The Horse Barbarians

4

Jason did not enjoy being unconscious. A red, cloying pain engulfed him and, barely rational, he had the feeling that, if he could only wake up all the way, he could take care of everything. For some reason he could not understand, his head was rocking back and forth, adding immeasurably to the agony, and he kept wishing it would stop, but it did not.

After what must have been a very long time, he realized that, when he was feeling the pain, he must be conscious, or very close to it, and he should use these periods most advantageously. His arms were secured in some manner, he could feel that even if he could not see them, but they still had some degree of movement. The bulk of the power holster was there, pressed between his arm and his side, but the gun would not leap into his hand. His groping fingers eventually found out why when they contacted the ragged end of the cable that connected the gun with the holster.

His shattered thoughts groped for understanding with the same disconnected numbness as had his fingers. Something had happened to him; someone, not something, had hit him. Taken his gun away. What else? Why couldn’t he see anything? Anything other than a diffuse redness when he tried to open his eyes. What else was gone? His equipment belt, surely. His fingers fumbled back and forth at his waist but could not find it.

They touched something. In its separate holder the medildt still remained on the back of his hip. Careful not to hit the release button, if it slipped out of his hand, it was gone, he pressed the heel of his hand up against the device until his flesh contacted the actuating probe. The analyzer buzzed distantly and he never felt the stab of the hypodermic needles through the all-pervading agony in his head. Then the drug took effect and the pain began to seep away.

Without the overriding presence of the pain, be could concentrate that small remaining part of his cOnsciousness on the problem of his eyes. They could not be opened: something was sealing them shut. Something that might or might not be blood. Something that probably was blood considering the condition of his head, and he smiled at his success in completing this complicated line of thought.

Concentrate on one eye. Concentrate on right eye. Squeeze tight shut until it hurt, pull with lids to open. Squeeze shut again. It worked, the pulling, squeezing, tears, dissolving, and he felt the lids start to part stickily.

The white-burning sun shone directly into his eye and he had to blink and look away. He was moving backward across the plains, a jarring and uneven ride, and there was something like a grid not too far from his face. The sun touched the horizon. That was important, he kept telling himself, to remember that the sun touched the horizon directly behind him, or perhaps a little bit to the right.

Bight. Setting. A little to the right. The medikit’s drugs and the traumatic shock were pushing him under again. But not yet. Setting. Behind. To the right.

When the last white glimmer dropped behind the horizon, he closed the tortured eye and this time welcomed unconsciousness.

The sharp pain in his side made a far stronger impression and Jason rolled away from it, trying to scramble to his feet at the same time. Something hard and unyielding bruised his back and he dropped onto all fours. It was time to open his eyes, he decided, and he brushed at his sealed eyelids and managed to unglue them. One look convinced him that he had been far happier with them shut, but it was too late for that now.

The voice belonged to a big, burly man who clutched a two-meterlong lance, with which he had been prodding Jason’s ribs. When he saw that Jason was sitting up with his eyes open, he pulled back the lance and leaned on it, examining his captive. Jason understood their relative positions when he realized that he was in a bell-shaped cage of iron bars, the top of which just cleared his head when he was sitting down. He leaned against the bars and studied his captor.

He was a warrior, that was clear, arrogant and self-assured, from the fanged animal skull that decorated the top of his padded helm to the needle-sharp prickspurs on the heels of his knee-high boots. A molded breastplate, apparently made of the same kind of material as his helm, covered the upper half of his body and was painted in garish designs around the central figure of an unidentifiable animal. In addition to the lance, the man had an efficient-looking short sword slung, without scabbard, through a thong on his belt. His skin was tanned and wind-burned, glistening with some oily substance and, standing upwind of Jason, he exuded a rich and unwashed animal odor.

“I” the warrior shouted, shaking the lance in Jason’s direction.

“That’s a pretty poor excuse for a language!” Jason shouted back.

“I” the man answered, in a shriller voice this time, accompanied with sharp clicking sounds.

“And that one is not much better.”

The man cleared his throat and spat in Jason’s general direction. “Bowab you,” he said, “you can speak the in-between tongue?”

“Now that’s more like it. A broken-down and corrupt form of standard English. Probably used as some sort of second language. I suppose that we’ll never know who originally settled this planet, but one thing is certain, they spoke English. During the Breakdown, when communication was cut off between all the planets, this fine world slipped down into dog-eat-dog barbarism and must have generated a lot of local dialects. But at least they kept the memory of English, debased though it is, as a common language among the tribes. It’s just a matter of speaking it badly enough to be understood.”

