The lion, its neck slit from ear to gullet, spewed blood and uttered a horrible gurgling bellow. Slowly it began to sink toward the earth. Godwin risked a quick look down. His head reeled. He was still a good eighty feet up. If the lion died too soon, he would be smashed to a pulp beneath its dead weight. He had thought only of slaying the thing, not of how he might land safely. He swore vividly. "This proves Ramizail's contention that I have a one-track brain!" The winged beast drifted down in spirals, its hindquarters drooping, its wings feebly beating the air, and its head jerking back and forth. Godwin held his breath. It folded its wings and plummeted straight for sickening yards, then making a last try at rising, extended the pinions once more. Godwin saw that he was no more than ten feet off the ground. He loosed his hold. The dunes came up with a rush to meet him and he lit and rolled over. The lion above gave a final roar and crumpled, smacking the sand a yard from Godwin's feet. The warrior arose and wiped his forehead with a bloodied hand, as Yellow-eyes alit on his shoulder, ruffling her feathers. "Whew! Lady, _that_ was no illusion." El Sareuk brought him his sword and charger, and mounting, he turned its head again to the west. CHAPTER VIII About the time that Godwin and his friends were fording the Rosetta Branch of the Nile, Heraj the sorcerer interrupted his leader again. "He riddled out the levitating oasis, Mufaddal, and he slew the winged lion. I thought you'd like to know what sort of man is coming after us." "If you had done your job at all well--" Mufaddal paused to thrust a piece of millet bread into his maw, and his half-brother interrupted him. "You know my limitations. Allah curse it, what man ever stood up to the winged lion before today?" He took a piece of paper out of Mufaddal's chin, or seemed to, at any rate, and read a few words that were scribbled thereon. "Well, the dog is crossing the Rosetta now. I have a horrible feeling he can't be stopped." Heraj sprinkled salt on the scrap of paper and ate it meditatively. "Pepi wants to try the rolling sands stunt. I suppose we may as well. But this Godwin ... by the _schedim_, what an opponent! Djinn or no djinn, I like him not!" He left, and Mufaddal, having lost his appetite, went off to inspect the plague ship for the hundredth time that week.