She would run him down? He bared angry teeth--but she was going to miss him! She was galloping between him and Rosk! She was.... _She was stretching down a hand to him, her face twisted with hope and fear and--friendship!_ * * * * * Instinctively he slapped her wrist with his palm as she hurtled past, jerked his legs up and was carried off by the rocketing roan. As he writhed into the saddle behind her, she screamed. "Help, oh help! He has attacked me!" The bi--no, the clever girl, by Orbs! Helping him, she was yet saving her own reputation and life, making it seem that he had leaped astride her mount as she was carried by him. No squire could have seen that helping hand, for they were all on the opposite side of her. A vast hullabaloo went up from their ranks. "Throw me off, you fool," she hissed at him, twisting round and pretending to strike him. "Throw me off!" He reached past her, hauled on the reins, brought the animal back on its heels, pitched her off unceremoniously, winked broadly at her and found time for a leer as her riding skirt hoisted unladylike as she sat up; then he rammed heels to the brute and was off on a run for his life. Guns banged behind him, slugs tore the air inches from his bowed back. Let 'em shoot, curse them, he had a chance now! The cliff of reed-laced muck dwindled, and he turned the roan and leaped him up to the higher level of ground. Then he turned and went charging back the way he had come, quick eyes searching for his comrade. "Jerran! Jerran, you scuttling mouse, where are you?" _Bang_ went a musket. "Here, Revel!" The little straw-colored man popped out of a bush in his path. He bent as Nirea had, gave the rebel a hand up behind him. Then he swerved the horse and went off through the oaks, while the gentry cursed and raved and came after as best they could. "Discomfortable riding, this, without pants. Ouch! Where shall we head, ancient one?" Revel asked grimly. "The way we're going. There, see that hill? Up and over that, and we're on a straight path for the forests of Kamden." Revel was jolted nearly out of his battered hide by the unfamiliar jounce and rock of the steed; but he knew he could stick on it till night if he had to. The only enemies that fretted him now were the golden spheres. You could not distance a god simply by mounting a horse. "Look up," he said, watching the path. "Are there gods?" "Yes, but high, following us. They mark our way." "Let them! Jerran, at nightfall we head for the mine. Our mine, and our cavern." "You can't go there, you drooling baby, you'd find an army of globes, priests, gentry, and zanphs. They'll be crawling all over the things in that cave, especially after you took guns from it! What is it that draws you there?" "A metal chest--ouch--I've been thinking of for a long time. Jerran, what's 'suspended animation'?" "Why?" "Nirea kept muttering it to herself in the cave. I think she read it on the chest."