“What you say?” the warrior growled, shaking his head over Jason’s incomprehensible burble of words.

Jason tapped his chest and said, “Sure, me speak in, between tongue just as good as you speak in, between tongue.”

This apparently satisfied the warrior because he turned and pushed his way through the throng. For the first time, Jason had a chance to examine the passing men who had just been a blur in the background before. All males, and all warriors, dressed in numerous variations on a single theme. High boots, swords, half armor and helms, spears and short bows decorated in weird and colorful patterns. Beyond them and on all sides were rounded structures colored the same yellowish gray as the sparse grass that covered the plains. Something moved through the crowd, and the men gave way to a swaying beast and rider. Jason recognized the creature from the description given by the survivors of the massacre, of the mounts that had been ridden during the attack.

It was homelike in many ways, yet twice as big as any horse, and covered with shaggy fur. The creature’s head had an equine appearance, but it was disproportionately tiny and set at the end of a moderately long neck. It had long limbs, especially the forelegs, which were decidedly longer than the hind legs, so that its back sloped downward from the withers to the rump, terminating in a tint, fficking tail. The strong, thick toes on each foot had sharp claws that dug into the ground as the beast paced by, guided by the rider who sat just behind the forelimbs at the highest point on the humped back.

A harsh blast on a metallic horn drew Jason’s attention and he turned to see a compact group of men striding toward his cage. Three soldiers with lowered lances led the way, followed by another with a dangling standard of some kind on a pole. Warriors with drawn swords walked alertly, surrounding the two central figures. One of them was the lancejabber who had prodded Jason to life. The other, a head taller than his companions, had a golden helm and breastplate inset with jewels, while curling horns sprouted from both sides of his helm.

He had more than that, Jason saw when he approached the cage. The look of the hawk, or a great jungle cat secure in his rule. This man was the leader and he knew it, accepted it automatically. He, a warrior, leader of warriors. His right hand rested on the pommel of his bejeweled but efficient-looking sword while he stroked the sweep of his great red mustachios with the scarred knuckles of his left hand. He stopped close to the bars and stared imperiously at Jason, who tried, but failed, to return the other’s gaze with the same intensity. His cramped position inside the cage and his battered, scruffy appearance did not help his morale.

“Grovel before Temuchin,” one of the soldiers ordered, and buried the butt end of his lance in the pit of Jason’s stomach.

It might have been easier to grovel, but Jason, bent double with the pain, kept his head up and his eyes fixed on the other.

“Where are you from?” Temuchin asked, his voice so used to command that Jason found himself answering at once.

“From far away, a place you do not know.”

“Another world?”

“Yes. Do you know about other worlds?”

“Only from the songs of the jongleurs. Until the first ship came down, I did not think they were true. They are.”

He snapped his fingers and one of the men handed him a blackened and twisted recoilless rifle. “Can you make this spout fire again?” he asked.

“No.” It must have been one of the weapons of the first expedition.

“What about this?” Temuchin held up Jason’s own gun, its cable dangling where it had been torn from his power holster.

“I don’t know.” Jason was just as calm as the other. Let him just get his hands on the gun. “I will have to look at it closely.”

“Burn this one, too,” Temuchin said, throwing the gun aside. ‘Their weapons must be destroyed by fire. Now tell me at once, other-world man, why do you come here?”

He’d make a good poker player, Jason thought. I can’t read his cards and he knows all of mine. Then what should I tell him? Why not the truth?

“My people want to take metal from the ground,” he said aloud. “We harm no one, we will even pay—”

“No.” There was a flat finality to the sound. Temuchin turned away.

“Wait, you haven’t heard everything.”

“It is enough,” he said, halting for a moment and speaking over his shoulder. “You will dig and there will be buildings. Buildings make a city and there will be fences. The plains are always open.” And then he added in the same flat voice.

“Kill him.”

As the band of men turned. to follow Temuchin, the standard-bearer passed in front of the cage. His pole was topped with a human skull and Jason saw that the banner itself was made up of string after string of human thumbs, mummified and dry, knotted together on thongs.

“Wait!” Jason shouted at their retreating backs. “Let me explain. You can’t just do this—”

But, of course, he could. A squad of soldiers surrounded the cage and one of them bent underneath it and there was the rattling of chains. Jason cowered back as the entire cage swung up on creaking hinges, and he clutched at the bars as the soldiers reached for him.

