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slapped it on. Seg looked up from the crashed flier. He shouted.
    “You won’t believe what’s here!”
    We went across the rocks. The aftermath of a fight is often a strange time, when noises ring in your ears, and the air seems irradiated with color, and the world moves under your feet.
    Seg was right.
    There were dead men sprawled here and there, curled up in nooks and crannies, huddled behind the rocks that had punched through the voller’s skin in the crash. She was done for. One of the silver boxes had broken and — it being the paol box — the cayferm it contained had wafted away to be lost in the air. A shivering man crouched behind a box which had saved him, for its stout wooden side was feathered with arrows like a pincushion. He held the windlass of a crossbow.
    “Look,” said Seg.
    Prince Nedfar lay half on his side, his hands outstretched gripping the crossbow. It was clear what had been going on. The man behind the box was a Relt, a gentle specimen of a race of diffs who are not warriors, and he had been spanning the crossbow for Nedfar. Nedfar’s face showed greasy and strained, dirty with grimed sweat. His eyes were sunken.
    Among the dead men a few living men rose to greet us.
    They were retainers, the Relt stylor, the cooks and valets, a groom, and I felt the pang at what must have happened. I bent to Nedfar. His sunken eyes looked like plums, bruised against bruised flesh.
    “Prince!”
    He opened his eyes.
    In his right shoulder the butt end of a quarrel stood up. It looked obscene. Judging by the amount of wooden flight showing, its steel head was buried deeply into Nedfar’s shoulder. He saw me. He recognized me. He spoke one word.
    “Traitor!”

Chapter four
    Of a Walk in the Mist
    “Now, now, prince. That’s all over.” I tried to take the crossbow from his hands. “You’re safe now. We have to make you comfortable—”
    “Jak the Shot — traitor! You betrayed Hamal!”
    “He’s off his head,” said Seg. “And I can see he is a fine-looking man, just as you said. A real prince.”
    “Yes. We’ve got to take care of him.”
    What had happened was clear enough. The fighting men with Nedfar had fought. They had been killed. They must have held off the wildmen for a goodly long time. The end was in sight when we turned up. I judged that the twenty-five we had dealt with had been left to finish the thing from a larger war-band.
    “Hamal—” Nedfar looked in a bad way. His face was of that color of the lead in old sewers. “You betrayed our plans to our enemies, Jak—”
    Jaezila brought water and moistened his lips. He saw her.
    “Jaezila — what — the man Jak the Shot — do not, do not—”
    “Prince!” Jaezila spoke in a voice like diamond. “Where is Tyfar?”
    “Tyfar? My son Tyfar?”
    “Yes, yes! Is he still in the Pass of Lacachun?”
    “Oh, yes. He is still there—”
    Nedfar’s mind was not wandering; but he was very tired and his wound gave him a distancing from reality. No doubt past and present clashed in his brain. He sounded very weak.
    “We must take Nedfar to a doctor.” I tried to sound matter of fact. “We could take the bolt out of his shoulder; but the pain might do for him, brave though he is. A needleman is absolutely vital.”
    “You’re right. And we’ll have to go in our airboat.”
    Again Jaezila bent to Nedfar.
    “Tyfar.” She spoke with compressed urgency. “Your son Tyfar. Is all well with him?”
    The prince’s voice rasped weakly. His head rolled.
    “All is — is not well — with Tyfar.”
    We bent closer, intent, concentrating on the halting words.
    “They trapped him — the message was — was a trick. A trap. I flew for help — help — Tyfar! They will slay him and all his men—”
    Nedfar tried to lift himself, fighting back the pain. He glared up at Jaezila; she bent over him, her soft brown hair a glory about her face. On that face an expression of loving care was replaced by horror and then by a savage