"The Hidden Kingdom of Padathor"

[dochermes]

"The Hidden Kingdom of Padathor"

3/2006

I.

The faintest whisper of a footstep alerted Jeremy Bane. In the faint starlight of a cloudy night, a shadowy form loomed over him and something glinted in the lifted hand. Bane checked the descending wrist, keeping the curved knife away from him, and simultaneously he locked his right hand savagely on a bare throat.

A gasp barely escaped the attacker. Bane hooked one leg about the man's knee and heaved him over to pin him underneath. There was no sound except the rasp and thud of straining bodies. Bane fought, as always, in silence. No sound came from the straining lips of the man beneath. His right hand writhed in Bane's grip while his left tore futilely at the wrist whose iron fingers drove deeper and deeper into the throat they grasped.

Grimly, Bane maintained his advantage, driving all the power of his shoulders and corded arms into his throttling grip. He knew it was either his life or that of the man who had crept up to stab him in the dark. In that unmapped corner of the Chujir mountains all fights were to the death. The fingers tearing at him relaxed. A convulsive shudder ran through the body straining beneath the Dire Wolf. It went limp.

Bane leaped up off the corpse, into the deeper shadow of the great rocks among which he had been resting. Instinctively he felt under his arm to see if the precious package for which he had staked his life was still safe. Yes, it was there, that flat bundle of papers wrapped in oiled silk, that meant life or death to many thousands. He listened to the stillness. All about him, the hillside with its ledges and boulders rose black in the starlight.

But he knew that killers moved about him, out there among the rocks. His sensitive hearing caught the faint shuffle of sandalled feet. Since he could not see them, he knew they could not see him, among the clustered boulders he had chosen for his sleeping site.

His left hand groped on the ground for his short heavy bow, and he seized the leather quiver with his right. That brief fight had made no more noise than the silent knifing of a sleeping man might have made. Doubtless his stalkers out in the gloom were awaiting some signal from the man they had sent in to murder their victim.

Bane knew who these men were. He knew their leader was the renegade Yugen who had dogged him for hundreds of miles, determined he should not reach the Imperial City with that silk-wrapped packet. Bane was known by repute in every adjacent realm. Every Race feared and respected him as the Dire Wolf. But in Zemu Watura, renegade Zoku-Ya from Chyl, Bane had met his match. And he knew now that Zemu was lurking out there in the night with his hardened killers.

The Yugen of Chyl were an unnerving sight. They had tawny skin like a lion, strange eyes with black sclera and red irises, and hairless craniums. Weirdest of all, Yugen had no noses. Only a faint bulge rose between their eyes and mouth. Among the Cousins of Men, the Yugen were the most bizarre. Their swordsmen, the Zoku-ya, were among the most dreaded warriors in the Midnight War.

Bane glided out from among the boulders in complete silence. Not even a stalking tiger could have avoided loose stones more skillfully or picked his way more carefully. He headed southward again. His soft native sandals made no noise, and in his dark hillman's garb he was as good as invisible. In the pitch-black shadow of an overhanging cliff, he suddenly sensed a human presence ahead of him. A voice hissed, "Samuya! Is that you? Is the dog dead? Why did you not call me?"

The Dire Wolf lunged and struck savagely in the direction of the voice. His tight fist crunched directly against a skull, and a man groaned as he fell. All about there rose a sudden clamor of voices.

Bane cast stealth to the winds. With a bound he cleared the writhing body before him, and sped off down the slope. Behind him rose a chorus of yells as the men in hiding glimpsed his shadowy figure racing through the starlight. The twang of bowstrings cut the darkness, but the arrows whizzed high and wide. Bane's hurtling shape was sighted only for an instant, then the shadowy gulfs of the night swallowed it up. Faster than any normal Human, the Dire Wolf was gone in a blur. His enemies howled curses in their bewildered rage. Once again their prey had slipped through their fingers.

As he raced across the plateau beyond the clustering cliffs, Bane knew they would be immediately after him, with hillmen who could trail a wolf across naked rocks. Still, hopefully with the start he had... as that thought crossed his mind, the ground gaped blackly before him. Even his superhuman quickness could not save him. His grasping hands caught only thin air as he plunged downward to smash his head with brutal force at the bottom.


II.


When he regained his senses, a chill dawn was already brightening the eastern sky. He sat up angrily and felt his head, where a large lump was clotted with dried blood. It was only by chance that his neck was not broken. He had fallen into a ravine, and during the precious time he should have employed in flight, he was lying senseless among the rocks at the bottom. Only his enhanced healing had enabled him to recover at all. Any normal Human would have been killed by that concussion.

What worried him most was that his healing factor had declined. He had been in Chujir a full month, and the supply of dried Tagra leaves he had brought was exhausted. Without those leaves and their rejuvenating properties, his body was beginning to lose the enhanced state that made wounds heal almost instantly and which made him immune to poison or exposure. Nothing he could do about it now.

Again he felt for the packet under his loose shirt, though he knew it was fastened there securely. Those papers could be his death-warrant, which only his skill and wits would prevent being executed. Bane had to warn the Imperial Court of the hellish storm brewing in these mountains where a reckless adventurer was dreaming of an outlaw empire.

To prove his assertion, Bane had spent three weeks trudging deep into Chujir on foot. To be less conspicuous at a distance, he had left all his weaponry and armor behind to wear the simple boots and trousers and loose blouse of a hillsman. Bane had even, with great reluctance, not brought along his trademark silver daggers; instead, he wore sheathed under his sleeves a pair of matched throwing knives made of steel.

Going from town to town, Bane had secured proof no one could ignore or deny, but he had inevitably been recognized. He had fled for more than his own life. Zemu Watura, the renegade Yugen who plotted the destruction of nations,had pursued hot on his heels. Zemu had followed Bane across the steppes, through the foothills, and up into the mountains where the Dire Wolf had thought at last to throw him off but had failed. The Stray Dog was a skilled bloodhound. He was cautious, too, as shown by his sending his craftiest slayer in to strike a blow in the dark.

Stiff and sore, Bane found his bow and began the climb out of the ravine. All he could think of was the proof he carried that would make Imperial officials wake up and take steps to prevent the atrocious warfare that Zemu planned. The proof was in the form of letters to various remote Chujiran governors, signed and sealed with the Stray Dog's own hand. They revealed his plot to embroil Chujir in a religious war which would send howling hordes of Draldros fanatics against the Imperial City. It was a scheme for plundering on a staggering scale. That package must reach the Emperor! Bane had never been more determined to accomplish something in his life.


