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him was going on. And this meant I delayed my own entry into the fight and assistance to Seg and Nath.
    So, and without any hidden meanings in this case, you can see that I thus risked the lives and sanity of these poor half-demented and savagely brutalized women.
    Seg shot. There is little that can be added to those evocative words. Seg Segutorio shot.
    Nath the Impenitent, sword a brand of flame, leaped down into the chamber and started to lay about him. Malkos screeched, spouted blood, and died.
    Most of the gorilla-faced diffs were without armor. Their weapons were piled against one wall. They had been chasing the women, joying in the licence allowed them by the Witch of Loh. Bestial though they were, they died like any mortal man.
    I saw Nath swing his sword in a cunning drawing stroke. The malko’s head flew off to roll bouncing on the filthy straw-matted floor. Crimson blood from the severed neck spouted across the white bosom and neck of the girl still clasped in the malko’s arms. The crimson splash seared into white skin. The woman drew a breath to scream, and the headless body fell away, tumbling onto the straw. She put her hands to herself, looking down, and she could not find the breath to scream any more.
    Nath surged on, his brand a bar of crimson. Seg’s shafts spitted malkos as they ran for their weapons.
    I shook Kov Loriman as a teacher shakes a recalcitrant child.
    “Look, Loriman. Look on what goes forward here. If that lady there were the Lady Hebe—”
    The girl to whom I pointed, slim and shrieking and naked and distraught almost beyond reason, struggled in the grip of a malko so passionately involved he had failed to grasp the significance of the other uproar going on about him.
    “Suppose that were the Lady Hebe, Loriman! She might be dead; there are many other ladies demanding your service. You are called the Hunting Kov, Loriman. Is your prideful selfishness so profound and your arrogant self-esteem so great, that you have forgotten you are a hunting kov and—”
    There was more I was wound up to spout into his ear. But he let rip with a groaning, snorting howl of anguish. He snatched up the sword in his fist. His face tautened, lost its slack look of imbecility, hardened into a semblance of the Hunting Kov I knew.
    “By all the gods of Panachreem!” he screeched.
    He whirled the sword once about his head and tore free of my grasp, hurled himself down into the melee.
    “And about bloody time too, by Krun!” I said as I unlimbered the Krozair brand and roared into the fray.
    Some of the malkos, naked as they were, had reached their stacked weapons. They took up their swords, thraxters mostly, and turned to face us. There was no doubt in their minds that even after this surprise which had brought down a number of them, they would quickly dispose of us four foolish souls.
    By this time Seg had knocked off most of the isolated targets. Those remaining were masked by the caterwauling women or by the tables they used as barricades or even by Nath and Loriman. Seg stashed his longbow and drew his drexer and with sword in fist joined me as we hurtled into combat.

Chapter five
    How Loriman the Hunter returned to life
    Dour, stocky, withdrawn people, malkos, prone to savagery beyond the bounds of reason. They have much body hair. Their gorilla-like faces are capable of expressions, emotions clearly discernable to any apim. Now, as they battled back at us, after lust came rage.
    Seg’s quiver was empty. So that was the real reason he had stopped shooting. His sword flamed alongside mine.
    No fighting is a pretty affair, no matter how the romanticists attempt to dress it up in fine language. Oh, yes, there is a panache, a surge of blood and a feeling that what you are about, being worthwhile, uplifts the spirits. But it is a dreadful business. When a heavy steel blade swishes through the air powered by the muscles and energy of a full-grown man, and strikes flesh and blood, the results may be