The officer stiffened. "I am not afraid, sir--though others are!" He wheeled his sith and trotted toward Telis. "Get back, Captain," ordered Telis. "My quarrel is not with you!" "Ride him down!" called Brand. The officer unsheathed his lance and laid it in rest. Levelling it at Telis, he dug his booted heels into the sith's flanks and thundered across the sand, leaning low in the saddle. Telis stood braced and, just as the animal came abreast of him, he stepped aside, catching the tip of the lance under his arm and whirling. The movement of the weapon overbalanced the officer and he tumbled from the saddle to sprawl in the sand. With a mortified howl of rage, the man was on his feet and upon Telis, but his fury made him careless. Telis' sword flashed out and the point found the officer's sword arm, piercing it neatly and ending the encounter with a flourish. Telis turned to face the attackers once again. "Now Brand," he taunted, "will you come out to do your own dying? Or will you send another lackey to take the steel meant for you?" Brand's heavy face darkened. For answer he raised his hands to the buglers. "Attack!" The force swept forward like a great tawny wave, shrieking and cursing. Telis stared aghast. An attack he had been expecting, and even the possibility of the Maldia finally taking the camp had occurred to him. But that fifty five hundred roaring madmen would attack one man was more than he had prepared himself for. Death seemed a certainty, and a fleeting image of Leslie swept across his mind. He lifted his futile swords and murmured a prayer to the Goddess.... * * * * * It was answered. The rain came like a gift from heaven. From the nozzles of the camp's pressure hoses there poured a great effluvium of pure, cold, water. It rose in a graceful curve high into the air and spilled down to lash the red sand into a morass and spray the attackers. Telis himself was caught up in the wonder of it. And the effect on the Maldia's fighting force of Guski was nothing short of miraculous. The charging savages pulled up, faces lifted to the sky in mute amazement. Then came fear--shrieking, mad, insensate terror! Rain was falling where no rain had fallen for ten thousand haads! The Goddess had opened up the flood gates of heaven and the stuff of the sky was falling down on a sinful Laurr! Dropping their weapons, they fled out into the desert--away from the accursed place that the Goddess had chosen to enchant! And, in their flight, they carried the mounted nobles of the Maldia, cursing, shouting, trying to regroup their shattered cohorts. Telis stood in the downpour, his body tingling to the touch of the precious water. He was thinking not that this trick of Tellurian technics had saved his life; rather he was thinking of Laurr and what this could mean to the planet. The deserts could be conquered, the world could be redeemed!