The Dire Wolf climbed up over the edge and cast a quick look about him. He was on a narrow plateau, pitched among giant slopes which rose somberly above it. To the south showed the mouth of a narrow gorge, walled by rocky cliffs. In that direction he hurried.

He had not gone a dozen steps when a bow twanged behind him. Even as the wind of the arrow fanned his cheek, Bane dropped flat behind a boulder, frustration enraging him. He couldn't escape Zemu and he couldn't fight him directly. This chase would end only when one of them was dead. In the strengthening daylight he saw robed figures moving among the boulders along the slopes of the northwest of the plateau. He had lost his chance of escaping under cover of darkness, and now it looked like a desperate final clash.

He gripped anew his bow. Too much to hope that that blind blow in the dark had killed Zemu, it had certainly been one of the Yugen. An arrow glanced off the boulder close to his elbow. He had pinpointed the sound of the release, marking the spot where the archer lurked. He watched those rocks, and when a head and part of an arm and shoulder came up with a bow, Bane loosed his own shaft. It was a long shot that worked. The Yugen reared upright and pitched forward across the rock that had sheltered him.

More arrows hissed down, spattering Bane's refuge. Up on the slopes, where the big boulders poised breathtakingly, he saw his enemies moving like ants, wriggling from ledge to ledge. They were spread out in a wide ragged semi-circle, trying to surround him again. He did not have enough arrows to stop them, even though he always snatched up as many of his enemies' fallen shafts as he could. He dared shoot only when fairly certain of scoring a hit. Nor could he make a break for the gorge behind him. Even with his extra speed, he would be pincushioned before he could reach it. The situation didn't look hopeful for him. The thought that those papers would never reach their destination touched him with black despair.

A arrow whining off his boulder from a new angle made him crouch lower, seeking the marksman. He glimpsed a figure moving high up on the slope, above the others. From that position the Zoku-Ya could drop arrows directly into Bane's covert.

The Dire Wolf could not shift his position, because a dozen other bows nearer at hand were covering it; and he could not stay where he was. One of those plunging shafts would find him sooner or later. But then the Yugen above decided that he saw a still better position, and risked moving there, trusting to the long uphill range. He did not know Bane as Zemu knew him.

The Stray Dog, further down the slope, yelled a fierce command, but the Yugen was already in motion, headed for another ledge, his garments flapping about him. Bane's arrow caught him in mid-stride. With a wild cry he staggered, fell headlong and crashed against a poised boulder. The Yugen was a heavy man, and the impact of his hurtling body toppled the rock from its unstable base. It rolled down the slope, dislodging others as it came. Dirt rattled in widening streams about it.

Men began recklessly to break cover. Bane saw Zemu himself spring up and run obliquely across the slope, out of the path of the sliding rocks. The tall supple figure in the robe with a golden crest was unmistakable. Bane loosed an arrow and missed, as he always seemed to miss the man, and then there was no time to fire again. The whole slope was in motion now, thundering down in a bellowing, grinding torrent of stones and dirt and boulders. The Zoku-ya were fleeing after Zemu.

Bane sprang up and raced for the mouth of the gorge. He did not look back. He heard above the roaring avalanche the awful screams that marked the end of men ground to bloody shreds under the rushing tons of shale and stone. He dropped his bow. Every ounce of extra burden counted now. A deafening roar was in his ears as he gained the mouth of the gorge and flung himself about the beetling jut of the cliff.

He crouched there, flattened against the wall, and through the gorge mouth roared a welter of dirt and rocks, boulders bouncing and tumbling, rebounding thunderously from the sides and hurtling on down the sloping pass. Yet, it was a only a trickle of the avalanche which was diverted into the gorge. The main bulk of it crashed on down the mountain.

III.

Bane pulled away from the cliff that had sheltered him. He stood knee deep in loose dirt and broken stones. A flying splinter of stone had cut his face. Now that the roar of the landslide was over, an unearthly silence fell. Looking back on to the plateau, he saw a vast litter of broken earth, shale chips and rocks. Here and there an arm or a leg protruded, bloody and twisted, to mark where a human victim had been caught by the torrent. Of Zemu and the survivors there was no sign.

But Bane had become a fatalist where the Stray Dog was concerned. He felt quite sure that Zemu had survived, and would be upon his trail again as soon as he could collect his demoralized followers. It was likely that he would recruit the natives of these hills to his service. The bandits here were zealous worshipers of the Lord of Fanedral, dreaded Draldros himself. Zemu's glib tongue gave him an influence over the followers of Draldros was only a little short of hypnosis.

So Bane raced hurriedly down the gorge. His bow and meager pack of supplies were lost. He had only the garments on his body and the daggers on his forearms. Starvation in these barren mountains was a haunting threat, if he escaped being butchered by the wild tribes which inhabited them. There was hardly one chance in a thousand of his ever getting out alive. But he had known it was a desperate quest when he started, and long odds had never balked Bane.

The gorge twisted and bent between tortuous walls. The split-off arm of the avalanche had quickly spent its force there, but Bane still saw the slanting floor littered with boulders which had stumbled down from the higher levels. And suddenly he stopped short.

On the ground before him lay a youth such as he had never seen in Chujir before. He was tall and strongly, wearing coarse wool pants and a long-sleeved tunic, belted with a scabbard which supported a straight sword.

His features were surprising. The young man had light brown hair, curly and cropped short, and brown eyes without the inner fold. His skin tone was olive. This was clearly not a typical Chujiran. The youth was vainly trying to draw his sword. He was pinned down by a boulder which had evidently caught him as he raced for the shelter of the cliff.

"Slay me and be done with it, you Fanedral dog!" he yelled.

"I won't harm you," answered Bane. "I'm no Draldros worshipper. Lie still. I'll help you if I can. I have no quarrel with you." He saw the heavy stone lay across the youth's leg in such a way that he could not extricate himself.

"Is your leg broken?" Bane asked.

"I think not. But if you move the stone it will grind me to shreds."

Bane saw that he spoke the truth. A depression on the under side of the stone had saved the youth's limb, while imprisoning it. If he rolled the boulder either way, it would crush that leg.

"I'll have to lift it straight up," he muttered.

"You can never do it," said the youth despairingly. "Padathor himself could scarecely lift it, and you are not nearly so big as he."

