here. We are given a choice, between peace and war, between starvation and the bounty of the Ochar. How do you choose, then? Which shall I give to Romek-Stark or the Swiftwing?" Dark wings clattered. Winds whirled around the cliffs, reached out to catch at Romek's cloak and hood and tear away his veil so that he stood naked-faced, white and shamed before them all.

"Give him the Swiftwing!"

Alderyk motioned to the Tarf, which moved forward and held out its arm. Romek took the Swiftwing. With steady fingers he undid the thong that held the bird's feet and loosed the wrapping from its head. It opened eyes like two red stars and looked at him and cried out, "War!"

"Yes," said Romek softly. "War."

He flung the bird upward. It took the air, beating powerfully, circling higher and higher until it gained the sunlight and was gone. Alderyk said, "From this day the Place of Winds is barred to the Ochar. Now go."

Romek turned and stalked out with his men.

"Come here," Alderyk said to Stark, and sat again upon the high seat, his face hard and grim. "We too have watched the north close in. We have had our eyes on Yurunna and the growing insolence of the Ochar. We lacked two things, strength and a leader. You offer us both. So we gamble, because if we do not we shall become the cut dogs of the Wandsmen even as the Ochar have." His yellow gaze struck deep into Stark, and a shiver of air ran whirling up the stony curves of the seat. "We gamble, Stark, Let us hope we don't lose." They waited until the yellow Qard came in, just before sundown. That night, while torches flared and light spilled from all the high doorways of the Fal-larin, Stark was blooded war chief of the Lesser Hearths of Kheb, mingling his blood with the blood of

the Hearth-Keepers, beginning with Mann, and sprinkling a little more on the stones for Old Sun. Alderyk held the knife. When all else was done, he made a slash in the dark fur of his own wrist and marked Stark's forehead with a purling line.

"I give you windfavor. May you use it well." Off to one side, where he had been brought for safekeeping, Jofr crouched and hugged his knees and wept with rage and hate.

A little more than three weeks later, duly ransomed, he sat beside his father on the crest of a long dune and saw what made him forget his tears. Splashed across the dun landscape below, in patches of faded color, was an army, mounted, glittering with spears. The patches of color were purple and red and brown. One-half of the six Lesser Hearths.

Spread out along the dune, a great mass of burnt orange, was the army of the Ochar. Even the inexperienced eyes of a boy on his first warfaring could see that the extent of the orange line was double that of the purple and red and brown together.

Jofr laughed and drummed his heels on the flanks of his mount. Farther away on that height Gelmar of Skeg looked down and spoke to Romek.

"Good. The First-Come have done well." He was robed and hooded like an Ochar, having no wish to draw attention to himself.

"We could always move more quickly than that rabble," said Romek, and added contemptuously, "So far, the Fallarin have done nothing to hinder us. Perhaps they have been remembering where their interests lie." He sought out the distant purple banner that marked Ildann's place in the line of battle that was being formed out of the interrupted march. "The man Stark will be there, most likely."

But Stark was nowhere in that army.

Stark was herding Runners.

After he was blooded, he had let the Hooded Men do what they would at the ceremony of the Spring-fire, taking no part in it himself. The Ochar had left in a tremendous hurry. Romek would be setting about organizing his army as swiftly as possible. Stark had talked strategy with the Fallarin. During those talks he had come to the conclusion that the Fallarin had acquired, down through the centuries, a streak of madness.

He had sent the Hearth-Keepers away from the Place of Winds to gather their men as quickly as they might, knowing even then that the Ochar, who had begun mustering days before and were less widely scattered, would be ready in force sooner than they could be no matter how they ran. Purple Hann, brown Marag and red Kref could gather most quickly. The other three Hearths were more distant. By common consent a rendezvous was chosen, a place called the Tears of Lek, a salt lake not far above Yurunna.

But it was certain, unless the Ochar had lost all their skill and Gelmar of Skeg all his cunning, that the army of the Lesser Hearths would not be permitted to join its several parts together at its leisure. Ildann said, "We three-Hann, Marag and Kref-being the nearest, will surely bear the brunt. We're strong fighters and not afraid to die, but no amount of courage will stand off the Ochar for long."

Alderyk smiled his sharp cruel smile, and the wings of the Fallarin beat up a laughing howl of wind.

"We'll see to it that you have help."

