The blue got up a foot.

Gods, I thought, don’t let Urns lose his other eye.

The blue had had his say, for incompetent it was proving. This was to be no single combat, Urns was no honourable foe, he was an intruder. The tiger sprang almost before the lion did. Their teeth and claws dug in simultaneously. Urns was brought to his knees, to his belly, leg twisted. Low growls thrummed the air. More animals joined, ignoring the blue bird which staggered to the female. They watched a moment, then went away into the trees. The smaller creatures scampered away too—some turned in the wood and looked back at Urns being eaten alive.

But nothing, even with Urns’ powerful heart, could have survived long under that onslaught of beasts. As I drew my knife, which I did almost immediately for though I knew it was useless and death, I could not leave him who had taken me through so much, I realized there was no need; there was no longer quivering, tossing of the Fighter dying fighting under the rending suffocation. The beasts fed gurgling and tearing. A grey wolf lifted his wolf-head to the stars and howled. A little marsupial, with rat-teeth and running on hind-legs, darted in and came back with a curved black wing like a shield, which often it had been to me, or like an exotic lady’s-fan except that it gouted crimson at the stump. In a deep smear on the turf all patterned with the prints of hooves and claws and pads and paws, a single stirrup lay. The rowelled spur, which I’d so rarely used, glinted. My instep ached as it remembered how often it had fitted over that metal bar, now lying loose, its frayed strap no longer proud and taut.

I stumbled on among the trees. I looked up. In the starlight rain slanted like ghirza strings across the hills. I didn’t know where I was going, only to get away as far as I could from the scene of Urns’ death, which seemed the ultimate in the deaths of my companions, for really he had been the nearest to me, it was almost the death of part of myself, and I was newly alone.

Suddenly the sky itself became a waterfall, like the one I had seen earlier only greatly more vast. Thunder followed lightning. The trees wailed.

I did not call myself fanciful when it seemed to me the wind pursued me. I was a new germ introduced into Atlan. I had brought with me the air and thoughts of my world, without wishing ill I was ill.

My Atlan hated me.

The dark was complete, every now and then huge clouds made their sluggish way between Atlan and the stars. Or perhaps they were moving at a great rate: their size made them take so long to pass.