Bane did not pause to inquire who Padathor might be, nor to explain that strength is not altogether a matter of size alone. He was much stronger than his lean build would suggest.

Yet he was not at all sure that he could lift that boulder, which, while not so large as many which rolled down the gorge, was yet bulky enough to make the task look dubious. Straddling the prisoner's body, he braced his legs wide, spread his arms and gripped the big stone. Putting all his honed sinews and his scientific knowledge of weight-lifting into his effort, he exerted all his strength in a smooth, mighty expansion of power.

His heels dug into the dirt, the veins in his temples swelled, and unexpected knots of muscles sprang out on his straining arms. But the great stone came up steadily without a jerk or waver, and the man on the ground drew his leg clear and rolled away.

Bane let the stone fall and stepped back, wiping the perspiration from his face. Without his full healing factor, straining muscles left him sore. The youth worked his skinned, bruised leg gingerly, then looked up and extended his hand in a curiously familiar gesture.

"I am Gilmir of Amendar," he said. "I owe you my life, whoever you are!"

"I'm sometimes called the Dire Wolf," answered Bane, taking his hand. They made a striking contrast: the tall, rangy youth with his lightly tanned skin and light brown hair, and the Dire Wolf, only slightly shorter but lean in his tattered garments. Bane's hair was straight and black, and his eyes were grey as steel. In the sun-darkened face, those eyes stood out startlingly.

"I was hunting on the cliffs," said Gilmir. "I heard shots and was going to investigate them, when I heard the roar of the avalanche and the gorge was filled with flying rock. Come to my village. You look like a man who is weary and has lost his way."

"Where is your village?"

"Yonder, down the gorge and beyond the cliffs." Gilmir pointed southward. Then, looking over Bane's shoulder, he cried out. The Dire Wolf wheeled. High up on the beetling gorge wall, a noseless head poked from behind a ledge. Bane whipped out his daggers with a snarl, but the face vanished and he heard a frantic voice yelling in guttural tones. Other voices answered, among which the Dire Wolf recognized the strident accents of Zemu. The pack was at his heels again. Undoubtedly they had seen Bane take refuge in the gorge, and as soon as the boulders ceased tumbling, had traversed the torn slope and followed the cliffs where they would have the advantage of the man below.

But Bane did not pause. Even as the grotesque head vanished, he wheeled with a word to his companion, and darted around the next bend in the canyon. Gilmir followed without question, limping on his bruised leg but able to keep up. Bane heard his pursuers shouting on the cliff above and behind him, heard them crashing recklessly through stunted bushes, dislodging pebbles as they ran, heedless of everything except their desire to sight their quarry.

Although the pursuers had one advantage, the fugitives had another. They could follow the slightly slanting floor of the gorge more swiftly than the others could run along the uneven cliffs, with their broken edges and jutting ledges. They had to climb and scramble, and Bane heard their maledictions growing fainter in the distance behind him. When they emerged from the further mouth of the gorge, they were far in advance of Zemu's killers.

But Bane knew that the respite was brief. He looked about him. The narrow gorge had opened out onto a trail which ran straight along the crest of a cliff that fell away sheer three hundred feet into a deep valley, hemmed in on all sides by gigantic precipices. Bane looked down and saw a stream winding among dense trees far below, and further on, what seemed to be stone buildings among the groves.


IV.

Gilmir pointed to the settlement.

"There is my village!" he said excitedly. "If we could get into the valley we would be safe! This trail leads to the pass at the southern end, but it is five miles distant!"

Bane shook his head. The trail ran straight along the top of the cliff and afforded no cover. "They'll run us down and shoot us like rats at long range, if we keep to this path."

"There is one other way!" cried Gilmir. "Down the cliff, at this very point! It is a secret way, and none but a man of my people has ever followed it, and then only when hard pressed. There are handholds cut into the rock. Can you climb down?"

"Watch me," answered Bane, sheathing his daggers. To try to go down those towering cliffs looked like suicide, but it was sure death to try to outrun Zemu's bows along the trail. At any minute he expected the Stray Dog and his men to break cover.

"I will go first and guide you," said Gilmir rapidly, kicking off his sandals and letting himself over the cliff edge. Bane did likewise and followed him. Clinging to the sharp lip of the precipice, the Dire Wolf saw a series of small holes pitting the rock. He began the descent slowly, clinging like a fly to a wall. It was hair-raising work, and the only thing that made it possible at all was the slight convex slant of the hill at that point.

Bane had made many a desperate climb during his career, but never one which put such strain on nerve and thew. Again and again only the grip of a finger stood between him and death. Below him Gilmir toiled downward, guiding and encouraging him, until the youth finally dropped to the earth and stood looking tensely up at the man above him.

Then he shouted, with a note of strident fear in his voice. Bane, still twenty feet from the bottom, craned his neck upward. High above him he saw a noseless face leering down at him with triumph. Deliberately the Chylan sighted caught up a heavy stone, leaning far over the edge to aim its downward course. Clinging with toes and nails, Bane grasped a fist-sized rock and flung it upward with all his strength. Then he flattened himself desperately against the cliff and clung on.

The man above screamed and pitched headfirst over the brink. The rock rushed down, striking Bane a glancing blow on the shoulder, then the writhing body hurtled past and struck with a sickening concussion on the earth below. A voice shouting furiously high above announced the presence of Zemu at last. Bane slid and tumbled recklessly the remaining distance, and, with Gilmir, ran for the shelter of the trees.

A glance backward and upward showed him Zemu crouching on the cliff, leveling a bow,but in that instant Bane and Gilmir were out of sight. Zemu, apparently dreading an answering volley from the trees, made a hasty retreat with the four Zoku-ya who were the survivors of his party.

"You saved my life when you showed me that path," said Bane, for once slightly out of breath.

Gilmir smiled. "Any man of Amendar could have shown you the path, which we call the Road of the Eagles. But only a hero could have followed it. From what region comes my brother?"

"From the world beyond Chujir," answered Bane,"the world outside the adjacent realms."

Gilmir shook his head. "I have never heard of such a thing. But come with me, my people will welcome you."

As they moved through the trees, Bane scanned the cliffs in vain for some sign of his enemies. He felt certain that neither Zemu, bold as he was, nor any of his companions would try to follow them down "the Road of the Eagles." They were not mountaineers. They were more at home in the saddle than on a hill path. They would seek some other way into the valley. He spoke his thoughts to Gilmir.

