"The Dog-Headed Demons of Okali"

[dochermes]

"Dog-Headed Demons of Okali"

3/2-3/28/1214 DR

I.

Romal leaned on his roughly hewn staff and gazed in scowling perplexity at the mystery which spread silently before him. Many a deserted village Romal had seen in the months that had passed since he turned his face east from the Copper Coast and lost himself in the mazes of forest and river of Okali, but never one like this.

It was not famine that had driven away the inhabitants, for nearby the wild brown rice still grew rank and unkempt in the untilled fields. There were no Darthan slave-raiders in this unmapped land. It must have been a tribal war that devastated the village, Romal decided, as he gazed somberly at the scattered bones and grinning skulls that littered the space among the rank weeds and grasses. These bones were shattered and splintered, and Romal saw jackals and a hyena furtively slinking among the ruined huts. But why had the slayers left the spoils? There lay war spears, their shafts crumbling before the attacks of the red ants. There lay shields, moldering in the rains and sun. There lay the cooking pots, and about the neck-bones of a shattered skeleton glistened a necklace of gold and copper discs, and painted shells...surely rare loot for any savage conqueror.

He gazed suspiciously at the huts, wondering why the thatch roofs of so many were torn and rent, as if by taloned things seeking entrance. Then something made his cold eyes narrow in startled unbelief. Just outside the mouldering mound that was once the village wall towered a gigantic tree, branchless for sixty feet, its mighty bole too large to be gripped and scaled. Yet in the topmost branches dangled a skeleton, apparently impaled on a broken limb.

The cold hand of mystery touched the shoulder of Romal. How had those pitiful remains come to rest in that tree? Had some monstrous ogre's inhuman hand flung them there? Okali was rumored to be infested with many dangerous creatures not found anywhere else. Griffins, Manticores, Thunderbirds and Speaking Apes. Romal knew most legends had some kernel of truth at their core.

Romal shrugged his broad shoulders and his hand unconsciously touched the hilt of his long sword, and the dagged in his belt. Romal felt no fear as an ordinary man would feel when confronted with the Unknown and Nameless. A lifetime of wandering in strange lands and warring with strange creatures had melted away from him all that was not hard and unyielding. He was tall and powerfully built, nimble withyouth. Wide-shouldered, long-armed, with strength of a full-grown Troll and the speed of a Snake man, he was no less a natural-born killer than the strange predatory beasts of Okali.

The brambles and thorns of the forest had dealt hardly with him; his blue tunic and black pants hung in tatters, his travel cloak was torn and his boots of Signarm leather were scratched and worn. The sun had baked his skin to a deep bronze, but his broad sullen face was impervious to its rays. Under heavy black brows, his eyes glinted strangely, blue eyes with amber flecks in their depths. From the shaggy black hair, the distinct points of his ears showed. For Romal alone in the world bore traits of all Seven Races.

Sweeping the village once more with his searching gaze, the Mongrel pulled his swordbelt into a more accessible position, shifted to his left hand the rough staff he had fashioned from a fallen branch, and took up his way again.

To the west lay a strip of thin forest, sloping downward to a broad belt of savannas, a waving sea of grass waist-deep and deeper. Beyond that rose another narrow strip of woodlands, deepening rapidly into dense forest. Where Trolls dwelt. Out of that forest Romal had fled like a hunted wolf with the Tunnel-dwellers hot on his trail. Even now a vagrant breeze brought faintly the echo of a deep-chested roar which warned of its creator's hate and blood-hunger across miles of forest and grassland.

The memory of his flight and narrow escape was vivid in Romal's mind, for only the day before had he realized too late that he was in Troll-claimed country, and all that afternoon in the reeking stench of the thick forest, he had crept and run and hidden and doubled and twisted on his track with the fierce Tunnel-dwellers ever close behind him, until night fell and he gained and crossed the grasslands under cover of darkness.

Now in the late morning he had seen nothing, heard nothing of his pursuers, yet he had no reason to believe that they had abandoned the chase. They had been close on his heels when he took to the savannas.

So Romal surveyed the land in front of him. To the east, curving from north to south ran a straggling range of hills, for the most part dry and barren, rising in south to a jagged black skyline that reminded Romal of the black hills of neighboring Danarak. Between him and these hills stretched a broad expanse of gently rolling country, thickly treed, but nowhere approaching the density of a forest. Romal got the impression of a vast upland plateau, bounded by the curving hills to the east and by the savannas to the west.

Romal set out for the hills with his long, swinging, tireless stride. Surely somewhere behind him the hulking brutes were still after him, and he had no desire to be driven to bay. Within his Human-seeming body, Romal had the full strength of a Fighting Troll and the whiplash quickness of a Snake man. One on one, he could match any single opponent but not even Romal the Mongrel could win in a pitched battle with a whole tribe of the brutes.

The silent village with its burden of death and mystery faded out behind him. Utter silence reigned among these mysterious uplands where no birds sang and only a silent brown monkey flitted among the great trees. The only sounds were Romal's tread through the grass, and the whisper of the damp breeze.

And then Romal caught a glimpse among the trees that made his heart leap with a sudden, nameless horror, and a few moments later he stood before Horror itself, stark and grisly. In a wide clearing, on a rather bold incline stood a grim stake, and to this stake was bound a thing that had once been a living man. Romal had been spawned and raised by the cruel Darthim, for whom torture was a sport and a delight. He knew much of the fiendishness that Humans and Gelydrim could also display, but now he shuddered and grew sick. It was not so much the ghastliness of the mutilations that unsettled him so, but the sudden knowledge that the wretch still lived.

II.

For as he drew near, the gory head that lolled on the butchered breast lifted and tossed from side to side, spattering blood from the stumps of ears, while a bestial, rattling whimper drooled from the shredded lips.

Romal spoke to the ghastly victim and he screamed unbearably, writhing in incredible contortions, while his head jerked up and down with the jerking of mangled nerves, and the gaping eye-sockets seemed striving to see from their emptiness. And moaning low, the ruined man huddled back against the stake where he was bound and lifted his head in a grisly attitude of listening, as if it expected something out of the skies.

"Listen," said Romal, in the dialect of that land. "Do not fear me. I will not harm you and nothing else shall harm you any more. I am going to loose you."

Even as he spoke Romal was bitterly aware of the emptiness of his words. But his voice had filtered dimly into the crumbling, agony-shot brain of the man before him. From between splintered teeth fell words, faltering and uncertain with effort. He spoke a language akin to the dialects Romal had learned from friendly river folk on his wanderings, and Romal gathered that he had been bound to the stake for a long time. For days, maybe weeks, he had whimpered in the delirium of approaching death; and all this time, inhuman, evil things had worked their monstrous will upon him. These things he mentioned by name, but Romal could make nothing of it for he used an unfamiliar term that sounded like Kulan. But these things had not bound him to the stake, for the torn wretch slavered the name of Lakul, who was a priest who had tied him to this stake.

Romal gently cut his bonds and eased his broken body to the grass. But even at the Mongrel's careful touch, the poor wretch writhed and whimpered like a dying dog, while blood started anew from a score of ghastly gashes, which, Romal noted, were more like the wounds made by fang and talon than by knife or spear. But at last it was done and the bloody, torn thing lay on the soft grass with Romal's folded cloak beneath its death's-head, breathing in great, rattling gasps.

Romal poured water from his wooden canteen between the mangled lips, and bending close, said: "Tell me more of these dog-headed devils and I swear this deed shall not go unavenged."

It is doubtful if the dying man heard. But he heard something else. The blue songbird Elura, with the curiosity of its breed, swept from a near-by grove and passed so close its great wings fanned Romal's hair. And at the sound of those wings, the butchered Okali man heaved upright and screamed in a voice that haunted Romal's dreams to the day of his death: "The wings! They come again! Ahhhh, the dog-headed demons!" Blood burst in a torrent from his lips and so he died.

Romal rose and wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. The upland forest shimmered in the noonday heat. Heavy silence lay over the land. Romal's brooding eyes ranged to the black hills crouching in the distance and back to the far-away savannas. Romal had seldom felt more ill at ease.

With rare gentleness, he lifted the red ruin that had once pulsed with life, and carried it to the edge of the glade. He arranged the cold limbs as best he might and he piled stones above it till even a prowling jackal would find it hard to get at the flesh below.

And he had scarcely finished when something jerked him back out of his somber broodings to a realization of his own position. The slightest sound in the distance, and his deep feral instincts made him whirl. The Trolls!

III.

On the other side of the glade he caught a movement among the tall grasses—the glimpse of a hideous broad face, with lips parted to reveal tusks whose like those of a boar, beady eyes and a protruding brow ledge topped by a mane of thick coarse hair. Even as the face faded from view Romal leaped back into the shelter of the ring of trees which circled the glade, and ran like a deer-hound, flitting from tree to tree and expecting at each moment to hear the exultant clamor of the Trolls and to see them break cover at his back.

But soon he decided that they were content to hunt him down as certain beasts track their prey, slowly and inevitably. He hastened through the upland forest, taking advantage of every bit of cover, and he saw no more of his pursuers; yet he knew, as a hunted wolf knows, that they hovered close behind him, waiting their moment to strike him down without risk to their own hides.

Romal smiled bleakly and without mirth. If it was to be a test of endurance, he would see how savage muscles compared with his own hard-earned resilience. Let night come and he might yet give them the slip. If not, Romal knew in his heart that the essence of his very being which chafed at his flight, would make him soon turn at bay, though his pursuers outnumbered him a hundred to one.

The sun sank westward. Romal was hungry, for he had not eaten since early morning when he wolfed down the last of his dried meat. An occasional spring had given him water, and once he thought he glimpsed the roof of a large hut far away through the trees. But he gave it a wide berth. It was hard to believe that this silent plateau was inhabited, but if it were, the natives were doubtless as ferocious as those hunting him.

Ahead of him the land grew rougher, with broken boulders and steep slopes as he neared the lower reaches of the brooding hills. And still no sight of his hunters except for faint glimpses caught by wary backward glances... a drifting shadow, the bending of the grass, the sudden straightening of a trodden twig, a rustle of leaves. Why should they be so cautious? Why did they not close in and have it over?

Night fell and Romal reached the first long slopes which led upward to the foot of the hills which now brooded dark and menacing above him. They were his goal, where he hoped to shake off his persistent foes at last, yet a nameless aversion warned him away from them. They were ominous with hidden hints of a danger he had not yet known.

Darkness fell heavily. The stars winked redly in the thick heat of the tropic night. And Romal, halting for a moment in an unusually dense grove, beyond which the trees thinned out on the slopes, heard a stealthy movement that was not the night wind—for no breath of air stirred the heavy leaves. And even as he turned, there was a rush in the dark, under the trees.

A shadow that merged with the shadows flung itself on Romal with a bestial mouthing and a stink of stale sweat, and the Mongrel, parrying by the gleam of the stars on the weapon, felt his assailant duck into close quarters and meet him chest to chest. Thick muscular arms locked about him, pointed teeth gnashed at him as Romal returned the fierce grapple. His tattered shirt ripped beneath a jagged edge. The Troll held one of his kind's crude knives. By blind chance Romal found and pinioned the hand that held the iron knife, and drew his own dagger, flesh crawling in anticipation of a spear in the back.

But even as the Mongrel wondered why the others did not come to their comrade's aid, he threw all of his iron muscles into the single combat. Close-clinched they swayed and writhed in the darkness, each striving to drive his blade into the other's flesh, and as the superior strength of the Mongrel began to assert itself, the Troll bellowed like an ox in agony. He had never imagined that a mere Human could match him in a fight.

A convulsive spin-wheel of effort pivoted them out into the starlit glade where Romal saw the jagged tusks that snapped beast-like at his throat. Simultaneously he forced back and down the hand that gripped his knife-wrist, and drove his dagger deep between the thick ribs. The Troll bellowed, and the raw acrid scent of blood flooded the night air. In that instant Romal was stunned by a sudden savage rush and beat of mighty wings that dashed him to earth, and the wounded Troll was torn from his grip and vanished with a scream of mortal agony. Romal leaped to his feet, shaken to his very foundation. The dwindling scream of the wretched Troll sounded faintly and from above him.

Straining his eyes into the skies he thought he caught a glimpse of a misshapen shadow crossing the dim stars. The writhing limbs of a Troll mingled namelessly with great wings and a shadowy shape passed overhead but so quickly it was gone, he could not be sure what he had seen.

IV.

And now he wondered if it were not all a nightmare. But groping in the grove he retrieved the staff with which he had parried the short knife of hammered iron that lay beside it. And here, if more proof was needed, was his long dagger, still stained with blood.

The skeleton in the village of torn roofs, the mutilated Okalin whose wounds were not made with knife or spear and who died shrieking of wings. Surely those hills were the haunt of gigantic birds who made humanity their prey. Yet if birds, why had they not wholly devoured the wretch on the stake? And Romal knew in his heart that no true bird ever cast such a shadow as he had seen flit across the stars.

He shrugged his shoulders, bewildered. The night was silent. Where were the rest of the Trolls who had followed him from their distant forest? Had the fate of their comrade frightened them into flight? Romal looked to his weapons. Trolls or not, he went not up into those dark hills that night.

Now he must sleep whether he wished to or not. A deep roaring to the westward warned him that beasts of prey were roaming, and he walked rapidly down the rolling slopes until he came to a dense grove some distance from that in which he had fought the Troll. He climbed high among the great branches until he found a thick crotch that would accommodate even his tall frame. The branches above would guard him from a sudden swoop of any winged thing, and if savages were lurking near, their clamber into the tree would warn him, for he slept lightly as a cat. As for serpents and leopards, they were chances he had taken a thousand times.

Romal slept and his dreams were vague, chaotic, haunted with a suggestion of pre-human evil and which at last merged into a vision vivid as a scene in waking life. - dreamed he woke with a start, clutching his sword hilt, for so long had his life been that of the wolf, that reaching for a weapon was his natural reaction upon waking suddenly.

Dawn was spreading over the eastern hills when Romal awoke. The thought of his nightmares came to him and he wondered again at its vividness as he climbed down out of the tree. A nearby spring slaked his thirst and some fruit, rare in these highlands, eased his hunger.

Then he turned his face again to the hills. Along that grim skyline dwelt some unnatural threat, and that mere fact was an irresistible challenge to the Mongrel. Whether he profited by his deeds or not, he was born to seek trouble.

Refreshed by his night's sleep, he set out with his long easy stride, passing the grove that had witnessed the battle in the night, and coming into the region where the trees thinned at the foot of the slopes. Up these slopes he went, halting for a moment to gaze back over the way he had come. Now that he was above the plateau, he could easily make out a village in the distance—a cluster of mud-and-bamboo huts with one unusually large hut a short distance from the rest on a sort of low knoll.

And while he gazed, with a sudden rush of wings the terror was upon him! Romal whirled, galvanized. All signs had pointed to the theory of a winged thing that hunted by night. He had not expected attack in broad daylight but here a bat-like monster was swooping at him out of the very eye of the rising sun. Romal saw a spread of mighty wings, from which glared a muzzle like that of a hunting hound. then he snatched up and flung a fist-sized rock with unerring aim. Struck hard in the face, the monster veered wildly in midair and came whirling and tumbling out of the sky to crash at almost his feet.

Romal lunged forward, driving his long sword deep into the creature's chest, and gazed wide-eyed. Surely this thing was a demon from the forbidden realm of Fanedral, said the somber mind of the Mongrel, yet a steel blade had slain it. Romal's ebbing fury left him baffled. He had never seen anything to approach this, though he had always strange paths.

The Kulan was like a man, inhumanly tall and sinewy with tough tawny-yellow hide. The head was that of a hound, with upright ears and a pointed muzzle set with impressive fangs. The yellow eyes glazed over as death settled in.

The creature, which was naked and hairless, was not unlike a human being in other ways. Fingers and toes were armed with heavy hooked talons. The chest was curiously misshapen, the breast-bone jutting out like the keel of a ship, the ribs curving back from it. On each elbow and knee was a short hooked horn which would make a vicious weapon for close fighting.

But the most curious feature of this fearsome beast was on its back. A pair of great batlike wings, ribbed and of tough leathery substance, grew from its shoulders, beginning at a point just back and above where the arms joined the shoulders, and extending half way to the narrow hips. These wings, Romal reckoned, would measure some eighteen feet from tip to tip.

He laid hold of the creature, involuntarily shuddering at the slick, hard, leather-like feel of the skin, and half-lifted it. The weight was much less as it would have been in a man the same height, some six and a half feet. Evidently the bones were of a peculiar bird-like structure and the flesh consisted almost entirely of stringy muscles.

Romal stepped back, surveying the thing again. Then his dream had been no dream after all. That foul thing or another like it had in grisly reality lighted in the tree beside him. There came a whir of mighty wings behind him. A sudden rush through the sky!

V.

Even as Romal whirled, he realized he had committed the lone wayfarer's unpardonable crime. He had allowed his astonishment and curiosity to draw him off guard. Already a winged fiend was at his throat and there was no time to raise his sword in defense. Romal saw, in a maze of thrashing wings, a devilish, inhuman face. He felt those wings battering at him, he felt cruel talons sink deep into his chest and arm; then he was dragged off his feet and empty space dropped away beneath him. Despite his grip, the sword fell and was lost.

The winged demon had wrapped his limbs about the Mongrel's legs and the talons he had driven into Romal's chest muscles held like fanged vices. The wolf-like fangs drove at Romal's throat, but the Mongrel gripped that bony throat and thrust back the grisly head, while with his right hand he strove to draw his dagger. The Kulan was mounting slowly and a fleeting glance showed Romal that they were already high above the trees. The Mongrel did not hope to survive this battle in the sky, for even if he slew his foe, he would be dashed to death in the fall. But with the innate ferocity of the fighting man he set himself grimly to take his captor with him.

Holding those keen fangs at bay, Romal managed to draw his dagger, and he plunged it deep into the body of the monster. The Kulan veered wildly and a rasping, raucous screech burst from his half-throttled throat. He floundered wildly, beating frantically with his great wings, bowing his back and twisting his head fiercely in a vain effort to free it and sink home his deadly fangs. He sank the talons of one hand agonizingly deeper and deeper into Romal's chest, while with the other he tore at his foe's head and body. But the Mongrel, gashed and bleeding, with the silent and tenacious savagery of a bulldog, sank his fingers deeper into the lean neck and drove his dagger home again and again, while far below awed eyes watched the fiendish battle that was raging at that dizzy height.

They had drifted out over the plateau, and the fast-weakening wings of the bat-man barely supported their weight. They were sinking earthward swiftly, but Romal, blinded with blood and battle fury, knew nothing of this. With a great piece of his scalp hanging loose, his chest and shoulders cut and ripped, the world had become a blind, red thing in which he was aware of but one sensation, the primeval urge to kill his foe.

