This conjecture made me sullen, at myself, my situation, my lack of advantage.

Suddenly three more riders came through the rain, this time moving slowly. As they drew level with my concealment, the first dismounted, kneeled in the mud, and cast about. The horse of this, the guide, was smaller and stockier, and he was unmasked. A Dark Slave. The two captains, hooded against the weather, showed me their blank silver skull-heads; then one reached idly to brush the rain away from a clump of grasses growing in the hillside. It was a fatuous womanish gesture, his wrist slender in its gauntlet, and so I knew him; Demizdor’s kinsman, Orek.

“Well,” the other called to the slave, “what do you make of it?”

The slave mumbled something in a stilted version of the city tongue.

The captain said, “We have lost him, Orek, unless our luck turns.”

Orek flung around in his saddle furiously.

“No, by my soul, we shall find him. Ah! Why did Lord Kortis give us no bronzes?”

“He thought it wasted effort. He would not set soldiery to catching Erran’s wolfhound.”

Orek struck his thigh with his fist, that mannerism especial to girls and girlish men hoping to ape virility.

“Erran shall not get him back when we have him, no, by the golden whore.” Then his voice broke like a boy’s, as if he wept. That surprised me. I thought, Does even Orek weep because he is angry? Before I could reason it out, he slashed his horse viciously with the silver-headed crop, and it floundered forward and away into the rain, after the rest.

Next moment the Absurd took a hand.

The remaining silver captain dismounted and began to lead his horse up the slope toward my limestone shelter, calling to the slave over his shoulder, “I’ve had enough bathing, fellow. I am for waiting here till the storm’s done. Ride and tell Zrenn where I am. Tell him they’ll be riding blind till midnight. We’ll find no tracks till this downpour’s spent.”

The guide got back on his horse, and rode off northward to where, presumably, the remaining group of men were searching. The captain continued walking up the hill toward me.

I had had plenty of roosting in the wet, and plenty of being hunted, too.

I quickly unsheathed the bronze-mask’s sword I had stolen, waited till the silver man came around the first spur, then stood up and cut him clean through, breast to back.

His glazing stare of surprise was evident, even through mask and smoked glass eye-pieces. I pulled off the mask and the rain danced on his eyeballs.

The horse, used to storm and ungentle behavior, stood patiently, observing me with indifference. I looked at the wet black clothes of the dead man, his mask, his horse, and I thought, Why not?

One quarter of an hour later, a silver captain rode down the slope, masked, gloved, hooded, leaving a half-dressed corpse wedged in the chalky mud of the hilltop.