"They will find death," answered the youth grimly. "The Pass of the King, at the southern end of the valley, is the only entrance. Men guard it night and day. The only strangers who enter the Valley of Padathor are known traders and merchants with pack-mules."

Bane inspected his companion curiously, aware of a certain tantalizing sensation of familiarity he could not place.

"Who are your people anyway?" he asked. "You do not look like Chujirans at all."

"We are the children of Androval," answered Gilmir. "When the great conqueror Tauron came through these mountains long ago, he built the city we call Amendar, and left hundreds of his soldiers and their women in it. Tauron marched westward again, and after a long while word came that he was dead and his empire divided. But the people of Amendar abode here, unconquered. Many times we have slaughtered the bandits who came against us."

Bane understood why Gilmir had seemed so familiar. Nearly two hundred years ago, the Melgarin had entered an expansionist era in which they had invaded Ulgor, Evaho and other realms. Bane hadn't known that Androval had also forced its ways into Chujir and left colonies behind them. But this young man was so typically Melgar in his features and mannerisms that it couldn't be doubted.

They were approaching the stone roofs which shone through the trees, and Bane saw that Gilmir's "village" was a substantial town, surrounded by a wall. It was so plainly the work of Melgar architects that he felt as if he had wandered into Androval itself.

Outside the walls, men tilled the thin soil with sturdy implements, and herded sheep and cattle. A few horses grazed along the bank of the stream which meandered through the valley. Most of the men were tall and robust like Gilmir. They dropped their work and came running up, staring at the unexpected stranger in hostile surprise, until Gilmir reassured them.

"It is the first time any but a captive or a trader has entered the valley in centuries," explained the youth. "Say nothing till I bid you. When they hear how you rescued me, their hospitality will be warm."

The gate in the wall hung open and unguarded, and Bane remarked that the wall itself was in a poor state of repair. Gilmir explained that the guard in the narrow pass at the end of the valley was sufficient protection, and that no hostile force had ever reached the city itself. They passed through and walked along a broad paved street, in which relaxed people went about their tasks of carrying bundles, chatting happily haggling at booths which sold goods.

A crowd quickly formed about them, but Gilmir, bursting with glee and importance, gave them no satisfaction. He went straight toward a large edifice near the center of the town and mounting the broad steps, came into a large chamber where several men, more richly dressed than the common people, sat studying a map on a small table before them. The crowd swarmed in after them, and thronged the doorway eagerly. The chiefs rose. Most imposing among them was a near-giant in a richly textured robe and a hammered gold diadem on his brow, who demanded: "What do you wish, Gilmir? Who is this stranger?"

"Oh Padathor king of the valley," answered Bardylis. "I present a newcomer to our kind."

"What wild tale is this?" harshly demanded the giant.

"Let them hear, brother!" Gilmir directed triumphantly.

"I come as a friend," said Bane in the formal dialect of Androval. "I am called Dire Wolf, a knight of Tel Shai."

A murmur of surprise went up from the throng, and Padathor fingered his chin and scowled suspiciously. He was a magnificently built man, clean-shaven like all kin but his visage was sullen.

He listened impatiently while Gilmir related the circumstances of his meeting with Bane, and when he told of the Dire Wolf lifting the stone that pinned him down, Padathor frowned and involuntarily flexed his own massive pectorals. He seemed ill-pleased at the approval with which the people openly greeted the tale. Evidently these descendants of the athletic Melgarin had as much admiration for physical perfection as had their ancient ancestors, and Padathor was vain of his prowess.

"How could he lift such a stone?" the king broke in. "He is of no great size. His head would scarcely top my chin."

"He is mighty beyond his stature, O king," retorted Gilmir. "Here is the bruise on my leg to prove I tell the truth. He lifted the stone I could not move, and he came down the Road of the Eagles, which few even among the Amendarans have dared. He has traveled far and fought many of our enemies, and now he would feast and rest."

"See to it then," grunted Padathor contemptuously, turning back to his colleagues. "But if he is a spy for mountain bandits your head will roll in the dust."


V.

"I stake my head gladly on his honesty, O king!" answered Gilmir proudly. Then, taking Bane's arm, he said softly, "Come my friend. Padathor is short of patience and scant of courtesy. Pay no heed to him. I will take you to the house of my father."

As they pushed their way through the crowd, Bane's gaze picked out an incongruous countenance among the bland, friendly faces...a thin, darker visage, whose black eyes gleamed avidly on the Dire Wolf. The man was obviuously a Chujiran, with a bundle on his back. When he saw he was being scrutinized he smirked and bobbed his head. There was something familiar about the gesture.

"Who is that man?" Bane asked.

"Hua-ran, a former bandit whom we allow to enter the valley with beads and mirrors and such trinkets as our women love. We trade ore and wine and skins for them."

Bane felt all his instincts shout a warning about that man. But when he turned and looked back, the dark face had vanished in the crowd. However, there was no reason to fear Hua-ran, even if the man recognized him. The Chujiran could not know of the papers he carried. Bane felt that the people of Amendar were friendly to the friend of Gilmir, though the youth had plainly roused Padathor's jealous vanity by his praise of Bane's abilities.

Gilmor conducted Bane down the street to a large stone house with a pillared portico, where he proudly displayed his friend to his father, a venerable patriarch called Edalgo, and his mother, a tall stately woman, both of them well along in years. Bane met Gilmir's sisters, robust healthy beauties, and his look-alike young brother. The Dire Wolf could scarcely suppress a smile at the strangeness of it all, being ushered into the every-day family life after the desperate ordeals he had survived.

The interest in their guest was genuine, but none save Gilmir showed much interest in the world outside their valley. Presently the youth led Bane into an inner chamber and set food and wine before him. The Dire Wolf ate and drank ravenously, suddenly aware of the lean days that had preceded this feast. While he ate, Gilmir chatted but he did not speak of the men who had been pursuing Bane. Evidently he supposed them to have been bandits of the surrounding hills, whose hostility was proverbial. Bane learned that no man of Amendar had ever been more than a day's journey away from the valley. The ferocity of the hill tribes all about them had isolated them from the world completely.

When Bane at last expressed a desire for sleep, Gilmir left him alone, assuring him that he would not be disturbed. The Dire Wolf was somewhat disturbed to find that there was no door to his chamber, merely a curtain drawn across an archway. Gilmir had said there were no thieves in Amendar, but caution was so much a natural part of Bane that he found himself a prey to uneasiness. The room opened onto a corridor, and the corridor, he believed, gave onto an outer door. The people of Amendar apparently did not find it necessary to safeguard their dwellings. But though a native could sleep in safety, that might not apply to a stranger.

