"By all that is holy, I should be Thoheeks and chief-of Sanderz-Vawn, but simply because I am a good, Christian man, my patrimony, my very birthright, is denied me. But if I cannot be chief, he will not sit in my place. As God is my witness, he will not!"

Showing his teeth in a grin of pure, evil malice, he went on, "Your barbarians will not have as new chief any maimed or crippled man, so when once we have immobilized dear Tim, I mean to dig out his right eye. I'd take them both, but I want him to have one so he can forevermore gaze upon what I'll have done to you, sweet sister.

"Then, when I'm done gelding him, I mean to hack off his right hand and his right foot and char the stumps in yonder fire."

Widahd was not yet dead. She knew what the man was doing to her body, though she could not feel her defilement or much of anything else. But she was come of a warrior race and refused to die leaving her foe a chance of life. If the arm she had stabbed was removed quickly enough, he might just live. What she must deliver before she surrendered to oncoming death was a wound impervious to treatment.

Awkwardly, her numbing left band sought and found the hilt of her second little dagger, but the cold unfeeling fingers kept slipping off the abbreviated hilt and it seemed for long and long that she would not summon the strength to draw it. Then, at last, it was free, but she found she had used too much of her waning power. She could not stab up.

Haltingly, she worked her small hand and the knife between their two close-pressed bodies. As her ravisher raised himself slightly in preparation for a deeper thrust, she maneuvered the blade to an upward slant so that the straining man impaled himself on it, taking the length of it in his belly, between navel and crotch.

There was nothing strangled about Gaios' second scream. It rang loud and long… and it served to alert Tim, just approaching the suite, and Sir Geros, who had bid his young lord goodnight and was about to descend the stairs.

Myron ignored the scream for the very good reason that he knew from the earlier sounds that his cohort was raping the Zahrtohgahn and was wont to make loud noises in transport of pleasure. While a woman's scream within the hall would have been sure to bring unwanted visitors tramping through the corridors and banging on doors and barging into suites, a man's would not, not with wounded men and prisoners under the roof.

He had done at last with Giliahna's right cheek. Turning her ravaged, gory face back, he hissed, "Hold still now. I'm going to carve a pi for Porneea on your brow, so that all will know you for the arrant whore you are."

Tim and Geros, broadswords bared and ready, kicked open the bedroom door and burst into the room. Myron left off his carving of Giliahna's ruined face and slid himself down her body far enough to get an inch of his blood-slimy dirkblade into her left breast, then he half-turned to face the armed men.

"Take one more step toward me, pagan bastards, and I'll drive this blade into her heart!"

He had taken his hand from her mouth, and his weight now was on her belly rather than her chest and arms. Giliahna swallowed a mouthful of thick, hot blood, then shouted, "No! I am already hurt, terribly hurt. Take the swine alive, for Archduke Bili and my brother. Tell Tim I love him." Then she grasped Myron's knife hand and wrist with both her own hands and forced her body up violently, so that half the length of the wide, thick blade sank into her chest

Tim was at the foot of the big bed in a single leap and the flat of his sword crashed against Myron's temple, hurling his body to the floor in an unconscious heap. But then the young captain's sword dropped from fingers suddenly gone cold and nerveless, and, as hot tears ran, he could but stare in grief and horror at what had been wrought upon this, the only woman he ever had loved… or ever would.

Her face was a mask of blood, with jaw, teeth and white bone winking through the slashed cheeks. Just above the red-pink nipple of her full right breast, the hilt and part of the blade of a heavy war dirk jutted up.

Geros glanced at what lay on the bed, then averted his eyes and stalked quickly to where Gaios had rolled off the body of Widahd and, his trousers still bunched about his knees, was sitting in obvious agony with a handful of cloth from her skirt pressed against his lower belly.

Geros sheathed his sword. "What ails you, bumboy? Bellyache, is it? Mayhap six feet or so of oaken clyster will, if not truly ease you, at least serve as a counterirritant." He chuckled, then added, "That's what you get for eating your own cooking, of course. You should've known better."

Giliahna said weakly, "Tim… my love. Please… it hurts… so much… please take… it out."

Tim walked on wooden legs up to where he could grasp the hilt of that cruel dirk that had robbed him of so much, of so many happy years. Quickly, he jerked the steel from his sister's chest He did not bother to try to staunch the Wood-flow that followed the blade out, for he had seen many death wounds, and from its location, this could be nothing but such.

But she should have been dead long since. He was too experienced a warrior to deny that incredible, astounding survivals occurred now and then. And with the flare of a spark of hope, some of the leaden enervation left his body and his mind.

"Sir Geros," he snapped. When that man stood close beside him, he said, "There may be a chance to save her. Go fetch Master Fahreed. At once!

