The Sword of Bheleu Book Three of the Lords of Dûs

Copyright 1982 by Lawrence Watt-Evans

CHAPTER ONE

Galt, the overman trader, shifted uncomfortably, sending a rivulet of cold rain down the back of his neck and under his mail; it soaked into his quilted gambeson and trickled slowly down his furry back, chilly and damp and thoroughly unpleasant. He suppressed a growl. The itching of the armor was quite bad enough without this added discomfort. He wondered how warriors could stand to wear the stuff day after day. Despite the padded undergarment, he was quite sure that he had acquired several scrapes and scratches from the metal links, and nothing he had tried had alleviated the itching. He suspected that he was allergic to the quilting.

Wearing the mail was bad enough; the added annoyance of drenching rain during his watch had him ready to give up the whole venture. And what was he, the co-commander, doing standing watch in the first place?

Packing up and going home would undoubtedly be the sensible thing to do, he told himself; Kyrith, however, didn't see it that way. She had insisted on this ridiculous siege, and that meant he was stuck here. The City Council would never forgive him if he left her here unsupervised, in sole command.

In truth, though, he knew he didn't provide much supervision; there was no doubt that, whatever their nominal status, Kyrith was in charge and he was not. She was all fire and drive and fury, despite her handicap, while he had been restrained and reasonable. It was no wonder at all that anyone fool enough to have volunteered for this all-volunteer force would prefer to follow an aggressive idiot, a warrior and the wife of a warrior prince, rather than a quiet, calm trader.

He blinked rainwater out of his great golden eyes and pulled his cloak more closely about him; with his free hand he removed his broad-brimmed hat, shook off what he could of the accumulated rain, then jammed it back on his head. He glanced behind him at the dark shapes of the camp tents, black humps against the gray-black sky. The rain had put out the last trace of the campfires, and the last lantern had been extinguished hours ago. The old Wasteland Road was invisible in the darkness and the northern hills too distant to see through the falling rain. A gust of wind swept water into his face, and he snorted, blowing the moisture out of his slit nostrils. Those ugly noses the humans had apparently had some use after all; they kept out the rain. There were plenty of advantages to being an overman, though, and on balance he felt his species came out ahead. The very word for his kind implied as much, of course. He looked about, peering through the rain and the darkness.

Immediately to his right waited the warbeast he had been assigned, its flank less than a yard away; its eyes were closed, either in sleep or to keep out the rain, he was unsure which. Its glossy black fur blended with the night sky and the darkened plain, so that it seemed almost a phantom, its edges indistinct, as if it were only a vague outline of an animal. Its triangular ears were laid back against its skull, smoothing its already sleek shape still further; its pantherlike tail lashed silently from side to side. Galt knew that most cats disliked water-very few overmen kept pets, but he had seen them aboard the trading vessels out of Lagur-and he wondered if the creature was as miserable as its feline forebears would have been if forced to stand in pouring rain for hours on end. He was not familiar with warbeasts, and could not tell from its face or its actions; to him it seemed as calm and impassive as ever, save for the motion of its tail.

To his left was empty plain; several yards away a dark shape rose up against the night sky where some human farmer had built his home. Somewhere beyond that, lost in the gloom, he knew there was another overman standing watch with a warbeast ready at his side.

Ahead of him, perhaps a hundred yards away, stood the ruined wall of the town of Skelleth, and the fallen towers that marked its North Gate. A pale flicker of light reminded him that some unfortunate human was also stuck with watch duty, but that man, whoever he was, at least had the comfort of a fire and whatever shelter was provided by the one tower wall that still stood.

Galt envied the man his fire. Even if he had had enough dry fuel to keep a fire going, he would not have dared to light one; it went against policy and good sense in so underequipped a siege as this one. The enemy forces could use such fires to locate the sentries, making it that much easier to send spies out between them, and to smuggle supplies in.

The firelight flickered oddly, and Galt's attention was drawn to it briefly, but he dismissed it as unimportant. The guard had probably walked in front of it, stretching his legs, no doubt.

The light flickered again, and then seemed to brighten. Galt blinked rain away and peered at it more closely.

It was brighter; in fact, there were now two lights, and one was moving.

The watch fire remained where it was; the increase in brightness had been the addition of this new light, whatever it was. He watched and listened carefully.

The new, smaller light was slowly approaching. Galt stirred uneasily, sending another trickle down his back, and his right hand closed on his sword hilt. The light was definitely coming closer. Although it was hard to be sure through the hissing rain, he thought he heard boots sloshing through mud. He patted the warbeast's side, then returned his hand to his sword and loosened the blade in its scabbard. The warbeast's eyes opened, gleaming a ghostly pale green in the dimness as they caught the faint light; its tail stopped lashing.

Galt took a step forward.

He had forgotten the added weight of his armor and that he had been standing in mud for several long minutes without moving his feet; there was a soft sucking sound as his boot came free, though the motion required little more effort than it would have ordinarily.

The light suddenly stopped moving, still at least a dozen yards away; there was an instant of silence, save for the pattering of the rain, and then a voice called softly, "Overman?"

Galt made no reply, but slapped the warbeast's neck in the signal meaning "separate and surround"; the monster obediently slipped silently away in the darkness. Galt spared a second to wonder how anything that large could move so quietly in the rain and mud.

"Overman? Please, if you're there, I come in peace. I want to talk to your leader." The voice was speaking in little more than a loud whisper, but Galt had no trouble in making out the words. Aware that the warbeast was circling around and that a shouted command would bring it leaping upon the intruder, Galt decided he could risk replying.

"Who are you?" he asked.

There was a pause; the light swung, and slogging footsteps approached a few paces. Galt could see that the glow came from a lantern held by a human, but could make out no details.

"My name is Saram. I used to be a lieutenant in the Baron's guard. I want to speak with your leader."

"Saram?" Galt was startled; he knew the man very slightly, having met him in the course of the trading expedition that had started this whole silly mess. Garth, the leader of that expedition, had spoken with Saram at length.

Since Garth's disappearance was more or less the cause of the siege, conversation with the man might prove worthwhile.

"Where are you?" the human asked.

"Never mind where I am. Hold the lantern up so I can see your face."

The man obeyed; although he was still too far away for Galt to be certain, his face could well have been Saram's.

"What do you want?" Galt asked.

"I want to talk to the leader of your expedition."

"About what?"

"About Garth."

"Speak to me, then. I will decide whether what you say is worth bringing to the attention of our commanders."

"But...who are you? I can't even be sure you're an overman. Come where I can see you."

Galt considered. The man was merely human, and it was plain that he was alone; unskilled as he was in fighting, Galt was sure he could handle a lone human-particularly with the warbeast lurking somewhere close by.

"As you wish." He walked carefully forward until he stood at the outer edge of the lantern's circle of light. His left hand dropped from holding his cloak closed and fell instead upon the hilt of his dagger; his sword was drawn and ready in his right. "Speak," he commanded.

Saram hesitated. "Who are you? You look familiar."

"I was unaware that humans could tell one overman from another."

"I may be mistaken"

There was no harm in admitting his identity. "No; we've met before. I am Galt."

"Oh, of course; the trader."

"The master trader, yes." There was a moment of silence as each considered the other; then Galt demanded, "Speak. What have you to say regarding Garth?"

"I know where he is."

"Do you know when he will return?"

"No. But what difference does that make? He is not in Skelleth. I will swear to that."

Galt smiled humorlessly. "I am afraid it will take more than the word of a single human to convince our leaders of that. If he is not in Skelleth, then where is he? As a matter of fact, Saram, I know as well as you that the Baron of Skelleth banished Garth; I was there, after all. Unfortunately, there are those who prefer to view that entire scene as a fraud, a drama to convince me that Garth was not in Skelleth while the Baron laid subtle plans for his capture."

Saram snorted, a sound barely audible above the drumming rain. "That's absurd."

"To you, it may seem so. To overmen and overwomen who know nothing of humankind, it seems perfectly plausible. The treachery of mankind is legendary among my people."

"But if I say where Garth has gone?"

"Merely another lie. However, I admit to a certain curiosity; where has he gone? He told me only that he would be back before the start of the new year."

"I had hoped to have some assurance of peace before revealing what I know."

"I'm afraid, that we'll just have to forget about it; then. A pity. I would very much like to know."

Saram considered for a moment, looking up at Galt's inhuman face, and then said, "He has gone to Dûsarra on an errand for the Forgotten King."

Galt did not reply immediately; this brief answer raised so many further questions that he preferred to tally them up in his head before asking any.

When he had thought it over, he asked, "Who is the Forgotten King?"

"An old man who lives in a tavern in Skelleth; more than that is hard to say. He claims that his kingdom is also forgotten and that he has lived here in Skelleth for centuries. There is good reason to believe him a wizard of some sort."

"Why would Garth be running errands for him?"

Saram shrugged, and the lantern bobbed, its light dancing and spattering. "Garth is not, perhaps, the least gullible of beings. Apparently, some oracle told him that the old man could grant him wishes, and he believes it. I think that his current quest is supposed to be rewarded with immortality."

"An oracle, you say?"

"I believe he mentioned one."

"The Wise Women of Ordunin, perhaps?"

"I don't know; it could be."

This began to make sense. Garth was one of the privileged few the Wise Women would speak to, and he had consulted them on several occasions. No one had ever yet known the Wise Women to be wrong, or actually to lie; however, they took a perverse delight in misleading their questioners. Undoubtedly Garth had misinterpreted some deliberately vague answer and betaken himself to this mysterious old man on the basis of that misinterpretation.

"Why, then, did this so-called King send Garth to Dûsarra?''

"I'm not sure. He has some complicated magic he's planning, but he lacks some of the necessary ingredients, it seems, and I think Garth was supposed to bring back something he needed."

"Where and what is Dûsarra?"

"I believe it is a city far to the west, in Nekutta."

"How far?"

"I don't know."

Galt contemplated this. "Could it be so far that he has not yet had time to return? It was a month or more ago that he vanished."

"Certainly it could. The world is a very big place."

"We overmen wouldn't know. These past three centuries we have had little opportunity to see it."

Saram ignored the sarcasm. "I haven't seen much of it, either, but I've heard that the land extends for hundreds of leagues to the west and south."

"So it is your belief that Garth is off adventuring in this Dûsarra and will return in due time?"

"Unless he gets himself killed, yes."

"Why have you told me this? Why come here, alone, in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, to tell us that our missing comrade is running some fool's errand for a crazy old man?"

Saram was momentarily taken aback. "It's the truth."

"Quite possibly it is, but why have you told me?"

"To end the siege!"

"You think this information will end the siege?"

"Why not? You came to rescue Garth; Garth isn't here."

"It would be more pleasant for all of us if things were that simple.

Unfortunately, they are not. Garth is not the reason for our presence so much as the excuse. We are here at the behest of his wife Kyrith-who has come seeking her husband, true. But do you think sixty of Ordunin's warriors and a dozen of the best and most valuable warbeasts would be out here solely to please a lone overwoman who prefers not to believe that Garth would rather go off adventuring than come home to her? I was there when the Baron sentenced Garth to exile and I do not think the man was dissembling. Further, I know Garth reasonably well, and I am well aware that in his resentment of his exile he would be disinclined to go meekly home to his wives and children. I know that he might well be impulsive enough to undertake this mission you mention, yet here I am, wearing armor in this miserable rain, watching the North Gate of your stinking village in the middle of the night."

"No, I will be frank. Garth's disappearance was only an excuse. This expedition was intended as a show of force. Our intent was to ride into the market square, confront the Baron, and renegotiate the terms of our existence.

For three hundred years overmen have lived a lean and bitter life in a harsh wasteland because your ancestors defeated ours in the Racial Wars and drove us into the barren north. We believed that the defeat was final and irreversible.

Our legends taught us that Skelleth stood at the border, a mighty fortress, ready to oppose any attempt on our part to renew our acquaintance with the rest of the world. Your people were reputed to be our implacable and deadly foes. Rather than confront you, we sailed the full width of the Sea of Mori and traded with the smugglers of Lagur for the necessities our land could not provide, paying whatever they asked because we had no choice and knew no better.

"Then Garth came south on some quest of his own invention and discovered that Skelleth was a pitiful ruin, three-fourths abandoned and on the edge of starvation, worse off than we were ourselves. He returned with me and two others to establish trade and, in accordance with our long tradition of bowing to human demands, we allowed your Baron to set the terms of that trade, including Garth's banishment and a dishonorable oath.

"However, this is not just. We saw, we four, just how low Skelleth had sunk. There is no longer any reason for us to cower. It is not fitting for us to do so. Therefore, we shall not. The time has come when the overmen of the Northern Waste are going to assert themselves once again."

"Have you then decided to start the Racial Wars anew?" The harsh sarcasm in Saram's tone was unmistakable.

Galt chose to ignore it. "No. We have no wish to commit mass suicide, either slowly by starvation or quickly by a disastrous war. We had planned to ride into the market and confront your Baron; we would present our demands, and he would have no choice but to agree as completely as possible. He would, of course, be unable to produce Garth. His failure to do so would allow us to maintain a position of moral superiority in what would otherwise be a case of outright aggression, and from that position we would dictate terms-the revocation of Garth's exile, the elimination of all tariffs and restrictions on trade, and free passage throughout his domain."

"It's a lovely theory."

"Yes, it is. It would have worked, too, had your Baron done his part and met us in the marketplace yesterday morning. He is no fool; he would have given in rather than risk a war he could not win."

Saram paused before replying. "It's hard to know," he said, "just what the Baron would do. He is mad, after all. You have only seen him during a lucid period. It's his madness that fouled up your whole plan."

"Is it?"

"Of course!"