He sprang over them, kicking one in the face as he went by and crashed into the soldiers beyond. The results were a foregone conclusion, but he made the most of the occasion. One soldier lay sprawled on the ground and another sat up holding his head when the rest carried Jason away. He cursed them, in six different languages, even though his words had as much effect on the stolid, expressionless men as had his blows.

“How far did you travel to reach this planet?” someone asked.

“Ekinortul” Jason mumbled, spitting out blood and the chipped corner of a tooth.

“What is your home world like? Much as this one? Hotter or colder?” Jason, being carried face down, twisted his head around to look at his questioner, a gray-haired man in ragged leather garments that had once been dyed yellow and green. A tall, sleepy-eyed youth stumbled after

him dressed in the same motley, though his were not so completely obscured by grime.

“You know so many things,” the old man pleaded, “so you must tell me something.”

The soldiers pushed the two men away before Jason could oblige by telling him some of the really pithy things that came to mind. With so many men holding him, he was completely helpless when they backed him against a thick iron pole set firmly in the ground and tore at his clothing. The metalcloth and fasteners resisted their fingers until one of them produced a dagger and sawed through the material, ignoring the fact that he was slicing Jason’s skin at the same time. When his clothing had been pulled open to his waist, Jason was bleeding from a dozen cuts and was groggy from the mauling he had taken. He was pushed to the ground and a leather rope lashed around his wrists. Then the soldiers went away.

Although it was early afternoon, the temperature must have been just above the freezing point. With his insulated clothing stripped away, the shock of the cold air on his body brought him instantly to full, shivering consciousness.

What the next step would be was obvious. The strap that secured his wrists was a good three meters long and the other end was fastened to the top of the pole. He was alone in the center of’a cleared area, and there was a bustle on all sides as the hump-backed riding beasts were saddled and mounted. The first man ready uttered a piercing, warbling cry and charged at Jason with his lance leveled. The beast ran with frightful speed, claws digging into the soil, hurtling forward like an unleashed thunderbolt.

Jason did the only thing possible, jumping to the other side of the pole and keeping it between himself and the attacking rider. The man jabbed with his lance but had to pull it back swiftly as he went by the pole.

Only fighting intuition saved Jason then, for the sound of the second beast’s charge was lost in the thunder of the first. He grabbed the pole and spun around it. The lance clanged against the metal as the second attacker went by.

The first man was already turning his mount and Jason saw that a third had saddled up and was ready to attack. There could be only one possible outcome to this game of deadly target practice: he could dodge just so often.

“Time to change the odds,” he said, bending and groping in the top of his right boot. His combat knife was still there.

As the third man started his charge, Jason flipped the knife into the

air and caught the hilt between his teeth, then sawed his leather bindings against its razor edge. They fell away and he crouched behind the slim pole to avoid the stabbing lance. The charge went by and Jason attacked.

He sprang, the knife in his left hand, reaching out with his right to grab the rider’s leg in an attempt to unseat him. But the creature was moving too fast and he slammed into its flank behind the saddle, his fingers clutching at the beast’s matted fur.

After that everything happened very fast. As the rider twisted about, trying to stab down and back at his attacker, Jason sank his dagger right up to its hilt in the animal’s rump.

The needlelike spikes of the prickspurs that the warriors used in place of rowels on their spurs indicated that the creatures they rode must not have very sensitive nervous systems. This was true of the thick hide and pelt over the ribs, but the spot that Jason’s dagger hit, not too far below the animal’s tail, appeared to be of a different nature altogether. A rippling shudder passed through the creature’s flesh and it exploded forward as though a giant spring had been released in its guts.

Already off balance, the rider was tipped from his saddle and disappeared. Jason, clutching at the fur and worrying the knife deeper with his other hand, managed to hold on through one bound, then a second. There was the blurred vision of men and animals streaming by while Jason fought to keep his grip. This proved impossible and, on the third ground-shaking leap, he was tossed free.

Sailing headlong through the air, Jason saw he was aiming toward the space between two of the dome-shaped structures. This was certainly better than hitting one of them, so he relaxed and tucked his chin under as he struck the ground and did a shoulder roll, then another. Landing on his feet, he ran, his speed scarcely diminished.

The domed structures, dwellings of some kind, were scattered about with lanes between them. He was in a wide, straight lane and thoughts of spearheads between the shoulder blades sent him darting off at right angles at the next opening. Outraged cries from behind him indicated that his pursuers did not think highly of his escape. So far, he was ahead of the pack and he wondered how long he could keep it that way.