Finally Bane drew aside the couch which formed the main piece of furniture for the chamber, and making sure no spying eyes were on him, he worked loose one of the small stone blocks which composed the wall. Taking the silk-bound packet from his shirt, he thrust it into the aperture, pushed back the stone as far as it would go, and replaced the couch.

Stretching himself wearily upon the couch, he started considering plans for escape with his life and those papers which meant so much to peace of Chujir. He was safe enough in the valley, but he knew Zemu would wait for him outside with the patience of a born predator. He could not stay here forever. He would have to scale the cliffs some dark night and bolt for it. Zemu would undoubtedly have all the bandits in the hills after him, but Bane would trust to luck and his own hard-earned skills, as he had so often before. The wine he had drunk seemed more potent than he had expected. Weariness after all his exertions the long past month caught up with him. Bane fell asleep within seconds of lying down.

VI.

When Bane awoke, it was to utter darkness. He knew that he had slept for many hours, and night had fallen. Silence reigned over the house, but he had been awakened by the soft swish of the curtains over the doorway.

He sat up on his couch and asked: "Is that you, Gilmir?"

A voice grunted, "Yes." Even as he was electrified by the realization that the voice was not that of Gilmir, something crashed down on his head, and a deeper blackness engulfed him.

When he painfully regained consciousness, a torch dazzled his eyes. In its glow he saw three men...burly Amendarans with faces more brutal than any he had yet seen. He was lying on a stone slab in a bare chamber, whose crumbling, cob-webbed walls were vaguely illumined by the gutturing torch. His arms were bound, but not his legs. The sound of a door opening made him crane his neck, and he saw a stooped diminutive figure enter the room. It was Huo-ran, the Chujiran.

He looked down on the Dire Wolf with his unlovely features twisted in a venomous grin.

"Low lies the terrible Dire Wolf!" he taunted. "Fool! I knew you the instant I saw you in the palace of Padathor."

"You have no feud with me," growled Bane.

"A friend of mine has," answered the Chujiran. "That is nothing to me, but it shall gain me profit. It is true you have never harmed me, but I have always feared you. So when I saw you in the city, I gathered my goods and hastened to depart, not knowing what you did here. But beyond the pass I met the monstrous Stray Dog, and he asked me if I had seen you in the valley whither you had fled to escape him. I answered that I had, and he urged me to help him steal into the valley and take from you certain documents he said you stole from him.

"But I refused, knowing that these Amendaran devils would kill me if I tried to smuggle a stranger into their valley, and Zemu went back into the hills with his four fiends, as well as the horde of ragged bandits he has made his friends and allies. After he was gone I returned to the valley, telling the guardsmen at the pass that I feared the hillmen.

"I persuaded these three men to aid me in capturing you. Gold has bought their fists and their silence. None will know what became of you, and Padathor will not trouble himself about you, because he is jealous of your strength. It is an old tradition that the king of Attalus must be the strongest man in the city. Padathor would have killed you himself, in time. But I will attend to that. I do not wish to have you on my trail, after I have taken from you the papers Zemu seeks. He shall have them ultimately... if he is willing to pay enough!" He laughed, a high, cackling laugh, and turned to the stolid Amendarans. "Did you search him?"

"We found nothing," one of the brutes answered without conviction.

Huo-ran clucked in annoyance. "You do not know how to search a prisoner. Here, I will do it myself."

He ran a practiced hand over his captive, scowling as his search was unrewarded. He tried to feel under the Dire Wolf's armpits, but Bane's arms were bound so closely to his sides that this was impossible.

Huo-ran frowned worriedly, and drew a curved dagger.

"Cut loose his arms," he directed, "then all three of you lay hold on him. This is as risky as letting a hungry leopard out of his cage."

Bane made no resistance and was quickly spread-eagled on the slab, with a big Amendaran at each arm and one on his legs. They held him closely, but seemed skeptical of Huo-ran's repeated warnings concerning the stranger's prowess.

The Chujiran again approached his prisoner, lowering his knife as he reached out. Without warning, Bane wrenched his legs free from the grasp of the careless captor and drove his heels at Huo-ran's chest. Had his feet connected solidly, they would have caved in the Chujiran's breast bone. As it was, even the glancing impact drove Huo-ran backward with an agonized grunt to strike the floor flat on his shoulders.

Bane had not hesitated. That same lunge had torn his left arm free, and heaving up on the slab, he smashed his left fist against the jaw of the man who gripped his right arm. The impact sounded like a hammer striking beef, and the Amendaran went straight down in a heap. The other two lunged in, hands grasping. Quicker than they could keep pace with, Bane flung himself over the slab to the floor on the other side. As one of the warriors lunged around it, he caught the man's wrist, wheeled, jerking the arm over his shoulder, and hurled the man bodily over his head. The Amendaran struck the floor head-first with an impact that knocked wind and consciousness out of him together.

The remaining kidnapper was more wary. Witnessing the terrible rage and blinding speed of his smaller foe, he drew a long knife and came in cautiously, seeking an opportunity for a mortal thrust. Bane stepped back, putting the slab between himself and that glimmering blade, while the other circled warily after him. Suddenly the Dire Wolf stooped and ripped a similar knife from the belt of the man he had first felled. As he did so, the Amendaran gave a roar, cleared the slab with an impressive bound, and slashed in mid-air at the stooping Dire Wolf.

Bane crouched still lower and the gleaming blade whistled over his head. The man hit the floor feet-first, off balance, and tumbled backward full onto the knife that swept up in Bane's hand. A strangled cry was wrung from the Amendaran's lips as he felt himself impaled on the long blade, and he dragged Bane down with him in his death struggles.

Tearing free from that weakening embrace, Bane rose, his garments smeared with his victim's blood, the red knife in his hand. Huo-ran staggered up with a croaking cry, his face drawn with pain. Bane sprang toward him. The sight of that dripping knife and the savage mask of Bane's face terrified the Chujiran. With a shrill scream he sprang for the door, knocking the torch from its socket as he passed. It hit the floor, scattering sparks. With the room plunged into darkness, Bane caromed blindly into the wall.

When he righted himself and found the door a second later, the room was empty except for himself and the Amendarin who were dead or senseless.

VII.

