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legs poising their bodies more hands high than any horse had any
right to be. Each had a single curled horn rising from its forehead.
The men wore high helmets of blazing gold. They were clad in
purplish-colored jerkins studded with brass nails, a color made into
vivid bruise-shine by the light. They carried weapons. And they
were gaining on Delia far faster than I could reach her.
She, like myself, was completely naked.
The air in my lungs scorched like fire. I bounded in fantastic
leaps, my Earthly muscles scorning the pull of gravity. Once before
I had let all my Earthly muscle-power leap out in defense of this
girl; now my bounds were truly of fantastic distance. Sand sheeted
away at each footstep. But the riders gained on Delia, and now I
could see they were not men, although possessing two arms and
two legs, for their faces were like nothing so much as the big tabby
cat s bewhiskered face I remembered from home. Their slit eyes
blazed. I shouted, and then saved my breath for running.
Delia flung both arms up as her foot caught in some
driftwood discarded on the beach and she fell. I heard her scream:
Dray Prescot!
A rider leaned one furred arm down and caught her up
around the waist, flicked her over to lie facedown across his saddle.
I lunged forward like a demented man. I could not lose her after
all, not now, not so soon after finding her again!
The lead rider reined up, those enormously long legs of his
mount spindling with muscled power. Sand cascaded, his mount
slid backward, then, with a snickering shrill, it had regained its
balance. But in those few vital moments I had reached a stirrup. I
grasped the booted foot and jerked and pulled as though I could
tear the thing s leg clean off.
He screamed and something thwacked down on my
shoulders. I glared up. Delia moaned. The rider threw away his
crop in fury and drew a long curved sword and lifted it high. I
reached up, took his elbow between my fingers, twisted, and heard
the bones grind and snap. The thing shrieked again.
Delia s eyes opened; horror clouded them. Behind you
I whirled and ducked and the curved sword sliced air. Now
they were all about me. Swords lifted in a net of steel. I reached
again for him whose arm I had mangled. He let out a keening
shriek and hauled desperately at his mount s reins. The beast
reared, throwing me off. Ducking a swiping sword, silently, I
leaped again. I was on the thing s haunches, and so short were they
that I half hung over nothingness with my left arm clamped around
the rider s waist and my right dragging his head back in that
arrogant golden helmet. I heard his neck snap and cast him from
me. I slid forward into the saddle, seized the reins and kicked my
heels into the flanks of the beast. It shivered and snorted and
bounded forward.
Then the world spun around in a blaze of sparks and I saw
the sand rising up toward me and, for only a fractional moment of
time, felt the hardness of the sandy ground smash all along my
face.
They must have left me for dead.
When I recovered, sick and groggy, and looked about, the
beach was silent and deserted and only the pitiful humped shape of
the dead beast, and the sprawled rider beyond, told of the tragedy
that had unfolded here.
At the instant of my success, on the point of escape, I had had
my mount shot from under me. The weapon still protruded from
the poor thing s flank. It was an eight-foot long spear, the head
fashioned from bronze and heavy although not particularly sharp.
It was an unhandy weapon.
Beneath the rider I subsequently learned that these
feline-like semi-humans were called Fristles I found his curved
scimitar-like sword. Despite his broken elbow he had retained
grasp of his sword hilt. When I had flung him from the high saddle
he had fallen so that the point of the blade had entered his stomach
with the hilt jammed against the ground. That blade had gone clean
through his body and the stained point protruded eight inches past
his backbone. The blood was blackened and caked and a few
flies for they exist everywhere rose as I approached.
I turned him over with my foot, freed his hand from the hilt,
put a foot on his body and dragged the sword clear. I cleaned it
thoroughly with the sand all about me. I was not thinking at all
clearly. I did not care to use this creature s clothes, so I cut up the
purple leather and fashioned myself a breechclout after the fashion
of Savanti hunting leathers; and I cut from his tunic enough to
wind about my left arm. His boots fit me well enough. I slung the
sword over my shoulder, its scabbard suspended from a leather
baldric, and I felt that when I ran across these cat-people again I
would kill very many of them before they could once again wrest
Delia of Delphond from me.
The sound of hooves would be muffled to a succession of
steady thumps in the sand. At the sound I drew the sword and
turned to face the rider who approached. The wind blew grains of
sand across the hoofprints; there had been no chance of tracking
those who had taken Delia.
Lahal, the rider called when he was fairly up with me.
Lahal, Jikai.
Lahal, I likewise replied. I had learned what Jikai could
mean in the various inflexions put upon the word. It could mean
simply Kill! It, could mean Warrior or A noble feat of arms
or a number of other related concepts, to do with honor and pride
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