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pace where he could, conferring with the taciturn guide who led our party at least twice during the morning. How far away was our rendezvous? I only knew that it lay upon the edge of the waste at some point of landscape which was so noteworthy as not to be mistaken.
     
    Harrowdale with its isolated farms was gone, and yet the road climbed with us. Save for our own party we might have passed through a deserted countryside. No animal, no bird-and certainly no man-came into sight. When winter wrapped the farms their people kept much indoors, the women busy at their looms, the men at such tasks as they wished.
     
    Now followed the sharper descent into Hockerdale and the murmur of water, for the swift flowing stream there was not yet completely ice roofed. We passed a guard post at the head of that dale, and men turned out to salute our leader and exchange words with him and the guide. It was at that pause another pony edged close to mine and she who rode it leaned a little forward in her saddle.
     
    "Do they mean to never give us any ease?" she asked, perhaps of me, perhaps only of the air, that her words might carry to Lord Imgry.
     
    "It would seem not so." I made my answer low-voiced, for I did not want to be heard abroad.
     
    She pulled impatiently at her veil and her hood fell back a little. This was that Kildas whom Tolfana had pricked with her spite at the table. There were dark shadows under her green-blue eyes in this wan light, a pinching about her full lipped mouth, as if both harsh dayshine and the cold had aged and withered her for the nonce.
     
    "You are his choice." she nodded to Lord Imgry. "But you ride mum this morning. What whip of fear did he use to bind you to his purpose? Last eve you swore you would not come-" There was not any sympathy in her, just curiosity, as if her own discomfort might be eased a little by seeing the sores of another sufferer exposed.
     
    "I had the night for reflection." I made the best reply I could.
     
    She laughed shortly. "Mighty must have been those reflections to produce so collected a mind this day! Your screams had the halls ringing bravely when they took you forth. Do you now fancy a sorcerer bridegroom?"
     
    "Do you?" I countered. The thought that Marimme had made such a show of her fear and revulsion was a small worry now. I was not Marimme and I could not counterfeit her well. Lord Imgry had been engrossed all morning in his urge for speed. But what would happen when he found he had been befooled? He needed me to make up the tale of the Bargain, and that should protect me from the full force of any wrath that he would feel upon learning of the substitution.
     
    "Do I?" Kildas drew me out of my thoughts. "As all of us, I have no choice. But-should these Weremen share much with those of our own kind, then I do not fear." She tossed her head, strengthened by her confidence in herself and those weapons chance and nature had given her. "No, I do not fear that I shall be ill received by him who waits my coming!"
     
    "What are they like? Have you ever seen a Rider?" I set myself to explore what she might know. Until this time I had been far more intent upon escape and what lay behind me, than what waited at this ride's end.
     
    "Seen them?" she answered my last question first. "No. They have not come into the Dales, save on raids against Alizon. And they are said then to travel by night, not day. As to what they are like-they wore man forms when they treated with us, and they have strange powers-" Kildas' confidence ebbed and again her fingers pulled at the veil about her throat as if she found it hard to breathe and some cord pressed there against her flesh. "If more is known-that has not been told us." I heard a catch of breath, not far removed from sob to my left. Another had come level with us. Her travel worn robe-she was Solfinna who had shared Kildas' plate the night before-her poverty put further to shame by the other's display.
     
    "Weep out your eyes if you