The sarif was no swordsman, the cowardly spear had been his only hope, and even as he turned his terrified eyes briefly toward his fellow an arrow bristled from the other sarif's throat. He shrieked and hurled his sword at Hardan even as he dug his heels into the maar's flanks. He went racing away, blood streaming from his sword-pierced upper arm. Malth Jed reined closer. "Wound you?" Hardan shook his head. "They killed Dandu Mot--many others--one of the holy healers who rebuked them--and now they loot the wagons." The girl's lips quivered as she spoke breathlessly. "I guess you get your wish now, Ylda Rusla," he said grimly. "We ride back to Aba to ask for troops to pursue Nitka Porn." Further conversation was impossible. The first pursuers, augmented now by a score or more of men on foot, were upon them. Spears and arrows were dropping around them as they wheeled their maars about to escape. Ylda's maar went down, squealing horribly, a spear in her belly, and the girl was hurled over her mount's head into the tangled coarseness of the yellow ulfo grass. Before Hardan could swing back to scoop the unconscious body of Ylda from the ground their pursuers had reached her and surrounded her. Hardan rode into them, hewing and slashing with his twin swords, letting his maar move as she willed. Blood splashed and spurted before his maddened blows, and the rebellious sarifs fell back momentarily. Ylda screamed. He saw a sarif on foot hoist the girl's struggling form to a mounted man, a huge-bodied redbeard, and the rider's fist smashing down at the juncture of rounded neck and fragile jaw. Ylda went limp as Nitka Porn's blow landed and then the outlaw rode away, waving a derisive fist at Hardan across the bulwark of mounted men and attacking sarifs on foot. He was battling for his life a second later. A spear found his body, and then another. Arrows hailed upward at him, piercing his padded limbs and drawing blood. In a moment he would be over-powered. Yet he fought on, trying to break through the press of rebel sarifs to pursue Ylda's captor. "Hardan," a terrible voice roared above the shouts of his attackers, "escape.... Outnumbered!" A spark of sanity remained in his weary brain. And the words of Malth Jed fanned it into life. His swords hissed, carving out a momentary gap, and he sent his maar plunging back the way they had come. He saw Malth Jed, sagging in his saddle, racing before him, and even as he watched a feathered shaft jutted abruptly from between his shoulderblades. The stocky sarif slumped forward, clinging in his death agony to the saddle, and so they rode away into the growing daylight of the Drylands--a wounded cursing Wetlander and a jouncing bundle of dead sinews and bone that had once been a man.... * * * * *