Without turning his head, he said, "Bailee, you can jest go on back, 'bout your work. Me an' this here little gal's got us some palav'rin' to do up here."

The trader closed his eyes in ecstasy as the captive girl rubbed and kneaded and caressed his flesh, and he was completely unaware of her other hand's activities, not even feeling the easing of the silver-hilted knife from out its sheath in the top of his right boot.

When he did feel the girl's body begin to crouch lower, he began to turn to face her… and a white-hot agony lanced in behind his right knee! Even as he suddenly realized that the right leg no longer would support him, the girl—still firmly clutching his scrotum in her wiry grip—launched herself forward, over the rail. Stuart, screaming his agony and terror, was dragged over and down and into the muddy brown water of the Great River.

Chapter Two

The shock of striking the water and its coldness stunned Stehfahnah for but a moment. She let go of the man and put the blade of the knife between her small white teeth in order to free both hands for swimming. Surfacing, she shook the water from her eyes and breathed deeply, treading water and moving her arms to keep her body erect in the water.

Gasping and coughing up water, her sometime captor was floundering about a few yards distant, just beyond the rhythmic file of splashing oars, which meant some eighteen feet from the side of the barge, the upper rail of which was now lined with men, all shouting and pointing.

Taking another deep gulp of air, Stehfahnah swam purposefully in the trader's direction. Once close behind him, she grabbed the back of his wide weapons belt, jerked loose his big dirk and its sheath, then shoved him deliberately into the path of the heavy oars.

Stuart did not even have time to scream before the hardwood blade of one of the sweeps, driven by the strength of four brawny slave rowers, smashed into him. He sank for a long moment, then bobbed up, to float, face-down, with the current.

By the time Several of the bargemen and wagoners had swum out, attached a rope to their leader and managed to hoist his limp, battered, broken and bleeding hulk back onto the barge, the girl was nowhere in view.

Remembering the shrewdly cast dart that had pierced and slain her elder half brother, Broh, on the dark day she and her younger brothers were drugged and made captive by the treacherous traders, Stehfahnah swam underwater until she was beneath the flat bottom of the second barge, fifty yards behind the first. As the lead barge had halted, the barges behind had had no choice but to follow suit, but the column could not remain immobile for long, else the insistent tugging of the river's current at their bulks would place undue pressure upon the transriverine cable.

Stehfahnah, too, was menaced by the current. She clawed at the rough, slimy boards, hearing just a few inches above her the clashings and jangling of the chains that held the oar slaves to their benches. At last she found a hold that would allow her to extend her head slightly and break surface at the waterline to take air while she did what she must do.

Her lungs once more filled afresh, she sent out a telepathic beam—a type of communication that her people called "mindspeak," fairly common in those of her blood, but rather rare among these alien folk. She did not really know if one or both of her younger brothers were aboard this barge, but she could hope…

"Djoh, Bahb!"

"Stehfahnah?"

"Yes," she affirmed. "I have escaped. I jumped off the water wagon. I think I slew the swine, Stooahrt, so a small part of our clan's vengeance has been taken, perhaps. I am under your water wagon, but there is no way I can free you, as well; you must find a time and a place to accomplish that for yourselves."

Twelve-year-old Bahb's acceptance of the situation was beamed clearly, but the younger boy, Djoh, asked silently, "But sister, there are so many of them and they are all so big and strong. What if we cannot get away?"

"Then you must go to Wind, little brother," Stehfahnah replied. "You must get or make a weapon and force them to slay you… but, for the honor of our clan, you must try to take at least one of the pigs with you. Be not overhasty, though, in aught you do. Depend upon Bahb's judgment—he has the mind of a full-grown warrior, for all that he has seen but twelve summers."

The barge had commenced to move forward, the heavy oars rising and falling rhythmically to the resounding strokes of a mallet on a hollow board. Stehfahnah took one last, deep gulp of air, then let go her hold and began to swim with the current, angling toward the western bank of the river.

The bargemen, long familiar with cases of near-drowning, had pumped the water out of Trader Stuart's body. Then his own men had stripped him of his soaked clothing and carefully bedded him down in his personal wagon. It was not done out of love or even liking for the man, but rather out of respect—respect for him both as a man and as a fighter of some note, not to mention the fact that he paid a decent wage for hard work. Never had he been known to try to cheat an employee out of monies due him.

Senior Wagoner DonnHwyt dropped heavily to the upper deck from the tailgate of the wagon. The aging but stocky and still powerful man was the nearest thing to a true physician that the caravan had. He was paid an extra amount for doctoring horses and oxen, but he practiced on the men as well whenever there was need. Now his thin lips were drawn even thinner into a grim line.

Three men awaited him—the two junior traders who had chanced to be on the lead barge, Hwahruhn and Custuh, plus Stuart's bodyservant-cum-sometime-bodyguard, "Clubber" Fred Doakes.