"Your captain swore by all the gods that the Baron was ill in bed and could not move or speak. That put us in a very awkward position; we had no choice but to leave the town and begin our siege. Was he lying?"

"No, he spoke truly, but this is a regular occurrence. Every fortnight or so the Baron's madness overtakes him, and he sinks into a state of depression so intense that he cannot speak, cannot stand, cannot feed himself.

Such an attack occurred when word arrived that your company was approaching Skelleth."

Galt digested this information. "How long will this last?"

"Who knows? It varies. This looks like a bad one; it could be days."

There was a moment of silence, save for the pattering rain, as each considered his position. Saram was the first to break it.

"Then you will stay until the Baron recovers and meets your demands?"

"Yes. For myself, I was tempted to abandon the whole thing and try again later, but Kyrith would have none of that. She is quite convinced that her mate is somewhere within your walls and she has no intention of departing without him. Most of the warriors are overeager young hotheads who did not care to give up their chance for glory so easily, and they supported her. This is the first time in more than three hundred years that the warriors of Ordunin have been on the offensive, and they like the feel of it."

"I am..." Saram paused, as if reconsidering what he had to say, then went on, "I am surprised that you have merely besieged us. Why not take Skelleth by storm?"

Galt snorted. "And start the Racial Wars again? I know little of human politics; but, while I doubt the High King at Kholis will interfere with trade negotiations no matter how we carry them out, he can scarcely be expected to ignore the capture of one of his baronies."

"It would seem we have a stalemate then."

"Only temporarily; sooner or later your Baron will recover and face us.

It should be a simple matter to resolve everything when that happens."

"I hope you're right."

"In the meanwhile, of course, I must stand watch in this miserable rain.

There is no need for you to be here, though; go home and dry off. I appreciate your efforts at peacemaking, but there's little you can do."

"So it would seem. Farewell, then, Galt, and I wish you luck." He turned, and began slogging back toward the ruined gate. The overman watched as the lantern light receded and finally merged once again with the light of the flickering watch fire.

CHAPTER TWO

The rain stopped shortly after dawn. Garth mounted his warbeast-which had been named Koros after the Arkhein god of war by a captured bandit a few months earlier-for the last leg of his long journey back to Skelleth from the black-walled city of Dûsarra. The clouds lingered in the sky, hiding the sun, making the day gray and gloomy, allowing the road to remain a soggy, muddy mess. Garth's supplies and clothing and the clothing of his human captive had all been thoroughly drenched when Garth had found no shelter from the downpour the evening before, and they remained uncomfortably damp for hours. Even Koros' fur was soaked, and the captive, a Dûsarran girl who called herself Frima, complained about the smell.

It didn't bother Garth particularly, though he couldn't deny its presence. He ignored her monologue; in the last two weeks, spent mostly in the saddle, he had grown accustomed to Frima's fondness for complaining.

When she had exhausted her first topic, the smell of wet warbeast fur, she went on to others-her own sopping garments, the unsuitability of her attire for a respectable person, the length of the journey, and all the other things that displeased her about the world and her place in it.

The overman didn't really blame her. He wasn't particularly happy about being caught in the rain; the water had soaked into the garments he wore under his mail, and the armor was holding the moisture in. His own fur was as wet as the warbeast's, though not as odorous.

Even Koros seemed to be irritated, and it was usually the most tranquil of beasts as long as it was properly and promptly fed and not attacked. The mud of the highway stuck to its great padded paws, slightly impeding its usual smooth, silent, gliding walk, so that its footsteps were audible as faint splashings.

Frima was still complaining when Garth first caught sight of Skelleth, a low line of sagging rooftops and jagged broken ramparts along the horizon.

He pointed it out to her, and she immediately forgot her complaints.

"You mean we're finally there?"

"Almost."

"I can't see any domes or towers."

"There aren't any."

"There aren't?"

"No." Garth had long ago gotten over his annoyance at the girl's habit of asking questions over again and simply answered each one however many times it might be asked. They had been together more than a fortnight, and he had grown accustomed to queries, and complaints. She was only human, after all; he couldn't expect much from her.

"What are their temples like, then?" she asked.

"To the best of my knowledge, there are no temples in Skelleth," he replied.

"There aren't?"

"No."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Are they all atheists, then?"

"No. At least, I think not."

"Are you an atheist?"

"I used to be; I am no longer certain."

"Why aren't you certain?"

"Because I saw and felt and did things in Dûsarra that have convinced me that at least some of your seven gods exist-though I am not certain they are truly gods, rather than some lesser sort of magical being."

"They're not my seven gods; I worship only Tema!"

Garth did not bother to answer. Instead, he studied the horizon carefully. Skelleth looked different from this angle; he had never approached from this direction before. Even when he had left on this expedition, he had done so by way of the West Gate, and then circled southward onto the highway he now rode.

He wondered briefly if it might be wise to enter by another gate. After all, he was still an exile by order of the Baron of Skelleth. It might well be advisable to use caution until such time as a proper opportunity for vengeance presented itself.

But no, that was not what he wanted; he would ride directly into town, defying the Baron to stop him. He had previously acquiesced to his banishment to avoid damaging the prospects for trade, but his trip to Dûsarra had proven very educational indeed; besides learning more about the gods humans worshipped, he had become convinced that Skelleth was by no means the only possible overland trade route between the Northern Waste and the rich lands of the south. It should be possible, he thought, to circle around Skelleth and trade directly with southern cities; he no longer believed that the old hatred between men and overmen would be strong enough to prevent commerce from flourishing once the southerners saw the gold his people mined in the Waste.

Furthermore, he had learned that the Northern Waste was not the only surviving colony of overmen; Dûsarra traded with overmen who lived on the Yprian Coast, and though he knew nothing about these people beyond the simple fact of their existence, he saw no reason that his own people couldn't trade with them as well.

With all these opportunities, he had no intention of being pushed around by the mad baron of a filthy little border town.

He had no intention of cowering before the Baron of Skelleth; he would ride straight into town, straight into the market square. If the Baron objected, then Garth would laugh at him. Better still, Garth would kill him!

He would take the great sword he had brought from Dûsarra, hack the Baron into pieces, and spill his blood across the dirt of his village...

"The ruby's glowing again," Frima said, interrupting his chain of thought.

Garth looked down at the hilt of the immense two-handed broadsword that was strapped along the warbeast's side. Sure enough, the large red jewel that was set in its pommel sparkled with more light than the morning sun could account for.

The thing had been at him again, he realized; it was the sword's influence that had made him think of killing the Baron. He forced thoughts of blood and destruction out of his mind, concentrating instead on his knowledge that the sword he had taken from the burning altar of Bheleu, god of destruction, was trying to warp his personality again. It had tried to do so several times on the journey from Dûsarra to Skelleth, but so far he had been successful in resisting its influence. He had avoided killing Frima several times, and kept himself from killing three farmers, two innkeepers, a drunkard, four travelers, and a blacksmith encountered along the way. The fact that both Frima and Koros remained calm and sensible had helped, and the glowing of the red stone served as a warning signal, allowing him to become aware of the insidious effects before they became irresistible.

He would be glad when he got rid of the thing. Along with the rest of his loot, including Frima, it was to be turned over to the Forgotten King. He would be reluctant to turn the sword over to anyone else; he knew how dangerous it could be. The Forgotten King, however, was a feeble old man and a wizard, presumably well able to resist such spells.

Of course, he was also the lost high priest of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, the god of death, according to the caretaker of that god's temple in Dûsarra. And it was a magnificent weapon, beautiful and deadly; it was a sword a warrior could be proud of indeed! With a blade like that he could slaughter any foe...

The red glow caught his eye, and he fought the bloodlust down again. He would have to discuss various matters with the King before he turned over the sword-or the other loot, for that matter; just because none of it had affected him significantly didn't mean it didn't have magical power-but one way or another he was going to have to get rid of the thing. He could not keep fighting off its domination forever.

The warbeast growled faintly, a noise he couldn't interpret; it was not the growl that meant danger ahead, nor was it a growl, of displeasure. He looked away from the stone, but could tell nothing more from the back of the great beast's head than from its growl.

"Are you all right?" Frima asked.

"I think so," he replied. "It hasn't gotten a good hold on me yet."

"That's good. I think there's someone on the road ahead."

Garth peered into the distance; the girl was right. That, then, must have been what Koros was growling about. There was a mounted figure ahead in the middle of the highway, perhaps a hundred yards from Skelleth's ruined gate.

Had the Baron posted guards on this road, too? Previously only the North Gate had been guarded. The figure was quite large for a human. Garth tried to identify the mount; it did not appear to be an ox, a yacker, or even a horse.

He had never seen any of the Baron's soldiers mounted.

Koros growled again and this time was answered by a roar from ahead. The animal was another warbeast, which meant that its rider was almost certainly an overman.

What, Garth asked himself, was an overman doing on the highway southwest of Skelleth? And with a warbeast? There was something very strange going on.

Koros was making a hissing whine that was its noise to express frustration; Garth told it, "Go ahead."

The warbeast let loose with a roar in answer to its fellow and quickened its pace slightly.

Frima shifted behind him. He looked back to see that she had clapped her hands over her ears. He had not, and regretted it; Koros' friendly greeting left his ears ringing.

The other warbeast was moving now, approaching them. When Garth judged that he was within earshot, he called, "Ho, there! Who are you?"

The reply was faint, but distinct. "I am Thord of Ordunin! Who are you?"

"I am Garth, also of Ordunin!" He began to call another question, but thought better of it; he could wait until they were closer and save his breath.

A moment later the two came together; their warbeasts began to snuffle and growl at each other in the ritual greetings of their kind. Koros was by far the larger of the two, clean and sleek from nose to tail, every inch of its hide glossy black, while the other beast was slightly scruffy about the lower jaw, with its left fang broken off short and a patch of tawny brown fur on its belly. Both had great golden eyes.

Thord was the larger of the two overmen by about an inch in height and perhaps twenty pounds in weight; his black hair was hacked off just below the ear, while Garth's reached his shoulders. Other than that, the two were quite similar. Both had the noseless, sunken-cheeked, lipless faces of typical overmen, and the leathery brown hide, beardless, but with a thin coat of fur from the neck down. Each had eyes of a baleful red. Thord wore full armor: mail coat, breastplate, helmet, gauntlets, greaves, and metal-clad boots.

Garth wore a wide-brimmed trader's hat, battered mail shirt, soft leather breeches, and ragged, worn-out boots. Thord bore a sword and dagger on his belt and had a battle-axe slung on his back. Garth's only weapons were a stiletto in one boot and the two-handed broadsword thrust through the warbeast's harness.

Thord was alone; Garth had Frima perched behind him on Koros' back. The Dûsarran girl was in her late teens, with black, curling hair and brown eyes; her skin was a shade or two darker than that of the pale people of Skelleth, though lighter than any overman's. She was barefoot and clad only in an embroidered tunic that would have reached her knees were it not bunched up higher as she sat astride the warbeast-hardly respectable garb for a human female, as she had told her captor repeatedly. Though she was fully grown, particularly in the bust, and not especially thin, it was a safe wager that she weighed less than half as much as either of the overmen.

Thord spoke first. "So it really is you, Garth! Where have you been?"

"I have been travelling in Nekutta, on business of my own. What are you doing here on human land with this warbeast?"

"We have Skelleth under siege; I am assigned to guard this road." There was a note of pride in his tone.

"Siege?" Garth looked out across the empty plain stretching away in all directions, broken only in the northeast where Skelleth stood. There was no sign of an army, siege engines, or even other guards.

"Oh, yes. We have insufficient numbers to surround the town completely, so we are using sentries such as myself in a ring around the walls, with orders to summon others wherever they might be needed. The humans are so weak that they haven't even attempted to break out yet."

Garth suppressed a derisive smile; he did not care to insult a fellow overman, but the absurd inadequacy of such a "siege" was very obvious to him.

If the humans had not yet broken out, it was not due to weakness, but either because they had not yet gotten around to it-probably because of poor organization-or did not choose to do so. He wondered what fool had contrived such a strategy even more than he wondered why his people had suddenly seen fit to take military action. "Who devised this scheme?" he asked.

Thord smiled. "Your wife, Kyrith."

"What? Kyrith?" All mockery was forgotten in Garth's astonishment.

"Yes. She and Galt the master trader are our co-commanders, appointed by the City Council."

Garth was momentarily dumbfounded. When he could speak coherently again, ignoring the plaintive questions Frima was asking, he demanded, "What is going on here? Explain this!"

Thord was taken aback at Garth's fiat and dangerous tone, but replied,

"Kyrith was concerned about your safety, Garth. She thought that the Baron of Skelleth must have abducted you when you did not return with the others from your trading mission. Galt told her that you had been exiled and had gone off on your own rather than return home ignominiously, but she didn't believe it.

She petitioned the Council for permission to raise a company of volunteers to march down here, confront this Baron, and demand your safe return. The Council agreed; the story is that, though they believed what Galt said, they thought such a threat might frighten the Baron of Skelleth and the other humans into treating us better in the future. They insisted, though, that Galt share the command, since Kyrith knew nothing of Skelleth or of human ways and might behave rashly in her anger."

Garth interrupted. "They might have done well to include a commander who knew something of military matters. This so-called siege cannot possibly have cut off communication between Skelleth and the rest of Eramma, and we, can only hope that no one in town has seen fit to summon reinforcements from the south as yet."

It was Thord's turn to be struck dumb. "Reinforcements?" he asked at last.

"Yes, reinforcements! Decayed as it may be, Skelleth is still an outpost of the Kingdom of Eramma, the nation that defeated ours in the last of the Racial Wars. They could probably have ten thousand men here within a week, to flay us all alive." He had no real idea how large a force Eramma's High King could muster, or how quickly it could reach Skelleth; his figures were sheer guesswork. He had no doubt at all, however, that the Erammans would have no trouble in obliterating a force of overmen too small to lay a proper siege.

