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the dogs. Her holed skull, if painted,’ he added, ‘will make a lovely lamp with oil and a wick inside. Do her honour.’ Khursp was the poet among them. He had been a whaler before and always, he said, begged pardon of the whales and fish he slew. ‘God allows it,’ he said, ‘providing it’s for food or cover, or to defend.’
    The tigress’s fur was lush. They combed it with their fingers.
    â€˜She’s one of the best we’ve taken – so glossy and full.’
    Khursp straightened. ‘Now we see why. Ah, shit.’
    Turning her they had found her primed with milk, her dugs rosy from use.
    Black luck to kill a nursing mother.
    â€˜No wonder the male was here and she so tetchy. Over there,’ said Arok, ‘that hole through the ice under the trees.’
    They went to see, and there was a single cub about six days old, pretty with its youth, blue-eyed and whining on a bed of ice-moss and bones.
    â€˜Let’s take the poor boy home,’ said Khursp.
    â€˜We could raise him,’ said Fenzi. ‘Perhaps for the chariots when he’s grown.’
    A sound behind made them draw their heads out of the ice-cave so fast necks were ricked.
    Holas were shouting.
    â€˜Arok – a band of men is coming!’
    Arok’s brows contracted. ‘This country’s empty.’
    Through all their trek inland, all their sojourn during which they had put up the garth and the House, none of them had seen even in the distance another human being than their own.
    â€˜What sort of men?’
    â€˜About a hundred, warrior-looking, all mounted on a kind of beast – like great sheep—’
    Arok scrambled up the slope where the look-out was. Standing there under two or three crystallized palms, he too saw. A hundred, a hundred and fifty men riding tall sheep that galloped with the rhythmic, sickening lurch of a ship. They were heading straight towards the area of the hunt. Decidedly any activity here was what had brought them.
    Too near to flee, too many to fight.
    Arok directed his warriors. They mounted their chariots, and into Arok’s vehicle was lugged the female lionet’s body. Fenzi ran out from the cave, the lionet baby squalling and clawing in his arms. Leaping back into his car Fenzi held the struggling cub in one arm, the reins round his waist. One hand was free now for sword or dagger. He seemed not to care. ‘Hush,’ he said to the lionet. ‘Hush, baba.’ And the lionet grew still.
    Extravagant clouds of snow and rime spurled up from the advancing band.
    Unpleasantly Arok was reminded of the Lionwolf’s legions on the march. Then of the reiver raid that had dispossessed him of his first son Dayadin.
    He drew his sword with a crisp abrasive noise.
    He began to see yellow and red cloth, with silver and brass winking on the fitments of the peculiar sheep-like riding animals. They had long necks like serpents beneath sheep’s heads, and behind on their backs rose a pair of hills which seemed a part of their bodies. Between the hills their riders perched. In colour the beasts were various browns, some almost black, and one almost white as dirty cream. When the mass was about seventy feet from the Holas a group of the animals separated and came lolloping forward, the white one to the front.
    Arok indicated to his men that they should wait. He flicked the reins of his chariot and drove forward alone.
    He rode into the space between the Holas and the unknown riders. By the Eye of God, though, the sheep-brutes were big – bigger than lamasceps.
    We have no language in common . He thought this almost idly. Then, They’re angry . Then: Is Chillel’s magic still on me? I think not. I was hurt in the last fight. I can die, now .
    He offered the Jafn salute, fist to shoulder, head unbowed. A politeness. He conserved himself. The other side was now mostly static, drawn up in jostling lines. Just the pale animal picked