Emerging from the chamber, he found himself in a narrow street, with the stars fading before dawn. The building he had just quitted was dilapidated and obviously deserted. Down the narrow way he saw the house of Perdiccas. So he had not been carried far. Evidently his abductors had anticipated no interference. He wondered how much of a hand Gilmir had had in the plot. He did not like to think that the youth had betrayed him. But in any event, he would have to return to the house of his father, to obtain the packet he had concealed in the wall. He went down the street, still not feeling up to his normal level after all the damage he had taken.
The lack of Tagra was taking away the extra edge he had enjoyed. The street was deserted, more like an alley than a street, running between the back of the houses.

As he approached the house, he saw someone running toward him. It was Gilmir, and he threw himself on Bane with a cry of relief that was not feigned.

"Oh, my brother!" he exclaimed. "What has happened? I found your chamber empty a short time ago, and blood on your couch. Are you unhurt? Nay, there is a cut upon your scalp!"

Bane explained in a few words, saying nothing of the letters. He allowed Gilmir to suppose that Huo-ran had been a personal enemy, bent on revenge. He trusted the youth now, but there was no need to disclose the truth of the packet.

Gilmir whitened with fury. "What a shame upon my house!" he cried. "Last night that dog Huo-ran made my father a present of a great jug of wine, and we all drank except yourself, who were slumbering. I know now the wine was drugged. We slept like statues.

"Because you were our guest, I posted a man at each outer door last night, but they also fell asleep because of the wine they had drunk. A few minutes ago, searching for you, I found the servant who was posted at the door which opens into this alley from the corridor that runs past your chamber. His throat had been cut. It was easy for them to creep along that corridor and into your chamber while we slept."

Back in the chamber, while Gilmir went to fetch fresh garments, Bane retrieved the packet from the wall and stowed it under his belt. In his waking hours he preferred to keep it on his person.

Gilmir returned then with the clothing typical of Melgar habit. While Bane donned them, gazed in admiration at the Dire Wolf's wiry torso, made amazingly defined by Kumundu training and by a life in the Midnight War.

Bane just completed dressing when voices were heard without, the tramp of men resounded through the hall, and a group of warriors appeared at the doorway, with swords at their sides. Their leader pointed at Bane, and announced, "Padathor commands that this man appear at once before him, in the hall of justice."

"What is this?" exclaimed Gilmir. "Dire Wolf is my guest!"

"It is not my part to say," answered the chief. "I but carry out the commands of our king."

Bane laid a restraining hand on Gilmir's arm. "I have to go. I want to see what business Padathor has with me."

"I, too, will go," said Gilmir, with a snap of his jaws. "What this portends I do not know. I do know that I would have died if not for Dire Wolf and I will stand by him."

The sun was not yet rising as they strode down the white stone-flagged street toward the palace, but people were already moving about, and many of them followed the procession.

Mounting the broad steps of the palace, they entered a wide hall, flanked with lofty columns. At the other end there were more steps, wide and curving, leading up to a dais on which, in a throne-like marble chair, sat the king of Amendar, surly as ever, seemingly mad at the world. A number of his chiefs sat on stone benches on either side of the dais, and the common people ranged themselves along the wall, leaving a wide space clear before the throne.

In this open space crouched a bent figure. It was Hua-ran, his eyes clearly showing hate and fear, and before him lay the corpse of the man Bane had killed in the deserted house. The other two kidnappers stood nearby, their bruised features sullen and ill at ease.

Bane was conducted into the open space before the dais, and the guards fell back on either side of him. There was little formality. Padathor motioned to Hua-ranand said, "Present your case."

The Chujiran jabbed a bony finger at Bane's face. "I accuse this man of murder!" he screeched. "This morning before dawn he attacked me and my friends while we slept, and slew him who lies there. The rest of us barely escaped with our lives!"

A mutter of surprise and outrage rose from the throng. Padathor turned his somber stare on Bane.

"What have you to say?"

"He's a damned liar," answered the Dire Wolf impatiently. "I killed that man, yes—"

He was interrupted by a fierce cry from the people, who began to surge menacingly forward, to be thrust back by the guards.

"I only defended my life," insisted Bane angrily, not relishing his position of defendant. "That old Chujiran and three of your people, that dead man and those two standing there, slipped into my chamber last night as I slept in the house of Em, knocked me senseless and carried me away to rob and kill me."

"Aye!" cried Gilmir wrathfully. "And they slew one of my father's servants while he slept."

At that the murmur of the mob changed, and they halted in uncertainty.

"A lie!" screamed Hua-tan, fired to recklessness by avarice and hate. "Gilmir is bewitched! Dire Wolf is a wizard! He practices forbidden black magic."

The crowd recoiled abruptly, and some made furtive signs to avert conjury. The Amendarin were more superstitious than their Melgar ancestors. Gilmir had drawn his sword, and his friends rallied about him, clean-cut, rangy youngsters, quivering like hunted dogs in their eagerness.

"Wizard or not," roared Gilmir, "he is my brother, and no man touches him save at peril of his head!"

"He is a wizard!" continued Hua-ran, spit dabbling his beard. "I know his kind of old! Beware of him! He will bring madness and ruin upon Amendar! On his body he bears a scroll with magic inscriptions, wherein lies his necromantic power! Give that scroll to me, and I will take it afar from Amendar and destroy it where it can do no harm. Let me prove I do not lie! Hold him while I search him, and I will show you."

"Let no man dare touch the Dire Wolf!" challenged Gilmir. Up from his throne rose Padathor, a great menacing figure. He strode down the polished steps, and every man shrank back from his bleak gaze. Gilmir stood his ground, as if ready to defy even his terrible king, but Bane drew the lad aside. The Dire Wolf had never been one to stand quietly by while someone else defended him.

"It is true," he said without heat, "that I have a packet of papers in my garments. But it is also true that it has nothing to do with witchcraft, and that I will have to kill the man who tries to take it from me. Many innocent lives are at stake."

At that Padathor's brooding impassiveness vanished in an explosion of outrage.

"Will you defy even me?" he roared, his eyes blazing, his great hands working convulsively. "Do you deem yourself already king of Amendar? You foreign devil, I will kill you with my naked hands! Back, and give us space!"

VIII.

His sweeping arms hurled men right and left, and roaring like a bull, he hurled himself on Bane. So swift and violent was his attack that Bane was unable to avoid it. They thumped together, and the smaller man was hurled backward to his knee. Padathor plunged right over him, unable to check his velocity, and then, locked in a death-grapple they ripped and tore, while the people surged yelling about them.