"Oh." Thord's face remained impassive, but his discomfiture was plain in his stiff silence. Garth heard Frima suppress a giggle. He hoped that Thord hadn't noticed. He would undoubtedly be mortally offended to know that a human was laughing at him. Garth himself was slightly irritated at the girl's lack of respect and was equally annoyed at the stupidity of Thord and his comrades who had volunteered for so asinine and dangerous a scheme.

"Go on, then; you just explained how the Council came to grant their permission for this venture."

"Oh, yes. Well, Kyrith had no trouble in finding sixty volunteers, and was allowed a dozen warbeasts as well. We marched down and arrived yesterday morning, but the Baron refused to see us; one of his guards told us he was sick in bed. Galt thought that we should just set up camp somewhere to the north, in the hills, and wait, but Kyrith didn't want to do that; she was afraid that the Baron might slip out unnoticed, I think. There was a vote, and Kyrith won, and we laid siege to the town yesterday afternoon."

That was a relief, Garth thought; it was too soon for any messages to have reached the cities of Eramma. It was possible that Skelleth's people had not yet even noticed that they were besieged; things could still be handled peacefully.

"All right;" he said, "you've done your duty, but I'm relieving you now.

You go back and tell my wife to call off this ridiculous siege. I'm safe and well and I'll come and find her as soon as I've finished a little business of my own in town. Where is she camped?"

"The main encampment is on the Wasteland Road to the north, but I can't leave my post yet."

"Nonsense. You go tell her I'm here." Garth was in no mood to argue; if he left Thord standing guard here on the main highway, the fool might attack a caravan or an innocent traveler, should one happen along.

"I have my orders, my lord."

"Forget your orders. I outrank whoever gave them and I'm countermanding them. This siege will end immediately; as a member of the City Council, the Prince of Ordunin, and a lord of the overmen of the Northern Waste, I am assuming command. Now, go tell that to Kyrith and tell her to wait for me and do nothing hostile toward the humans until I arrive. Is that clear?" Without his intending it, his right hand crept down toward the hilt of the great two-handed broadsword; the gem in the pommel gleamed blood-red.

Thord hesitated a moment longer, trying to decide whether Garth did in fact have the authority to overrule a commander appointed by a quorum of the City Council. Garth was here and annoyed; the Council was not. That decided him. "As you wish," he said, as he turned his warbeast's head northward.

Garth watched him go; he was growing angrier as he thought about the stupidity of the overmen who could plan and execute such an inept maneuver-his own chief wife among them? A siege was a delicate and sometimes dangerous operation, not a casual lark. It would serve the lot of them right if someone did happen along and take them in the rear. It would be only just and fitting if the entire sixty were slaughtered. For half a silver bit he'd go up there himself and teach them all something about war-teach them at swordpoint!

"Garth?" Frima's voice was not entirely steady.

The human had interrupted his chain of thought-the insolent creature! He almost snarled as he asked, "What do you want?"

"The jewel's glowing again." She pointed.

It was, indeed, and glowing relatively brightly. He looked at it and told himself that the anger he felt was not his own. There was no reason to be angry with the girl, who had acted as she thought best. There was no reason to be angry with Kyrith and her volunteers-at least, not reason enough for him to take action. They didn't know any better.

It took several minutes of effort to force himself back to a state of comparative calm. When he had managed it, he told himself that he would really have to get rid of the sword as soon as he possibly could.

Well, that was part of the personal business he wanted to attend to here in Skelleth; he intended either to deliver the loot he had brought from Dûsarra to the Forgotten King or dispose of it someplace where it wouldn't endanger anyone in the future.

With that in mind, he urged Koros forward toward the town's southwestern gate.

There was no guard; had the townspeople realized they were besieged, there almost certainly would have been, he told himself. Therefore, they apparently hadn't noticed. That was good; it meant that no act of war had yet taken place as far as the humans were concerned.

It struck him as curious that the only gate the Baron saw fit to guard was the one leading north. True, the other four all faced nominally friendly territory, and there was no real threat in any direction-except perhaps from his own people. Duty at the North Gate was a convenient punishment for guardsmen who had displeased the Baron; Saram had told him that, months ago.

The other gates were less suitable, since they were more sheltered from the cold winds and more likely to have traffic disrupting the boredom.

Whatever the reasoning behind it, he was glad that the Baron did guard only the north. It meant he could enter the town unseen.

The gate before him was actually merely a gap in the wall where the road wound its way through the rubble of long-fallen towers; there was no trace left of the actual gate that had once been there. Koros had no trouble in making his way through it. The road through the West Gate was partially blocked by debris, but this one was not; it was kept clear for the caravans that provided Skelleth's only real contact with civilization.

Inside the wall, Garth found himself surrounded by ruins. The town had once been a fair-sized city, in the days when it was humanity's main bulwark against the overmen in the final years of the Racial Wars three centuries earlier; but when the fighting stopped, so did the flow of supplies and men from the south. Skelleth had withered, shrinking inward, until now it was mostly abandoned. The remaining village was clustered about the market square and the Baron's mansion, surrounded by acres of crumbling, empty buildings.

His goal was the King's Inn, the tavern where the Forgotten King lived.

It stood on a narrow, filthy alley behind the Baron's mansion, right near the center of town, so there was no way he could hope to reach it undetected. That being the case, he saw little point in trying; skulking about through the ruins would just slow him down, and he wanted to get to Kyrith's encampment before she had time to do anything else stupid.

Therefore, he rode straight onward, ignoring the astonished pedestrians and householders who stared as he passed.

It was quite likely that word would reach the Baron, which was unfortunate; Garth was still, after all, under sentence of exile, forbidden to enter Skelleth without the Baron's express permission. He might, have to kill a few guardsmen in order to convince the humans that he would come and go as he pleased, with or without their permission.

It might be fun to kill a few guardsmen; he would use the sword, of course, and hack at them until...

He caught himself and glanced down at the glowing ruby before Frima had time to say anything.

It would not be fun to kill anyone. Humans had just as much right to live as he himself did. If he were forced into a confrontation with the Baron's soldiers, he would just have to hope that he could bluff them out of attacking, as he had done once before. He would not kill anyone if he could help it.

He didn't want to harm anyone, he told himself.

He had to repeat it over and over as he rode through the streets, watching the townspeople scatter at his approach. He had to resist the temptation to order Koros to charge, to ride them down like so many goats, to snatch the great sword from the warbeast's harness and swing it among them.

By the time he reached the King's Inn he was muttering aloud, "I mustn't harm them, I mustn't kill anyone."

Far to the west, in the city of Dûsarra, in a room draped in black and deep red and lit by a single huge candle, a pudgy, balding man in a flowing black robe held a clear crystal globe and stared into its depths. Constant use of the scrying glass was tiring and it seemed to age him, but it was one of his greatest pleasures. His abilities grew stronger with practice, and of late he had practiced much.

He had not, however, practiced as much as he might have liked; he had other duties now, many of them. A month ago he had been under orders that severely limited his use of the glass, but when his special abilities were not needed his time had been entirely his own. Now he had no restraints upon him, no one who could tell him what to do or not to do; but with this freedom had come responsibility for all the affairs of his sect. He, Haggat, was the new high priest of Aghad, god of fear and hatred, and it was his job to keep the cult healthy and active. He could not do that merely by studying his glass; he had to sit in judgment on disputes, choose what course the cult would take, and sift through and consider all the information gathered by means both magical and mundane.

He had delegated many tasks, as many as he thought be could without weakening his authority, but he still found much of his time being spent on administrative trivia. It was a relief and a joy when he could return to his first love, spying.

Unfortunately, his time was running out; be had to go and tend to business, choosing a candidate for the night's sacrifice. He could not put it off if the victim was to be readied in time.

That was a great pity; be bad been watching his favorite subject, the overman who had made him high priest by slaying his predecessor. Garth's image had been hard to summon of late, and Haggat did not think it was entirely due to increasing distance. Something was interfering, some magical force of great power. It was probably the Sword of Bheleu that was responsible.

The overman was not doing anything of great interest at the moment; he had apparently arrived in Skelleth and was making his way through the streets.

Now he seemed to be stopping at a small tavern. He was muttering something, but fire glass showed images only, without sound, and the scene was not sufficiently clear for lipreading.

Haggat had better ways to spend his time than watching an overman take his noon meal, which was undoubtedly Garth's intent. The image was blurring, and the sacrifice bad to be chosen. He lowered the sphere, letting the vision within fade out of existence.

He would return, however, when time allowed. Garth had defied and defiled the cult of Aghad, and it was Haggat's duty to make sure that he suffered for that.

The cult of Aghad was quite expert in such matters.

CHAPTER THREE

"Where are we?" Frima asked.

"This," Garth answered, "is the King's Inn, where the Forgotten King may be found."

"Does he own it? Is that why it's called the King's?"

"I don't know; it doesn't matter."

"Are you really going to give me to him?" Her tone was wistful; Garth could not precisely identify the emotion, wistfulness being more or less alien to overmen, but he realized she was not pleased.

"Yes, I am; that is why I took you from the altar of Sai and brought you to Skelleth. I have no other use for you. It may well be that he will have no more need for you than I do, though, in which case you will most likely be free to go your way."

"Oh." That single syllable carried many mingled emotions; Garth was aware of none, and even Frima herself did not fully understand her feelings at that moment. There was trepidation as she faced an unknown fate, mingled with anticipation of meeting a wizard, hope that she might be freed, regret that her association with Garth was apparently about to end-a maze of confused and confusing sentiments.

They were in the alley behind the Baron's mansion; surrounded by filthy mire and an appalling stench. A few paces ahead, on their left, was the open door of a tavern, and its broad, many-paned window of ancient purpling glass was just beyond. The day was still gray and cloudy, so that the alleyway was full of shadows and the lanterns gleaming inside the King's Inn made the door and window into welcoming oblongs of light.

No one had dared interfere with the warbeast's smooth, silent progress through the town, but any number of villagers had seen it pass, and it was possible that some had recognized which overman it was carrying. Word had probably already reached the Baron of Garth's arrival; he could not afford to waste any time. He hoped that he would be able to speak with the old man and be gone before any opposition could be sent to stop him.

There was a stable just past the inn, but he ignored it and left Koros standing in the alley while he gathered together the booty he had brought from Dûsarra in fulfillment of the Forgotten King's task.

Most of it was contained in a single good-sized sack, which he slung over his shoulder. Frima was another part; he lifted her to the ground and ordered her to accompany him and remain silent. Finally, there was the bewitched sword; he was hesitant to handle it directly, since he well knew that, even when he was not actually touching it, it was able to exert considerable control over his emotions and actions. There seemed no good alternative, however, so at last he pulled it from the warbeast's harness, using only one hand and keeping a layer of cloth wrapped about the hilt so that his flesh was never in direct contact with the metal or the black covering of the grip.

At Garth's command, Frima led the way into the bright, clean interior of the tavern; she was less able to run away with him immediately behind her. He carried the sack in his left hand and the sword in his right; but had she made any suspicious move, he could have dropped them quickly and grabbed her.

The inn's main room was a pleasant contrast to the noisome alley; it was just as Garth remembered it, warm and clean and worn. The walls were paneled in dark woods, and light came from several oil lamps on tables and overhead beams, as well as from an immense fireplace that occupied much of the right-hand wall. Glassware and pewter sparkled faintly on shelves. The wall to the left was lined with great barrels of ale and wine, bound and tapped with shining, polished brass. At the rear, a wooden stair led to an upper floor. To the right lay the broad slate hearth that spread before the gaping stone fireplace.

The oaken floor was worn into strange, smooth shapes that showed that the furniture had not been rearranged in centuries. Shallow troughs led between and around the tables, where the feet of countless patrons had scuffed along; slight grooves marked where each chair had been dragged to and from its table over and over again. The tables themselves stood atop low hills, their legs perched on the only parts of the floor that had not been worn down.

Half a dozen humans were present. There was the portly, middle-aged innkeeper, a trayful of ale-filled mugs in his hands. There were two unkempt villagers in dirty tunics who had been calling for their ale when the girl and the overman entered; they fell suddenly silent as they caught sight of the newcomers. There was a guardsman in mail shirt and leather helmet, speaking to a black-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard; Garth recognized the civilian as Saram, formerly a lieutenant in the Baron's service, and a man who had sometimes been of service to both Garth and the Forgotten King.

And finally, there was the King himself. He was an old man wrapped tightly in his tattered yellow cloak and cowl, sitting at a small table in the back corner beneath the stairs. He might once have been tall, by human standards, but was now ancient, bent, and withered. The cowl hid much of his face, so that all that could be seen was the tip of his bony nose and the wispy white beard that trailed from his chin.

Garth pointed him out to Frima; she stared in open astonishment. "That's the king you want to deliver me to?"

"Yes," Garth replied. He fought down annoyance at the girl's surprise; he was very much aware of the sword he held in his right hand and the faintly glowing red gem set in its pommel.

The innkeeper and the other four patrons watched silently as the pair made their way to the corner table. The innkeeper stood still, not daring to move, lest he block their path accidentally, until they had passed him; then he hurried to deliver the ale he carried, before his customers had a chance to react to the overman's presence by leaving without paying.

The pair of civilians muttered quietly to one another. The guardsman, with no pretense of stealth, told Saram, "I think I had better go and tell the captain."

"You do that," Saram answered. "I'll stay here and watch." His eyes followed Frima across the room.