Custuh, almost qualified to be a senior trader himself, was the first to speak. "Well, man," he lisped through the gap left when the nomad boy had smashed out his front teeth with the pommel of a saber, "will he live or not? If he will, ith he tho badly hurt he won't be able to command nekth yearth venture?"

Old Don shrugged, his broad shoulders rising and falling, his big, callused hands spread wide, palms facing outward. "Lordy, Misruh Custuh, I ain't no real doctor. And it'd tek one to tell yawl awl thet. Misruh Stuart's left shoulder is broke, bad broke—thet oar done as much damage as a iron mace, and even if some surgeon don't tek the arm off, he won't never use 'er much agin.

"And the outside tendon a-hint his right knee's done been sliced clean in two, but thet ain't awl. His bag was damn near tore loose from his pore body by the there damn HI bitch. It's a pow'ful good thang he done a'ready got him a son 'r two, 'cause I 'spect he ain't never gonna git him no more younguns of no kind awn no woman… if he does live, thet is."

"The real question is," commented Hwahruhn, scratching at the scalp beneath his silver-shot black hair, "dare we—any of us—go back on the plains next year, since the gal's gotten free? If you'll all recall, I was against the whole dirty business from the outset—the treachery, the killing, the kidnappings, not to mention the way that gal was abused during these last few weeks. If she gets back to her clan…"

Custuh snorted derisively. "Bert, you maunder like an old woman, you do! 'If the gal gits back to her clan,' indeed! Did you ever hear tell of anybody swimming this here river with all their clothes on? Huh? And too, while all the rest of you were set at getting ol' Stuart out'n the water, I had a pair of darts ready and was watching to see her haid come back up… and it never did, so she probly drownded."

But Hwahruhn shook his head, unease in his voice and worry in his dark-brown eyes. "What you aver is just possible, true, but these nomads are tough, wiry, resourceful people. They're survivors, Liasee. If the child you all insisted upon wronging gets out of the river alive… God help us all!"

Stehfahnah had not intended to come out of the river in close proximity to the trader town, but she certainly would have preferred to get out of the cold, swirling water much sooner than was the case. When at last she was able to drag herself up an inclined and muddy bank on the western side of the broad waters, she could but lie for a long while on the brush-grown verge, her muscles jerking and twitching with the fatigue of her efforts.

At length, as hunger began to nibble at her belly, she sat up and commenced—as she had been taught—to think out her situation, to take stock of her possessions and gauge their potential usefulness for accomplishing her purpose.

She knew that she was far, far east of the last place her clan had been encamped. She and her brothers, one of dozens of farming hunting parties, had been a good two days' ride from camp when they had been taken, and the wagon train had lumbered on for nearly three weeks after. Therefore, she estimated that a span of not less than three days' ride west would bring her near the tents and yurts of her people…

but she had no idea just how far south the river might have borne her this day. Also, she had no horse or any hope of easily acquiring one, unless she should chance across one of the increasingly rare wild herds and could mindspeak the king stallion into allowing one of his sons or daughters to accompany her on her quest. She knew better than to approach any of the scattering of dirtman settlements; such would only mean slavery or worse.

She sighed, then spoke aloud to herself. "So I must walk. Sun be praised that the wolves are well fed this time of year."

But if she must plan upon making a journey of such length solely on foot, it might well take a month or more. Winter storms had been known to come very early, and if she was to survive alone, dismounted and friendless upon the open plains, she must have many things she now lacked—more and heavier clothing, more effective weapons than one large and one small knife, some kind of food that could be packed without quickly spoiling, a container for water, a means of making fire.

The last necessity was fulfilled almost at once. When she got around to closely examining the weapon she had torn from the trader's belt, she found not only a knife, but a number of smaller enclosures within the leathern sheath. A hone stone occupied one pocket, another held a flint and a steel for fire-making, and two smaller ones contained a tiny steel eating skewer and food-knife plus a small silver spoon.

The belt knife itself was a heavy, handsome, formidable weapon—a full foot of thick, broad blade, honed to razor keenness along all of one edge and the first third of the other. Below the polished steel ball pommel, the wooden hilt had been well covered with black leather and wound with many yards of silver wire, and the number of deep nicks in the blade side of the shiny brass guard showed that the weapon was not simply a gaudy showpiece.

Knowingly, Stehfahnah weighed and balanced the knife, finding its weight properly distributed to render it an effective missile. A design had been etched onto both sides of the blade, and Stehfahnah grunted satisfaction when she closely studied these. She had had little experience at the arts of reading and writing—not many of her people had, for few books had survived six hundred years of chaos, and neither of these two talents were necessary for survival on the prairies, high plains and mountains wherein Horseclansfolk dwelt—but she could write her own name and that of her clan, so she easily recognized that the letter S was the central motif of the designs and at once felt that Wind had intended this fine, deadly, lovely weapon just for her, Stehfahnah's, hands.

The boot knife was typical of weapons of its type—a leaf-shaped, double-edged blade of some half-inch width and some four inches in length, guardless and with a plain hilt of deer antler. Stehfahnah found that it fitted securely into the sheath built into her own left boot top.

