"I have ... you won't be hunted by the pack. You'll be flayed alive, inch by inch, with white-hot needles of iron, starting with your feet and working upward. And I'll watch." He laughed. "You _are_ a wench," he said admiringly. Then he turned and appeared to forget her as he began to inspect the contents of the cavern. After a moment she wandered off to look at them herself. Nearest lay a long wooden chest, on which were arranged certain contrivances that looked like guns, except that they were short, no more than a foot long; they had triggers and barrels and small curved stocks, so they must be guns! No one had ever seen a gun under four feet long. She looked for the ramrods, but there were none on the chest. Possibly they were cached inside it. Over the chest in an arch that covered the entire top was a sheet of almost invisible stuff that she touched fearfully. She had never seen anything like it--like frozen water! Hard and cold ... She thought of the oiled paper in her father's windows. A sheet of this substance in a window would be a magnificent possession, the envy of every squire in Dolfya. Oiled paper was semi-transparent, while this stuff was like a piece of air. * * * * * There was a white square lying beside the tiny guns, with black printing on it. She was deciphering it, painfully, for not only did she read very slowly, even in the priceless old books of her father's library, but this print was in a language slightly different from Orbish, when she felt two hard hands on her waist. "Get your stinking paws off me," she said, without moving. She was picked up and set down gently on one side. Revel bent over the chest. "What are they?" She thought fast. She had deciphered enough of the card to know they _were_ guns: _American handguns of 1940-1975 period_, it said. She couldn't let him know it. The rucker must not get hold of a gun, or he'd attack the gentry themselves, for hadn't he slain innumerable gods already? "They are children's toys," she said. "I don't know what sort of children would be interested in such weird-looking things." "Did you ever hear of the Ancient Kingdom?" She shook her head; the term was new to her. "The ruck knows of it; the ballad-singers have many sagas of the Ancient Kingdom, but I imagine the gentry have forgotten. It was the world and people of a long time ago. I think these things were walled up here then." His face, really a handsome face if you forgot he was a rucker, screwed up in thought. Then he started to chant something. "The people of that far-off time, They carried little guns; They had so much more freedom Than we who are their sons." He stared at the weapons. She thought fast. "These are toy guns, yes. The writing says they are guns for children." "Maybe the toys of those children worked," he said looking at her. "You talk nonsense."