The soldier nodded, rose, and departed, as Garth seated himself across from the yellow-garbed figure. Frima nervously sat at the nearest unoccupied table; there was something about the old man she found disturbing. She realized that even when she looked directly at him-or as nearly as she could-she could not see his eyes, but only darkness. His face was dry and wrinkled, drawn tight across the bone, and no matter how much she adjusted her position or her gaze, she could not make out his forehead or his eyes through the shadows of the overhanging cowl. They must, she decided, be sunken back into his head; he did not seem to be blind. There must be more there than empty sockets.

Garth paid no attention to the shadows; he had seen the old man before and knew that he always appeared thus. He was not certain why the King's eyes could not be seen or how the trick was managed, but it had become familiar. He knew that the old man could see, and that sometimes a glint of light could be seen, as if reflected from an eye, so he was sure it was just a trick of some kind.

"I have brought you what I found upon six of the altars in Dûsarra," he said without preamble.

The old man shifted slightly and placed his thin mummylike hand atop the table. "Show me," he said.

His voice was a dry, croaking whisper. Frima shuddered. The voice sounded of age and imminent death. It reminded her of the stories she had heard of P'hul, the goddess of decay. It was said that where the goddess walked, the ground turned to dust, plants fell to powder, pools dried up, and trees withered and died; the Forgotten King's voice would have fitted such a deity to perfection.

Garth dropped the sack he still held to the floor beside him and gripped the sword with both hands. "First," he said, "there are matters to be settled."

"What matters?"

The voice was the same; somehow Frima had thought that it would change, that the old man's throat would moisten.

"I want to know why you want these things. I want to know why you have refused to tell me what you plan to do. I want you to explain who and what you are and what you are doing in this run-down tavern in a stinking, half-deserted border town."

"Why?"

Garth made an inarticulate noise of surprise and frustration. "Why?" he said, "You ask why? I have reasons, old man. If you want these things you sent me after, you will have to answer me."

The yellow-draped shoulders lifted slightly, then dropped.

"Don't shrug it off! I want to know what you think you're doing." Garth lifted the sword, and Frima saw that the red stone was glowing brightly, a fiery blood-hued light.

The old man lifted his hand from the table and made a gesture with one long, bony finger; abruptly; the glow was gone. The red stone had turned black and now resembled obsidian more than ruby.

Garth and Frima both stared at it in silent amazement. The overman had half-risen; now he sank slowly back into his chair. There was a moment of silence.

It seemed to Garth that a fog had lifted from his mind. He felt curiously empty, as if a moment before his skull had been packed with cotton that had just now vanished, leaving it darkly hollow. His vision seemed preternaturally clear and pure, as if it had somehow been washed clean of an obscuring haze of blood and red light. The anger he had felt was gone, wiped away in an instant, taking with it the irritability and confusion, that had seemed to color his every thought for the last two weeks.

Perhaps oddest of all was that, though he was still among the same people as he had been among before, he felt alone for the first time since he had seen the sword glowing red-hot in the ruined temple.

He knew with crystalline clarity and utter certainty that he was himself again-and only himself-where he had been something else minutes earlier. He felt clean, and it was a very good feeling indeed.

He wondered how long it could last. The sword was supposed to be a link to the god Bheleu; whatever the Forgotten King might be, could he defy a god?

Was it truly the god of destruction who had influenced Garth? If so, how long would it be before he reasserted his authority? Garth looked apprehensively at the sword's pommel.

The stone remained dead black. At last, somewhat reassured, Garth said,

"I want to know how you are able to do such things. I apologize for the anger; as you obviously are aware, the sword has-had-a hold on me, and caused me to behave irrationally at times. However, it is not the sword, but my own will that forces me to insist upon an explanation before I give you these things I stole. What are you? What is it you hope to achieve?"

"You are troubled," the old man said, "because you have been told that I am the high priest of The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken and you do not want to aid one who serves Death."

"You do not deny it, then?"

The Forgotten King did not answer.

"You understand, then, why I am reluctant. I know that at least one of these objects has magical power-I would have said very great power, had I not seen you deal with it just now. I suspect that some of the others are also magical, though subtler. I know that you sent me on this errand in the hope of acquiring items necessary for some great feat you hope to perform, but you have consistently refused to tell me anything of the nature of this feat. Is it any surprise that, when I learned your identity, I feared that this purpose must be dire indeed? The tasks you have set me are hardly comforting; you asked me to bring you the basilisk from Mormoreth, the deadliest creature I have ever encountered in fact or legend, and to rob for you the altars of the dark gods. Everything would seem to indicate that you plan some truly ghastly act of mass death in the service of your god."

The old man sat silently for a moment, apparently considering this; as he did, Frima was distracted momentarily. Saram had crossed the room and now stood beside her.

"Do you mind if I join you?" he asked softly, indicating one of the other chairs at her table.

"No," she replied without thinking; then she added, "Garth might object, though"

"Oh, I don't think he will," Saram whispered. "Those two are too involved with each other to pay any attention to us." He seated himself across from the girl, and together they watched and listened as the Forgotten King answered.

"I care nothing for any god's service. I seek only to die."

After a brief pause, Garth answered, "I had suspected as much. I could see no use for a basilisk except to kill. When you swore you meant to harm no other, I guessed that you wanted it to slay yourself. Later, though, I doubted my conclusions, for you said that what you sought would have some great significance to the rest of the world, and the death of one old man did not seem to fit. I thought that you might perhaps be lying, that in fact you did want only to die, and that all your other claims were merely to entice me to aid you-but the Wise Women of Ordunin told me that if I served you, my name could live until the end of time, which did not fit such a hypothesis.

"Now, you say that you seek simply your own death; how can this have such mighty repercussions? How can my aiding you ensure my eternal fame? I do not understand. Further, you say that you care nothing for the gods, yet there was no mistaking the Dûsarran priest's description; you are the one he described as the high priest of the Final God."

"I was," the Forgotten King answered.

"Were? Have you forsaken the service of the deathgod?"

The old man did not answer.

Garth sat silently for a moment, then said slowly, "I think I begin to see. The Dûsarran said that it was in the nature of your service to the god of death that you, yourself, cannot die. You wish to die, though; you have lived more than four ages, he said, and now you grow weary. Yet you cannot die so long as you serve The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken. You have therefore forsaken your service-or sought to. You did not die when you met the gaze of the basilisk; your immortality is still strong. Death has not accepted you, the god has not accepted your renunciation of him."

The old man nodded very slightly.

"Then is it that you mean to force the gods to acknowledge your resignation, so that you may die? Do you intend to invoke the gods themselves?"

The Forgotten King did not answer.

"That must be it; you will bring The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken into our own world, so that you may end your pact with him. Such a conjuring would indeed be a feat worthy of eternal fame, a thing unequalled in history."

The yellow-robed figure shifted slightly. "Not ùnequalled in history,'

Garth. I did it once, when I first made my pact."

"I can see, too, how you could offer me immortality; I could be presented to the god as your replacement. Such an eternal life does not appeal to me."

The King shrugged.

"This conjuring-how is it to be done?"

"I have not said that I plan any such thing," the old man answered.

"You keep up your air of mystery, but what else can you intend? You do not deny it, do you?"

Again, the sagging shoulders rose and dropped.

Garth sat back and considered. His chair creaked beneath his weight. The Forgotten King would not confirm it, but his theory made sense; it hung together neatly and fit all the known facts, as well as the old man's previous statements. Why, then, did the King not admit it? There must be possible consequences that he thought would displease Garth and discourage any further aid. Such consequences must be fairly easy to discover, too; if they were in the least esoteric, it would be simple enough to keep Garth from learning of them.

He thought the matter over. Bringing The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken into the mortal realm-what would that entail? The god sometimes demanded human sacrifices; could that be it? It could, indeed. Further, the invocation itself surely would involve the speaking aloud of the unspeakable name, whatever it was-that was supposed to mean certain death. Obviously, it would not kill the Forgotten King, but what of those around him? What of Garth himself? What would the presence of personified Death do to the surrounding area?

He had no way of knowing what would be involved. Probably no one knew except the Forgotten King.

"What will happen to those around you, if you are successful in whatever magic you intend to perform in order that you may die?"

The old man shrugged once again.

"Do you mean that you do not know, or is it merely a matter of indifference to you?"

"I do not know exactly."

Garth paused, phrasing his next question carefully.

"Have you reason to believe that the magic which will permit you to die will also bring about other deaths?"

After a moment of silence, the King replied, "Yes."

"How many other deaths?"

"I don't know."

"One? A few? Many?"

"Many."

That was it, then; that was why the old man had been so reluctant to say what he was after. Furthermore, it was the reason Garth would not serve him any longer and would not turn over the booty he had brought from Dûsarra.

At least, that was what Garth told himself. Then he reconsidered and asked, "Is it possible that there might be some other way in which you could die, some way that would harm no one else?"

The old man answered, "I do not know of any such possibility; I have sought one for centuries without success. The basilisk was very nearly my last hope for such a death."

Very nearly his last hope, Garth thought-not absolutely. There was a chance, then. He would not aid in the Forgotten King's scheme to loose The God Whose Name Is Not Spoken, but he might be willing to help out in other ways.

He might not win eternal glory by helping the old man to die, but it would be something worth doing. He would not assist in bringing the gods down from the heavens, but he would put an end to an immortal and kill the high priest of Death. That was something that would be noteworthy and significant. He did not feel that he owed the King anything, but there was no reason he shouldn't take pity on him.

That being the case, he did not wish to antagonize the ancient wizard-priest. However, he also was hesitant to turn over the Dûsarran loot.

He sat, debating with himself what he should do next.

"You said you had brought me things; let me see them." The dry, deathly voice cut through his meditating.

"Forgive me, O King, but I am reluctant to give you what I brought, lest you perform your magic and cause these many deaths we spoke of."

"I asked only to see them."

He could hardly refuse such a request, under the circumstances. Perhaps the old wizard could tell him what some of the items were, what magic they possessed.

"First," he said, "there is the sword. I pulled it from a burning altar in a ruined temple, apparently dedicated to Bheleu, god of destruction. It appears to have great power-or at least, some power." He remembered the seeming ease with which the King had turned the blood-red gem black and decided to forego guesses as to relative magical might.

"It is the Sword of Bheleu, true token of the god," the Forgotten King said.

Garth was startled; the old man rarely volunteered information. He looked at the shadowed eyes and thought he might have seen a glint. Was the ancient actually showing signs of excitement?

Interested now himself, the overman reached down and lifted the sack onto the table, then thrust a hand into it.

The first item he brought out was wrapped in cloth. "This is the gem from the altar of Tema, the goddess of the night," he explained. "I keep it concealed because it has hypnotic properties that can snare the unwary." He placed the head-sized bundle on the table beside the sword.

At the other table, Frima sucked in her breath.

"What is it?" Saram whispered.

"He robbed Tema! That's sacrilege!"

"It is?"

"Of course it is!"

Saram would have said something further, but Garth was bringing a second stone out of the bag. This one was unwrapped and gleaming black, apparently a faceted and polished chunk of obsidian.

"This," the overman said, "came from the altar of the god of darkness and of the blind; I don't recall his names offhand." He plunged his hand in again and pulled out a small pouch.

"The altar of P'hul was empty, save for dust; I brought you some of the dust." He tossed the pouch beside the two stones-and dragged out a larger and obviously much heavier pouch. He opened it and poured coins out on the table top. They were all gold, but encrusted with something dark brown and powdery.

"This is what I found on the altar of Aghad; the stains are dried blood." A bitter note crept into his voice as he added, "At least two people died while I visited that temple, for no reason but to amuse the Aghadites."

Firma interjected, "You slew their high priest, though."

He turned, reminded of her presence. "I would prefer that I had slain the entire cult, as I did Bheleu's. Come here, girl." He beckoned.

Hesitantly, Frima got to her feet and stepped up beside the Forgotten King's table. Garth placed a hand on her shoulder. "This," he said, "is what I found on the altar of Sai, goddess of pain. However, lest she not be what you had in mind, I also took what I was told the painworshippers customarily kept on their altar." He dumped the almost-empty sack out, revealing a coiled whip and a narrow-bladed dagger.

"Was there nothing else?" the King asked.

"I am afraid I didn't think to bring the ropes they used to bind their sacrifice."

"That is not what I meant. This is junk for the most part, Garth. The stones are the true pieces, but their power was largely spent long ago. The sword-that is worthwhile. The rest is nothing, mere trash. This whip is a false imitation; the true token of Sai is shod with silver. The token of Aghad is a golden dagger. P'hul's tool is a ring in the possession of a council of wizards."

"This is what I found on the altars," Garth replied. He was amazed at the King's loquaciousness.

"What of the seventh altar?"

Garth hesitated. "I took nothing from the altar of Death," he replied.

"Why?"

"I did not trust you; I feared what you might do should it prove as powerful a force for death as the sword is a force for destruction."

"The book was there, though?"

Startled, Garth stared at the King. "What book?" he asked.

"There was no book?"

"No."

"Then what was on the altar?"

He could see no harm in telling the truth. "There was a horned skull, from no species I have ever heard of."

There was a moment of silence. Then the King said, "Did you move it?"

"No, I left it there. It was attached to the altar, and I thought better of separating it."

"Of course it was attached, you idiot! It's part of the altar! Was there nothing else?"

It was the first time Garth had ever heard the old man raise his voice; it was not a pleasant experience. Though still not loud, the sound seemed to bite through him.

"No, nothing else. The top of the altar was empty. Oh, there was slime all over it, from the monster..."

"I care nothing about slime! I need that book!"

"There was no book there, I am quite certain."

"Begone with you, then! Keep your trinkets and leave me in peace; I must consider this." With that, the old man rose, wrapped his cloak more tightly about him, and moved around the table and up the stairs.