Her gnawing hunger partially assuaged by a few handfuls of berries and the raw legs of a large frog she was fortunate enough to catch, the Horseclans girl sought and found a willow tree, and her nimble fingers had soon produced a quantity of twine from the inner bark. After locating three game trails in the riverside brush, she constructed as many simple snares of whittled twigs and twine nooses, plus a log deadfall where the mark of cervine hooves was plain; if even one of the traps proved effective during the night to come, she would have fresh meat, a skin or hide of some description, bone and possibly sinew or horn with which to fashion other tools and weapons.

By the time she returned to her starting point, the late-afternoon wind had completely dried the shirt and trousers which she had carefully draped over bushes. Dressed, she began to cast about for a safe place to spend the night, finally settling for the spacious crotch of a huge mimosa tree. Cold she knew it would be, but safe from any prowling predators, poisonous snakes or the like. That decided, she cut armfuls of springy pine tips and coarse grass and filled the depressed crotch with them. She debated kindling a fire with which to warm herself before she climbed aloft to sleep, but decided to not do so, for if her former captors were searching along the river for her, smoke or flame might give away her position.

Twice during the long, dark night, she awoke with a start, gasping and trembling and imagining herself still confined within that hateful, wooden-walled wagon, defenseless prey to the lusts of the hateful traders. Throughout all the suffering, the horrors and deep humiliations she had been forced to undergo, Stehfahnah's fierce pride had sustained her, and she had refused to allow her tormentors the satisfaction of seeing a Horseclanswoman's tears; but now, alone and high in a riverside tree, she wept, violently, uncontrollably, and at long last she slept again, so deeply that the warming beams of Sacred Sun on her face finally wakened her to the first morning of her new-won freedom.

Two of the snares still gaped empty, but the third had caught her a fine, fat rabbit. With practiced ease, she broke the neck of the struggling animal and went on with the furry carcass slung from a loop of the twine.

"Wind be praised!" she breathed fervently at the site of her painfully constructed deadfall, for beneath the heavy log lay a buck, so recently dead that the carcass still was warm. True, he was much smaller than most varieties of plains bucks, but his dearth of meat and smallness of hide was fully compensated for in the girl's mind by the pair of slender, needle-tipped and almost straight horns standing a good two feet up from his head.

Good fortune remained with her. Two days later, now armed with a brace of horn-tipped spears and a hand-carved spear thrower, she slew a large white-tailed doe. With the sinews of her two largest kills and the knife-shaped trunk of a redbark bow-wood tree, the wood roughly cured over the heat of her carefully shielded cooking fire, she began to fashion a bow. Arrows were whittled down from lengths of birch, fletched with owl feathers and tipped with fire-hardened bone shards. Birch bark and strips of partially seasoned deerhide were fashioned into a combination bowcase and quiver.

She also began the involved process of converting the doe's second stomach into a water bag for her journey. She felt pressed for time, being fully aware from a lifetime on the plains that she still was highly vulnerable to the elements and that the first freezing storm of winter could swoop down upon her with amazing suddenness.

Stehfahnah's first warning that she was not still alone in the riverside woods was the smell of smoke. She had been ranging farther and farther afield since she had finished her makeshift bow. Armed with it and her balanced pair of spears, she was seeking feral cattle or the large, curved-horned bucks for the thicker, better-quality hides they grew, knowing that her thin, flimsy riding boots would need heavy reinforcement soon.

Then she found an otter in a steel trap. The sinuous shiny-brown creature's frantic struggles to free itself had only broken the flesh of its pinioned leg, the remorseless bite of the metal jaws cutting the flesh to the bone. The beady eyes were full of pain and terror, and the whiskered lips writhed back to bare the white teeth.

The fine, large, water-resistant pelt would have been a most welcome addition to Stehfahnah's growing hoard, but her recent ordeal bred within her a kindred feeling with the trapped and suffering animal. Recalling that some animals, predators in particular, could often be reached by mindspeak, she made the effort.

She had mindspoken horses and a few of the prairiecats— the huge, long-fanged felines which had for hundreds of years lived among and made common cause with the Horseclans-folk—but she found the water dweller's mind significantly different from the other two animal sentiences. Silently, she offered to free the trapped creature if, in return, it would agree not to bite her.

The otter mind was a roiling maelstrom of agony and terror and bloodlust. "Hurt…kill… kill… kill!"

Broadbeaming a message of soothing, Stehfahnah repeated her offer. "Furry brother, if you will not bite me, I will free you from the hurting thing." After a number of repetitions, when she had almost despaired of reaching the pain-mad beast and was upon the point of ending its suffering with a well-placed shaft from her bow, the otter abruptly ceased to struggle against the trap, although its muscles still jerked involuntarily with the pain.

"Stop hurt thing?" he queried. "Not bite if stop hurt."

