“Very little,” said Aryenis, looking down on me from the height of the second stair. “No men are really to be trusted without a woman to look after them. Men and babies, they are all the same, except when it comes to battle, and even then men really want a woman to encourage them and pet them afterwards. Even when men are playing they generally have to ask a woman to look at them just like children run and call their mothers to come and see their games. Come here and let me put that bandage straight for you.” “What will Forsyth say if you change it?” “Forsyth did not tie that one, Harilek. Either you or Payindah did it, and did it very badly.” She was adjusting it as she spoke, and she carefully pushed it to one side to see if the wound was all right; at least, that’s what it felt like. “You are branded for the rest of your life, I think, Harilek, so that you may never forget the gate. There, that looks better.” “I don’t want to forget it, Aryenis. I can remember the gate very well without a scar to help me.” She hurriedly changed the subject. “Come; the horses wait.” She swung herself into the saddle of her mare before I could help her. Then, with two mounted archers behind us, we rode out of the gate down into the city, and, when we got to the main street we turned up it in the opposite direction from the one at which we had come in in the morning. We passed through the same crowd of people as we had seen before, and now, when they saw Aryenis, many of them called to her, and I could see all heads turning our way. Aryenis is a wonder at making every one know her, but then you couldn’t help noticing her in the thickest of crowds. She smiled at those who spoke to her, and passed a word or two with some of the shopkeepers who came running out to greet her. We rode through the northern gate, a replica of the one we had entered in the morning, out on to a broad highway with gardens on either side. After going a couple of miles, we struck off to the left, and, riding up the hillside, followed a narrow track, along which flowed a little irrigation channel shaded with willows, almond, and silver-barked poplar. Most of the trees were now shedding their leaves, but in summer it must have been a very pretty, shady, green lane. The ground on either side was cut up into fields, which evidently drew their water from the irrigation channel, for there were water-cuts and banks, and at one place a man was opening a little rough sluice to let the water on to the fields at the side. About us were wooded slopes, and all along the hillsides little terraced fields, fruit orchards with grey stone walls, scattered little stone houses, and ricks of straw and hay. “You have a fertile country, Aryenis, and a beautiful one. Look at those hills there!” Beyond us long slopes of blue hills, climbing ever higher and higher toward the main snow-peak, and between them dim blue shadows, not unlike my own Sussex country that Kipling sings of: