“Oh rejoice, Demizdor,” she said. “The savage will protect you in the stinking den of his idiot people.”

“Be civil or the savage shall change his mind. Was it your name you spoke?”

She shuddered all over, and said, “Demizdor is my name.”

I could not say it quite. I was eager to forget the city tongue I had used.

“Demmis-tahr,” I said. She laughed, more like choking than laughter. I could not make her out, though I meant to keep her.

“Even my name is to be defiled,” she said. “But I will call you Vazkor.”

“Call me that, you bitch, and I will kill you.”

At dawn, I and twenty-three red warriors rode out of the fortress. Our tribal dead we had burned with their ornaments and weapons; the city men we left for the carrion birds of the mountain valleys. We took all their riches and all their horses, either riding or leading them. They did not like us much after their former lords, but they should come to it, since they must. I had half dreamed of bringing away one of the tubular cannon on its wheeled cart, but the braves would not touch it. It had been only a whim—I had no idea of their workings, nor much hope of learning—so I let it go.

I had kept an eye out for the dark slave-men but saw none, and we did not seek them. We had one prisoner only and she was mine.

I had clad her in her furs over the finery of emeralds so the warriors should not see them or any other of her treasure, gem or flesh, and grow envious. By day I made her tie her hair in a piece of velvet. Only the deer-mask stared out. She was calmer.

I said to her, “Obey me and you are safe. You found me rough, but try tricks and you will be at the mercy of others who are less courteous even than I.”

“That is a winsome thought indeed,” she said. Then, as we were going out, she called to me mockingly, “Vazkor, Vazkor.”

I could not bring myself to hit her. I was intoxicated with her body and would not damage it, and this she knew, sensing her power already, and she my slave. I took her shoulders and lifted her off the ground.

“I have been thinking, bitch-lady. Maybe you are right. Maybe your king Vazkor—he was a king, was he not, a golden-mask?—maybe he is in me, as the old men said when they kneeled. So. Call me by that name. I shall beat you if you use another. I am Vazkor. One day I shall steal a golden mask and wear it when I stopper you.”

After that she kept quiet, for she was no less contrary than other women.

Still, the thought took root in me. If I resembled their dead prince, his must be the spirit which had guided me, my possession. This made it harder to reason myself from the notion, as I had been attempting to do since the fight. The incidents upon the rock had not declined like the dream that began them, but I told myself I would not dwell on them. And I had other things to consider.