Even as he raced across the deserted balcony toward the north wing where several adjoining suites had been temporarily converted to a hospital and surgery, Geros knew himself bound on a fool's errand. No mortal man or woman could survive a war dirk in the heart. But if fetching the Zahrtohgahn physician would ease young Tim's grieving mind, that is what he would do.

In the hospital, Geros had to pull his rank and almost his sword before Master Fahreed was finally summoned from another room. The tall man's white robe was liberally spotted and smeared with fresh blood. He was scowling and his manner was brusque.

"Say your piece quickly and begone, Sir Geros. I'm in the middle of a chancy bit of emergency surgery on a brave young Ahrmehnee, whose skull was cracked in a drunken brawl. You Kindred are all mad. When all your enemies are slain, you turn on each other like starving wolves."

But Geros could not speak fast enough for the master, who suddenly snapped, "You can mindspeak? Then lower your shield, man, I cannot waste more time."

When he had scanned the contents of Geros' mind, his scowl vanished and his tone softened. He placed a hand on the aging castellan's shoulder and said, softly, "I grieve with you and your poor young lord, friend Geros. It was a terrible act, even for an Ehleen, and I of all men in this hall know that these Ehleenee can be beasts incarnate. But I must agree with your prognosis. A wound inflicted with a weapon like that in that area of the chest is invariably fatal.

"I could do nothing for the woman, even were I to come, and I cannot come, nor can my apprentice, not now. I'm sorry."

The blue-black man turned to go, shaking his shaven head. All at once, he turned back. "Sir Geros, Mistress Neeka, for whatever else she may or may not be, is a skilled and most talented apothecary. She assisted me here during the rush of battle casualties, and I found her performance most impressive. Her suite is just down the hall from here. Why don't you go to her and open your mind as you did to me? If nothing else, she can administer the young man a draft to ease his shock and hurt and grant him restful, healing sleep."

Mechanically, Tim arose from beside Gilliahna. She lay unmoving save for the barely perceptible rise and fall of her chest. Myron seemed to be still unconscious, but taking no chances, Tim retrieved his sword and ran two inches of the blade into his half brother's buttock. When the carcass did not even twitch, Tim was satisfied.

Gaios still sat near the corpse of his victim. Moaning, he rocked from side to side, both hands still pressing the rags to his belly. His eyelids were pressed tightly shut, but tears still managed to ooze from beneath them, joining a copious sweat to impart a glistening sheen to his face, now twisted in agony.

Turning back to the bed and Giliahna, Tim noted that her slashed face and the stab wound in her chest had ceased to bleed. Moaning louder even than Gaios, he tried not to think of the licking flames that so soon must be set about her lovely body, tried not to think of the long and bitter years he still must live without her… and he made his decision.

He lifted off his baldric, stripped off tunic and shirt and stretched himself beside his sister, his lover, she who should have been his wife. He kissed her cold lips, then reached out and took from the bedside table Myron's blood-sticky dirk.

Softly, tenderly, he said, "We shall go to Wind together, my love, never again to be parted."

Then Tim Sanderz grasped the wire-wound hilt in both hands and ran the full length of the blade into his own chest, skewering his broken heart.

When Sir Geros and Neeka hurried into the suite, the old soldier reeled against the door frame in shock, but Neeka bustled over to the bed. Ignoring for the moment the man, who had obviously taken his own life since his hands were still gripped about the hilt of the knife, she set about examining the woman.

When Geros had more or less composed himself, he approached. "Dead, is she not? Poor little Giliahna."

The answer he received then was like the crash of a war-hammer against his head. "Not dead nor even dying, Sir Geros, she has only swooned."

Hesitantly, Geros laid a trembling hand on Giliahna's-flesh. "But… she is cold as death… and she no longer bleeds…?"

Neeka just sniffed. "You'd be cold to the touch, too, if you'd lain naked in this icy chamber for who knows how long, not to speak of the large amounts of blood she must have lost before the bleeding stopped."

In his own state of shock, Geros at first could not understand. Even so, he proved far easier to convince than either Tim or Giliahna.

Chapter XIX

Ahrkeethoheeks Bili, Thoheeks and chief of Morguhn, Vahrohnos Deskahti, Vahrohneeskos of the Order of the Golden Cat of the Confederation, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Blue Bear of Harzburk, was nothing if not stubborn and set in his ways. Not even the rising wrath of his supreme overlord, Milo of Morai, High Lord of the Confederation, not even the vicious temper of the High Lady, Aldora Linszee Treeah-Pohtohmahs Pahpahs, could persuade him to leave Morguhn before the harvests were all in, the archducal taxes collected and his personal affairs set in order.

To one of the Undying High Lady Aldora's more violent outbursts, he had replied with a calmness that further infuriated her, "Aldora, I don't want to go north and become Prince of Karaleenos, and you well know it. I only do so out of loyalty to the Confederation and willingness to serve it when and as called upon.