And Stark had stroked Gerd's ugly head and nodded, hoping that he was not lying. Because if he was, the fierce-eyed chiefs would be leading their people to certain death, in his name.

So now, like a careful shepherd, Stark moved across the dunes on the broad track of the Ochar host; and the Northhounds ran free, bounding at the edges of the stinking, tattered and thoroughly cowed flock, flicking them with the lash of terror.

They had gathered up between three and four hundred of the things, cleaning out three nesting cities with fire and wind and hound-fear. Beside Stark and the pack, one hundred and fifty Fallarin-with Alderyk at their head and twice as many Tarf to serve them-managed the Runners with small bursts of sandstorm, guiding them and holding down their speed.

The Fallarin rode, like Stark. When they did take the air, their flight was short and skimming. The Tarf went on their own limbs, and they could outrun anything except the Runners. Stark had used them as scouts, depending on their information for the timing of this unlikely operation. He had considered the whole idea insane, but the Fallarin had been serenely confident, knowing their own skills and the habits of Runners.

"Runner packs always go with the sandstorms, and just ahead," Alderyk said.

"They never go against them. We can drive them wherever we wish them to go, using the wind for a whip."

And so far they had done just that. Whenever the Runners tried to turn or scatter, they were met by a rush of stinging sand, and they turned again to go before it.

Now Alderyk rode up beside Stark and said, "Look at them. They smell meat." The runners had begun to move faster. They were forgetting the hounds. Some of the old males made hooting cries.

"Suppose it's our own people they hit," Stark said. The Tarf had kept him in close touch with the move83

ments of both armies, and he knew that Ildann's force was facing the Ochar.

"They won't," said Alderyk. "Be ready about your hounds, and keep out of our way."

Two Tarf came racing back, kicking spurts of sand. "Beyond that next rise, Lord, we could see a great patch of orange moving." Alderyk said, "I will go myself."

One of the Tarf caught his bridle. He launched himself with a leathery flapping and rose heavily into the air; not high, but high enough to see farther than anyone on the ground.

He went a little distance forward and then came back in a great hurry.

"Now!" he said to Stark. "Ildann's army lies there, to your left, across two ridges." He cried out a shrill cry to the Fallarin. Stark called in his hounds.

War-horns sounded out of sight beyond the dunes, hoarse and bawling. The Fallarin were ranged in a wide crescent whose points enclosed the Runners. Stark rode through their line, out of the way of it. He saw them spread their wings. He heard them begin to sing, a strange wild crooning storm-song, and underneath the singing the wings beat a broken cadence. The hounds howled.

Within the crescent the wind rose shrieking and the sand rose with it in a blinding wall. The blurred mass of the Runners moved, picking up speed, all the narrow bodies thrust forward, the incredible legs churning. The sand hid them. Wind and cloud rushed away. Stark put his beast into a loping run, the hounds beside him.

He cleared the first dune, plunged in the hollow beyond it, going at a tangent behind that flying wall of sand. He began to hear noises, horns blowing, a confusion of shouts and cries almost lost in the wind-roar. When he reached the crest of the second dune, he could see what was happening. 84

Ildann had drawn his line on a wide flat. The Ochar had launched their attack from the height, throwing out wings on eitiher side to take advantage of their greater numbers and envelop the smaller army.

The sandstorm of the Fallarin, with its several hundred Runners, hit the Ochar left wing before it was halfway down the slope of the dune. The shock was audible. The mass of burnt orange disintegrated in a boiling of sand and leaping bodies. Hideous sounds came out of that turmoil, where the Runners tore, and fed, and died.

War-horns bellowed. Men shouted. The sounds were thin and lost. The charge faltered as the line staggered, struggled to reform itself. Momentum carried right and center down the slope. Arrows flew from both sides. Ildann's line wheeled, raggedly but with savage enthusiasm, purple and brown taking the burnt of the shock while the red Kref spurred up to drive a wedge between the Ochar center and the totally demoralized left. They struck hard. But Stark's heart sank when he saw the solid wall of orange that still confronted them.

He kicked the beast into a run, going down the slope toward the battle. The sand was settling. Knots of men and beasts and Runners heaved and floundered, inextricably mixed, among the dead and dying. Suddenly at the Ochar rear a whirlwind rose and struck, spouting up more sand. Torn scraps of orange flew out of it like winter leaves. The Fallarin had moved on to fresh endeavors. The Ochar line swayed and shifted, and the men of the Lesser Hearths howled like wolves.

