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and their flying leathers glistened in the red and green radiance all about, and they went over on their backsides. Blood gushed from right hand’s nose and mouth. Left hand could not see, for his helmet jammed down over his face. They both lay on the dusty ground and they did not offer to rise. They did not move at all. Terrible is a Krozair longsword, and terrible even when merely a length of wood, in the hands of a Krozair brother.
    A giant rustling of feathers through the air warned me. I skipped sideways very smartly, and went flat down again and rolled and the net skittered past flailing dust and dead grasses.
    I stood up. Two metal swords lay fallen from nerveless hands. The fluttrells waited twenty or so paces off. The pair with the net circled again. Two polearms, which the flutsmen call ukras, lay in the dust. There were crossbows pouched on the waiting birds. I kept my grip on my length of wood...
    Clearly not fully understanding what had befallen their comrades, the pair with the net tired of trying to snare me. They landed and, together, charged.
    When the dust settled I was in possession of the complete equipment of four flutsmen, including their mounts.
    One of the sky reivers was not quite dead. I bent to him. Blood dribbled from his ears. His eyes were unfocused. I loosened his flying scarf and eased him, finding water in a bottle strapped to a bird’s saddle. Moistening his lips gave him a dying spurt of energy.
    “Who — who are you?” He croaked the words.
    “Rather, dom, who are you? Your band is near?”
    “We gather — in the hills.”
    Whether or not he knew he was dying, I could not say. But he wanted to talk, and he spent his last few moments on Kregen telling me that an army gathered, here in the sparse land by the Mountains of the West. There were mercenaries from all over, and the flutsmen were hired out to join the army as aerial cavalry. He did not know the numbers involved; but he said the army was large — ”Many tents, many totrix cavalry and regiments of paktuns—”
    “Not all mercenaries are paktuns,” I said. “Have they all then won so much renown as to be dubbed paktun and wear the silver mortilhead on its silken ribbons at their throats?”
    “You mock me, dom. But there are many hyrpaktuns with them who wear the golden zhantilhead, the pakzhan, at their throats. You will not — I think — mock them.”
    “I do not mock you. But the trade of mercenary has sadly fallen away in these evil times.”
    I was not about to tell him I had been a flutsman and mercenary myself; he was dying, and so, discovering he worshipped his god, Geasan the Opulent, with some fervor, I was able to administer the last rites he desired. He was lucky. Many and many a man dies on Kregen without that comfort simply because his god is unknown in the place of his death.
    Better to be like me, who acknowledges Zair and Opaz — and Djan! — who need no flummery of that kind, being of the spirit.
    After he was dead I left him and his comrades to be buried by the birds of the air.
    A disturbing and puzzling fact he had mentioned in his dying ramblings was that this army being gathered here was not for use in the west. There were constant incursions of reivers and other unhealthy fighting creatures from the wild lands to the west, and Hamal’s borders here had to be kept tight. So where was this army headed?
    When I was ready to fly off, riding one bird and the other three in trail on halters, I looked down. I saluted gravely; not the Jikai, certainly not that! His name had been Olan the Stux. His bird carried in a stuxcal eight of the heavy javelins. They might be useful. If he hadn’t been so damned anxious about the merchandise — me — and had shot me or stuxed me, he might still be alive. All passes under the hand of Opaz.
    With that sobering thought to remind me of the murkiness of the future, crowded with perils, I took off for Paline Valley.

Chapter four
    Of a Spark in the Cells
    To carry