"But if go I must, then I'll do it in my own way and at my own pace. There is much my son, Djef, must know if he is to be a good chief and thoheeks of our clan. I must be certain that all sits well in Vawn and that young Thoheeks Tahm Adaimyuhn of Sanderz is adjusting well to his new and heavier harness of duty. At the same time, I must attend the thousand and one small but important functions of my present office, entertain my distinguished guests… and often waste precious time soothing the temper tantrums of one of them." The small, olive-skinned woman went livid and speechless v with frustration and rage. She snatched her long belt dagger free of its case and made to slash its keen edge at Bili's maddeningly unruffled face. But suddenly she became aware of the huge, slavering hound, stalking in from the next room, stiff-legged, with tail tucked and lips wrinkled up from the bared foam-covered teeth. Whirling, she flexed her knees and held her blade ready for stab or slash.

"Quick, Bili," she said calmly, her temper dissipated in the urgency of the moment, "get a spear. I'll hold him here. He looks to be gone mad."

But he moved not a muscle, he only chuckled and, in less than the blinking of an eye… the hound was gone!

Aldora spun about, shouting, "Damn you, Bili Morguhn! Ahrmehnee magic! How dare you do that to me! Do you forget who I am?" She lunged upward at his body with the long dagger.

Still chuckling, he lightly skipped from the path of the thrust and struck the hand wielding it hard enough that the weapon went clattering into a corner. Then the delicate-looking little woman went for his face with her nails, but he clasped his arms around her, easily immobilizing both arms, while his questing lips found hers, locked upon them and remained for a long, long time, before wandering downward to pay brief court to a flat, tiny ear, and then burying themselves in the hollow of her throat.

Much, much later, as both lay, tired and disheveled, upon a badly rumpled bed, Aldora's fingers traced the scars on his smooth, fair-skinned body, recalling that she had done so thirty-odd years before when this same, marvelous man had been a boy… no, never a boy, not him, not Bili!…

She sighed and lay back down beside him, snuggling to the hard warmth of his body. "How old are you now, Bili?"

He turned his head to smile down into her upturned, heart-shaped face. "Nearly fifty summers, my love. Why? Does this old man displease you?"

She shivered with thought of the recent pleasure he had given her and briefly raised her mindshield that he might know and be forever answered. "Oh, Bili, Bili, my own Bili," she murmured with intense feeling. "Why could it have not been you, rather than this half brother of yours?

"I had almost forgotten, you know? Had almost ceased to remember just how wonderful, how complete and perfect it has always been with you… and only with you."

In another part of the archducal hall, Milo of Morai— once Undying God of the Horseclans, now Undying High Lord of the Confederation, by his own reckoning, at least eight hundred years old—sipped wine and chatted with the three newest-found of his rare, mutant strain.

The tests devised by him and by Aldora and administered under their constant supervision had shown positive results in all three cases. The ancient High Lord was inordinately pleased and showed it plainly.

"Giliahna, Neeka, you'll both love the new capital, Theesispolis, and especially the palace there. My wife, Mara, designed it and oversaw every step of its construction. And, speaking of Mara, she'll be more than overjoyed to see you. She and Aldora, they… well, Aldora is seldom happy or contented for long and she envies Mara so much that about twenty years ago she tried to drown her—that being one of the few ways our kind can be slain. Since then, the two have consistently and most wisely avoided being in the same city at the same time.

"I am, perforce, often in the western mountains on campaign and poor Mara grows lonely with only old Drehkos for company." He took a long draft of the brandy-laced wine and clapped Tim Sanderz on the shoulder.

"As for you, Tim, you're the incarnate answer to centuries of prayers. You enjoy campaigning and warfare. You're good at it. You're a natural leader and, moreover, you're an experienced commander of organized troops, so presumably a good tactician. If you prove out as a strategist, as well, I may finally be able to get a few years of rest.

"With Drehkos to govern the settled lands—something he's quite skilled at—and you to command the armies and the frontier, Mara and I might go away for a while. We might sail out to the Islands or even clear across the Eastern Sea to the lands beyond—Ehspahneeah, Gahleeah or even Pahl'yos Ehlahs—it's been centuries since either of us has seen those lands, or even been much beyond the borders of our own."

Tim's blue eyes were wide with amazement. "But… you mean you'd trust me with your entire military establishment, my lord Milo?"

"Tim, you'd better start remembering to call me Milo and comport yourself as the equal, the peer, that you all truly are.

With luck, we'll have many centuries together, and even a single hundred years is a hellishly long time for one man to defer to another.

"Yes, I'll trust you with the armies… when you've proved you can handle them properly, win victories without too high a butcher's bill, think for yourself, yet have the good sense to know when to accept and defer to the advice of your staff. But that will be five or ten years from now, Tim.