Laying down her spears and throwing stick, unshouldering her bowcase-quiver, Stehfahnah approached the otter, wondering if he really understood her. With some trepidation, she knelt near the trap, which was chained to a deep-driven wooden stake. The otter was big—almost four feet long—and could seriously hurt her before she could draw a knife and kill him if he had misunderstood the tenuous mental messages.

Nonetheless, she gripped the blood-slimy jaws of the trap and tried to pull them open, but the leverage was not right and her fingers kept slipping from the smooth, wet metal. Her well-intentioned efforts were only hurting the otter more, and his snarls were not reassuring to her.

Reaching behind her, she drew one of the spears closer. Drawing out her big knife, she worked the blade in near one hinge of the biting steel jaws, then gingerly twisted the knife. Haltingly, the trap opened a fraction of an inch, then a Smidgen more. When it was open to the extent of over two fingers' width, she mindspoke again.

"Now, furry one, pull out your leg, quickly!"

Scurrying as rapidly as three legs would carry him, the otter disappeared into the brush in the direction of the nearby river. Stehfahnah, unable to either pull up the stake or break the chain, finally squatted over the trap and urinated on the device, knowing that the strong odor of human urine would warn animals away from the hellish instrument.

Within the next several hours, she chanced across half a dozen identical traps. Each one of them was empty, and she used a spearbutt to spring them all, also disturbing the ground about them, spitting to be certain of leaving twolegs scent. Such was her preoccupation with the traps that her day's hunt proved fruitless and she trudged back to her campsite that afternoon empty-handed.

She had just lit her squaw-wood tinder and laid a virtually smokeless fire in the little hollow and had lowered a quarter of venison she had hung high on an oak branch preparatory to slicing off enough meat for her dinner when she suddenly realized that she no longer was alone within the brushy-banked hollow.

She let go of the deer meat and whirled, crouching, her big knife held low, ready to stab or slash or throw. But then her blue-green eyes widened in stunned disbelief.

On the river side of the fire pit were no less than three otters. The largest she recognized as the big male she had earlier freed from the steel trap; the other two were significantly smaller, although obviously adult animals. Before the trio, in the weeds, lay a big catfish, still flopping and feebly gasping.

Sheathing her knife, Stehfahnah mindspoke, "Welcome, furry ones. Will you share this meat with me?"

The larger mustelid had sunk into a crouch, taking his weight off the three legs now, perforce, doing the work of four. It was he who answered, although Stehfahnah could feel the attentiveness of the two smaller beasts.

"Why female twolegs stop hurt thing and let this one go free, why not kill like kill other furry ones and take hides? Why hunt out and kill other hurt things of male twolegs?"

Stehfahnah herself was not really sure just why she had passed up the opportunity—Sun-sent—to add the otter's fine pelt to her racks of seasoning skins, or why she had then wasted all of one precious afternoon in disarming the line of traps rather than preparing for the grueling journey which lay ahead and which must soon commence if she was to live to see its end.

She replied, "This twolegs hunts for food as well as for hides. She tries' to kill quickly and not hurt. Also, you furry ones remind her of others, furry cats, with whom she grew up. This twolegs would be your friend, would share her meat with you. If you will allow her to do so, she has certain herbs she can apply to your leg to stop the hurting for a while and help the flesh to heal quicker."

The larger, male otter, it developed, thought of himself as Mighty-and-Invincible-Killer-of-Much-Meat-in-Water, a sobriquet he had assumed after, sometime in the past, having attacked and torn the throat out of a swimming deer, then guided the carcass to the bank. After he and the two female otters had gorged on raw deer meat and Stehfahnah had avidly devoured the tender fillets of the fish, he sat motionless, snarling only sporadically while she cleaned his lacerated hind leg, plastered it thickly with a mixture of herbs and deer fat, then bound it with a strip of cloth torn from her only shirt, warning him to refrain from chewing off the cloth for at least three days.

The smaller of the two females was somewhat shy and "spoke" but little. The other, however, "chatted" on at some length throughout the meal and while the girl tended the hurt male.

Mother-of-Many-Many had once borne and successfully reared no less than six kits in the same litter, though her present litter numbered only three. Fast-Swimmer also had a litter of three kits, and the two females were sharing the single den, as well as hunting responsibilities for and protection of the six kits. The male, for all that he also used the same enlarged muskrat burrow, hunted only for himself, and, from the various "conversations," Stehfahnah was never sure if he had fathered both or either of the litters. Otters, apparently, had never developed the close familial ties of the prairiecats or of the nomads' breed of horses.

Shortly after nightfall, the three otters took their leave and waddled swiftly into the brush toward the river, the bellies of all three bulging with a surfeit of rich red venison. The two females bore, as well, strips of the deer flesh which Stehfahnah had sliced from the quarter specifically for the waiting kits in the riverbank den.

In the following days, Stehfahnah did her hunting to west and south, studiously avoiding the north. The otters' information about the trapper had been disturbing to her. He was occupying a "den-of-dead-wood" at some indeterminate distance northward and within sight of the river.