With his spear leveled and the hounds death-baying around him, Stark went into the fight.

He went bareheaded and barefaced, and that alone marked him. The Red Cloaks cheered and shouted his name. The hounds killed a way for him through the orange, toward where Romek's standard showed above the melee, opposite Ildann's center.

Many of the men on both sides fought on foot now. The ground was littered with dead beasts and the dusty

cloaks of the fallen. Over the roar of battle came the sound of the whirling winds, dancing their devil's dance, stripping men of their garments, beating and blinding them, tossing them like chaff, driving their mounts mad with fear.

The Ochar flinched and reeled. Battered from all sides, they began to break and scatter, and the whirlwinds drove them. The men of the Lesser Hearths pressed furiously against the yielding line.

Romek's standard still stood. He had his clansmen by him, a hundred or more still unwounded. He saw Stark, at the head of the Purple Cloaks and coming strongly. Romek raised his standard and shouted. His men charged Ildann's center.

Romek came straight for Stark.

Let be, said Stark to the hounds. Guard yourselves.

He spurred forward to meet the Keeper of the Hearth of Ochar. The first spear clash snapped shafts against small round shields and toppled both men unhurt from the saddle. Drawing blade, they fought on foot, with the tides of purple and orange flowing round them on all sides and a banshee screaming of wind beyond. Romek was a tall cold fury quite careless of life if he could only take Stark with him.

Kill? said Gerd, clawing the ground. Kill, N'Chaka?

No. This one must be mine.

There were plenty of others. The hounds killed themselves weary. Gradually Stark became aware of a small quietness in which he and Romek circled and slashed and parried. There was only the stamp of their feet and the ringing blades and a huge sound of breathing. They were surrounded by purple cloaks.

Romek, steel and rawhide, cut and slashed until his arm began to tire. Stark moved like a wraith. The level light of Old Sun caught in his pale eyes, and there was a patience there as terrible as time.

Romek's soft boots shuffled in the trodden sand. Shuffled, missed step. Stumbled.

Stark leaped forward.

Romek struck, low and viciously, out of that feint.

Stark leaned aside, as an animal shifts weight in mid-spring. The blade sang past him. His arm whipped down. The curved edge of his blade took Romek between shoulder and jaw.

Gerd came and sniffed at the severed head. Then he licked Stark's hand. Ildann, his cloak torn and bloody, shook his sword in the air.

"Where are the Ochar? Where is the pride of the First-Come?" A great wild shout went up. The men would have taken Stark on their shoulders; something held them back, and it was not entirely the presence of the hounds. Stark thrust his blade into the sand to clean it. The battle was over, except for the noisy business of stamping down the last bits of it and slaughtering those Runners that were still alive and too stupid to escape. The whirlwinds danced over the dunes, flogging the surviving Ochar on their way. Stark said to Ildann, "Where are my companions?"

"Yonder behind the ridge, there." He pointed across the flat. "We left them with the baggage train and a strong guard. They'll be coming soon."

"Did you see ... Was there a stranger with Romek at any time?"

"A Wandsman? No, I saw none."

"Pass the word along. If a stranger is found among the dead, I want to know it."

Ildann passed the word. But Gelmar was not among the dead. He was fighting hard to stay among the living, clinging to his racing beast and thinking of Yurunna and the Lords Protector.

Jofr was not among the dead, either. Some of the Hann found him half-dazed where the wind had flung him, and they brought him to headquarters instead of slitting his throat because they remembered the ransom. Stark was there with Gerrith and Ashton and Halk, and the three Hearth-Keepers, and Alderyk of the Fal87

larin. He looked at the boy, all beaten and drooping between the tall men.

"Let him sit," he said. There was a tiny fire and the air was chill. "Bring him food and water."

Jofr kept his head bent down and would not touch what was brought to him. Ashton sat by and watched him.

Stark asked Gerrith, "Do we have any further need of this one?"

"No."

Stark turned to Alderyk. "Perhaps some of your Tarf could take him where he can find his own people."

"That would be easy enough. But why do you want to save him?"

"He's only a child."

"Very well, if you must. They can start now." The three chiefs began to talk about ransom.

Stark said to the boy, "Is your father living?"

"I don't know. I lost him when the wind struck."

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LEIGH BRACKETT

[Eric John Stark][Skaith 02] The Hounds of Skaith