She towed him through the woods and underbrush--fast. As long as he hung on to her he didn't stumble or run into a tree once. Irrationally embarrassed by his dependence on a child, he tried letting go for a short time--very short--and was quickly battered into changing his mind. He thought dizzily of the spearmen trying to follow through the dark and could almost laugh again. * * * * * Their trek to the coast was marked by desperate speed. For twenty-four hours, they stopped only to gnaw at their rations or snatch a drink at a stream. Charles kept moving because it was unendurable to let a ten-year-old girl exceed him in stamina. Both of them paid terribly for the murderous pace they kept. The child's face became skull-like and her eyes red; her lips dried and cracked. He gasped at her as they pulled their way up a bramble-covered 45-degree slope: "How do you do it? Isn't this ever going to end?" "Ends soon," she croaked at him. "You know we dodged 'em three times?" He could only shake his head. She stared at him with burning red eyes. "This ain't hard," she croaked. "You do this with a gut-full of poison, _that's_ hard." "_Did_ you?" She grinned crookedly and chanted something he did not understand: "_Nine moons times thirteen is the daughter's age When she drinks the death-cup. Three leagues times three she must race and rage Down hills and up_--" She added matter-of-factly: "Last year. Prove I have the power of the goddess. Run, climb, with your guts falling out. This year, starve for a week and run down a deer of seven points." He had lost track of days and nights when they stood on the brow of a hill at dawn and looked over the sea. The girl gasped: "'Sall right now. _She_ wouldn't let them go on. She's a bitch, but she's no fool." The child fell in her tracks. Charles, too tired for panic, slept too. * * * * * Charles woke with a wonderful smell in his nostrils. He followed it hungrily down the reverse slope of the hill to a grotto. Martha was crouched over a fire on which rocks were heating. Beside it was a bark pot smeared with clay. As he watched, she lifted a red-hot rock with two green sticks and rolled it into the pot. It boiled up and continued to boil for an astonishing number of minutes. That was the source of the smell. "Breakfast?" he asked unbelievingly. "Rabbit stew," she said. "Plenty of runways, plenty of bark, plenty of green branches. I made snares. Two tough old bucks cooking in there for an hour."