But Simon was shaking his head. “I am a soldier. And I am from another world. Let dog eat dog as the saying goes — the Kolder trail is mine.” He touched his head; if he closed his eyes now he knew he would see not darkness but a narrow valley through which angry men fought a rearguard action.

“Do you venture into Yle and Sulcarkeep and no farther?” Briant broke silence for the first time.

“Where would you have us go?” Koris asked.

“Karsten!” If Simon had ever thought the youth colorless and lacking in personality he was to doubt his appraisal at that moment.

“And what lies in Karsten which is of such moment to us?” Koris’ voice held an almost bantering note. Yet there was something else beneath the surface of that tone which Simon heard but could not identify. There was a game here afoot, but he did not know its purpose or rules.

“Yvian!” The name was flung at the Captain like a battle challenge and Briant eyed Koris as if waiting to see him pick it up. Simon glanced from one young man to the other. As it had been earlier when he and the witch had talked across the board, so was it now: these two fenced without thought of their audience.

For the second time red tinged Koris’ cheeks, then ebbed, leaving his face white and set, that of a man committed to some struggle he hated but dared not shirk. For the first time he left the Ax of Volt lying forgotten on the table as he came swiftly about the end of the board, moving with that lithe grace which always contrasted with his ill-formed body.

Briant, a queer expression of mingled defiance and hope giving life to his features, waited for his coming, stood still as the Captain’s hands fell on his shoulders in a grip which could not have been anything but bruising.

“This is what you want?” the words came from Koris as if jerked one by one by torture.

At the last moment perhaps Briant tried to evade. “I want my freedom,” he replied in a low voice.

Those punishing hands fell away. Koris laughed with such raking bitterness that Simon protested inwardly against the hurt that sound betrayed.

“Be sure, in time, it shall be yours!” The Captain would have stepped away if Briant had not seized in turn upon Koris’ upper arms with the same urgency of hold the other had shown earlier.

“I want my freedom only that I may make a choice elsewhere. And I have decided upon that choice — do you doubt that? Or is it again that there is an Aldis who has the power I cannot reach for?”

Aldis? A glimmering of what might be the truth struck Simon.

Koris’ fingers were under Briant’s chin, turning the thin young face up to his. This once was the Captain able to look down and not up at a companion.