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8

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

N'Chaka?

Send fear. Him! Not kill!

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

"No!" cried Gelmar. "Stop it, Gerd!"

The hound whined irritably. N'Chaka?

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

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

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

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

Send fear.

The Ochar chief gasped and groveled in the sand.

"No," said Gelmar, who came and put his hand on Gerd's shoulder. "I forbid you, Gerd. You belong to us, to the Wandsmen. Obey me."

The Ochar chief ceased to struggle. He continued to sob. The three other men had moved away from him, as if he had been suddenly bewitched and they feared to be caught by the same spell. They appeared bewildered, unable to believe what they saw.

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

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

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

Stark braced himself.

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

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

And Stark said, You cannot kill me, Gerd. Remember Flay.

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

The fear kept on.

Stark's pale eyes changed. His mouth changed. A sound came from his throat. He was no longer seeing Gerd as Gerd. He was seeing older, faraway things, the Fear-Bringers—the eternal enemy with all his many faces of dread, hunger, storm, quake, deadly night, deadlier day, the stalking hunter snuffling after heart-blood.

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

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

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

N'Chaka . . . !

The fear stopped.

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

Follow . . . strongest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He gave an order, and the three Ochar were smitten with a palsy. They opened their mouths beneath the orange wrappings and cried out. They ran stumbling away.

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

"Ekmal."

"Stay by me, Ekmal. And remember that the hounds hear your thoughts."

He ordered the hounds to watch but not to kill unless he told them to.

The Wandsmen went ahead, hating him. The Yur, beautiful and blank, walked with the Wandsmen. Ekmal walked beside Stark, his hands well away from his girdle and the sharp blades. The hounds came at Stark's heels. The wind still blew and the air was brown, but a man could move in it if he had to.

Men in cloaks of orange leather were bringing animals out of the house, where they had been taken for safety. The animals were tall, with long legs and wide paws splayed and furred for the sand. They stepped daintily. They were all colors, black and yellow and brown, barred and spotted. Their arched necks bore slender heads set with intelligent amber eyes.

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

Stark said, "Speak to them, Ekmal."

"Put down your arms!" Ekmal cried. "These demon dogs have killed a hundred Runners. Obey this man or he will set them on us."

The men muttered among themselves, but they took their hands from their hilts. Ekmal turned to Stark.

"What do you wish of us?"

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

"All the beasts? We cannot!"

"All the beasts. With food and water."

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

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

Ekmal stopped. His eyes widened. "The Lords Protector? Coming here?"

Gelmar said, "This off-worlder has pulled down the Citadel, Ekmal. He has burned it, and the Lords Protector are cast out."

A stillness came over the Hooded Men. They stood stiff and stricken in the wind.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stark said, "Give the orders."

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

Ekmal said, "The well is inside."

Watch, Gerd.

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

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

The main room was large and neatly kept, with a dung fire smoking on a raised hearth. Weapons were ranged ready to hand. There were hangings and trophies on the walls, along with ornaments, some of them so exotic that they must have been brought up from the south over the Wandsmen's Road. Bags of grain, jars of wine and oil and other stores were kept in walled enclosures. At the back, the large room opened into a series of passageways leading to other quarters. The Wandsmen, Stark was sure, would have apartments fitted with every comfort. All in all, it was a pleasant place to rest from the rigors of travel.

A group of women, some holding small children to them, was gathered just inside the door. They wore long bright-colored garments of wool, and they did not cover their faces, which were thin-featured and handsome and fiercely hostile. They were clustered about one woman who knelt on the floor comforting a boy of about eleven. He wore a woolen tunic with an orange girdle, and he had not yet hidden his face behind the man's veil. He was trembling, biting back his sobs, and when he saw Stark he reached out for the bow he had dropped on the stones.

"No!" said Ekmal, and snatched up the bow. He touched the boy's bright head. "This is my son Jofr. I beg you—"

"Water the hounds," said Stark.

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

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

Halk was watching, too.

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

Watch, Gerd!

We watch, N'Chaka.

Stark walked to the fire, and the blue eyes of the women cursed him. Weariness gnawed at him, a corrosion in his bones. "Is there wine?"

Gerrith poured from a clay jug and handed him the cup. Ashton's gaze moved uneasily from the Wandsmen to the Hooded Men who came and went with gear and provisions.

"We must go on now," Stark said. "I can't stay awake forever, and I dare not risk the hounds." He bent over the litter. "Halk?"

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

"Dark Man."

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

"I'll go," said Halk. His voice came groaning and whispering out of his hollow chest like wind from a cave. "And I'll not die, neither. I've sworn before Old Sun's face that I'll live to make of you an offering to the shade of Breca."

Breca had been Halk's shieldmate, struck down in the battle with the Thyrans. Those iron men had given her splendid body to the cannibal Outdwellers, mutton for the spit. Halk might have borne her death, but not that. And he blamed the Dark Man of the prophecy for having led them all to disaster.

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

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

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

The hounds came dripping and slobbering from the trough.

Gelmar said, "Stark. They will not follow you below Yurunna. Then you will be two men and a woman with a half-dead burden to bow your backs and only your six hands between you to fight with when the Yur come to take you." He turned suddenly to Gerrith. "Has the wise woman something to say?"

She stood frozen in the act of pulling up her hood. She had the look of a prophetess once more, her eyes at once seeing and not seeing, fixed on Gelmar, her lips open to form words.

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

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

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

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

Stark said, "I will not."

"No harm will come to him," Gerrith said, and her voice rang like a far-off bell. "Take him, Stark, or Mother Skaith will bury us all."

Stark hesitated. Then reluctantly he reached out for the boy.

Gerd growled louder.

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

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

Stark said, "Come."

Jofr looked at his father. "Must I?"

"It seems so."

"Very well," said Jofr, and smiled. "I am an Ochar."

He stepped forward alone to Stark's side.

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

They mounted. Stark took Jofr before him in the saddle. They rode away from the house, past the heaps of Runner bodies by the pens, past the gnawed and scattered bones of the Harsenyi beasts.

Ekmal and the Hooded Men stood watching them until they vanished beyond the walls. Then Ekmal went into the house and spoke to Gelmar.

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

"That is true."

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

Without hesitation Gelmar said, "Bring the Swiftwing."

Ekmal went along one of the tunnels of the house. The tower of murmuring birds lay to his right, but he did not go to it. They were base creatures, fit only for food. He turned to the left and climbed narrow steps to a high apartment with window slits that let in the light of Old Sun and the wind of the desert. There were hangings of faded crimson on the walls, and trophies of weapons and skulls. Some of the skulls were brittle and yellow with age, crumbling dustily at the rims of the jaws and eyeholes.

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

"Swiftwing," said Ekmal. "Sky-piercer. Wind-rider. Lightning-brother."

The creature opened eyes like two red stars and looked at Ekmal. It opened its beak and cried out stridently the only word it knew:

"War!"

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

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