A leather flap was thrown back on one of the domes ahead and a gray-haired man looked out, the same one who had been trying to question Jason earlier. He appeared to take in the situation in a glance and, opening the flap wider, he motioned Jason toward it.

It was a time for quick decisions. Still running headlong, Jason glanced around and saw that, for the moment, no one else was in sight. Any port in a storm. He dived through the opening dragging the old

man after him. For the first time he was aware that the combat knife was still in his hand, so he pressed it up through the other’s beard until the point touched his throat.

“Give me away and you’re dead,” he hissed.

“Why should I betray you?” the man cackled. “I brought you here. I risk all for knowledge. Now back, while I close the opening.” Ignoring the knife, he began to lace the flap shut.

Looking quickly about the dark interior, Jason saw that the sleepyeyed youth was dozing by a small lire, over which hung an iron pot. A withered crone was stirring something in the pot, completely ignoring the commotion at the entrance.

“In back, down,” the man said, pushing at Jason. ‘They’ll be here soon. They mustn’t find you, oh no.”

The shouting was coming closer outside and Jason could see no season to find fault with the plan. “But the knife is still ready,” he warned, as he sat against the back wall and allowed a collection of musty skins to be draped over his shoulders.

Heavy feet thundered by, shaking the earth, and voices could be heard from all sides now. Graybeard hung a leather shawl over Jason’s head so that it obscured his face, then scrabbled in a pouch at his belt for a reeking clay pipe that he poked into Jason’s mouth. Neither the old woman nor the youth paid any attention to all of this.

They still did not look up when a helmeted warrior tore open the entrance and poked his head inside.

Jason sat, motionless, looking out from under the leather hood, the hidden knife in his hand, ready to dive across the floor and sink it into the intruder’s throat.

Looking quickly about the dark interior, the intruder shouted what could only have been a question. Graybeard answered with a negative grunt, and that was all there was to it. The man vanished as quickly as he had come and the old woman tottered over to lace the entrance tightly shut again.

In his years of wandering around the galaxy, Jason had encountered very little unselfish charity and was justifiably suspicious. The knife was still ready. “Why did you take the risk of helping me?” he asked.

“A jongleur will risk anything to learn new things,” the man answered, settling himself cross-legged by the fire. “I am above the petty squabbles of the tribes. My name is Oraiel, and you will begin by telling me your name.”

“Riverboat Sam,” Jason said, putting the knife down long enough to pull up the top of his metalcioth suit and push his arms into it. He lied by reflex, like playing his cards close to his chest. There were no threatening moves. The old woman mumbled over the fire while the youth squatted behind Oraiel, sinking into the same position.

“What world are you from?”

“Heaven.”

“Are there many worlds where men live?”

“At least 30,000, though no one can be completely sure of the exact number.”

“What is your world like?”

Jason looked around, and, for the first time since he had opened his eyes in the cage, he had a moment to stop and think. Luck had been with him so far, but he was still a long way from getting out of this mess alive.

“What is your world like?” Oraiel repeated.

“What’s your world like, old man? I’ll trade you fact for fact.”

Oraiel was silent for a moment and a spark of malice glinted in his half-closed eyes. Then he nodded. “It is agreed. I will answer your questions if you will answer mine.”

“Fine. You’ll answer mine first as I have more to lose if we’re interrupted. But before we do this twenty-questions business, I have to take an inventory. Things have been too busy for this up until now.”

Though his gun was gone, the power holster was still strapped into place. It was worthless now, but the batteries might come in useful. His equipment belt was gone and his pockets had been rifled. Only the fact that the medikit was slung to the rear had saved it from detection. He must have been lying on it when they searched him. His extra ammunition was gone as well as the case of grenades.

The radio was still there! In the darkness they must not have noticed it in the flat pocket almost under his arm. It only had line-of-sight operation, but that might be enough to get a fix on the ship or even call for help.

He pulled it out and looked gloomily at the crushed case and the fractured components that were leaking from a crack in the side. Some time during the busy events of the last day, it had been struck by something heavy. He switched it on and got exactly the result he expected. Nothing.

The fact that the chronometer concealed behind his belt buckle was still keeping perfect time did little to cheer him. It was jo in the morning. Wonderful. The watch had been adjusted for the 20-hour day when they had landed on Felicity, with noon set for the sun at the zenith at the spot where they had landed.

“That’s enough of that,” he said, making himself as comfortable as was possible on the hard ground and pulling the furs around him. “Let’s talk, Oraiel. Who is the boss here, the one who ordered my execution?”