Not often did Dire Wolf find himself opposed by a man stronger than himself. But the king of Amendar was a mass of whale-bone and iron, and nerved to blinding quickness. There was no science about Padathor's onslaught. He fought like a tiger or a lion, with all the appalling frenzy of the primordial.

In contast, the Dire Wolf fought with sharp precision and timing, keeping his head. His blinding blows blurred out in an unbroken tornado of destruction. The huge king of Amendar swayed from those blows like a tree in a storm, but always came surging back. He lashed out with great wide strokes that drove Bane reluctantly back before him, blocking and evading as best he could.

Only his enhanced speed and Kumundu mastery had saved Bane so long against such overwhelming strength. Naked to the waist, battered and bruised, his body ached with the punishment he was enduring. The loss of his healing factor was a great disadvantage because he was so used to ignoring blows from opponents. But Padathor's great chest was heaving. His face was a mask of raw beef, and his torso showed the effects of a beating that would have killed a lesser man.

Gasping a cry that was half curse, half sob, he threw himself bodily toward the Dire Wolf, trying to beat him down by sheer weight. The Dire Wolf pivoted like a matador, tripping the king so that the huge man fell flat on his face. That gave him a second's respite as Padathor rose.

Through the blood and sweat that streamed into his eyes, Bane saw the king towering above him, arms spread, blood pouring from a flattened nose down his mighty chest. His belly went in as he drew great laboring breaths. And into the relaxed pit of his stomach, the Dire Wolf drove his straight left with all the strength of his rigid arm, iron shoulders and knotted calves behind it. His clenched fist sank to the wrist in Padathor's solar plexus. The king's breath exploded out of him in a rush. His hands dropped and he swayed with all defenses gone. Starting down at knee level, Bane's right uppercut met his foe's jaw with a decisive crispness and Padathor pitched headlong and lay as still as as corpse.

In the stupefied silence that followed the fall of the king, while all eyes were fixed on the fallen giant and the groggy outsider who wavered above him, a gasping voice shouted from outside the palace. It grew louder, mingled with a clatter of hoofs which stopped at the outer steps. All wheeled toward the door as a wild figure staggered in, spattering blood.

"A guard from the pass!" cried Gilmir.

"The bandits!" cried the man, blood spurting through his fingers which he pressed to his shoulder. "Three hundred bandits! They have stormed the pass! They are led by a strange noseless fiend and four of his kin who have bows that fire many times the distance of ours! These men shot us down from afar off as we strove to defend the pass. The bandits have entered the valley..." He swayed and fell, blood trickling from his lips. A blue arrow hole showed in his shoulder, near the base of his neck.

No clamor of terror greeted this appalling news. In the utter silence that followed, all eyes turned toward Bane, still leaning dizzily against the wall as his breath returned. That fight had nearly killed him. It had been many years since he had felt the effects of a beating like that.

"You have conquered Padathor," said Gilmir. "He is dead or dying. While he is helpless, we have no king. There is no one to lead us."

Bane did not hesitate. He raised his voice with complete confidence. "You have ME to lead you. I am in charge now. How many men are able to bear arms?"

"Three hundred and fifty," answered one of the chiefs.

"Then let them take their weapons and follow me," he said. "The walls of the city are rotten. If we try to defend them, with Zemu directing the siege, we will be trapped like rats. We must win with one stroke, if at all."

Someone brought him a sheathed and belted scimitar and he buckled it about his waist. What remained of his healing factor was beginning to kick in, but there was no time to recover. From some depest reservoir he drew on sheer will power to continue. The prospect of a final showdown with Zemu stirred him powerfully. At his directions men lifted Padathor and placed him on a couch. The king had not moved since he dropped, and Bane thought it probable that he had a concussion of the brain. That finishing smash that had felled him would have split the skull of a lesser man.

Then Bane remembered Huo-ran, and glared about for him, but the Chujiran had vanished.

At the head of the warriors of Amendar, Bane strode down the street and through the ponderous gate. All were armed with long straight swords; some had spears and pikes, ancient weapons long unused. He knew the bandits would be no better armed, but the bows of Zemu and his Turks would count heavily.

He could see the horde swarming up the valley, still some distance away. They were on foot. Lucky for the Amendarans that one of the pass-guards had kept a horse near him. Otherwise the bandits would have been at the very walls of the town before the word came of their invasion.

The invaders were drunk with exultation, halting to fire outlying huts and growing stuff, and to shoot cattle, in sheer wanton destructiveness. Behind Bane rose a deep rumble of rage, and looking back at the blazing eyes, and tall, tense figures, the Dire Wolf knew he was leading no weaklings to battle.

He led them to a long straggling heap of stones which ran waveringly clear across the valley, marking an ancient fortification, long abandoned and crumbling down. It would afford some cover. When they reached it the invaders were still out of bow fire. The bandits had ceased their plundering and came on at an increased gait, shouting threats of torture and slaughter.

Bane ordered his men to lie down behind the stones, and called to him the warriors with the longbows, some thirty in all.

"Pay no heed to the bandits," he instructed them. "Shoot at the men with the bows. Do not shoot at random, but wait until I give the word, then all fire together."

The ragged horde were spreading out somewhat as they approached, loosing their matchlocks before they were in range of the grim band waiting silently along the crumbled wall. The Amendarans quivered with eagerness, but Bane gave no sign. He saw the tall thin figure of Zemu, and the bulkier shapes of his followers, in the center of the ragged crescent. The men came straight on, apparently secure in the knowledge that the Amendarans had no experience with weapons, and that Bane had lost his bow. They had seen him climbing down the cliff without it. Bane cursed not being better armed.

Before they were in range of the defenders, Zemu loosed a shaft and the warrior at Bane's side slumped over, drilled through the neck. A mutter of rage and impatience ran along the line, but Bane quieted the warriors, ordering them to lie closer behind the rocks. Zemu tried again, and the Zoku-ya sent a volley, but the arrows whined off the stones. The men moved nearer and behind them the bandits howled with bloodthirsty impatience, rapidly getting out of hand.

Bane had hoped to lure Zemu into reach of his bowmen. But suddenly, with an earth-shaking yell, the bandits stormed past the Stray Dog in a wave, blades flaming in the sun. Zemu yelped in outrage, unable to see or shoot at his enemies over the backs of his reckless allies. Despite his curses, they came on with a roar.

Bane, crouching among the stones, glared at the gaunt giants rushing toward him until he could make out the fanatical blaze of their eyes, then he roared, "Loose."