Garth watched him go in open-mouthed astonishment; then a glimmer of light caught his eye, and he turned to see that the stone in the pommel of the Sword of Bheleu was red once more and flickering with a fitful, uneven glow.

He felt a moment of horror as the familiar suffocating blur of anger and confusion closed on him; the horror faded with the death of the mental clarity sufficient to recall what he had lost.

CHAPTER FOUR

Saram was the first to speak after the Forgotten King's abrupt departure.

"What was that all about?" he asked.

"I don't know," Garth replied. His thoughts seemed muddy and vague and laced with a lingering annoyance.

"What happens now?" Frima asked.

The overman had been staring at the steps the old man had just ascended; at the sound of the girl's voice he turned to face her.

"It would seem," he said, "that you're free now. As I told you, I have no use for you; I brought you here only because the old man told me to bring whatever I found on the altars, and you were on Sai's altar. I thought that my taking him literally might convince him to be less cryptic in the future. It appears it hasn't quite worked-but that's not your concern. I delivered you to him, and he rejected you, so I have no further need for you. You're free to do as you please."

"Will you take me back to Dûsarra, then?"

"I hadn't planned to."

"Oh, but you have to! I can't go back myself; it's not safe, and I don't know the way!"

"Do you really want to go back? When we left, there was a plague loose in the city."

"Oh." She was immediately less enthusiastic. "That's right, the White Death was in the marketplace, and the city was on fire. Maybe I don't want to go back. What should I do, then?"

"That's up to you." Garth rose. "I have affairs of my own to attend to, and I want to get out of here before the Baron sends his soldiers after me-if he hasn't done so already."

"You can't leave me all alone in a strange town!"

Garth hesitated. "I can't very well take you to a military camp, either.

How would I explain a human's presence? Besides, I can't keep looking after you forever. At least here in Skelleth you're among your own species."

Saram interjected, "I could look after her for a while, I suppose."

The overman was startled. "It is not necessary; she's not your concern."

"I don't mind."

Garth looked from Saram to Frima and back. Was he missing something here? Had the former guardsman taken some sort of interest in the girl? He had noticed them speaking to each other, though he had not heard what had been said.

What sort of an interest could it be, though? He knew that he didn't understand humans very well, but what sort of attachment could have been formed so quickly? No, more likely the man was just curious about the Dûsarran, or wanted to do Garth a favor-doubtless expecting the debt to be repaid later. There was nothing wrong with that; Garth already felt he owed Saram something, as the man had been of assistance in the past.

"Very well, then. Perhaps you can find her some more suitable clothing; she's been complaining about what I gave her, and I would like to have my tunic back."

"Don't worry; I'll take good care of her." There was something odd about the man's smile, Garth thought, but he dismissed it.

The sword and other items were still strewn across the table; though he was eager to be on his way to straighten out the mess Kyrith and Galt seemed to have gotten themselves into, Garth paused to gather them up. It would not do to leave magical objects lying around where any casual tavern patron might pick them up. He knew from personal experience that the white stone and the sword were dangerous, and the black stone might be as well. The rest the King had dismissed as junk, but gold was gold, and not to be thrown away, while the whip and dagger were decent enough weapons. The pouch of dust he almost left, but an instinct for tidyness overcame him, and he threw it into the sack with the rest.

The sword, of course, didn't fit in the sack; he kept it clutched in his right hand while his left hefted the bag up onto his shoulder. The gem flickered dimly.

A final glance assured him that he had left nothing behind except Frima.

The Baron's guards could appear at any moment, he knew. He turned and strode out the door.

Saram and Frima watched him go. When he was out of sight, the former guardsman turned and looked his new companion over carefully, then said, "Sit down, girl, and tell me about yourself."

Frima saw the obvious appreciation in Saram's eyes and noticed that the man's hair and beard were as dark as any Dûsarran's, and they neatly framed a strong, attractive face. With a shy smile she sat and said, "My name is Frima.

What would you like to know?"

Outside the King's Inn, Garth slid the Sword of Bheleu back into his warbeast's harness, then climbed onto the creature's back. Koros stood placidly, apparently paying no attention, until the command came to go; then, instantly, it surged forward in its customary smooth, steady glide.

If guardsmen were coming, they had not yet arrived; there was no opposition as overman and warbeast made their way northward through the twisting streets. The ground had finally dried somewhat, though it was still soft underfoot, and the warbeast's great padded paws were able to move with catlike silence, no longer hampered by clinging mud.

As he rode, Garth found himself wondering at the Forgotten King's behavior. What had the old man expected him to bring back? He had spoken of a book; what book did he mean? There had been no book in the temple of Death.

The temple had been a cave in the side of the volcano that towered above the black walls of Dûsarra, a cave that had been enlarged artificially, with elaborately carved walls. The altar had looked as if it were carved from a stalagmite; it was tall and narrow, he recalled, with a sloping top, rather like a lectern or reading stand, with the eerie horned skull where a candle or lamp would go on a reading stand. Other than the skull, it had been completely empty. There had been no book. There had been nowhere in the cave that a book could have been hidden where it would not have risked being consumed by the monstrous thing that lived in the depths below and behind the temple.

The altar was, he had to agree, the right shape to hold a book. Could the doddering old priest who tended the temple have taken the book and hidden it somewhere outside?

Why would the caretaker do such a thing? To protect it from the thing within, perhaps? That might be it. He would suggest such a possibility to the Forgotten King should he ever care to return to the old man's service.

What made this book so precious?

That, actually, was fairly easy to guess from what the King had said.

The book must be necessary for the magic he intended to perform. Perhaps it was a book of spells, containing the needed instructions and incantations, or perhaps the book itself had some magic to it.

Whatever the exact situation, it didn't really matter. What mattered was that he had performed the errand he said he would perform for the King, keeping his word, and that the King was not able to perform his deathcausing magic. That put his dealings with the old man at an end. Now he was free to do as he pleased with the loot from Dûsarra, to deal with the upstart Baron of Skelleth as he saw fit, and to straighten out the actions of Galt and Kyrith.

When the Baron and his wife's war party had been taken care of, his time would be his own once again, and he could relax and figure out what to do with the magical sword and gem at his leisure.

He was approaching the North Gate now; as he had expected, there was a guard posted in the ruined watchtower beside the road. He expected no difficulty there; the man was supposed to keep enemies out, not to prevent them from leaving.

Beyond the gate lay open plain, and perhaps two hundred yards along the Wasteland Road stood the encampment he was headed for. He could see warbeasts standing calmly in a group at one side and overmen milling about amid the tents. They appeared to be moving in an aimless muddle; he hoped they weren't as disorganized as they looked. How could the City Council have been so stupid as to send them out without a competent warrior in command?

The human guard had noticed him now, alerted by the jingling of armor and harness; Koros' soft footfalls were inaudible. The man rose to his feet, short sword drawn; even Garth, inhuman as he was, could read the confusion and nervousness on the young human's face.

"Halt!" the guardsman cried.

It was too soon for trouble; Garth spoke a word to his mount, and Koros halted a few feet from the soldier.

The man was obviously unsure what to do next, so Garth took the initiative. "I think you are making a mistake in stopping me, man," he said.

"I am leaving peacefully. You are here to warn of approaching enemies; I am not approaching, but departing."

The soldier was still plainly uncertain.

When no response seemed forthcoming, Garth continued, "Besides, you cannot very well stop me. You are a lone man on foot, while I am an overman with a warbeast and with many more of my kind within earshot." He motioned toward the camp. "I suggest you tell me I can go, before I become impatient."

The logic of this was irrefutable. The guard sheathed his sword and waved Garth on. "You...you can go."

"Thank you," Garth replied politely. He tapped a signal to Koros, and the warbeast moved onward. He didn't bother to look back.

Behind him, the guard considered for a long moment. He faced a difficult decision; should he leave his post to inform his superiors of this occurrence, or should he wait until his relief arrived?

His relief was due at sunrise the following morning, and it was now scarcely past midday. Anything could happen in so long a time. If he stayed where he was, the overman might have time to work some dreadful plan. He would be of little use where he was; his only purpose, really, was to run ahead of any attack that might come and give a warning, since a single man couldn't be expected to delay even a lone overman for more than a few minutes. For that purpose the two scouts Captain Herrenmer had posted in hiding on either side of the gate should be plenty; the gate had remained openly guarded only so that the overmen would not be certain that the men of Skelleth had taken any action at all.

Of course, if he left his post, the overmen would see that and know that action had been taken.

A third solution occurred to him, finally, one that was wholly satisfactory. He left his post for a few moments, as if answering a call of nature somewhere in the rubble of the crumbling walls, and found one of the hidden scouts. After informing the other man of what had happened, he returned to the gate and resumed his watch.

Meanwhile, the scout was on his way back into the center of town, staying always out of sight amid the ruins.

CHAPTER FIVE

The encampment was fully as disorganized as Garth had feared. He was halfway from the wall to the camp before anyone even noticed his presence, and no effort was made to stop or slow him before he reached the cleared area in front of the tents, though he was obviously out of place in his battered mail and drooping trader's hat, his warbeast laden with bundles, so unlike the clean, sleek, new appearance of the other overmen.

There was no sign of Galt or Thord, but there were various overmen standing, sitting, or walking about, and Kyrith stood in front of one tent, listening to a young warrior Garth did not recognize. The two turned when someone called out a warning of Garth's approach.

The young overman started to demand an explanation, but Kyrith's hand on his arm stopped him. She scribbled something on the wax-coated tablet she carried. He glanced at it, then looked back at the new arrival.

"You're Garth?" he asked.

"I am Garth, Prince of Ordunin. Who are you?"

The warrior blinked his red eyes and replied, "I am Thant, son of Sart and Shenit "

"I never heard of you. Are you helping to run things here?"

"Yes."

"Have the sentries been called back, as I told Thord to do?"

"Well, no. You see, we could not be certain..."

"I don't care why. If you want to make yourself useful, Thant, son of Sart and Shenit, then you can go run around the village and fetch back all the sentries that you fools have posted. I'm putting an end to this absurd siege before it brings the wrath of all humanity down on us.

Thant blinked again, then looked at Kyrith. She nodded. He hesitated a moment longer, until Garth bellowed, "Move!"

He moved. Garth called after him, "And when you get back here with the sentries, we'll break camp! I want us out of here before sunset!"

When the warrior was well on his way, Garth dismounted, swinging himself easily to the ground, and strode toward Kyrith. She met him halfway, and they embraced briefly. There was no passion in their embrace, and they did not kiss; for overmen and overwomen, marriage was a matter of convenience and companionship; sex was an involuntary function that occurred when an overwoman was in heat. Their mouths were virtually lipless and hardly suited to kissing.

Had Kyrith been in heat, Garth's attentions would not-have been so perfunctory.

When they released each other Garth asked, "Where are Myrith and Lurith and the children?"

Kyrith pointed northward. Garth asked, to be sure he was not misinterpreting her gesture, "You left them to take care of the house?"

She nodded.

"That's all right, then. Why did you come here, though? What did you want to stir up trouble for? Didn't Galt tell you that I'd be back by the end of the year?"

She reached for her tablet. Garth stopped her. "Never mind. We'll discuss it later." Communicating with Kyrith was annoyingly slow and inconvenient ever since the accident that had put shards of ice through her throat and destroyed her voice. He knew that she found it as frustrating as he did, and she resented it when he let his irritation interfere with their conversations; ordinarily he would have been more tactful about declining to let her write out her answer, but he did not want any unnecessary delays now.

The people of Skelleth might well have been stirred up by the siege or his own ride through town. He said, as a partial explanation, "We have to straighten out the situation in Skelleth. Thord told me that Galt is your co-commander.

Where is he?"

She pointed to one of the tents and made a sign indicating sleep.

"He's asleep? It's after noon!"

She scribbled on her tablet and showed him the words: "Night watch."

"I need to talk to him."

Kyrith signed for him to wait and headed for the tent.

Garth waited and looked about. There was no organization to the camp at all, it seemed. The warbeasts were off to one side, in a rope enclosure that obviously wouldn't stop them for more than five seconds should they decide to leave; there was no sign of any food supply for them, and a hungry warbeast was as dangerous to friend as to foe. Had the overmen been letting them hunt their own food? That was fine for one, two, or maybe even three, but there were half a dozen in the pen, and more still out on sentry duty. A dozen warbeasts hunting in the same territory could strip it clean in a matter of days and might well start fighting amongst themselves over the game they found. Furthermore, most warbeasts weren't picky about what they ate so long as it was sufficiently large and fresh; they would hunt humans as readily as anything else, and that would hardly be good for interspecies relations.

He couldn't judge just how hungry the penned beasts were, but they did not look as if they had been fed in the last day or two; that was good, as it implied they had last hunted somewhere to the north, where humans were rare and uncivilized and wouldn't be missed by the people of Skelleth. It was also bad, however, because it meant they would demand feeding soon.

The tents were apparently placed at random, wherever their owners' whims had chosen; most were clustered loosely about a large, square-framed one that Garth assumed must serve as a command post. Some were not set up properly; pegs were left hanging or lying on the ground.

There was no sign of any central supply; it appeared that each tent held its own stocks of food and water and its owner's own weapons and armor.

In short, the camp displayed all that was worst in the behavior of overmen. Garth knew from his studies of the history of the Racial Wars that the humans had not won solely because they had never outnumbered his kind by less than five to one; they had had superior organization, as well. Humans were naturally social animals; though they tended to be careless, sloppy, and stupid, they were able to function well in groups. A single competent military commander could organize a thousand humans and get them to fight with some semblance of efficient cooperation.