Now the feeble and spasmodic beating of the dying monster's wings held them hovering for an instant above a thick grove of gigantic trees, while Romal felt the grip of claws and twining limbs grow weaker and the slashing of the talons become a futile flailing.

With a last burst of power he drove the reddened blade straight through the breastbone and felt a convulsive tremor run through the creature's frame. The great wings fell limp—and victor and vanquished dropped headlong and plummet-like earthward.

Through a red wave Romal saw the waving branches rushing up to meet them—he felt them flail his face and tear at his clothing, as still locked in that death-clinch he rushed downward through leaves which eluded his vainly grasping hand; then his head crashed against a great limb, and an endless abyss of blackness engulfed him.

VI.

Romal snapped back suddenly from the feverish delirium, and his first sight of sanity was that of a round, kindly Okali face bending over him. Romal saw he was in a roomy, clean and well-ventilated hut, while from a cooking pot bubbling outside wafted savory scents. Romal realized he was ravenously hungry. And he was strangely weak. The hand he lifted to his bandaged head shook, and its bronze was dimmed.

The people of Okali were a handsome race, copper-skinned and black-haired, mostly lean and usually almost naked. Both sexes wore skirts of woven grass and a few decorations such as polished shells strung around the neck or bright feathers stuck in the hair on the back of their heads. Only the men bore a vertical serpent tattoo on their chests, without exceptions.

The fat man and another, a tall, gaunt, grim-faced warrior, bent over him. The fat man said: "He is awake, Ubora, and of sound mind." The gaunt man nodded and called something which was answered from without.

"What is this place?" asked Romal in a language he had learned that was similar to the dialect the black had used. "How long have I lain here?"

"This is the last village of Rukh." The fat man pressed him back with hands as gentle as a woman's. "We found you lying beneath the trees on the slopes, badly wounded and senseless. You have raved in delirium for many days. Now you should eat."

The young warrior entered with a wooden bowl full of steaming meat stew, and Romal ate ravenously with his fingers.

"He is tough like a leopard, Ubora," said the fat man admiringly. "Not one man in a thousand would have survived with those wounds."

"Aye," returned the other. "And also he slew the Kulan that rent him, Lakul."

Romal struggled to his elbows. "Lakul?" he cried fiercely. "The priest who binds men to stakes for devils to eat?"

And he strove to rise so that he could strangle the fat man, but his weakness swept over him like a wave, the hut swam dizzily to his eyes, and he sank back panting, where he soon fell into a sound, natural sleep.

Later he awoke and found a slim young girl named Disa, watching him. She fed him, and feeling much stronger, Romal asked questions which she answered shyly but intelligently.

This village was Rukh, ruled by Ubora the chief and Lakul the shaman. No one in Rukh had ever seen or heard of a white-skinned man such as himself before. She counted the five days Romal had lain helpless, and he was amazed. But such a battle as he had been through was enough to kill an ordinary man. He wondered that no bones had been broken, but the girl said the branches had broken his fall and he had landed on the body of the Kulan. He asked for Lakul, and the fat priest came to him, bringing Romal's weapons. Unexpectedly, among them was his sword.

"Some we found with you where you lay." said Lakul, "some by the body of the Kulan you slew. You are not one of us, your eyes are sky-colored and your ears pointed as a wolf's. Who are you?"

"I am like no other," Romal answered, "but ultimately, still a man like yourself. My name is Romal and I am a landless wanderer. From the lips of a dying man I first heard your name being cursed. Yet your face seems kindly."

A shadow crossed the eyes of the shaman, and he hung his head.

"Rest and grow strong, oh Romal," said he, "and in time you will learn of the curse that rests heavy upon this ancient land."

And in the days that followed, while Romal recovered and grew strong with the wild beast vitality that was his, Lakul and Ubora sat and spoke to him at length, telling him their history.

VII.

Their tribe was not originally from that area, but had come upon the plateau three generations before, giving it the name of their former home. They had once been a powerful tribe in Old Rukh, on a great river far to the south. But tribal wars broke their power, and at last before a concerted uprising, the whole tribe gave way, and Lakul repeated legends of that great flight of a thousand miles through forest and swampland, harried at every step by cruel foes.

At last, hacking their way through a country of ferocious Trolls, they found themselves safe from man's attack but prisoners in a trap from which neither they nor their descendants could ever escape. They were in the horror-country of the Kulan, and Lakul said his ancestors came to understand the jeering laughter of the Tunnel-dwellers who had hounded them to the very borders of the plateau.

The Rukh found a fertile country with good water and plenty of game. There were numbers of goats and a species of wild pig that throve here in great abundance. At first the black people ate these pigs, but later they spared them for a good reason. The grasslands between plateau and forest swarmed with antelopes, buffaloes and the like, but there were also many Manticores. These aggressive beasts with the hindquarters of lions and the fore parts of great apes roamed the plateau, but Rukh warriors were called "Manticore-slayer" in their tongue and it was not many moons before the remnants of the great predators retreated to the lower levels. But it was not only Manticores they had to fear, as Lakul's ancestors soon learned.

Finding that the Trolls would not come past the savannas, they rested from their long trek and built two villages, Upper and Lower Rukh. Romal was in Upper Rukh; he had seen the ruins of the lower village. But soon they found that they had strayed into a country of nightmares with dripping fangs and talons. They heard the beat of mighty wings at night, and saw horrific shadows cross the stars and loom against the moon. Children began to disappear and at last a young hunter strayed off into the hills, where night overtook him. And in the grey light of dawn a mangled, half-devoured corpse fell from the skies into the village street and a whisper of ghoulish laughter from high above froze the horrified on-lookers. Then a little later the full horror of their position burst upon the Rukh.

At first the winged brutes were wary of the new Humans. They hid themselves and ventured from their caverns only at night. Then they grew bolder. In the full daylight, a warrior shot one with an arrow, but the fiends had learned they could slay a Human, and its death scream brought a score of the devils dropping from the skies, who tore the slayer to pieces in full sight of the tribe.

The Rukh then prepared to leave that hellish country and a hundred warriors went up into the hills to find a pass. They found steep walls, up which a man must climb laboriously, and they found the cliffs honeycombed with caves where the winged men dwelt.

Then was fought the first pitched battle between men and bat-men, and it resulted in a crushing victory for the monsters. The bows and spears of the black people proved futile before the swoops of the taloned fiends, and of all that hundred that went up into the hills, not one survived; for the Kulans hunted down those that fled and dragged down the last one within bowshot of the upper village.

