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said from the left of the hall.
    “Against custom perhaps.” Sir Bavis seemed to have recovered his aplomb and spoke with his usual authority. “But against the law it is not I feel Saikmar son of Corrie has spoken well. And I declare before you all, and especially before Luchan—whose tongue would appear to have loosened in his mouth since last we were gathered here!—that I have seen this upstart Belfeor but once before, when he came to throw himself upon the city today with the rest of Trader Heron’s caravan. Beyond that I know nothing about him.”
    Throughout the long debate Belfeor had said nothing; he had stood in the same defiant pose with his thumbs hooked in his belt. Now he raised his voice.
    “Am I accepted, then?”
    “Against my will, against the will of us all, but because it is not forbidden, you are accepted,” said Sir Bavis bitterly.
    “Good!” Belfeor said, and grinned around at the scowling nobles. “Moreover, friends, I’m not here, as that young fellow suggested, to have my neck broken by your long. Perhaps in a day or two we’ll see those sneers on the other side of your heads!”
    Seeing the man’s utter self-confidence, Saikmar felt a chill of apprehension. It was ridiculous to think this upstart might succeed! And yet … such assurance must be rooted somewhere.
    “The man’s clearly mad,” he heard his uncle whisper. Possibly, Saikmar thought. But he was terribly afraid that in fact he knew something which the folk of Carrig did not and that his secret might gain him the victory.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Not merely an upstart, but an unbeliever too—surely the gods would never permit a man like that to triumph over the king! In a dark side-chapel of the great temple, hours later, Saikmar’s head still rang with what Belfeor had said. It was the custom that each contender should watch the night through in the chapel where stood his own clan’s symbol and the statues of the appropriate patron gods; belonging to no clan, the intruder naturally put the priests in a quandary over where he might properly keep his watch.
    And Belfeor had said in loud cheerful tones such as men never used in the holy precincts, “Don’t mind me. Anywhere comfortable will do, so’s I can doze off when I feel inclined.”
    Leaning back in his hard chair carved from a single block of stone, Saikmar stared wondering at the god-statues and the twywit symbol. If Belfeor was killed in the hunt, of course, that would be fit reward for his impiety. But if he lived, and worse yet if the king did not …
    Doggedly he drove the idea from his mind. He could not, however, escape the knowledge that the intrusion of Belfeor had placed an intolerable responsibility on him. He had read that fact in everyone’s eyes as he was being dedicated prior to his watch: in his mother’s, his uncle’s, the priests’, the acolytes’ …
He
was the person on whom Carrig depended for the frustration of the intruder.
    To distract himself, and also in the hope that it would encourage him to emulate it, he began to meditate on the nature of his clan animal, the twywit. It was almost as good a beast to claim totem-kinship with as the parradile, for it was agile, cunning, and extremely tough. It was about the weight of a man, having two muscular hind legs with which it could leap when pouncing on prey, or bound across an obstacle such as a creek, when it would retract and hold up its clawed forelimbs. Its normal gait, however, was on all fours, a quick scurrying run. Its head was flat aboveand developed below into short, powerful, heavily fanged jaws. Its fur was thick and smooth, shading from light tan on the head to reddish-brown on the belly and blackish-brown on the back. It was tailless.
    In another way, though, it was a poor clan-sign to boast about, for a few years ago a great pestilence had almost cleared the territory of twywits—to the relief of farmers who had lost valuable stock or even children through its ravages, and to the