"Immediately we all go back to the old capital, Kehnooryos Atheenahs, for the winter, you three will enter the Confederation Mindspeak Academy and well then learn just what active and latent talents you each possess. But you'll not only be studied, you'll be taught, as well.

"You'll learn the many different levels of mental communication, and how to speak on two or three at the same time. You'll be taught how to get around or through closed mind-shields and, if you own the innate ability, how to do it without the shielded mind even knowing it. You'll be taught to farspeak, and your range—with and without the added power of other minds—will be meticulously measured and recorded.

"You may—one or two of you, anyway—learn to far-gather, though I confess we've had precious little success in teaching that highly esoteric skill. Those who have been able to learn already possessed the rudiments. The Academy simply honed an existing edge, as it were."

Neeka shook her head slowly, then asked, "Lord, what is this fargather? I've never heard the term."

After long years with the arrogant, outspoken, bull-headed and often violent Aldora; with his loving but self-assured and frequently argumentative wife, the Undying High Lady Mara, Milo had felt instantly attracted to this quiet, humble and unassuming, basically gentle, raven-haired beauty. Though they two had been sharing a suite and a bed for some weeks, her public manner toward him remained one of humility and deep respect. He was becoming more and more fond of her and was seriously considering marriage to her after a few years, if Mara approved.

"Fargathering, Neeka, is the rare ability to mentally detect danger at distances and through many barriers. It is most applicable to soldiering and warfare and most useful therein. In the century or so of the Academy, the number of actual occurrences, either natural or induced, of real strength in its use has been pitifully small. All of those, saving only one, have been men.

"That single exception was our present host's first wife, Rahksahna Morguhn—Ahrmehnee-born, now deceased. Bili, himself, owns the strongest fargathering talent ever recorded, yet none of his brothers so far tested has the power to any degree, and his three children by Rahksahna lack it entirely. I am now hoping against all the odds that Tim and Gil, as they both had the same mother as Bili, will prove latent far-gatherers."

Milo drained off the other half of his goblet, then refilled it, continuing to talk while reaming his pipe and packing it with tobacco.

"You'll learn to mindspeak with animals, not just horses and cats, but all manner of beasts. You'll learn to see with others' eyes, hear with their ears, smell with their noses, taste with their tongues and feel with their skins."

His eyes caught Neeka's and she lowered her gaze, flushing darkly, a small smile tugging at her lips. In their nights together, he had already commenced her education in those particular and erotically pleasurable directions.

"Finally, when you've absorbed all the Academy has to offer you, you'll start learning languages and dialects. All of you know Mehrikan—Neeka knows one dialect, Gil two, and Tim five, but there are more than a dozen all told in the Confederation alone. You all can read and write and speak Southern Ehleeneekos, and Neeka knows the Northern dialect, but you'll all have to learn the Island dialect, which differs markedly from mainland Ehleeneekos.

"Tim and Gil speak a passable Ahrmehnee, already, and Neeka can quickly master it, no doubt, but you'll all have to learn to read and write it, and that will take time, since they use an alphabet entirely different from Mehrikan and only distantly related to Ehleeneekos.

"Neeka reads and writes Zahrtohgahn, but she can't speak it. Tim speaks Kweebehkeekos and Nyahgrahee, which are almost the same language, and a bastard pidgin-Zahrtohgahn. The only language that at least one of you doesn't have is English."

All three looked puzzled at the unfamiliar word. Before any could frame the question, Milo explained.

"English was the language that was spoken and written by the people who dwelt on this continent almost a thousand years ago. The gullible and the superstitious of our time call those long-dead people gods, but they were not, any more than am I or are you. The Witch Kingdom, so called, deep in the southern swamps, is the only place that English still exists as a spoken language, though all the many Mehrikan dialects are its direct descendants.

"If, after you've mastered all the more needful languages, you want to learn to speak English properly, fine, I'll be happy to teach you… and I'm the only man outside the Witch Kingdom who can. But you must all learn to at least read English. Now and then, one or two or more of the ancient books turn up somewhere or other, my agents obtain them by hook or by crook and they are rushed to Theesispolis to be carefully preserved in the great library there, along with the volumes of my personal journal, which is also in English.

"These books contain, oftimes, knowledge which has, does and will prove invaluable to us and our people over the centuries. So we must all have the ability to partake of it."

All three nodded assent. Then Neeka's brow wrinkled and she shyly asked, "But why learn all these other languages, my lord, when we can all mindspeak?"

Milo had arisen and was standing with his pipestem in his mouth, its filled bowl inverted over a candle flame, while he sucked mightily and little spurts of wispy smoke jetted from his mouth.

Tim answered the question. "Because, Neeka, outside the Confederation, mindspeak ability is far less common than it is in our lands."