Then it was that the Rukh, seeing they could not hope to win through the hills, sought to fight their way out again the way they had come. But a great horde of Troll met them in the grasslands, and in a great battle that lasted nearly all day, hurled them back, broken and defeated. And Lakul said while the battle raged, the skies were thronged with hideous shapes, circling above and laughing their fearful mirth to see men die wholesale.

So the survivors of those two battles, licking their wounds, bowed to the inevitable with fatalistic philosophy. Some fifteen hundred men, women and children remained, and they built their huts, tilled the soil and lived stolidly in the shadow of the nightmare.

In those days there were many of the winged demons, and they might have wiped out the Rukh utterly, had they wished. No one warrior could cope with a Kulan, for they was stronger than a human, they struck as a hawk strikes, and if they missed, those wings carried him out of reach of a counterblow.

VIII.

Here Romal interrupted to ask why the Rukh did not make war on the demons with arrows. But Lakul answered that it took a quick and accurate archer to strike an Kulan in midair at all, and so tough were their hides that unless the arrow struck squarely it would not penetrate. Romal knew that the Okali natives were very indifferent bowmen and that they pointed their shafts with chipped stone, bone, or hammered iron almost as soft as copper.

But Lakul said the Kulans did not seem to wish to destroy the Rukh utterly. Their chief food consisted of the little pigs which then swarmed the plateau, and young goats. Sometimes they went out on the savannas for antelope, but they distrusted the open country and feared the Manticores. Nor did they haunt the forests beyond, for the trees grew too close for the spread of their wings. They kept to the hills and the plateau, and what lay beyond those hills none in Rukh knew.

The Kulans allowed the Rukh to inhabit the plateau much as men allow wild animals to thrive, or stock lakes with fish—for their own pleasure. The bat-people, said Lakul, had a strange and grisly sense of humor which was tickled by the sufferings of a howling human. Those grim hills had echoed to cries that turned men's hearts to ice.

But for many years, Lakul said, once the Rukh learned not to resist their masters, the Kulans were content to snatch up a baby from time to time, or devour a young girl strayed from the village or a youth whom night caught outside the walls. The bat-folk distrusted the village; they circled high above it but did not venture within. There the Rukh were safe until late years.

Lakul said that the Kulans were fast dying out; once there had been hope that the remnants of his race would outlast them—in which event, he said fatalistically, the Trolls would undoubtedly come up from the forest and put the survivors in their cooking pots. Now he doubted if there were more than a hundred Kulans altogether. Romal asked him why did not the warriors then rush forth on a great hunt and destroy the devils utterly, and Lakul smiled a bitter smile and repeated his remarks about the prowess of the bat-people in battle. Moreover, said he, the whole tribe of Rukh numbered only about four hundred souls now, and the bat-people had become their only protection against the Trolls to the west.

Lakul said the tribe had thinned more in the past thirty years than in all the years previous. As the numbers of the Kulans dwindled, their hellish savagery increased. They seized more and more of the Rukh to torture and devour in their grim black caves high up in the hills, and Lakul spoke of sudden raids on hunting parties and toilers in the plantain fields, and of the nights made ghastly by horrible screams and gibberings from the dark hills, and blood-freezing laughter that was half-human; of dismembered limbs and gory grinning heads flung from the skies to fall in the shuddering village, and of grisly feasts among the stars.


Of all the great droves which once swarmed the plateau, only a remnant was left, and these were hard to catch. The Rukh had eaten most of the pigs, so the Kulans ate more of the Rukh. Life became even more of a hell for the Okalins, and the lower village, numbering now only some hundred and fifty souls, rose in revolt. Driven to frenzy by repeated outrages, they turned on their masters. Any Kulan alighting in the very streets to steal a child was set on and shot to death with dozens of arrows. Knowing retribution was near, the people of Lower Rukh drew into their huts and waited for their doom.

IX.

And in the night, said Lakul, it came. The Kulans had overcome their distrust of the huts. The full flock of them swarmed down from the hills, and Upper Rukh awoke to hear the fearful cataclysm of screams and blasphemies that marked the end of the other village. All night Lakul's people had lain sweating in terror, not daring to move, harkening to the howling and gibbering that rent the night. At last these sounds ceased, Lakul said, wiping the cold sweat from his brow, but sounds of grisly and obscene feasting still haunted the night with demon's mockery.

In the early dawn, Lakul's people saw the hell-flock winging back to their hills, like demons flying back to hell through the dawn. They flew slowly and heavily, like gorged vultures. Later the people dared to steal down to the accursed village, and what they found there sent them shrieking away. And to that day, Lakul said, no man passed within three bow shots of that silent horror. And Romal nodded in understanding, his cold eyes more somber than ever.

FOR many days after that, Lakul said the people waited in quaking fear. Finally in desperation of fear, which breeds unspeakable cruelty, the tribe cast lots, and the loser was bound to a stake between the two villages, in hopes that the Kulans would recognize this as a token of submission so that the people of Rukh might escape the fate of their kinsmen. The custom, said Lakul, had been borrowed from the Troll who in old times worshipped the Kulans and offered a human sacrifice at each moon. But chance had shown them that the Kulans could be killed, so they ceased to worship them—at least that was Lakul's deduction, and he explained at much length that no mortal thing is worthy of real adoration, however evil or powerful it may be.

His own ancestors had made occasional sacrifices to placate the winged devils, but until lately it had not been a regular custom. Now it was necessary; the Kulans expected it, and each moon they chose from their waning numbers a strong young man or a girl whom they bound to the stake.

Romal watched Lakul's face closely as he spoke of his sorrow for this unspeakable necessity, and the Mongrel realized that the priest was sincere. Romal shuddered at the thought of a tribe of human beings thus passing slowly but surely into the maws of a race of monsters.

Romal spoke of the wretch he had seen, and Lakul nodded, pain in his soft eyes. For a day and a night he had been hanging there, while the Kulans glutted their vile torture-lust on his quivering, agonized flesh. Thus far the sacrifices had kept doom from the village. The remaining pigs furnished sustenance for the dwindling Kulans, together with an occasional baby snatched up, and they were content to have their heartless sport with the single victim each moon.

A thought came to Romal. "The Trolls never come up into the plateau?"

Lakul shook his head; safe in their forest, they never raided past the savannas.

"But they hunted me to the very foot of the hills."