Overmen, unfortunately, were less gregarious. Each, when pressed, would invariably put his own well-being before that of anyone or anything else, including the very survival of the species. They resented taking orders, and, in fact, usually wouldn't obey even direct commands without an explanation of why they should. An army of overmen didn't function as a single unit, but as a collection of individual warriors, each ferocious enough in his own right, but with no sense of loyalty to his comrades, and prone to go off on solo adventures at the first opportunity.

What little cooperation overmen did display had been forced upon them by events, and its forms had usually been learned from the humans they despised.

Marriage was a human invention that overmen had adopted because it simplified family responsibilities and inheritances. Cities facilitated trade and government-but even so, the overmen had only one in all the Northern Waste, and it sprawled over several square miles of coastline and hill with a population of less than five thousand, the houses strewn randomly about the countryside rather than laid along streets.

For that matter, nobody actually knew what the population of Ordunin or of the Waste was, as, there had never been sufficient cooperation to conduct a census.

This camp, then, seemed typical of overmen when there was no strong organization and leader forcing them to behave. He knew, from his own military experiences in battling the pirates who occasionally raided Ordunin, that overmen could be made to form a coherent fighting unit-but it was extraordinarily difficult. Where one human officer might reasonably hope to manage a hundred soldiers in an emergency, each overman had commanded no more than ten, at the very most; three was better. Every two or three officers then needed a commander.

And here, sixty overmen were under two co-commanders with no intermediate organization apparent.

Had the expedition been set up properly, there would have been a supply train accompanying it, including a herd of goats to feed the warbeasts and a good stock of replacement armor and weaponry. There would be three captains, he thought, each with two lieutenants, each with two sergeants, each with three or four soldiers. The tents would have been set up in some pattern and the warbeasts tethered in a ring around the camp, to serve as the first line of defense.

Kyrith and Galt emerged from the tent, and he put aside his thoughts.

Galt blinked at the daylight; the sky was finally beginning to clear.

"Greetings, Garth," he said.

"Greetings, Galt. What are you doing here? What is this so-called siege supposed to do?"

"Don't blame me for the siege; that was Kyrith's idea, and I was overruled."

"What are you doing here in the first place?"

"We came to speak with the Baron of Skelleth. Kyrith didn't believe that you had gone off on your own willingly; she thought that the Baron had you prisoner somewhere in Skelleth or had killed you, and she gathered these volunteers to come find you. The City Council sent me along. We had intended to ride into the village, confront the Baron, present our demands, and settle the matter on the spot, preferably by gracefully accepting his capitulation."

"You needed sixty armed overmen for that?"

"As we both know, Garth, the Baron of Skelleth takes a great interest in military matters. Your disappearance gave us sufficient excuse for a show of force, which, it was felt, might serve to convince him where simple negotiation would not."

Galt's smooth manner irritated Garth. He snapped, "It didn't work?"

"It might have succeeded, had the Baron met with us. Unfortunately, we were told, with much sincere regret, that he was sick in bed and could not see us. We did not care to force the issue then and there, but Kyrith was unwilling to do nothing; hence the siege."

"The Baron refused to see you, and you simply left town?"

"We set up the siege."

"Siege! You call this farce a siege?"

Galt shrugged, and Garth's annoyance grew.

"You accepted the word of the humans that the Baron was ill? You did not insist upon seeing him?"

"No. The captain of the guard swore by half a dozen gods I never heard of and by various parts of his anatomy that the Baron was ill in bed. I spoke last night with the man called Saram, whom you know and whom I believe you trust, and he told me that the Baron's illness is legitimate-a side-effect of his madness."

"Did it not occur to any of you that it would be far more effective to camp in the marketplace, where you could not be so easily ignored or put off, rather than to establish a siege you cannot possibly maintain? Furthermore, a single message slipped past your pitiful line of sentries could bring the wrath of the entire Kingdom of Eramma down on you and on the Northern Waste, since a siege is undeniably an act of war. Had you camped peacefully in the square, you would have been honest petitioners, breaking no laws."

Galt was slow to reply. "Such an audacious action did not occur to me."

"Audacious? The Baron of Skelleth is the audacious one! He dares to dictate terms to overmen as if we were mere peasants? To refuse your embassy an audience? It is time that we showed him the error of his ways. I propose that we march back into town; if he will still not speak with us, we will camp in the market until he does."

"I am not sure that would be wise. I did not approve of the siege, but I think that your plan faces the same objections. We dare not push the Baron too far; we need this trade with Skelleth."

"No, we don't. We can trade anywhere we please. The Racial Wars are over, Galt, whatever we may have believed while isolated in the Northern Waste, and regardless of what the Baron of Skelleth may have told us. I have just returned from a city called Dûsarra, where overmen are an everyday sight.

The humans have forgotten their fear and hatred; remember how short their lives are! To them, three centuries are a dozen generations, almost five lifetimes."

"How can overmen be a common sight anywhere outside the Northern Waste?"

"Ah, this is the best news of all! There are overmen living on the Yprian Coast. We are not the only survivors."

"The Yprian Coast? That barren wasteland?"

"Is the Northern Waste any better?"

Galt did not answer that. Instead, he asked, "Are you sure we could trade elsewhere?"

"At the very least, we could trade with the Yprians and with Dûsarra. I think we could probably go anywhere we pleased without interference; humans care more for gold than for ancient hatreds."

"Still, any overland trade route would have to go through the Barony of Skelleth; it extends from the Yprian Gulf to the Sea of Mori."

"What of it? Do you think the Baron's thirty-odd guardsmen can patrol the entire border?"

"It would still be preferable to have the Baron's permission."

"Yes, it would be preferable, but it is not necessary, and it would also be preferable to make plain to all that overmen are not to be treated with the disrespect the Baron of Skelleth has displayed."

While Galt digested this, Kyrith scribbled on her tablet, then handed it to Garth. It read, "What disrespect? Why not go home?"

He handed it back. "No, Kyrith, I can't go home yet. I can't go back to Ordunin until the Baron releases me from my oath."

She made a questioning gesture.

Garth said, "What are you asking?"

She wrote and handed him the tablet. It read: "What oath?"

"Galt should have told you," Garth replied. "He was there. I swore an oath to the Baron of Skelleth when last I saw him. He proposed that in order to remove all legal impediments to trade between Skelleth and the Waste and to put a formal end to the war with Eramma, I, as Prince of Ordunin, should surrender and swear fealty to him, thereby making Ordunin and its territory-which is to say, the entire eastern half of the Northern Waste part of the Barony of Skelleth. He called this a simple and reasonable thing, but we both knew he devised it to humiliate me, as I had humiliated him once before. He insisted that I swear to present this proposal to the City Council as soon as I returned to Ordunin. I was unarmed, on a peaceful trading mission, and caught off-guard; I swore the oath he demanded. I will not present any such disgraceful scheme to the City Council, however. Therefore, if I am not to break my sworn word, I cannot return to Ordunin until the Baron releases me from my vow. This is one reason we must confront him, quite aside from trading concessions or my exile from Skelleth; he must release me. He will release me. He will release me, or I will kill him."

Garth's voice had gone flat and toneless during this speech, which was a sign of mounting anger among overmen. Galt and Kyrith both noted it, and Kyrith put a hand on her husband's arm, attempting to calm him.

Galt noticed the gesture, and something else caught his eye as well.

Koros stood behind its master, and an immense two-handed broadsword, easily six feet in length, was thrust horizontally through the warbeast's harness, along the creature's right flank. A huge red jewel was mounted in the weapon's pommel, and the gem was glowing with an eerie, bloody light of its own.

"Garth," he said, "that's an interesting sword there. Where did you get it?"

Garth turned to glance at the sword and froze when he saw the crimson glow. He had been working up to a murderous fury, imagining himself using the sword to impale a cowering, whimpering Baron of Skelleth; visions of blood and fire had been flashing, through his mind. Now, he struggled to suppress those urges.

For a moment he regretted leaving Frima in Saram's care; had she been there, she would probably have warned him sooner.

When he thought he had himself more or less under control, he said, "I found it in Dûsarra, in a ruined temple. It appears to have some sort of enchantment to it." He found himself curiously reluctant to speak of it, and therefore did not explain the nature of its power over him and did not mention Bheleu or any other deities.

"It's magical? Is that why it's glowing?" Galt was fascinated; he had heard of magic, but had never before seen any at first hand. He looked more closely. The glow seemed to have dimmed somewhat, but it was still clearly visible.

"Yes"

Galt stepped around the other two, to get a better view of the strange gem.

"Don't touch it!" Garth roared.

Startled, Galt stepped back. "I wasn't going to."

Garth was annoyed with himself; there had been no need to bellow at Galt. He was unreasonably touchy about anything having to do with the sword, it seemed; he told himself that he would have to keep that in check. He would also have to get rid of the sword, and quickly; its hold on his emotions seemed to be getting stronger and had been quite dangerous enough before. It would not do to go into a killing frenzy while negotiating with the Baron of Skelleth.

On the other hand, it was a beautiful weapon, a magnificent blade; it would be a very impressive thing to have along during negotiations. He would take it, he decided, and keep himself under careful control. After all, he could not safely leave it lying around untended and he would not trust it in the hands of any of these idiotic volunteers. He would worry about disposing of it after he had settled with the Baron.

He had turned away as he reached this decision and therefore did not see the glow flare up brightly once more. Galt saw the increased brightness, but did not realize it had any significance and said nothing. His attention was distracted from the sword when Garth announced, "I want the entire company packed up within an hour, so that we will have time to reach the market square and set up camp there before full dark." Galt turned away to help in breaking camp and paid no more attention to the great sword or the shining jewel.

He had a curious feeling, however, that he was being watched.

Garth had lived with that feeling almost constantly for more than a fortnight and no longer noticed it, but he, too, was slightly troubled. He seemed to sense mingled amusement and triumph without actually feeling either emotion himself.

CHAPTER SIX

Herrenmer, captain of the guard, had wasted no time; within five minutes of hearing from the scout that an overman had ridden openly out of Skelleth to the encampment on the Wasteland Road, he had summoned his five lieutenants and told them to put every man on active duty immediately. He didn't know exactly what was going on, but he intended to take as few chances as possible. He was sure that the overman was Garth. Earlier, Shallen had reported that the self-proclaimed Prince of Ordunin had turned up at the King's Inn, and no other overman had been seen inside the walls since the whole company had been turned away the preceding morning.

When he had heard that, Herrenmer had immediately sent someone to see if the Baron was able to take charge of affairs once again. The report had been negative; he was stirring, but not yet coherent.

Herrenmer had not dared to take action against Garth on his own authority; he was nervous about the overman's claims to nobility, since he didn't understand just what that might entail. Therefore he had just waited.

Now, however, Garth had gone to join his fellows. With their leader back, it was unclear just what action the overmen might take, but it seemed likely that they would do something. Garth's absence had been one of the things that had been mentioned by the leaders of the main group when Herrenmer had spoken with them yesterday.

They might be satisfied now that he was back and just go home peacefully-but Herrenmer didn't expect it. He thought that they would now probably march back into town and cause more trouble.

He intended to see that it was not that simple.

Once his lieutenants had gone to find and bring back all the men, he gave orders to those men who were already available that they were to proceed immediately to the north wall, with crossbows, moving under cover of the ruins and staying out of sight of the overmen. This time, the overmen would not be able just to walk in unhindered.

When reports began arriving that the ring of sentries that the overmen had set up around the town was being removed, he was sure that something was planned, and soon. It was still possible that they were simply going home, but he would be shirking his duty if he took no action because he made that assumption.

When he had sent twenty men northward, he gave orders that the rest of the guards were to serve as a second line of defense here in the village, in case the overmen did march in despite his efforts. That done, he himself headed toward the North Gate.

He had not yet reached it when the overmen began moving south.

When Garth had announced his intentions to the gathered volunteers, there had been no dissent; all present seemed to take it for granted that he had assumed command and had the right to do so. Many of the warriors cheered when he spoke of showing the Baron that overmen would not be pushed around any longer. They were obviously glad to be taking action, any action, rather than standing guard or sitting around doing nothing.

Camp had been broken quickly and with reasonable efficiency; while that was being done, someone had found Garth an over-the-shoulder sheath for a two-handed broadsword, so that he was able to carry the Sword of Bheleu slung on his back, rather than strapped inaccessibly in his warbeast's harness.

When everything was packed away and stored on the back of warbeasts and overmen-Garth regretted again that no one had thought to bring a supply train; even a handful of wagons or yackers would have helped-the company was formed up into something resembling a military formation, rather than a mob. He placed himself front and center, with Kyrith on his right and Galt on his left, all mounted on warbeasts. Behind them came a second row of five warbeasts carrying the overmen Garth thought showed potential. The main body of troops followed, arranged in ten rows five abreast, arid the remaining five warbeasts and overmen brought up the rear.

It would have pleased Garth to have the overmen march in step, perhaps to some rhythmic marching chant such as he had been taught by one of his great-grandfathers, but he decided it would take more time and effort than it was worth. If he had time, he thought, he would also have liked to set up a proper military organization with a command structure that might actually work, rather than the current loose arrangement. He hoped that such organization would not be needed. With luck, the troops would not be required to do anything but stand there looking formidable and that they could do.

When he was satisfied with the formation, he took his place at the head and gave the order to advance.

Movement was ragged and uneven at first, but the warriors got the hang of it fairly quickly. By the time they were within fifty yards of the North Gate, they were moving more or less in unison, staying more or less in their places in the formation.

Ahead of them, Garth saw the guard at the North Gate turn and run as they approached. He smiled; it felt good to inspire such obvious fright. Of course, the guard was just doing his duty, running to alert the village, since one man could not possibly hope to stop more than sixty overmen, but it was still pleasant to see.

