He chewed his meat, his beard gleaming with fat. His eyes gleamed too. They told me I should have known better than to beg of him after what I had said to him before.

“Listen to the puppy bark. He wet his drawers at sunset and cried for his mother. Even so brave a warrior as Tuvek swoons like a maid at city men.”

The warriors grunted. A couple laughed, then saw my face and shut their mouths. I was so angry I could not get a word out.

Ettook said, “No, Tuvek. You haven’t earned the right to lead my krarl to battle. But wipe your eyes. Never fear, we will not tell your wives how you ran to hide in the mud.”

Suddenly my anger seemed to burst and was dissipated like a poisoned swelling.

Surprised by my own coolness, I smiled confidently back at him.

“It is good of you, my father, to tell no one. I am grateful. I shall never forget your own bravery. The priests should make a song of it.”

It was too delicate for him, but he labored at the problem and shortly he had puzzled it out. He had himself been hidden somewhere; his gear was muddier than mine, and his knives neither bloody nor newly cleaned.

His face writhed itself into a congestion, and I said, “Your pardon, my father. I am embarrassed by the presence of your valor.”

And I walked away before he could recover himself, straight to the horse pens. Here, judging my roan would have run off, I stole a mount.

A small piece of an hour later, I was out of the valley and riding west, on the trail of the slave-takers.

They left a fine trail, the city raiders. Horse dung caked the rocks, and hooves pocked in the soft soils of spring, and the footmarks of men, and in places a bluish dust-powder spilled from their wheeled cannon. In one spot even a golden bead on a ring, from harness or rider, dazzled like a firefly in a bush—as if they had intended me to follow and meant to leave me spoor.

A whole night and day I sought them, and part of a second night.

After twenty miles or so of finicky, careful riding, I saw the mountains begin to level and sink down toward high rocky plateaus. The going was better for horses, theirs and mine. By midnight of the first dark, I was confident enough of the quarry that I took a few hours’ sleep, lying in a shallow cave. Their trail ran northward, which was not the way to the old burned city, Eshkir, so I deduced, which lay more west and south of us.

The western heights were yellow as a goat’s eyes, bare and treacherous as horns, but the northern steeps were thinly green with a reluctant grazing. Presently I passed the site of a recent bivouac, black fire-pits, the ubiquitous dung of horses and men, the earth churned up and despoiled, and the charred bones of two deer they had roasted. Apparently the city demons needed food, despite the tales.