The other who had held his own lands in the back country and had escaped with his bare life from that holding some thirty days earlier, shook his head.

“Yvian is a soldier, a mercenary. War is his trade. But to kill in such ways is to sow black hate against a future reaping. And Yvian is lord in this land; he would not willingly rip apart his own holding and bring it to ruin — he is too keen-witted a man. He would not give orders for the doing of such deeds.”

“Yet we have seen more than one such sight. They could not all be the work of only one band commanded by a sadist, or even two such.”

“True. That is why I think we now fight men who are possessed.”

Possessed! The old meaning of that term in his own world came to Simon — possession by demons. Well, that a man could believe having seen what they had been forced to look upon. Possessed by demons — or — the memory of the Sulcarkeep road flooded into his mind; possessed by a demon — or emptied of a soul! Kolder again?

From then on, much as it revolted him, Simon kept records of such finds, though never was he able to catch the perpetrators at their grisly work. He longed to consult with the witch, only she had gone north with Briant and the first wave of fugitives.

He launched through the network of guerrilla bands a request for information. And at nights, in one temporary headquarters after another, he pieced together bits and patches. There was very little concrete evidence, but Simon became convinced that certain commanders among the Karsten forces did not operate according to their former ways, and that the Duke’s army had been infiltrated by an alien group.

Aliens! As always that puzzle of inequality of skills continued to plague him. Questioning of his refugees told him that the energy machines which they had always known had come from “overseas” ages past: “overseas” energy machines brought by the Sulcar traders, adapted by the old race for heat and light, the Falconers also from “overseas” with their amazing communicators borne by their hawks. And the source of the Kolder was also “overseas” — a vague term — a common source for all?

What he could learn he dispatched by messenger to Estcarp, asking for anything the witches might have to tell in return. The only thing he was sure of was that as long as his own force was recruited from those of old race, he had no need to fear infiltration himself, for that quality which gave them kinship with the land and the wild things granted them in addition the ability to smell out the alien.