Again Lakul shook his head. There was only one cannibal; they had found his footprints. Evidently a single warrior, bolder than the rest, had allowed his passion for the chase to overcome his fear of the grisly plateau and had paid the penalty. Romal's teeth came together with a vicious snap which ordinarily took the place of profanity with him. He was stung by the thought of fleeing so long from a single enemy. No wonder that enemy had followed so cautiously, waiting until dark to attack. But, asked Romal, why had the Kulan seized the Okali instead of himself—and why had he not been attacked by the bat-man who alighted in his tree that night?

The cannibal had been bleeding, Lakul answered. The scent called the bat-fiend to attack, for they scented raw blood as far as vultures. And they were very wary. They had never seen a man like Romal, who showed no fear. Surely they had decided to spy on him, take him off guard before they struck.

Who were these creatures? Romal asked. Lakul shrugged his shoulders. They were there when his ancestors came, who had never heard of them before they saw them. There was no intercourse with the Troll, so they could learn nothing from them. The Kulans lived in caves, naked like beasts; they knew nothing of fire and ate only fresh, raw meat. But they had a language of a sort and acknowledged a king among them. Many died in the great famine when the stronger ate the weaker. They were vanishing swiftly; of late years no females or young had been observed among them. When these males died at last, there would be no more Kulans; but Rukh, observed Lakul, was doomed already, unless... he looked strangely and wistfully at Romal. But the Mongrel was deep in thought.

Among the swarm of native legends he had heard on his wanderings, one now stood out. Long, long ago, an old shaman had told him, winged devils came flying out of the north and passed over his country, vanishing in the maze of the darkness-haunted south. The shaman related an ancient legend concerning these creatures, that once they had abode in myriad numbers in the hellish realm of Fanderal. The evil god ruling that realm, Dread Draldros himself, could not come to this world but in his malice and hatred, he sent his winged demons to wreak such harm as they could.

Why did the Higher Ones permit such crimes? If, as wise men claimed, the great spirits Jordyn and Cirkoth and Eryasha ruled the world, why did they not stop this Draldros? Why was there so much suffering and so many horrors to afflict Humans? Was it a question without answer? Romal came out of his reveries with a start. Lakul was tugging gently and timidly at his sleeve.

X.

"Save us from the Kulan!" said Lakul. "If you be not a god, there is the power of a god in you! You are stronger than mortal Man, swifter than mortal Man, your sword is hard and sharp enough to slay demons. More than a moon has passed since you came into Rukh and the time for the sacrifice is gone by, but the bloody stake stands bare. The Kulans shun the village where you lie; they steal no more babes from us. We have thrown off their yoke because our trust is in you!"

Romal clasped his temples with his hands. "You know not what you ask!" he cried. "It is in my deepest heart to rid the land of this evil, but I am no god. With my sword I can slay a few of the fiends, but I am still one warrior against a hundred. If I had but twenty Melgar knights beside me, then indeed would there be a rare hunting. But even if I slew all those fiends, what of the Trolls?"

"They too will fear you!" cried old Ubora, while the girl Disa and the lad, Loga, who was to have been the next sacrifice, gazed at his wife, new hope in their eyes.

Romal dropped his chin on his fist and sighed. "Yet will I stay here in Rukh all the rest of my life if you think I can offer protection to the people."

So, Romal remained at the village. The Okalin were a kindly folk, whose natural good humor and fun-loving spirits had been subdued and saddened by long dwelling in the shadow of oppression. But now they had taken new heart by the Mongrel's coming, and it wrenched Romal's heart to note the pathetic trust they placed in him. Now they sang in the plaintain fields and danced about the fire, and gazed at him with adoring faith in their eyes. But Romal, cursing his own helplessness, knew how futile would be his fancied protection if the winged fiends swept suddenly out of the skies.

But he stayed in Rukh and racked his brains for a plan. He sat and brooded for hours each day and into the night. The germ of an idea began to grow at the back of Romal's mind, but he discarded it. It required setting a great trap but how could the Kulans be trapped? The roaring of Manticores played a grim accompaniment to his brooding meditations. As the Human numbers dwindled on the plateau, the hunting beasts who feared only the spears of the hunters were beginning to gather. Romal laughed bitterly. It was not the solitary Manticores, that might be hunted down and slain singly, that he had to deal with.

At some little distance from the village stood the great hut of Lakul, once a council hall. This hut was full of many strange fetishes which, the shaman said with a helpless wave of his fat hands, were strong magic against evil spirits but poor protection against winged hellbeasts of gristle and bone and flesh.


XI.


Romal woke suddenly from a dreamless sleep. A hideous medley of screams burst horrific in his ears. Outside his hut, people were dying in the night, horribly, as cattle die in the shambles. He had slept, as always, with his weapons buckled on him. Now he bounded to the door, and something fell limply into his arms.

In the faint light of a smoldering fire near by, Romal in horror recognized the face of the youth Loga, now frightfully torn and drenched in blood, already freezing into a death mask. The night was full of fearful sounds, inhuman howling mingled with the whisper of mighty wings, the tearing of thatch and a ghastly demon-laughter. Romal freed himself from the locked dead arms and sprang to the dying fire. He could make out only a confused and vague maze of fleeing forms and darting shapes, the shift and blur of dark wings against the stars.

He snatched up a torch and thrust it against the thatch of his hut. As the flame leaped up and showed him the scene he stood frozen and aghast. Howling doom had fallen on Rukh. Winged monsters raced screaming through her streets, wheeled above the heads of the fleeing people, or tore apart the hut thatches to get at the panicky victims within.

Dazed and bewildered by the sudden attack, cowed by long years of submission, the Rukh were incapable of combined resistance and for the most part died like sheep. Some, maddened by desperation, fought back, but their arrows went wild or glanced from the tough wings while the devilish agility of the creatures made spear thrust and axe stroke uncertain. Leaping from the ground they avoided the blows of their victims and, sweeping down upon their shoulders, dashed them to earth where fang and talon did their brutal work.

Romal saw old Ubora, gaunt and bloodstained, at bay against a hut wall with his foot on the neck of a monster who had not been quick enough. The grim-faced old chief wielded a long-handled axe in great sweeping blows that for the moment held back the screeching onset of half a dozen of the devils. Romal was leaping to his aid when a low, pitiful whimper checked him. The girl Disa writhed weakly, prone in the bloody dust, while on her back a demon crouched and tore chunks of flesh loose. Her dulling eyes sought the face of the Mongrel in anguished appeal.