He glanced back and saw that other overmen were smiling as well.

Then he heard the slap of a bowstring and ducked instinctively. A crossbow quarrel whirred past his head.

He knew, in a vague and detached way, that he should get down, order his troops to do the same, and appraise the exact situation before taking any direct action, but a blinding wave of fury drowned all such logic. He reached up and grabbed the hilt of the great sword and pulled it from its sheath.

"Human scum!" he bellowed. "You dare defy me?" The sword came free, and he swung it over his head.

The sun, low in the western sky, vanished behind a cloud at that moment, and the glow of the jewel was visible to friend and foe alike.

"I am Bheleu, bringer of destruction!" Garth cried. "Who dares stand against me?"

Two dull snaps sounded, and two more bolts sped toward him; he spun the sword and somehow met both in mid-air, striking sparks as their barbed heads hit the steel of the sword's blade. The quarrels flew harmlessly aside; one left a trail of smoke in the air.

As it moved, the sword shone silver, then white, as if the blade were now glowing as well as the gem. Garth laughed. "Flee, humans! Flee before the wrath of a god!"

Clouds had gathered overhead with incredible speed, and a distant roll of thunder answered him.

No more crossbows were fired. The guardsmen, already terrified at facing three times their number in overmen, did as they were told and fled. None of them cared to face this supernatural being who could knock arrows out of the air with his glowing sword. The cover provided by the crumbling wall and heaped rubble suddenly seemed hopelessly inadequate. When the last to arrive, who had not yet had time to conceal himself, turned and ran, the others were quick to follow.

The overmen watched in amazed confusion as their foe, who had appeared from nowhere, vanished with equal speed, while Garth raved and did mysterious things with his strange sword.

As suddenly as it had come, the spell departed, and Garth found himself holding the sword awkwardly above his head while men newly visible were running southward into the town. That was not what he wanted; he wanted to negotiate peacefully. The show of force was to have been just that, a show; he had no desire to risk starting the Racial Wars anew. "No!" he called, "they mustn't flee!"

Behind him, someone overheard him and misinterpreted his intent. "After them!" he called.

Before Garth could recover sufficiently to countermand, his troops were surging forward, yelling and cheering. They poured over the broken remnants of the wall and into the town, pursuing the running guardsmen.

Galt and Garth were both shouting, trying to stop the forward rush, but neither could be heard above the clamor. The warriors of Ordunin were on the offensive for the first time in three hundred years and enjoying it.

Garth quickly realized that he could accomplish nothing where he was.

The other overmen were getting further away and more scattered with each passing second. He would have to head them off. He ordered Koros forward, along the roadway and through the gate. Galt followed his lead; Kyrith trailed behind.

Garth reached one of his warriors, grabbed the overman by the shoulder, and bellowed in his ear, "Let them go! Form up on the road!" Before the warrior could acknowledge the command, Garth was on to the next.

Moving in a straight line and mounted as he was, he quickly passed all the infantry; the warbeasts, fortunately, had not joined in the headlong dash after the fleeing humans. He had collared half a dozen of his troops, and they were now gathering on the road as he had ordered, but looking none too pleased about it. He turned and bellowed, "Hold! Let them go!"

Another half dozen overmen stopped and looked at him.

"Get back in formation on the road!"

Reluctantly, those who heard him obeyed; the clump of warriors on the road grew. Galt, too, was gathering them in.

A few moments later Garth had to turn and head off a few who had wandered well off to one side. When he came back with them in tow, he found that Galt had managed to gather more than half the company into position. The rest, seeing what was happening, were now drifting back, one or two at a time.

It took perhaps fifteen minutes before they were all together, and Garth found himself again at the head of sixty overmen.

He was also, he discovered, apparently in command of four human soldiers who had been captured. He ordered their captors to release them and had them come to the front of the column where he could address them.

"Men," he said, "I wish to apologize for our part in this unfortunate incident. However, you brought it upon yourselves by firing on us. We are here as a peaceful embassy, whatever the appearances may be, and do not wish harm to anyone. Our people remember the Racial Wars, though, and remember that your ancestors stole our lands and goods and drove us into the wastes; thus their eagerness in pursuing you. We know that our best hopes lie in peaceful trade, but the desire for vengeance is strong. Do not provoke us in the future, and both sides will benefit. I am sending you back to your captain and to your lord, the Baron of Skelleth, and I want you to convey to them our intention to come and treat with them. We want only to speak peacefully with them, but we come prepared for whatever eventualities may arise. I will not be responsible for anything that may occur if we are again attacked without cause. Do you understand?"

The four heads bobbed up and down.

"Good. You may go then." He waved a hand in dismissal.

The four men, hesitantly at first, moved down the road. With each step they moved a little faster; by the time they were lost to sight amid the ruins along the winding road, they were almost running.

When they were gone, Garth turned to look over his troops. They were slightly less impressive than before, as their armor was no longer spotless and shiny; the scramble across the rubble had left them spattered with mud.

There were fewer smiles in evidence than previously. A speech was probably needed, Garth decided. To give himself time to devise one, he called,

"Was anyone injured?"

The overmen shifted about, but no one answered.

"Did anybody injure any of the humans?"

Again, there was no reply.

"Good. Now, warriors of Ordunin, I have a few words to say. We are here on a peaceful mission, not to start a war. I am not sure whether you are all aware of it, but the Racial Wars are finished and we do not want to start them all over again. We cannot afford to. The humans outnumber us probably a hundred to one in the world as a whole and have every logistical advantage; that has not changed in the past three centuries. Therefore, whatever the temptations or provocations, we must not take any aggressive action unless driven to it. In the incident that just occurred, I know we were fired upon from ambush without warning or justification but remember that the humans were probably terrified at the sight of us and acted without thinking, in defense of their home. You saw that the display I put on frightened them away almost immediately. I did not call for their pursuit; what I said was simply in surprise at the ease with which they were driven back, as I had wanted to speak to them. Someone among you-I did not recognize the voice-then called for pursuit and you obeyed. I ask that, in the future, you obey only orders given by your three commanders: Galt, Kyrith, and me. Is that understood?"

There was a reluctant chorus of assent.

"Good. Then take a moment to brush yourselves off, so that we will look suitably impressive when we confront the Baron, and get back into formation."

A moment later, again impressive in shining armor and neat formation, the company renewed its advance down the street toward the center of Skelleth.

Garth regretted once again that he did not have time to teach the overmen to march in step and hold a properly tight formation; that, he thought, would really have provided a show!

Ahead of them, Herrenmer met his fleeing soldiers halfway between the wall and the square and gathered them together and brought them back into some semblance of discipline. He had to knock a few heads to do it, but he managed.

Once that was done, he made his plans. He knew that his little force could not stop the overmen in open combat, and there wasn't time to set up a decent ambush along the road. Therefore, the best course of action would be to withdraw to the marketplace and meet them there. Accordingly, he formed his men up in a column and marched them back to the square.

Along the way he wondered just what magic the overmen actually possessed. The old legends of the Racial Wars made no mention of overmen using magic. The wizards had fought almost invariably on the human side; at least, so he had heard.

It wasn't really his concern; he was a simple soldier. Magic was for others to worry about; he could only do the best he could with what he had.

As Garth passed the first houses that still had roofs, he was considering what he would say to the Baron. He glanced back over his shoulder at the hilt of the Sword of Bheleu; it would not do to go into a berserk rage while trying to negotiate trade concessions or have his oath renounced. The Baron of Skelleth seemed to have a special talent for annoying Garth, who had found the man difficult enough to deal with in the past without any supernatural interference. He hoped that he would be able to keep his anger down. Perhaps, he thought, the little display he had put on at the North Gate had used up the sword's power for a while; he had felt no particular anger since.

Its magical power aside, the sword was truly a beautiful and impressive weapon, and he would regret parting with it. The blade was six feet of gleaming steel; the hilt was made of some black, polished substance he couldn't identify, the pommel was a silver claw clutching that immense red jewel. It looked like a ruby, though it was hard to believe a ruby could be that large. Whatever it was, it was the color of fresh blood, and he was relieved to see, glancing back, that though it sparkled in the afternoon sun at the moment, it did not appear to be glowing.

He would definitely have to get rid of the thing. It might even have been wise to dispose of it before speaking with the Baron, but he could not bring himself to do so. That would have left him virtually unarmed, and he wanted every advantage when confronting Doran of Skelleth.

His first sight of the Baron had been as the man presided over the execution of the guardsman whose negligence had allowed Garth to enter Skelleth unannounced the first time he came south; the townspeople had blamed Garth for the man's death. The Baron had demanded at swordpoint that Garth turn over to him the basilisk that he had just gone to great trouble to fetch.

Garth had come out ahead in that encounter by stealing the basilisk back and later killing it before the Baron could recover it-but that had so annoyed the Baron that, when Garth returned as a trader, he was systematically insulted, humiliated, and forced to swear the oath he now hoped to have revoked.

They were well into the inhabited area now, but there were no people to be seen; Garth guessed that they had been warned by the guards and had taken shelter. He caught sight of someone on the street ahead, making hand signals to someone else Garth could not see before the signaler vanished around a corner. Whatever other advantages the overmen might have, they would not have the element of surprise.

They didn't need it, Garth told himself. An overman could easily handle any two humans, and a warbeast half a dozen; and Skelleth's entire military was comprised of about three dozen guards-perhaps not quite that many, since the Baron had executed Amer and dismissed Saram as a result of Garth's earlier visits and might not have replaced them yet. His company could deal with the guards easily, should it become necessary.

If the civilian population were to attack them, though, there might be a real problem. Garth had no idea what Skelleth's population was; he doubted anyone knew. It didn't matter, he assured himself. This was to be a peaceful demonstration, not a battle.

The streets remained deserted, save for occasional figures ahead who vanished as soon as they signaled that the overmen were approaching. Garth spotted three of these before he led his party into the northwest corner of the marketplace.

The square was not deserted. There were no merchants, no farmers, none of the ordinary villagers going about their business; instead, there were two dozen guardsmen lined up neatly in front of the Baron's mansion, along the north side of the market. They were divided into two equal groups, one on either side of the central door, with each group arranged three deep and four abreast. Every man wore a shoddy mail tunic and held a drawn short sword; every head wore a leather helmet, and every belt bore a dagger. Four of the helmets were studded with iron, indicating that their wearers were lieutenants; these men were located in the center of each block.

This pitiful squad, Garth realized, represented the armed might of Skelleth, the once-great fortress from which his people had cowered in fear for three hundred years. He suppressed an urge to laugh in their faces as he marched his own force into the center of the square, swinging around to the south to come to a halt in some semblance of formation, directly facing the human soldiers. In this half-circuit of the market, he and his troops got their first good look at the civilian population of Skelleth; the people were crowded into every street that entered the square, except for the one the overmen had marched on. They watched with varied emotions the arrival of their traditional foes. None stepped across the invisible line dividing the market from the rest of the village.

Whispers, rustles, and shuffling feet were audible, but no one spoke aloud until Garth bellowed, "We have come to speak with the Baron of Skelleth!"

The sounds shifted subtly; fewer feet scraped the dirt, more voices whispered. From the corners of his eyes Garth could see the mouths of two streets; both were full of people, all ragged and dirty, and almost all thin and unhealthy. These were the invincible warriors his ancestors had feared. A surge of fury fountained up within him; how could he and his people have taken so long to discover their foe's weakness? It was not fitting that overmen should have feared such creatures.

The door of the Baron's mansion opened, and the whisperings faded in anticipation.

It was not the Baron who emerged; the whispering flourished anew as Garth recognized the man who stepped out into the square and stood between the two groups of guardsmen. Tall for a human, dark of hair and eye, wearing the steel helmet that was his badge of rank, Herrenmer, captain of the Baron's guard and Skelleth's military commander, faced the overmen.

"The Baron is not well," Herrenmer said. "I have just come from his bedside. Perhaps I can serve in his place."

Only the Baron could free Garth from his oath, so Garth's reply was immediate. "We have come to see the Baron on matters that cannot be left to underlings. We have come peacefully seeking an audience, despite the assault upon us by your men, and we will remain here in this square until that audience is granted."

"Very well; I will inform the Baron of what you have said and see if he feels well enough to deal with you himself." Herrenmer turned and re-entered the mansion.

Garth and the overmen waited, sitting astride their warbeasts or standing where they were. Garth remained as motionless as he could; the sinking sun was hot on his left cheek, and there was an unpleasant itch below his left arm. Even had he been able to scratch it through his armor, to do so would have ruined the dignity of his appearance. Instead he sat, waiting for Herrenmer's return or the Baron's emergence, growing steadily more irritated as the whispering in the watching crowd ebbed and flowed.

Beside him, Galt and Kyrith also sat still; but behind them, the other overmen were less restrained. They were in unfamiliar territory and looked about themselves with interest.

The poverty and decay of the town were plain on all sides; the only building not in obvious need of repair was the Baron's mansion. Shutters were missing or broken, roofs sagged, doors failed to fit their twisted frames. It appeared that little had been done to maintain the town in the three centuries since overmen had last seen it. For the most part, the warriors thought very little of the place.

The mansion's door opened again, and again the whispers hushed; this time Herrenmer pushed the doors wide and latched them open, then stood to one side. A moment later the Baron of Skelleth emerged, shuffling forward uncertainly. He was clad in a black robe embroidered with red and wore a circlet of gold on his brow; his hair and sparse beard were black. He was small and thin and seemed even smaller as he was hunched over slightly; his right hand appeared to tremble slightly as he raised it and said, "Greetings, overmen."

"Greetings, Doran of Skelleth," Garth replied.