She reflected that since it was imperative that none of the local dirtmen—the nomads' epithet for farmers and all other folk who lived in one set place—suspect her presence, here, she had been very foolish to spring and upset so many traps without touching the baits. The single bloodstained trap might have left the impression in the trapper's mind that the animal had managed to pull free of the cruel jaws, and if she had taken away the baits from the sprung traps and smoothed away her footprints, he just might have attributed the deliberate spoilage of his line to a possible wolverine and maybe even moved into another territory.

Now that he, through her unconcerned carelessness, was certainly aware that someone was nearby, Stehfahnah took pains to be extremely cautious in hunting and in everyday living, going so far as to forsake her warm, wind- and weatherproof lean-to for that tree crotch wherein she had spent her first few nights in these woods; though now she slept warmer and in more comfort for the two deer hides over the mattress of pine tips, and the odor of the fragrant needles went far toward masking the reek of her blanket of half-cured rabbit skins.

Fearful of being surprised at night, while sleeping, the girl kept all her weapons aloft with her and within easy reach. But the dreaded confrontation came by light of day.

On that ill-fated day, Stefahnah bad, early in the morning, come across a spoor she had long sought in vain—that of one of the cattle whose ancestors had gone feral after the death of the earlier civilization, had in many areas interbred with truly wild bovines and slowly evolved into the long-horned, shaggy-coated and ill-tempered beasts known as "shaggy-bulls" and still roamed the hills and backwoods in small herds or individually.

The girl had first tracked, then stalked the huge old bull for hours, at last getting sufficiently close to drive three arrows almost to the fletchings within a palm-sized space just behind and below the massive left shoulder. After a time of roaring and stamping about, the behemoth sank suddenly to his knees and began to vomit up vast quantities of frothy blood. Then, slowly, the head came to rest on the blood-soaked ground and the mighty beast's near-ton of hulk thumped onto his right side, chest rising and falling spasmodically, the thick legs driving the deadly cloven hooves in the final agony.

Recalling the words of the hunters of her clan, the slender girl patiently waited until the big animal had ceased any movement, until the urine and dung gushed through the death-relaxed sphincters. Not until then did she approach her stupendous kill and set herself to the long, arduous and singularly messy job ahead of her.

Alone, without an axe of any description, she had known ahead of time that she would be able to take only half the fine, thick hide, but that would be more than sufficient for her purposes… if she could get the heavy, unwieldy thing back to her camp.

When she had hung as much of the carcass as she could manage to hack loose high in several nearby trees, she gorged on rich, raw, bloody liver and used her thongs of deer rawhide to tie the half hide into a load she could fasten to her pack frame, with the rest of the liver, the succulent tongue and a kidney stuffed into one of the bovine's stomachs added to the load.

It was near sunset when she stumbled, bone-weary, out of the brush and down the incline to her camp. Weaving with utter exhaustion under the heavy packload, she was just too tired to take her usual precautions or even to notice that the camp was not as she had left it.

Just as she shrugged out of the straps of the pack frame, something crashed against her temple, and Sacred Sun Itself seemed to explode inside her head. Then there was blackness.

Chapter Three

For a week after Stehfahnah's spectacular and sanguineous escape from the ferry barge, the men guarding the two kidnapped boys moved warily and in augmented force about their charges. Heeding their sister's wise counsel and their own native cunning, however, the Horseclans boys seemed model captives, successfully giving the impression of an increasing passivity. Therefore, as seasonally hired men dropped off along the way to seek their homes or some winter employment, the boys' guards grew fewer and far more slack.

A fortnight of travel eastward from the Great River had brought the vastly diminished caravan of wagons, pack beasts and horsemen to within two days' journey of Pahdookahport—a true metropolis of about five thousand souls, largest river port on the western reaches of that mighty waterway called the Ohyoh River and always bustling center of the east-west trade.

Within and without the towering granite walls which protected the riverside capital of the Republic of Pahdookahport a visitor might see men of almost every race, creed and color—each attended by his hired bravos. Merchants from near and far haggled over bundles of furs, bales of hides of deer and shaggy-bull, bison and elk. A hundred or more forge fires fouled the air around the quarter of the smiths, wherein rusty or corroded metals dug from the ruins of the long-dead Ancients were reconverted to the uses of living men. Factors of the far-eastern kings, princes and archdukes sat in their guarded carriages clad in rich clothing and sipping at richer wines in arrogant disdain whilst their hordes of well-trained agents scurried hither and yon sniffing out the best of the wares of incoming caravans and barges. In other guarded carriages lolled an Ehleen or two—swarthy, big-boned men, their black hair shiny with pomade, their full lips like as not encarmined, their golden swordhilts bejeweled, the nails of their heavily beringed fingers lacquered—sneering at the "barbarians," any not of their own race.