Romal ripped out a bitter oath and drove in his sword point to the hilt. The winged devil pitched backward with an abhorrent screeching and a wild flutter of dying wings, and Romal bent to the dying girl. She whimpered and kissed his hands with uncertain lips as he cradled her head in his arms. Her eyes closed.

Romal laid the body gently down, looking for Ubora. He saw only a huddled cluster of hideous shapes that ripped and tore at something between them. And Romal went berserk. With a scream that cut through the inferno he bounded up, slaying even as he rose. Even in the act of lunging up from bent knee he drew and thrust, transfixing a vulture-like throat. Then whipping free his sword as the thing floundered and twitched in its death struggle, the raging Mongrel charged forward seeking new victims.

On all sides of him the people of Rukh were dying hideously. Whether they fought futilely or fled, the demons coursed them down as a hawk courses a hare. They ran into the huts and the fiends rent the thatch or burst the door, and what took place in those huts was mercifully hidden from Romal's eyes.

And to the frantic Mongrel's dismay it seemed that he alone was responsible. The Okalin had trusted him to save them. They had withheld the sacrifice and defied their grim masters. Now they were paying the horrible penalty and he was unable to save them. In all the agony-dimmed eyes turned toward him, Romal saw reproach he could not bear.

Now he ravened through the massacre and the fiends avoided him, turning to easier victims. But Romal was not to be denied. In a red haze of the burning hut, he saw a culminating horror; a Kulan gripped a writhing naked thing that had been a woman, and the wolfish fangs gorged deep. As Romal sprang, thrusting with his blade, the bat-winged beast dropped his mewing prey and soared aloft. But Romal dropped his sword and with a bound of no panther could match, he caught the demon's throat with one hand and locked his iron legs about its lower body.

Once again he found himself battling in mid-air, but this time close above the hut roofs. Terror had entered the cold brain of the Kulan. He did not fight to hold and slay; he wished only to be rid of this silent, clinging thing that stabbed so savagely for his life. He floundered wildly, screaming abhorrently and thrashing with his wings, then as Romal's dagger bit deeper, dipped suddenly sidewise and fell headlong.

The thatch of a hut broke their fall, and Romal and the dying Kulan crashed through to land in a writhing mass on the hut floor. In the lurid flickering of the burning hut outside that vaguely lighted the hut into which he had fallen, Romal glared into the yellow eyes inches from his. Then his steel-hard fingers sank deeper into the fiend's throat in a grip that no tearing of talons or hammering of wings could loosen, until he felt the neck snap in his grip and the demon went limp.

Outside, slaughter continued. Romal bounded up, his hand closing blindly on the haft of some weapon from the ground, and as he leaped from the hut a Kulan sprang from under his very feet. It was an axe that Romal had snatched up, and he dealt a stroke that split the Kulan's skull into equal halves. He plunged forward, stumbling over bodies and parts of bodies, blood streaming from a dozen wounds, and then halted, baffled.

The bat-people were taking to the air. No longer would they face this strange madman who in his fury was more terrible than they. But they went not alone into the upper regions. In their talons they carried writhing, screaming forms, and Romal, raging to and fro with his dripping axe, found himself alone in a corpse-choked village.

He threw back his head to shriek his hate at the fiends above him and he felt warm, thick drops fall into his face, while the shadowy skies were filled with screams of agony and the laughter of monsters. Romal's last vestige of civilized reason snapped. He roared and pounded his chest with his fists as a Troll might, shouting foul curses at the miserable world and the Higher Ones who uncaringly allowed such horrors.

XIII.

A cold, white-faced dawn crept over the black hills to shiver above the red destruction that had been the village of Rukh. The huts stood mostly intact, except for the one which had sunk to smouldering coals, but the thatches of many were torn. Dismembered bones, half or wholly stripped of flesh, lay in the streets, and some were splintered as though they had been dropped from a great height.

It was a realm of the dead where only one survivor stirred. Romal leaned on his blood-clotted axe and stared upon the scene with dull, weary eyes. He was grimy with sweat and clotted with half-dried blood from long gashes on chest, face, and shoulders, but he paid no heed to his hurts.

The people of Rukh had not died alone. Seventeen Kulan lay among the bones. Six of these Romal had slain. The rest had fallen before the frantic dying desperation of the Okalin. But it was a meager toll to take of the attackers. Of the four hundred-odd people of Upper Rukh, not one had lived to see the dawn. And the surviving dog-headed demons were gone safely back to their caves in the black hills, gorged to repletion.

With slow, mechanical steps Romal went about gathering up his weapons. He found his sword, dagger and the heavy staff. He left the main village and went up the slope to the great hut of Lakul. And there he halted, stung by a new horror. The ghastly humor of the Kulan had prompted a malicious jest. Above the hut door hung the severed head of Lakul. The unseeing eyes were those of a hurt child, full of reproach.

Romal gazed over the bloody shambles that had been Rukh, and he gazed at the death mask of Lakul. The Mongrel lifted his clenched fists above his head, and with glaring eyes raised, he cursed all the gods and devils who made mankind their sport, and he cursed Man from not fighting back, for living blindly on and blindly offering his back to the trampling feet of his gods.

Then as breath failed he halted, panting. From the lower reaches sounded the deep roaring of a Manticore and into the eyes of Romal came a crafty gleam as he made a vengeful plan. Silently, he recanted his earlier blasphemy, for if the Higher Ones created Man for their sport and plaything, they had also given him a brain that held craft and cruelty greater than any other living thing. Maybe creator and creation were not that different.

"Here you will keep me company," said Romal aloud to the head of Lakul. "The sun will wither you but I will keep the crows away. Your eyes will see the destruction of your slayers. As it came to pass, I could not save the people of Rukh from being cut down, but rest comforted that at least I can avenge them. "

In the days that followed Romal labored mightily, beginning with the first grey light of dawn and toiling on past sunset, into the white moonlight till he fell and slept the sleep of utter exhaustion. He snatched food as he worked and he gave his wounds absolutely no heed, scarcely being aware that they healed of themselves. He went down into the lower levels and cut bamboo, great stacks of long, tough stalks. He cut thick branches of trees, and tough vines to serve as ropes.

With this material he reinforced the walls and roof of Lakul's hut. He set the bamboos deep in the earth, hard against the wall, and interwove and twined them, binding them fast with the vines that were pliant and tough as cords. The long branches he made fast along the thatch, binding them close together. When he had finished, an elephant could scarcely have burst through the walls.

