“Their wish was to do so,” Evalyth replied. “Now my wish is to get revenge for my man.” She didn’t know if this language included a word for justice. No matter. Because of the drugs, which heightened the logical faculties while they muffled the emotions, she was speaking Lokonese quite well enough for her purposes.

“We can get soldiers and help you kill as many as you choose,” Rogar offered.

“Not needful. With this weapon at my side I alone can destroy more than your army might. I want your counsel and help in a different matter. How can I find him who slew my man?”

Rogar frowned. “The savages can vanish into trackless jungles, heaven-borne.”

“Can they vanish from other savages, though?”

“Ah! Shrewdly thought, heaven-borne. Those tribes are endlessly at each other’s throats. If we can make contact with one, its hunters will soon learn for you where the killer’s people have taken themselves.” His scowl deepened. “But he must have gone from them, to hide until you have departed our land. A single man might be impossible to find. Lowlanders are good at hiding, of necessity.”

“What do you mean by necessity?”

Rogar showed surprise at her failure to grasp what was obvious to him. “Why, consider a man out hunting,” he said. “He cannot go with companions after every kind of game or the noise and scent would frighten it away. So he is often alone in the jungle. Someone from another tribe may well set upon him. A man stalked and killed is just as useful as one slain in open war.”

“Why this incessant fighting?”

Rogar’s look of bafflement grew stronger. “How else shall they get human flesh?”

“But they do not live on that!”

“No, surely not, except as needed. But that need comes many times as you know. Their wars are their chief way of taking men; booty is good too, but not the main reason to fight. He who slays, owns the corpse, and naturally divides it solely among his close kin. Not everyone is lucky in battle. Therefore these who did not chance to kill in a war may well go hunting on their own, two or three of them together hoping to find a single man from a different tribe. And that is why a lowlander is good at hiding.”

Evalyth did not move or speak. Rogar drew a long breath and continued trying to explain: “Heaven-borne, when I heard the evil news, I spoke long with men from your company. They told me what they had seen from afar by the wonderful means you command. Thus it is clear to me what happened. This guide—what is his name? Yes, Moru—he is a cripple. He had no hope of killing himself a man except by treachery. When he saw that chance, he took it.”

He ventured a smile. “That would never happen in the highlands,” he declared. “We do not fight wars, save when we are attacked, nor do we hunt our fellowmen as if they were animals. Like yours, ours is a civilized race.” His lips drew back from startlingly white teeth. “But, heaven-borne, your man was slain. I propose we take vengeance, not simply on the killer if we catch him, but on his tribe, which we can certainly find as you suggested. That will teach all the savages to beware of their betters. Afterward we can share the flesh, half to your people, half to mine.”