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blade was as motionless as the shaft of a monument; the body it had struck down was no longer breathing.
    A great disconsolate whine came from the crouching watchbeast, and Gelimer without thinking could interpret the outcry: This was bad, this was very bad indeed, but there had been no way for the animal to prevent this bad thing happening.
    There would have been no way for a human being to stop it either, perhaps. Gelimer glanced toward the door, and saw that it was securely latched.
    The wet boots, still delicately puddling the wooden floor, would seem to mean that the man had got up, had gone outside for whatever purpose, and had come back in before he met his death.
    The hermit approached the bed. There was no doubt at all that his late patient was now certainly dead. Still the hermit turned him partway over, and saw a hand-breadth or more of pointed Swordblade protruding through what must be a neatly split breastbone. Death, of course, must have been instantaneous; there was only a very moderate amount of blood, staining the cloth that had wrapped this deadly weapon and was now lying crumpled beneath the body.
    With the door latched on the inside, it seemed an impossible situation.
    Not knowing what else to do, and moving in something of a state of shock, Gelimer wrenched the Sword out of the stranger’s body that task wasn’t easy, for the blade seemed to be held in a vise of bone and stood for a few moments with that black hilt in hand, looking about him suspiciously, ready to meet some further attack, an attack that never came.
    “Geelong, I don’t suppose that you—? But of course not. You don’t have any real hands, to grip a hilt, and … and of course you wouldn’t, anyway.”
    The watchbeast looked at its master, trying to understand. And certainly no man would ever be able to stab himself in such a way.
    Eventually the hermit wiped the blade on the coarse cloth that had been its wrapping—the steel came clean with magical ease—and put it back into the sheath that he found lying discarded on the floor in the middle of the room. Then he went to arrange the body more neatly and decently on the bed, wadding the Sword wrapping cloth underneath in an effort to save his own blankets. There was not going to be that much more bleeding now.
    Then he decided that the only practical thing to do was to go back to sleep again, after satisfying himself that his door and his window were indeed closed tightly, and latched as securely as he could latch them. Geelong continued his whimpering, until Gelimer spoke sharply to the beast, enjoining silence.
    A few moments after that the hermit was asleep by the fireside as before. The silent presence of the occupant of the bed did not disturb his slumbers. All his life Gelimer had known that it was the living against whom one must always be on guard.
     
    * * *
     
    In the morning, before the sun was really up, the hermit went out to dig a grave, and to see to one or two other related matters. The snow had stopped an hour ago, and by now the sky was clear. He left the sled in its shed, but he took Geelong with him.
    The fallen riding-beast, as Gelimer had expected, was dead by now, already stiffened. The saddle it bore was well made, and the beast itself had been well fed, he thought, before it had started out on its last journey. There were no saddlebags; most likely the journey had been short.
    With considerable effort, and with the aid of his dumb companion, Gelimer tugged the dead animal to the edge of the next cliff down, and put it over the drop, and looked after it to see where it had landed. Not all the way into the river, unfortunately; that would certainly have been best. Instead the carcass was now wedged in a crevice between rocks on the lip of the next precipice. Good enough, thought Gelimer, quite good enough. In that place, the hermit thought, the carcass should be well exposed to flying scavengers, and at the same time out of sight and smell of any human