The Manticores had come into the plateau in great numbers and the herds of little pigs dwindled fast. Those the Manticores spared, Romal slew, and tossed to the jackals. This racked Romal's heart, for he had no hatred of animals and this wholesale slaughter, even of pigs who would fall prey to hunting beasts anyhow, grieved him. But it was part of his plan of vengeance, and he steeled his heart.

The days stretched into weeks. Romal toiled by day and by night, and between his stints he regarded the shrivelled, mummied head of Lakul, whose eyes, strangely enough, did not change in the blaze of the sun or the haunt of the moon, but retained their life-like expression. Romal wondered if, as it had seemed to him, Lakul's spirit was still waiting within that head for its revenge.

Selecting a likely branch, he fashioned a longbow thicker than any normal Human could draw, making strings from dried animal guts and hardening sharpened arrows in fire until he felt they would punch through even Melgar plate armor.

Romal saw the Kulans wheeling against the sky at a distance, but they did not come near, even when he slept in the great hut, weapons at hand. They feared his power to deal death with the powerful bow and sharp arrows.

At first he noted that they flew sluggishly, gorged with the flesh they had eaten on that red night, and the bodies they had borne to their caves. But as the weeks passed they appeared leaner and leaner and ranged far afield in search of food. And Romal smiled grimly at their distress.

This plan of his would never have worked before, but now there were no Humans to fill the bellies of the Kulan. And there were no more pigs. In all the plateau there were no creatures for the bat-winged beasts to eat. Why they did not range east of the hills, Romal thought he knew. That must be a region of thick forest like the country to the west. He saw them fly into the grassland for antelopes and he saw the Griffins take toll of them. After all, the Kulans had peers among the hunters. They were strong enough to slay pigs and deer and Humans safely, but against the lion-bodied Griffins they did not care to take their chances.

At last they began to soar close to him at night, and he saw their greedy eyes glaring at him through the gloom. He judged the time was ripe. Huge buffaloes, too big and ferocious for the bat-people to slay, had strayed up into the plateau to ravage the deserted fields of the dead Okali people. Romal cut one of these out of the herd and drove him, with shouts and volleys of stones, to the hut of Lakul. It was a tedious, dangerous task, and time and again Romal barely escaped the surly bull's sudden charges, but persevered and at last slew the beast before the hut.

A strong west wind was blowing and Romal flung handfuls of blood into the air for the scent to waft to the Kulan in the hills. He cut the bull to pieces and carried its quarters into the hut, then managed to drag the huge trunk itself inside. Then he retired into the thick trees nearby and waited.

He had not long to wait. The morning air filled suddenly with the beat of many wings, and a hideous flock alighted before the hut of Lakul. All of the dog-headed demons seemed to be there, and Romal gazed in angry wonder at the tall, strange creatures, so like to humanity and yet so unlike—the veritable demons of priestly legend. They folded their wings like cloaks about them as they walked upright, and they talked to one another in low, barking tones that had nothing of humanity.

No, Romal decided, these things were not natural creatures. They were the materialization of some ghastly jest of sorcery, some travesty created by warping and debasing natural living beasts. The Darthim were fond of such experiments. they had populated this Okali with the lion-ape hybrids called manticores, with the winged lion-eagle hybrids called griffins. There were many such monsters in the world. In fact, Romal thought bitterly, himself was such an artificially life form... a Mongrel.

Now the Kulan hesitated, with their natural distrust for a building, and some soared to the roof and tore at the thatch. But Romal had built well. They returned to earth and at last, driven beyond endurance by the smell of raw blood and the sight of the flesh within, one of them ventured inside. In an instant all were crowded into the great hut, tearing ravenously at the meat, and when the last one was within, Romal reached out a hand and jerked a long vine which tripped the catch that held the door he had built. It fell with a crash, and the bar he had fashioned dropped into place. That door would hold against the charge of a wild bull.

Romal emerged from his cover and scanned the sky. Nearly a hundred Kulan had entered the hut. He saw no more winging through the skies and believed it safe to suppose he had the whole flock trapped. Then with a cruel, brooding smile, Romal struck flint and steel to a pile of dead leaves next to the wall. Within sounded an uneasy mumbling as the creatures realized that they were prisoners. A thin wisp of smoke curled upward and a flicker of red followed it; the whole heap burst into flame and the dry bamboo caught.

A few moments later the whole side of the wall was ablaze. The fiends inside scented the smoke and grew restless. Romal heard them cackling wildly and clawing at the walls. He grinned savagely, bleakly and without mirth. Now a veer of the wind drove the flames around the wall and up over the thatch—with a roar the whole hut caught and leaped into flame.

From within sounded a fearful pandemonium. Romal heard bodies crash against the walls, which shook to the impact but held. The horrid screams were welcome to his ears. Brandishing his clenched fists, he answered with a roar deeper than any Human chest should be able to produce. The cataclysm of horror rose unbearably, paling the tumult of the flames. Then it dwindled to a medley of strangled gibbering and gasps as the flames ate in and the smoke thickened. An intolerable scent of burning flesh pervaded the atmosphere, and had there been room in Romal's mind for anything else than rim triumph, he would have shuddered at the stench.

From the thick cloud of smoke, Romal saw a lone growling brute emerge through the shredding roof to flap slowly and agonizingly upward on fearfully burned wings. Calmly the Mongrel loosed his final arrow, and the scorched and blinded thing tumbled back into the flaming mass just as the walls crashed in. To Romal, a great release of tension seemed to free him. His face broke suddenly in a wide grin, and a sudden shout of exultant human laughter mingled eerily in the roar of the flames.

Romal stood with the staff in one hand and the chipped sword in the other, above the smouldering ruins that hid forever from the sight of man the last of those terrible, dog-headed demons the Higher Ones had banished from this world when the Darthan Age had begun a thousand years earlier. Romal stood brooding, an unknowing symbol of triumph of courage against the unknown.

Smoke curled upward into the morning sky, and the growling of foraging beasts shook the plateau. Slowly, like light breaking through mists, awareness returned to him. He had survived another ordeal, only the latest in the long trial that was to be his life. Bitterly, he knew he could not expect any other future but more battle and struggle. Romal looked up into the distant hills and felt the silent call of the unguessed distances beyond. No rest for him. The Mongrel tightened his swordbelt, took his staff firmly in his hand and turned his face eastward. His tale was far from over.