Milo resumed his seat, he and his now well-lit pipe emitting clouds of fragrant, blue-gray smoke. He nodded. "Tim is right. But even in the Confederation, only a little more than half the people have real, everyday-usable mindspeak even though the percentage has been climbing every year for the last two hundred or more.

"When I led the first ten thousand or so of the Kindred from the Sea of Grass and into Kehnooryos Ehlahs a bit more than two centuries ago, mindspeak—since it had long been a survival trait in the hard and too often short life of the clanspeople on the prairies and high plains, as it was the means of communicating with their horses and the allied prairiecats—was present to some degree in between seventy and eighty percent of them.

"But in the Southern Ehleenee, whom we conquered piecemeal, only one or two percent were accomplished mindspeak-ers, and even those with latent powers only brought the figure to something less than ten out of every hundred. There were two reasons for this: Since their culture differed so drastically from that of the Horseclans, they had no real, pressing need for the ability and so had never nurtured and developed it; and since their antique religion considered any unusual mental abilities to be an indication of witchcraft—for which 'sin' the penalties were harsh, hideous, agonizing and fatal—those who did possess mindspeak seldom used it.

"As the Kindred and Ehleenee intermarried and interbred, the talent began to crop up with more frequency, especially among the nobility. Then, after I broke the power of the Ehleen Church a century and a half back; after I stripped their clergy of many of their ancient rights and privileges, revoked their tax-exempt status retroactively and seized much of their property for back taxes along with tons of gold and silver; after I disbanded and either killed or imprisoned their secret packs of night-riding terrorists; after I released the common Ehleenee from the Church's emotional stranglehold and turned them against the clergy by exposing those clergymen for what they truly were—smugglers, brothel owners, receivers of stolen goods, extortionists, rapists and murderers, and most telling, slavers of the worst sort, who maintained a fleet of merchant ships to transport the children the priests demanded of their parishioners for 'holy orders' across the sea to be sold at auction; after all this had been done and most of the Ehleenee were truly free in both mind and body, the percentage of mindspeakers really began to climb.

"But what I consider—as will you—progress is seldom comprehensible to those whose lives span only fifty or sixty years and often less. Nonetheless, the population of the Confederation now includes almost sixty percent mindspeakers, and that is a hopeful sign that, someday, all our people will share the same gift."

In the late evening of yet another day, Milo sat with his pipe and a small goblet of fiery cordial, his nude, freshly bathed body wrapped against the chill of the night in a chamber cloak of silk and fur. His long, almost hairless, bare legs were extended before a fragrant fire of oak and applewood.

Across the width of their chamber, warmed by a nearby brazier, sat Neeka. The woman occupied a low, padded stool, faced a mirror lit by flanking lamps, and was raptly concentrating on the meticulous brushing of her buttock-length black hair. Her own goblet of cordial sat on her dressing table, barely sipped, and the small, richly jeweled pipe she was trying to learn to smoke had been set aside to smolder out.

Between them, a big bed, its cherrywood headboard carved with the arms of Clan Morguhn, awaited them. Milo was eagerly anticipating the warmth of feather mattress and quilted coverings, but Neeka, it soon became apparent, was thinking of other things.

"Milo," she asked, still brushing, "people have to have something to believe in. It was wrong for you to destroy the Church, and that destruction can only breed more and more rebellions over the years. Someday, the Ehleenee may even unite and—"

Milo chuckled and interrupted her. "Ehleenee unite? Never! Neeka, they couldn't even unite to face the threat of my armies conquering them, so factionalized and backstab-bing were they… and they've not changed one whit over the years.

"My few thousand Horseclansmen and Freefighters could never have defeated any really united Ehleen kingdom, especially if that kingdom had had the minimal support of the others, but none of them was ever completely united or even minimally supported. No sooner did I invade Kehnooryos Ehlahs from the west than that unhappy realm was invaded from south by other Ehleenee—the Karaleenoee, to be exact—from the north by Middle Kingdom types and threatened from the sea by the Ehleen pirates, plus being faced with one large and numerous smaller internal rebellions.

"When I invaded Karaleenos, it was the same story. Karaleenoee nobles who had bones to pick with Zenos and his successors either openly allied with me or weakened his armies by refusing to contribute troops and supplies or actually rising and laying waste to his rear areas.

"The last King of the Southwestern Ehleenee, Zastros, might easily have crushed the combined armies I had raised to oppose his advance north had not certain of his chief thoheeksee decided they'd had enough of him and his Witch Kingdom queen, slain her, turned him over to me and disbanded the army.

"Even the people of whom you were born, the Northern Ehleenee, regularly have a civil war once or twice each century. The only Ehleenee who ever enjoyed any kind of stability for any length of time were the Islanders, those who used to be pirates. And the last king of the pirates, Alexandros, used to say that that was only because every pirate understood that total unity alone prevented the utter extirpation of them all.