Urbahnos Kostanis was such a one. A native of the Kingdom of Karaleenos and scion of a noble house of that realm, he had nonetheless—once irrevocably exiled to this assignment in punishment for having killed the son of a powerful man in a duel—applied his keen mental faculties so assiduously that in the bare ten years he had lived among the barbarians he had become a very wealthy merchant and was even now exchanging letters with those who would arrange to purchase his pardon from the Royal House of Karaleenos, King Zenos and his ministers being always ready to see justice done if the price was right.

Unlike the other two Ehleenee resident in Pahdookahport—Pehtros Ziplonos of Kehnooryos Mahkedohnya and Kenos Trindis of Kehnooryos Ehlas—Urbahnos' knowledge of the merchandise he was offered and sometimes bought was as thorough and as detailed as that of his agents. So it had been a long time since he had been deluded or cheated as his two racial peers often were.

He rendered the other two as much courtesy as their blood heritage entitled them (which was damned little, really, for both young Pehtros and the older, corpulent and flatulent Kenos were, though much darker than most of the barbarians, clearly not kath-ahrohs or Ehleenee of pure lineage, as was Urbahnos), but that was all, for he felt that any man so stupid and stiff-neckedly arrogant as to not learn every facet of the trade or profession which earned him a livelihood was fully deserving of all misfortunes which chanced to befall him.

Puffing at his bejeweled pipe, Urbahnos snorted silent derision. For all that Kenos had been in Pahdookahport nearly twice as long as had he, the old fool still could not even tell the difference between a fisher fur and a mink. While just last year that young ass Pehtros had paid good, silver thrahkmehee

for several bales of shaggy-bull hides (from which extra-heavy leather the best boots, bucklers and other war gear were fashioned) which, when opened for repacking prior to shipment, proved to be mostly poor-quality horsehides, interspersed with thin sheets of hardwood to give weight and solidity to the bales.

The full lips of the stocky Karaleenosian twisted into a thin, crooked smile at the memory of how the effete, stripling-slender Pehtros had howled. Naturally, an assassin had been retained to put paid to the account of the larcenous agent who had arranged sale and purchase of the spurious bales, but while the barbarian's well-earned death salved wounded pride and served clear notice to others, his corpse and hovel yielded up precious few of the Mahkedohnyan silver pieces.

Urbahnos snorted yet again. And the ninny would, had he not been there to advise, have sent his own well-known bodyguards to take revenge upon the unwashed flesh of the scoundrelly agent, which action would likely have brought down the wrath of the duke upon not just Pehtros but himself and Kenos, as well.

Observing that the barge he had been eying was now securely moored and that slaves were manhandling into place a broad ramp from deck down to wharf, Urbahnos dismounted from his carriage, shifted his jewel-hilted slashing sword rearward to make for easier walking and, flanked and trailed by four of his scarred, well-armed bodyguards, set his booted feet to the slimy cobblestones of Dock Street.

As the usual dockside crowd of slave stevedores, boatmen, agents, pimps, thieves and idlers from the town, above, grew denser, the largest of Urbahnos' bodyguards—and Nahseer was large by any standards, towering almost two full meters from pink-soled foot to shaven, dark-brown pate, with a big-boned frame which carried little fat but at least one hundred and thirty kilos of rolling muscle covered with a scarred and callused skin the shade of an old saddle—took the lead, his bulk clearing the way for his employer as the metal-shod prow of an ocean-going warship cleaves the tossing waves.

In the lee of the docked barge, a few swings of Nahseer's long, brawny arms cleared the foot of the boarding ramp and the party ascended to the deck, whereon the captain, himself, waited to greet the well-known and thoroughly respected Lord Urbahnos.

In the small, cramped cabin, the Karaleenosian sipped once, for courtesy's sake, at the contents of the copper cup served to him—that vile-flavored distillate of various grains known as "hwiskee" and as much savored by the barbarians as if it had been a decent, civilized vintage wine—then got down to business, speaking the barge captain's drawling dialect of Mehrikan with the ease and fluency born of long practice.

"To judge by your deck cargo, Hynz, someone must be building a new wharf or refooting an old one. Is timber all you're carrying, this trip?"

The burly bargeman sighed gustily and shrugged. "Damn near. Lord Urbahnos, damn near. It's the dang duke. He wants to build him a new pier and all up river, for to take some of the pressure off'n the ol' port, here, and wouldn't nothin' do but bal' cypruses clear from down to the drownded lands."

Urbahnos raised his carefully trimmed eyebrows. "You went that far south, friend Hynz?"

The captain rumbled a chuckle and shook his balding head. "Aw, hell no, Lord Urbahnos, only far as Tworiver-town. Some of your kinfolk—Southern Ehleenee—they brung the logs up far as Mehmfisz, and Ol' Djordj Gaibruhlz he brung 'em inta Tworivertown and then I laded 'em there. You knows how 'tis, Lord Urbahnos, them Southron Ehleenee, they sure lawd won't come no futher north than they jest has to."