"So you have come to torment me further? Is not the life the gods have cursed me with torment enough to please you?" His faced twisted in a ghastly smile; he raised his head, struggling to stand upright, and looked directly at Garth. The overman met his gaze and was taken aback by the abject despair he saw there, the liquid sorrow of a dying animal.

He was slow in replying, "We have come to ask you to reconsider some of your previous decisions. My people are not pleased by your actions in response to our attempts to establish peaceful and profitable trade between our two nations."

"You have forced me to rise from my sickbed because I have allowed you insufficient opportunity to swindle my subjects?" The parody of a smile remained, perhaps broadened. Garth, already annoyed, felt his anger piling up within him; he began to wonder whether the Baron was exaggerating his illness.

The question was not that of a man sunk in unbearable woe; it smacked rather of the cleverness that Garth had seen the Baron display when at the peak of his cycle.

"We do not swindle anyone. You have compelled me to swear an oath that is intended to humiliate me. You have exiled me from your realm for no reason other than your personal dislike for me. The trader Galt tells me that the tariffs and regulations you propose, should my people refuse to acknowledge you as our overlord, are prohibitive, making peaceful trade impossible, although we all know it would benefit Skelleth as much as Ordunin. We have come here to ask you to correct these injustices, to benefit the people of your village as well as ourselves."

"What injustices? I ask nothing unreasonable!" The mocking smile was gone; the slouch and the trembling had lessened until they were almost imperceptible. The eyes were still desolate, though; Garth found that disturbing.

He did not understand this man at all. His failure to understand enraged him further. His answer was shouted, not spoken. "Nothing unreasonable? Is it reasonable to prevent the enrichment of us all merely to feed your own bloated ego? Do you seriously think that any overman could swear fealty to a human?"

Beside him, Galt's red eyes shifted back and forth, scanning the crowd.

He was not happy with what he saw; Garth's outburst was provoking fear and resentment in both soldiers and civilians; this was plainly visible in their faces. He upbraided himself mentally for allowing Garth to act as sole spokesman; Garth was not as stupid as some overmen, nor as ignorant or careless, but he did have a nasty temper at times, and was not trained at restraining it. Galt, on the other hand, had spent most of his apprenticeship learning to take in his stride the asinine behavior a trader was likely to encounter among humans; he was sure that he could have handled this affair with greater tact.

It would have been difficult, he thought, to have shown less tact. He debated breaking into the conversation himself, trying to calm everyone. He was quite sure that, if Garth was not careful, this debate could lead to bloodshed and disaster. He cast a glance sideways at Garth, but could read nothing in his face; before he could reach a decision his gaze was caught by the hilt of the strange broadsword that Garth had acquired. The red gem set in it was gleaming brightly.

The Baron, too, seemed to notice the sword as he replied to Garth's outburst. "Do your people need this trade so desperately? You come here armed, with a force twice the number Skelleth can muster, the least of you carrying weapons and armor better than I can afford for myself. Your leader has a sword set with gems. Every one of you is well-fed and healthy, as far as I can see.

Yet you protest mightily that I have demanded more than you can give. My people are starving, overmen. Look around you; my people are dying of cold and hunger. Is it unfair that I ask tariffs of you before allowing you to come and frighten them into giving you what little they have in exchange for the worthless trinkets you bring them? Is it unfair that I have hoped to collect taxes from you, that I might relieve their suffering? Is it unfair that I have tried to keep away from them those of you known to have committed murder, such as you? Is it unfair that I have asked your people to come only in groups small enough to pose no threat to the safety and well-being of Skelleth? Our two nations have been at war for half a millennium, Garth; now you come here, defying the laws and edicts of this realm, and demand that you be treated as an honored friend and neighbor. Can you think that I will give in willingly?"

Garth's right hand had crept across his chest toward his left shoulder and the hilt of the great sword during this speech; his fingers touched the weapon as Galt replied quickly, "You are twisting the truth and playing with words, Baron. We would not protest reasonable tariffs, though they would go, not to your starving people, but into your own pocket. We have no wish to cheat or deceive your people. If you do not want what we can trade, we will pay in gold for what we need. We can abide by restrictions on our travel in your lands, but you have ordered that no party of more than three may come; how can we form caravans to pass the dangers of the road in safety? Your claimed reasons for distrusting us are nonsense; Garth has killed in self-defense, but is no wanton murderer, and the war between our peoples ended three hundred years ago. You have asked us to give up our independence as a nation simply to obtain the right to trade; would you be willing to surrender your barony to us were the situation reversed?"

Galt's intrusion into the conversation had come as a surprise to everyone present; Garth had thrown him a startled glance, but let him speak.

The Baron continued to stare directly at Garth.

"I do not parley with servants," the Baron said.

Galt fought back a reply; it was Garth's turn again.

"He speaks the truth, Baron, perhaps more eloquently than I could, while you lie. You say that you do not parley with servants, yet you seem willing enough to speak to one you call a murderer; where is the logic in that? Galt is no servant, as you well know; you seek to insult and enrage us. Why?"

There was a moment of silence; then the Baron turned and began walking back toward his home. "I do not answer to murderers," he said.

"Hold, man?" Garth bellowed; his right hand closed on the sword and snatched it out of its sheath. With a flourish, he swung it about and hoisted it crosswise above his head.

The Baron stopped on the threshold and turned back to face the overmen again. "I have called your bluff, Garth," he said. "I hold all power here, save what you take by strength of arms. You have that strength; we both know that. You could kill me, and destroy Skelleth-but to do so would start the Racial Wars anew, and this time humanity would not be satisfied to drive you filthy monsters into the wilderness. This time, Garth, they would wipe you out, to the last stinking freak. You have no other choice; accept my terms, or fight and die. I will not change my terms. I am neither fool nor coward to be impressed by this handful of would-be warriors. If your people want to trade here, then you, Garth, are exiled, and sworn to offer your City Council the opportunity to surrender to me. Any trade in Skelleth will be by my rules. I will forgive you this one intrusion, but the next time armed overmen come here, I will send word to the High King at Kholis. Now, put away that ridiculous sword and go, all of you; leave me in peace!"

Garth's mounting fury could no longer be contained; he spun the Sword of Bheleu over his head, screaming, and then hurled it at the Baron's back as the man stepped through the doorway.

With a roar, the sword burst into flame in mid-air, and plunged burning into the Baron's back; his embroidered robe blazed up immediately as two feet of fiery, bloodstained blade protruded from his chest.

Despite the obvious force of the blow which had so easily pierced him, the Baron staggered and remained upright. He turned one last time, to face out toward the marketplace; his clothes and hair were lost in red flame. For an instant it seemed to Garth that his eyes, too, were afire.

"Fool!" he said; then he toppled forward onto his face. The sharp impact with the threshold drove the blade backward through his chest and out his back; as he twitched one final time it came free and fell forward across one shoulder, its hilt pointed directly at Garth.

CHAPTER SEVEN

There was a frozen moment of near-silence; the only sound was the crackling of the flames. For long seconds, no one moved.

Garth thought he heard soft, mocking laughter; he turned, but could not locate its source. The fury still boiled within him, but when he had thrown the sword its hold had loosened, and he was able to think again.

As he looked around, he saw shock and astonishment on every face; humans and overmen alike were staring at the burning corpse. No one was laughing; no one smiled; no one spoke. Then one of the guardsmen broke the silence, speaking in a harsh whisper that carried to every corner of the square. "Black magic!"

Another voice, this one from one of the crowded streets, shouted, "Kill them! Kill the overmen!" Garth spun about and thought he saw the shouter, an old man wearing dark red who stood in the forefront of the crowd in the street that led to the West Gate. He had no chance to reply or to make certain of his identification before he heard the snap of a bowstring. Instinctively, he ducked.

For the second time that day, an arrow whistled over his head; it continued on, to scrape against Galt's breastplate before falling to the clear ground between the soldiers of Skelleth and the first row of warbeasts.

"Down! Get down!" Garth called; following his own advice, he slid from the saddle. As he reached the ground, a ragged volley of arrows followed, coming from all directions.

Immediately, he understood the entire situation and berated himself for not anticipating it. He had seen the twenty-five guardsmen in front of the mansion and considered them to be the entire force, even though he knew there were more than thirty men in the Baron's service. The others had been stationed in windows and on rooftops all around the square. The Baron had been a clever man, even in his madness. It was possible there were other dangers hidden in the crowds-and the crowds were themselves a problem, blocking every avenue of retreat save one, keeping the overmen bottled up in the market where they were easy targets.

More arrows flew, whistling and buzzing; the thumping of bowstrings was now coming in a steady, uneven rhythm. Around him, the overmen were shouting; he heard a cry of pain and the growling of a warbeast.

It was far too late now to prevent bloodshed; despite his good intentions, the sword had overcome him, and this peaceful mission had become a battle. That being so, Garth told himself, it was a battle he intended to win.

The anger still seethed in him; it had been far too long since the, overmen of the Northern Waste had won a battle, and this seemed a good place to start.

He looked around; the situation was bad. His troops, completely untrained, were milling about in confusion as arrows rained down on them from every side; half the mounted overmen had followed his example and dismounted, but the others were still on their warbeasts, looking about in dazed confusion. The villagers, soldiers and civilians alike, were staying well back, letting their archers deal with the invaders. None of the overmen had yet taken any action to remedy their vulnerable position.

"Ho, overmen of Ordunin!" Garth bellowed at the top of his lungs. "The battle is begun, whether we want it or no! Advance, then, and kill the guardsmen!" He gave this order, not because he considered the soldiers a threat, but because the archers would be reluctant to shoot into a melee involving their own comrades. It was the simplest order he could think of that would serve a useful purpose at this point. Once he had his overmen acting together again and responding to his commands, he could worry about better tactics.

Confused and angry, the overmen were glad to obey; now that they had a direction, they charged forward around the warbeasts that blocked their way.

The mounted warriors did not seem to hear Garth's order; they continued to look about in confusion. As Garth watched, an arrow caught one young overman in the throat; soundlessly, he slid sideways out of the saddle, blood welling in his mouth, his red eyes wide with shock.

The overmen who had dismounted joined their companions in the charge, leaving their beasts behind. Garth suddenly realized that none of them really knew how to control the great animals.

The best thing for morale, Garth knew, would be to join the charge himself; there were tactical considerations, however, that were more important. As he had hoped, the archers were slackening their fire for fear of hitting their townsmen; but when the overmen had wiped out the humans-as they inevitably would do-the archers would again have a clear field of fire. The bowmen remained, therefore, the biggest threat, and Garth knew his best weapon was the warbeasts. It was time to pit the two against each other. When the first overmen reached the human soldiers, Garth spotted the location of one archer as the man leaned out from behind a chimney to release another arrow.

With a wordless growl, Garth pointed this out to Koros, then ordered the warbeast, "Kill!"

The monstrous animal roared in response, a sound that drowned out the growing clamor of the battle for a moment, then turned and leaped onto the back of its neighboring kin. From there it sprang upward in a magnificent jump that landed it on the roof where the bowman lurked. Shards of splintered slate flew in every direction at the impact of the warbeast's weight; the man had time for one short scream before Koros smashed the chimney out of the way and ripped him apart.

Garth did not wait to watch the archer's death; he was already pointing out another to Kyrith's warbeast. When that animal had leaped for its target, he turned back to Galt's, and then started on the first row of five.

Not all the warbeasts were as successful as Koros; one missed the roof it was aiming for and tried to scramble up the wall, its claws tearing out chunks of wood and plaster. Another made its leap perfectly, but landed on a thatched roof that was unable to support its weight; the beast and the archer it pursued both vanished into the building's upper floor, amid growls and screams.

Not all the bowmen were on rooftops; some were behind upper-floor windows too small for the huge animals to fit through. The warbeasts, direct and simple creatures, dealt with this by ripping out the wall around each window.

When he had sent warbeasts after every archer he could locate, leaving four of the animals in the middle of the square, Garth turned his attention back to the fighting in front of the mansion. His troops appeared to have the situation in hand. Outnumbering the humans two to one, even after the casualties inflicted by the archers, the overmen seemed to have their main problem in avoiding their own fellows. The twenty-five guards had been reduced to a knot of half a dozen, clustered in front of the open doors around the burning body of their lord.

The civilian population of the town had done nothing yet except to produce a great deal of noise; no one had ventured into the square. The crowds seemed smaller; probably, Garth thought, many had fled and taken shelter wherever they could. Those who remained merely watched, yelling.

Garth dismissed them from consideration for the moment and strode forward to aid his warriors in dealing with the surviving guardsmen.

"Hold!" he called. "Stand back!"

Reluctantly, the overmen obeyed. The remaining humans stood, swords bristling, and waited.

"There is no need to continue the fight! Surrender and we will allow you to live."

Herrenmer was one of the survivors. It was he who answered, "Never, monster! We saw how well we could trust you when you slew the Baron!"

Garth fought down a surge of anger. "Have not enough of your men died, Herrenmer? We outnumber you now by almost ten to one and we have our warbeasts as well. You have fought bravely and well on behalf of your dead lord, but you have lost; give up and we will let you live. I swear it."

"Hah! This for your sworn word!" He flung his short sword at Garth, much as Garth had flung the Sword of Bheleu at the Baron.

Garth, however, ducked; the sword flew over his head and landed rattling on the hard ground beyond.

Several of the overmen growled, but made no aggressive move; this was between Garth and the human.

"Herrenmer, don't be a fool. Now you've even lost your sword; you can't fight anymore. Say that you surrender, and no harm will come to you."

Herrenmer did not answer; instead he looked about in desperation for a weapon to replace the one he had lost. He found one; whirling, he dove for the hilt of the Sword of Bheleu.