A densew volley whistled out along the wall, ragged, but terrible at that range. A storm of iron-tipped shafts blasted the oncoming line, and men went down in rows. Lost to all caution, the Amendarans leaped the wall and hewed into the staggering bandits with naked steel. Readying to end this, Bane drew his scimitar and followed them.

IX.

No time for orders now, no formation, no strategy. Amendar and bandit fought as men fought thousands of years ago, without order or plan, massed in a straining, grunting, hacking mob, where naked blades flickered like lightning. Yard-long knives clanged and ground against the curved swords of the Amendarin. The rending of flesh and bone beneath the chopping blades was like the sound of butchers' cleavers. Dying dragged down the living and warriors stumbled over the mangled corpses. It was a shambles where no quarter was asked and none given, and the feuds and hates of a thousand years glutted in slaughter.

No bows were used in that deadly crush, but about the edges of the battle circled Zemu and the Yugen, loosing shafts with deadly accuracy. Man to man, the stalwart Amendarin were a match for the hillmen, and they slightly outnumbered the bandits. But they had thrown away the advantage of their position, and the bows of the Stray Dog's own party were dealing havoc in their disordered ranks. Two of the Zoku-ya were down, one hit by a bolt in that first and only volley, and another disembowelled by a dying Amendaran.

As Bane slashed his way through the straining huddles and flailing blades, he met two of the remaining Zoku-ya face to face. The first man raised a bow but his hand came up empty after digging in his quiver. In the next instant Bane's sword ripped through his belly and stood out a foot behind his back. As the Dire Wolf twisted his blade free, the other Yugen flung a rock, missed, and knew he had to close. He rushed in, slashing with a saber at Bane's head. The Dire Wolf parried the singing blade, and his own weapon cut the air like a blue flash, splitting the Zoku-ya's skull to the chin.

Then he saw Zemu. The Stray Dog was groping in his quiver, and Bane knew he was out of bolts.

"We've tried fighting at a distance, Stray Dog," challenged Bane, "and we both still live. Come and try cold steel face to face!"

With a wild laugh the Stray Dog ripped out his blade in a bright shimmer of steel that caught the morning sun. Well over six feet in height, muscled like a blacksmith was Zemu Watura. The outcast son of a noble Chylan house, supple and lithe as a mountain tiger, he twirled his blade and took a stance.

"I match my life against a little package of papers, Dire Wolf!" the Stray Dog laughed as the blades met.

On each side the fighting lulled and ceased, as the warriors drew back with heaving chests and dripping swords, to watch their leaders settle the score.

The blades sparkled in the sunlight, clashed together and then leaped apart, darting in and out like living things.

Bane's Kumundu training had not given as much time to swordplay as it had to unarmed combat but he was still highly skilled. His innate enhanced speed and sureness would have made him more than a match for any Human swordsman. But he was going against the greatest Zoku-yu of modern times. Into his attack, Zemu brought all the fine skill of a Race of swordsmen, all the craft taught by masters of the blade of Chyl, and all the savage cunning he had learned in wild battles in adjacent realms beyond the world.

Zemu was taller and had the longer reach. Again and again his blade whistled nesr Bane's throat. Once the edge sliced the Dire Wolf's arm, and a stream of of bright crimson blood dripped. There was no sound except the rasp of feet on the sward, the rapid whisper of the blades, the deep breathing of the men. Bane was the harder pressed. That terrible fight with Padathor had taken its toll. His legs trembled, his arms grew heavy. As if through a fog, he saw the triumphant smile growing on the thin lips of the Stray Dog.

The sneer triggered a final surge of determination in Bane's spirit, nerving him for a last rush. He lunged with the unexpected fury of a starving wolf, there was a whirlwind of blades... and then Zemu was down, clutching at the earth with twitching hands. Bane's narrow blade had pierced through him below the ribs.

The Stray Dog rolled his black eyes up at his conqueror, and his lips distorted in a ghastly smile. "I've had worse wounds," he croaked. "Give me a moment to catch my breath." He sank back and lay gasping, his noseless face split by a mocking grin. Bane stared down, furious that it seemed his most hated enemy might live after all. Despite a furious urge to kill the monster, Bane realized that Zemu had too much value as a prisoner to be interrogated.

The Zoku-ya began slinking furtively away, their morale broken, like a pack of wolves whose leader is down. Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, the Amendarans gave tongue and pelted after them. The invaders broke and fled, while the infuriated Amendarans followed, stabbing and hacking at their backs, down the valley and out through the pass.

Bane was aware that Gilmir, blood-stained but exultant, was beside him, supporting his trembling frame that seemed on the point of collapse. The Dire Wolf wiped the blood-tinged sweat from his eyes, and touched the packet under his girdle. Many men had died today for that. But many more would have died had it not been saved, including helpless women and children, the elderly and the infirm.

Gilmir muttered apprehensively, and Bane looked up to see a gigantic figure approaching from the direction of the city, through whose gate the rejoicing women were already streaming. It was Padathor, his features grotesquely swollen and blackened from Bane's iron fists. He strode serenely through the heaps of corpses, and reached the spot where the companions stood.

Gilmir gripped his notched sword, and Padathor, seeing the gesture, grinned with his pulped lips. He was holding something behind him.

"I do not come in anger, Dire Wolf," he said calmly. "A man who can fight as you have fought is neither wizard, thief nor murderer. I am no child to hate a man who has bested me in fair fight and then saved my kingdom while I lay senseless. Will you take my hand?"

Bane grasped it with a surprising surge of friendship toward this giant, who may have been a bully but who at least now was showing magnanimity.

"Unfortunately, I did not recover my senses in time for the battle," said Padathor. "I only saw the last of it. But if I did not reach the field in time to smite the dogs, I have at least rid the valley of one rat I found hiding in the palace." He casually tossed something at Bane's feet. The severed head of Huo-ran stared blankly up at the Dire Wolf.

"Will you reside forever in Amendar and be my foster brother, as well as the brother of Gilmir?" asked Padathor, with a glance down the valley, toward the pass through which the warriors were harrying the fleeing invaders.

"I am honored and thank you, oh king," said Bane, "but I must return to my own people. There are other jobs for me to tackle and it is still a long road to travel. When I have rested for a day, I must be gone. A little food to carry with me on my journey is all I ask." He thought a second, then added, "And I will always keep the memories of the brave people of Amendar."

3/6/2023