The Karaleenosian did know how it was, although he really could not comprehend just why the so-called Ehleenee of the vast Southern Kingdom felt cause for being so standoffish, since there had been so shamefully much intermarriage and interbreeding with the indigenous barbarians in those lands south and west of Karaleenos that the folk of that kingdom were all but barbarians. Only in Karaleenos (and, to a lesser degree, in Kehnooryos Ehlas) were kath-ahrohs—Ehleenee of pure lineage—any more in numbers than a rapidly dwindling minority.

"Then this timber is your only cargo?"

The barge captain nodded. "Aye, Lord Urbahnos", only save fer a dozen barr'ls of hooch, barley hwiskee it be."

The Ehleen repressed a gag; corn hwiskee was bad enough, God knew, but the distillates of rye and barley were positively nauseous to a civilized man of refined tastes.

"But," the big bargeman added, with a grin that showed brownish, rotting teeth, "I got me some news I bet will interest you a mite, Lord Urbahnos." Then he leaned back and applied himself to his hwiskee, resuming his conversation only when his guest had stacked four broad, silver thrahkmehee on the dirt-shiny table between them.

"Ol' Shifty Stooahrt, the plains trader, he be laid up in Tworivertown, and he won't be a-doin' no more plains trading, neither, not never again. Seems as he and his train got them a chance to catch them some Horseclans kids—a gal and two lil boys."

Urbahnos leaned forward. "The boys—blonds? Redheads? How old?"

Captain Hynz treated him to another rotten grin. "Now, I jest knowed thet would tickle your fancy, Lord Urbahnos. The gal, she's the one what crippled pore Stooahrt—took his own dang boot knife and cut the tendon ahind his knee, she did, then jumped right off the cable barge 'tween Traderstown and Tworiver, a-draggin' the pore feller after her by his pore balls! Then when they both was in the river, she shoved him to where a oarblade crushed up his shoulder so bad the doc had to take the whole dang arm off him.

"But the lil bitch got what was a-comin' to her—leastways, mosta who-all was there thinks she drownded in the river, for all nobody ever foun' her body.

"But the train's still got them two boys—one blond and one redheaded, one about twelve and the other about ten— and they only 'bout two three days out from Pahdookahport, too, comin' in by land, crost the Old High Road."

Calmly lifting his own cup of the abominable tipple, the Ehleen meshed his keen mind into high gear. Fair-skinned blond and red-haired slave boys brought high prices in all the Ehleen lands of the east, especially were the slaves prepubescent and high-spirited—and in that last regard, he need have no fear if the captives were truly of Horseclans stock. Of course, the men who now held the boys were well aware of these facts, too, and would consequently demand and likely receive a stiff price for their "merchandise," especially if they went onto the quayside slave block for open bidding by Urbahnos and the other traders, factors and merchants.

However, the Ehleen mused, should an enterprising man act upon privately obtained information and ride out to meet the incoming train… hmmm…

Unbeknownst to the two men closed in the tiny cabin, a sailing barge from upriver had furled sails, put out long sweeps and rowed in to berth on the opposite side of the pier. For all that she bore a small amount of miscellaneous cargo, this vessel was basically a passenger boat, but a single short glance at the passengers who lined the rail of the newcomer as the boatmen made bow and stern lines fast to ironbound bollards was enough to send most of the docksider pimps and petty criminals off to seek better-heeled or less dangerous prey.

Within a cabin of the passenger boat, a long-limbed, fair-haired man sat brooding, his big hands clasped about the well-worn hilt of a fine broadsword, his blue-gray eyes seeing not the greasy, soot-stained wooden wall before him but rather the rolling, green leas of the land of his birth, a land now forever lost to him, the County of Geerzburk.

At a tentative rapping on the closed door, Martuhn of Geerzburk gave over his bitter reveries and turned his head to face the closed portal.

"Come."

At the basso rumble, the battered door swung inward to reveal a stocky, short-legged man known to all the world simply as Wolf. Hideously scarred was Wolfs face, by both blade and flame. Neither ear was intact, and a piece of waxed leather covered the empty socket which once had held the mate to his ebon right eye, while his hairless pate resembled an eroded and deep-furrowed hilltop. The plain steel helm which normally covered the bald head was presently held in the crook of Wolfs right arm, the hand of which had long ago been lopped off at the wrist. The arm was tightly laced into a leather cuff, to the tip of which was affixed a heavy knob of steel.

Wolf fingered his nonexistent forelock, executing a short, jerky bow. "M'lud count, the boat done docked up and they's a-shoving the planks out. Duke Gutly's likely awaiting."

Count Martuhn smiled thinly. "Wolf, old friend, you'd best watch your tongue, else our employer may have it and your ugly head, as well. Surely you know that there is no man so proud and hypersensitive as a new-made noble? I like the corpulent old pirate no better than do you, but he pays well… and punctually, if you will recall."

