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place soon after we took to the road, but there was not enough left to explore. In the open there was silence, for this was a windless day. The clop-clop of our mounts’ feet on the pavement seemed to echo, making far too loud a sound, so that I found myself looking from side to side, and now and then over my shoulder. The feeling grew stronger that we were being watched—by outlaws?
    In spite of myself I found my hand straying ever in the direction of the sword hilt, ready to defend against attack. Yet when I glanced at Riwal, I saw him riding easy, though he also watched right and left.
    “I feel”—I urged my mount closer to his—“that we are watched.” Perhaps I humbled my pride to admit that, yet this was more his land than mine, and I relied on him.
    “It is ever so—in the Waste,” he returned.
    “Outlaws?” My fingers closed about the hilt now.
    “Perhaps. But more likely other things.” His eyes did not quite meet mine, and I sensed he was at a loss to explain. Perhaps he, too, feared to display some weakness before me, a younger and less-tried venturer.
    “Is it the truth then that the Old Ones left guardians?”
    “What man among us knows?” He countered my question with another. “This much is so: when one ventures into their ways, there is often this feeling of being watched.Yet it has never been with me more than just watching. If they left guardians, as you say, those are now too old and tired to do more than watch.”
    I found that hardly reassuring. And still I continued to watch—though nothing stirred out in that flat land across which the road hammered a straight and level path.
    At nooning we drew to the side of the pavement, ate and drank, and gave our horses to drink also from the water skins we carried. There was no sun, and the sky over uswas gray; still I could see no clouds gathering to threaten storm. But Riwal sniffed the air, his head up to the sky.
    “We must seek shelter,” he said, and there was urgency in his voice.
    “I see no storm clouds.”
    “Storms come unheralded and swiftly in the Waste. There—” He had been surveying the countryside around, and now he pointed ahead to where there was a pile beside the road, perhaps another cluster of time-eroded ruin.
    We pushed on, to discover that sight-distance was deceptive in this place. There was a haze that seemed to rise from the ground so that things appeared closer than they were. But at length we reached the spot he had appointed. And none too soon, for the sky was no longer the gray of a gloomy day, but had darkened now into twilight come hours too soon.
    Chance had brought us to shelter. Though the ruins at the outset of the road had been so formless as to only suggest they had once had purpose, this ancient building was in better preservation. There was actually part of a room or hall among the jumble of stone blocks with a portion of roof over it. And into that we crowded both ourselves and our animals.
    Now the wind blew, whirling up the grit, hurling it in marching columns to fill eyes, mouths, nostrils. We had tofight to gain the last few strides to cover. Once inside, when we turned to look out, it was to see a curtain of dust.
    That did not last long. Overhead sounded the rumble of thunder as if an army with a siege train marched. And the lash of lightning followed with force enough to suggest it had struck not too far away. Then came rain—quickly beating down the dust, yet not clearing any path for our vision; rather providing a second curtain, this time of moisture, not grit.
    Water ran in a stream across the pitted floor, so we crowded back into the farthest comer of the ruin. The horses whinnied and snuffled, rolling their eyes, as if they found this fury of nature frightening. But to me our corner gave an illusion of shelter, though I flinched when the lightning struck again.
    Such fury deafened us. We were reduced to the point of simple endurance and we kept hold of the reins, lest our mounts