"No, little Neeka, I don't doubt that there'll be brief, bitter risings from time to time, but we actually have more of them amongst the recently conquered mountainfolk than amongst the Ehleenee. However, very few of them require intervention by Confederation troops, most being put down on the spot by locals."

"But still, Milo," Neeka went on relentlessly, "if you'd allow those who wish to to follow the Ehleen Church openly, one bone of great contention would be removed and most of the present secret societies which often breed these rebellions would no longer have much cause for existing."

Milo shook his head. "Neeka, all you say may well be correct, but such a reestablished Church would require close supervision, lest it become as rotten, corrupt and powerful as its predecessor. I simply have never had the time or energy to spare for such a task… or the inclination, to be honest. I've lived for a millennium, and in all that time, in all the many cultures in which I've resided, through which I've moved, my experiences with organized religions have never been good, so my opinion of them is abysmal.

"But, if long life has taught me nothing else, my dear, it is that flexibility is a true asset, so I'll promise you this: When, in twenty or so years, you've learned all that you must, if you still want to see an Ehleen Church reestablished and you are willing to supervise that Church and keep its clergy at least law-abiding if not really honest—no one could keep either a politician or a priest honest anymore than they could render chicken dung into gold filigree—I shall then allow such reestablishment to take place."

Tossing off his cordial, he laid his pipe on the hearth and stood up. "Now let's get to bed, woman. We ride north tomorrow, and the dawn will come soon enough. Besides, you have at least five hundred years to brush your hair."

Epilogue
Dr. Sternheimer painfully flexed his arthritic joints enough to take his place at the conference table. All chitchat among the men and women already at that table had ceased immediately he entered the room at a shuffling hobble. Despite the pain of his swollen, inflamed joints, he was smiling broadly. But his smile did nothing to ease the nervous tension which crackled like electricity in the cool, humidified atmosphere of the locked, soundproofed room.

This body, the Council of Directors, might rule the Center in theory and in name, but in actual fact there was only a single individual who had guided it—through fortune and misfortune, through victories and defeats, through good years and lean—almost from its very inception nearly a thousand years in the past That man was David Sternheimer, D.M.S., D.S., Ph.D.

He cleared his throat, but still spoke huskily. "Doctors, for centuries we have been seeking a way to displace the mutants whose advent foiled our reconquest of the areas that were once known as Georgia, North and South Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. We attempted many fine, well-laid-out plans, only to find that some were not laid out well enough.

"But in all these efforts, we were treating the symptoms— as it were—rather than attacking the disease, proper. Because of the very real and very dangerous mental abilities of the mutants in general and of then- leader, Milo Moray, in particular, we feared to put a body occupied by one of us into really close proximity to the mutants.

"However, a little more than ten years ago, a new and radical plan was broached to me. I first weighed all aspects of it with my usual thoroughness, then began its implementation. In order to do this, I was forced to sacrifice something which I—which we and the Center—have been seeking since first we became aware that such existed; I refer, of course, to a live mutant. Our agents in the north had access to a young female mutant, but I ordered that that person be prepared for a mission, rather than be brought here for experiments."

"Now, dammitall, David," snapped a black-haired, blue-eyed young man, who looked about twenty years old, "you exceeded the authority we—this Council—granted you! It is of vast importance that we learn just what processes make a mutant. For only when we share their strengths and know their weaknesses can we stand up to these people with even a bare chance of defeating them and reuniting our nation. And if we don't have a mutant or two to take apart, how can we hope to understand them?

"I, for one, will here state that I'm damned tired of transferring my mind to a younger body every two- or three-score years. If we could have bodies that never aged, that were next to impossible to kill, as the mutants have, think of what we could accomplish.

"I say that we void this current scheme, reclaim the mutant and bring it here."

All looked to Sternheimer, but he just shrugged. "Dr Seiget, even if I agreed with you, and I do not, reclamation of that particular mutant will be impossible for some years to come. It is now accepted by the chief mutant and en route to the capital of that so-called Confederation. Not even it knows that it is anything more than what it seems, so mental prying will not betray it. Only an intricate series of tones will awaken the memories deeply buried in its subconscious… and only I own the instrument capable of producing that series of tones.

"You will get your experimental mutant in time, Lewis, never fear. Mavbe you'll even get more than one. And that damned Milo Moray will get his comeuppance, too! He's been happily torturing and butchering our colleagues and agents for far too long with virtual impunity. But now, now, I've implanted a humanoid time bomb in his very bosom. And when I feel the time is right…"

Author's Introduction

In the previous Horseclans volumes (Swords of the Horseclans through The Patrimony) I have moved consistently forward in time from the initial volume of the series (The Coming of the Horseclans) ; but this volume and the next few which will follow it are all set before the time of The Coming.

