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sickly light their jaws opened widely, and the blackness of their gums showed their yellow fangs in glistening horror. They hissed and leaped.

Chapter three
    Of two leems and one torch
    The girl child cried and dribbled. The priest shrieked and writhed. The stench of the leems belched foully in that confined space.
    The leems leaped. In that instant I dropped the priest and switched the girl around behind me. I drew the thraxter. The sword cleared scabbard — and the leems hauled up in midair, choked on broad silver chains and collars about their necks.
    They crashed to the floor and were up in an instant, howling, spitting, all a bristle of fang and claw.
    I glared at them. Foul beasts! They’d come sniffing around the chunkrah herds to cut out a straying animal and chew her up for their dinner. The priest tried to run.
    I twisted the sword about and let him see the point and he cowered back, shaking.
    “They are death — death, you fool!”
    “Aye! Your death for certain.”
    He slobbered.
    The leems were chained one each side. The sweep of their claws at the ends of the chains practically met along the center-line. There was no way past them while they slashed at anything that approached them there, and while there was probably a wheel and ratchet mechanism for drawing the chains back taut, there was certainly no time now to find it and put it into operation.
    There was no way back through the fires and the enraged worshippers, and there seemed no way ahead.
    The chief priest fell to his knees, wailing. I lifted the child higher on my arm. The leems snarled and slavered, the foam frothing upon them. Their hides hung loose and matted, slimed in filth. The sickly light fluttered as the fires at our backs sucked air past and made the shrunken torch-light waver and fleer.
    With the child to protect, the sword would not serve here. The blade snicked back into the scabbard. The torch was a greasy, poor affair, not one of the great torches of Kregen. But it would do its duty. It must.
    The leems leaped against their chains, snarling, and fell back. I pushed the child more securely — yet again! — into the crook of my arm. I kicked the priest. And I thrust the torch ahead. The flame sizzled hair. The nearest leem yowled, desperate to get at me and tear out my throat and sink his fangs into me.
    “Back, you misbegotten creature!” I yelled, incensed.
    The torch thrust again, burning him about the muzzle. He shrank back. My own back was to his mate; now, with a single step forward, I dare not step back.
    Shaking his head from side to side to avoid the flame, the leem tried to burst past that fiery barrier and get at me. The torch thrust and withdrew, flicking him with fire. His frenzy mounted, as did my own fury, so that we were just two enraged beasts, fronting each other.
    Each step must be judged and taken carefully. The floor, which was in reality the underside of the old ship’s deck, was rotten in places, treacherous with splinters. And there was the priest to kick ahead, like a cringing, mewling football. The leems’ chains rattled. Their roars shook the timbers of the ship. The girl child continued to cry, turning her flushed and tear-streaked face into my shoulder against the brown robe. I held her gently — gently and yet with a grip of iron. After all this, I would not lose her.
    A dozen paces, and the torch a mere sickly waft of flickering flame and greasy smoke, and we were through.
    I hurled the torch at the leem, who yowled and cringed away and the brand struck the far bulkhead and scattered in a pyre of dying sparks.
    Ahead shone a small ragged opening of light.
    The danger of the leems passed, the priest appeared to regain some of his senses. He stood up when I kicked him and hauled him by the scruff of the neck.
    “You are a dead man, unbeliever, defiler—”
    “Shut that claptrap! And keep moving.”
    The roaring at our backs increased as we pressed on for those last few steps. The waft of smoke