The nobleman arose, having to stoop in the low cabin. He was armed—a corselet of finest Pitzburk plate, worn and nicked but polished to a sheen, short kilt of scale mail, arm and elbow guards and the ornate greaves which were the mark of an infantry officer of the far-away Middle Kingdoms. Not until Count Martuhn had buckled on his broad, steel-mounted dagger belt did he settle the even broader leathern baldric onto his right shoulder and snap the links of the sheathed broadsword to it so that the weapon occupied its familiar place at his left hip. That done, he lifted from the table his fine but battered helm and turned to stoop lower and to the side so his height and bulk might pass through the cabin door.

By the time the nobleman-become-Freefighter came on deck, his young ensign, Flairtee, and his six big, burly sergeants had shouted and chivvied and beaten the five dozen recruits into a sort of formation. One brief glance at these fruits of his eastern recruiting trip was all that the exiled officer could bear—thieves, certainly, rapists, likely as not, murderers, more than one he was sure, broken men, outlaws, brigands; all men who, for one reason or another, had found it expedient to put a good thousand miles of territory betwixt them and their homelands.

But even as Martuhn winced at the tatterdemalion sight of the "formation," his keen mind was consoling him with the thought that some few of his recruits showed definite promise. Back at Tchehsheerportburk, out of which he and his staff had operated and gathered their recruits, that slender, brown-skinned, silent Zahrtohgahn had demonstrated enviable skill in casting accurately dart, light axe, knife or stone; he was also a shrewd and accomplished wrestler. The middle-aged Harzburker (he denied Harzburker antecedents, but, to Count Martuhn, his accent gave him away) was obviously of gentle birth and even possibly, like Martuhn, a broken nobleman, ,for he was a first-rate swordsman and the habit of command was natural and automatic to him; mentally, the former lord of Geerzburk was already priming the Harzburker for either sergeant or officer, likely the latter.

The third he considered a real treasure. This man, like the first, was also a Zahrtohgahn, but older, heavier of build and much darker of skin. His weapons skills were passable, but his true value lay not in the pursuits of war. Quite by accident, during the journey from the east, Martuhn had learned that the blue-black-skinned man who had signed on as Ahkmehd al Ahsrahf was a highly skilled and talented physician and surgeon—something so rare in a Freefighter company as to be almost unheard of.

When he had donned his helm, Count Martuhn returned Ensign Flairtee's intricate flourish of steel with a hand salute, then drew the junior officer aside and spoke in a low voice.

"Keep these swine aboard, Rahnee. The last thing we need is to be held responsible for turning the likes of them loose on one of the duke's precious ports, much as this one does need a thorough cleansing.

"I would suspect that, when I report to His Corpulence, we will be ordered to garrison the new fortress at Twocityport. At least those were the plans when we were sent east, to recruit these reinforcements for the company."

The freckled young officer nodded. "You think well be sent by water, eh, your grace?"

"If I were the duke, that's what I'd do," affirmed the commander. "He dislikes and distrusts even the best stripe of easterners, and you may be certain that his spy network has informed him that our little contingent is composed of the very dregs. No, he'll not want this lot marching through his towns and grain lands to Twocityport… though Wolf and I may ride over; I've had enough of this damned boat and its foul, cramped stink. Give me a good bit of horseflesh between my knees."

Old beyond reckoning and built upon still older ruins, the City Republic of Pahdookahport was ostensibly independent, free of homage to any lord save the hereditary Council of Merchant-Lords which had ruled from time immemorial. In grim reality, however, the port city had not exercised any latitude of self-determination for the twelve years since—besieged by a huge rabble of river pirates and in very tight straights—the then council had sought the aid of the Duke of Twocityport. At the head of his hundreds of disciplined, well-armed and battle-hardened mercenaries, Duke Tcharlz had not only broken the siege but had virtually annihilated the several bands of temporarily allied pirates.

Then had the council made its most serious mistake. All but bankrupt from the cost of the siege and the hefty sum exacted by the shrewd duke for his troops' services, their port facilities in need of extensive repairs before they stood any chance at all of refilling their coffers, the councilors had irrevocably doomed their long-standing free status by contracting a sizable loan in specie, materials and slave labor from their savior.

Since that date, Pahdookahport had been a client-state to Twocityport in all save name. The duke's interest rates on the loan went far beyond mere usury. After twelve long years, and despite large, twice-yearly payments', the principal of the loan still stood untouched and the interest still continued. Even the densest head in Pahdookahport now realized that Duke Tcharlz's stranglehold on the small republic would be loosened only by his death.

Not feeling really safe inside his captive city, for all that his own troops patrolled the streets and docks of the close-packed aggregation of homes, warehouses, taverns, brothels, countinghouses and shops, the duke had raised up a fine, strong and commodious residence atop a low hillock a half mile away from the city on the road which wound to Twocityport. He alternated his residence between this edifice and his palace near the capital.

Deliberately grinding the noses of the citizens of Pahdookahport into their hated serfdom to him, Duke Tcharlz had partially demolished several of their public buildings to face his new residence—christened Pirates' Folly—and had stripped public buildings and the very homes of merchantlords of fine furnishings, statuary, wall hangings and artwork, allowing only fractions of their true value to be applied against the city's indebtedness to him.