If some of my readers are confused by this, I am sorry, but I had deliberately left the initial volume open at both ends because I was planning just what I have now done.

The books to follow this one will deal with the origin of the prairiecats, the discovery of the breed of mind-speaking horses, certain of the adventures of Milo of Morai prior to his return to the Horseclans, and much, much more.

May Sacred Sun shine always upon you all.

Robert Adams
Richmond, Virginia
28 July 1980

Chapter One

The Great River, which had shone bright-blue at a distance, rolled muddy-brown as it slid under the blunt prow of the broad row-barge. Senior Trader Shifty Stuart occasionally spat from the cud of tobacco in his cheek into the river, but be did not bother to look at the water, nor did he look back to the west, at Traderstown, which the vessel had just left His eyes were for the east, for Tworivertown, where he would shortly make landfall with his cargo of furs, hides, fine horn-bows, matchless felts and blankets of nomad weave, beautifully worked leather items and a vast assortment of oddments obtained by the far-ranging horse-nomads of the transriverine plains by trade or warfare from other folk farther west, south or north.

This was not Stuart's first such return from a long summer of trading with the nomads. For sixteen summers he had roved the plains country in a caravan of trader wagons— endless days of baking heat, choking dust, swarms of biting flies and other noxious insects, the incessant lowing of the huge oxen that drew the oversized, high-sided wagons on their five- or six-foot wheels from one clan meeting place to another or, every fifth summer, up to the semipermanent Tribe Camp for the quintennial meeting of the chiefs of all or most of the sixty to seventy clans of horse-nomads that had ruled the plains for most of the five or six hundred years since the fabled Mercan civilization had gone down in death and destruction at the hands of some far-distant enemy who must have suffered equal or worse devastation and decimation, since no invading armies had ever followed up the bombs and plagues.

Stuart had heard all the tales, and he even believed some of them, for he had seen with his own two eyes the cracked and splintered shards of the network of fine roads that had once crisscrossed the land, and the long-dead and overgrown, but still impressive by their far-flung hugeness, cities of the plains. On three occasions, he had overruled the superstitious maunderings of his wagoners and associates to camp in the ruins of one of the larger of these, that one that the nomads called Ohmahah, and on each visit he and his men had garnered several hundredweights of assorted metal scraps out of the ruins, for all that the nomads had doubtlessly combed and recombed them for generations.

Others of the old tales were believed only by fools and children, opined Stuart, Such as the yarns concerning men traveling to and walking upon the moon, or living beneath the sea or crossing the sea in boats lacking either oars or sails. Silly, asinine nonsense, all of it!

The senior trader leaned his weight against the massive timber beside him—one of four, two each at prow and stern, which were built into the flat bottom of the barge and ran through every level to more than twenty feet above the top deck, where they supported the iron rings through which was let a hempen cable over two feet in thickness and extending from the ferry dock of Traderstown to the ferry dock of Tworivertown, enabling the ponderous, topheavy barges to bear men and women, wagons, livestock and goods across the wide water in any weather and in complete safety.

He cocked up one leg to rest a booted foot upon the low rail and began to calculate his probable profits. Then a hand was tugging gently at his sleeve. He turned his head to see Second Oxman Bailee.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Mistuh Stuart, suh, but it's thet there nomad gal, she wawnts to git out to squat. Ever sincet I beat her good fer messin' up the wagon, she's done been real good 'bout thet. D'you rackon…"

Stuart waved a hand impatiently. Bailee was a good oxman, when he wasn't drunk at least, but he took forever to Say anything in his whining, nasal, Ohyoh-mountaineer drawl.

"Yes, yes, Bailee, let the little slut out. It's safe to now— we're almost halfway across."

As an afterthought, he yelled at the oxman's back, "And when she's emptied herself, bring her up here to me."

The trader settled back against the immobile timber baulk with a self-satisfied smile. In his recent calculations he had clean forgot to add the probable sale price of the girl and of the two other younkers, as well, not to mention the three fine, spirited plains ponies. And even if she and the boys were to bring Stuart not a penny, still the last few weeks of use of her slender, toothsome body of nights would be almost recompense enough.

The treks outward, in the springtime, were not so bad, for the trading trains most always carried along comely young female slaves for sale to the nomads. Unlike most of the eastern, civilized slave buyers, the horsemen of the plains cared not a scrap of moldy hide whether or not their human purchases were virgins. Indeed, they would pay more for a pregnant girl or one nursing a new brat than for the very prettiest virgin or barren slut. Therefore, all the traders and many a common wagoner or oxman usually had a soft-breasted bedwarmer every westward leg of the year's trek, until she quickened or was sold into some clan or other.

But the returns usually were companionless. Providing food and water for any chit that had for whatever reason not been sold by the end of trading was unbusinesslike. Nomads would not take a sickly or lunatic slave girl even as an outright gift, and many a trader drove these unprofitable leftovers out into the vast sea of grasses to fend for themselves. But Stuart was a bit more kindly. He had a guard or oxman slit the creatures' throats and leave the carcasses for the wolves and buzzards.

The horse-nomads only bought, however; they never sold slaves of any description. For all that, the rarely captured nomad women brought high prices from eastern buyers, while a trader lucky enough to acquire even one little nomad boy could practically name his own price from the slave mongers who had journeyed inland from the coastal lands of the Ehleenee, no trader who valued his yearly custom and his hide would so much as mention his willingness to deal in nomads to any of those shaggy, smelly, fleabitten, but grim and ferocious warriors and chiefs with whom he dealt.

Nor could an enterprising man simply snatch a few of the immensely profitable nomad spawn and bear them back eastward with him, for his own guards—hired here and there, from this clan or that, for the season—would not only desert him, but would bring back the fierce warriors of the closest clan to wreak a horrible vengeance upon the kidnappers and free the captives.

"You're a dang lucky son of a bitch, Shifty Stuart!" the trader told himself for the umpteenth time in the last three weeks. "If them four savages had come a-riding into camp even two days earlier, wouldn't 've been a dang thing we could have done 'cept to give 'em a feed and a mebbe do a little trading for them raw hides and horns they had. With them dang Clan Muhkawlee guards still in camp. I'd've just had to watch a small fortune ride back off from me."

Through the sleeve of his tough linen shirt, Stuart gingerly kneaded the healing but still painful stab wound in his upper arm, thinking, with a prickle of justifiable fear, "It were a near thing, though, fer all that If thet young feller had got away…" He shuddered, his thoughts going back to tales he had heard of what had been done by vengeful nomads to would-be kidnappers of their kin. He shook his head. "Whoever would've thought a little squirt—he couldn't've been more'n fifteen or sixteen, an' dang skinny, to boot!—so groggy he couldn't hardly stand up from the drug we'd snuck into his bowl of stew, could of kilt two growned men outright, hurt another so bad he died thet night, an' stabbed or slashed four or five others, got on his horse and been on his way, afore ol' Lyl Sunk thet dart in his back?"

Fleetingly, the trader once more regretted the loss—unavoidable as it had been—of the third nomad boy, then shrugged, ruminating, "Ain't no good to fret over spilt milk, I reckon. Mean as thet little bastid was, likely he'da had to be beat plumb to death afore a body got any use outen him, anyhow."

Stuart grinned again. "Three hundred dollars apiece, mebbe more, them two younkers oughta bring me, oncet I gits 'em to Fanduhsburk, mebbe twicet thet if I decides to take 'em plumb to Looeezfilburk. Hell, mebbe I'll do 'er, been coon's years sincet I'z in Looeezfilburk, an' I'll have me the gal to play with till we gets there, too. 'Course, she's gotta be gentled down some…"

He had been the first to take the girl, and the little minx had fought him like a scalded treecat—pummeling, punching, kicking and clawing until his arm wound had started to bleed again, not to mention tooth-tearing his bristly chin and very nearly biting his right ear off; which last injuries. she had wrought on him after he had had her wrists and ankles securely tied to the wagon sides, nor was he the only man she had savagely marked. That he had successfully resisted the impulse to give her back as good or better with his big, bony fists and strictly forbidden any of the others with whom he shared the use of her to strike her face had been based upon a good, sound principle of business—broken noses and knocked-out teeth lowered the value of female slaves.

He had not, of course, expected her to be a virgin, nor had she been; no nomad girl ever was so for any length of time after attaining puberty.

"But," he mused and again grinned to himself, "they says them there slave doctors in Fanduhsburk could make a virgin outen a thirty-year-old whore. Mebbe I oughta git 'em to make this gal inta one? Hmm, I'll think on it. She'd sure bring more thet way, eastern buyers likin' virgins the way they does."

He returned to his mental calculations for another few moments, then Bailee was shoving the girl to a place beside him at the rail, and he lost his train of thought. A glance downward gave him a glimpse only of the top of her head of dull, matted, dirty, dark-blond hair, for like all her people she was small, barely as high as his armpit.

The girl's baggy trousers and full-sleeved shirt were both Somewhat the worse for having been violently removed from her body on several occasions, as well as being filthy from having been lived in and slept in for the weeks since her capture. Her short boots of red felt and brown leather had survived in better condition, since she had been carefully locked out of sight in one of the big wagons for most of the journey.

She stood at the rail for some minutes, then shyly edged closer, closer, until her slender body was in contact with Stuart's. Her grubby, broken-nailed, but slim and graceful right hand hesitantly extended to touch, then gently massage his genitals through the stuff of his clothing.

Stuart grinned. "Cain't git enough of me, can you, baby doll?