“He is Temuchin the Warrior, The Fearless One, He of the Arm of Steel, The Destroyer—”

“Fine. He’s on top. I can tell that without the footnotes. What has he got against strangers, and buildings?”

“‘The Song of the Freemen,” Oraiel said, digging his elbow into the ribs of his assistant. The youth grunted and rooted about in the tangled furs until he produced a lutelike instrument with a long neck and two strings. Plucking the strings for accompaniment he began to sing in a high-pitched voice.

There was more like this and it went on for an unconscionably long time, until Jason found himself beginning to nod. He interrupted, broke off the song, and asked some pertinent questions.

A picture of the realities of life on the plains of Felicity began to emerge.

From the oceans on the east and west, and from the Great Cliff in the south, to the mountains in the north there stood not one permanent building or settlement of man. Free and wild, the tribes roved over the grass sea, warring on themselves and each other in endless feuds and conflicts.

There had been cities here, some of them were even mentioned by name in the Songs, but now, only their memory remained, and an uncompromising hatred. There must have been a long and bitter war between two different ways of life, if the memory, generations later, could still arouse such strong emotions. With the limited natural resources of these arid plains, the agrarians and the nomads could not possibly have lived side by side in peace. The farmers would have built settlements around the scant water sources and fenced out the nomads and their flocks. In self-defense, the nomads would have had to band together in an attempt to destroy the settlements. They had succeeded so well in this genocidal warfare that the only trace of their former enemies that remained was a hated memory.

Crude, unlettered, violent, the barbarian conquerors roamed the high steppe in tribes and clans, constantly on the move as their stunted cattle and goats consumed the scant grass that covered the plains. Writing was unknown; the jongleurs, the only men who could pass freely from tribe to tribe, were the historians, entertainers and bearers of news. No trees grew in this hostile climate so wooden utensils and artifacts were unknown. Iron ore and coal were apparently plentiful in the northern mountains, so iron and mild steel were the most common materials used. These, along with animal hides, horns and bones, were almost the only raw materials available. An outstanding exception were the helms and breastplates. While some were made of iron, the best ones came from a tribe in the distant hills who worked a mine of asbestos-like rock. They shredded this to fibers and mixed it with the gum of a broad-leaved plant to produce what amounted to an epoxy-fiber-glass material. It was light as aluminum, strong as steel, and even more elastic than the best spring steel. This technique, undoubtedly inherited from the first, pmBreakdown settlers on the planet, was the only thing that physically distinguished the nomads from any other race of iron-age barbarians. Animal droppings were used for cooking fuel; animal fat, for lamps. Life tended to be nasty, brutish and short.

Every clan or tribe had its traditional pasture ground over which it roamed, though the delimitations were vague and controversial, so that wars and feuds were a constant menace. The domed tents, camacks, were made of joined hides over iron poles. They were erected and struck in a few minutes, and when the tribe moved on, they were carried, with the household goods, on wheeled frames called escungs, like a travois with wheels, which were pulled by the moropes.

Unlike the cattle and goats, which were descendants of terrestrial animals, the inoropes were natives of the high steppes of Felicity. These claw-toed herbivores had been domesticated and bred for centuries, while most of their wild herds had been exterminated. Their thick pelts protected them from the eternal cold, and they could go as long as 20 days without water. As beasts of burden, and chargers of war, they made existence possible in this barren land.

There was little more to tell. The tribes roved and fought, each speaking its own language or dialect and using the neutral in, between tongue when they had to talk to outsiders. They formed alliances and treacherously broke them. Their occupation and love was war and they practiced it most efficiently.

Jason digested this information while he attempted, less successfully, to digest the unchewable lumps from the stew that he had forced himself to swallow. For drink there had been fermented morope milk, which tasted almost as bad as it smelled. The only course he had missed was the one reserved for warriors, a mixture of milk and still-warm blood, and for this he was grateful.

Once Jason’s curiosity had been satisfied, Oraiel’s turn had come and he had asked questions endlessly. Even while Jason ate, he had had to mumble answers, which the jongleur and his apprentice filed away in their capacious memories. They had not been disturbed, so he considered himself safe, for the time being. It was already late in the afternoon and he had to think of a way to escape and return to the ship. He waited until Oraiel ran out of breath then asked some pointed questions of his own.

“How many men are there in this camp?”

The jongleur had been sipping steadily at the achadk, the fermented milk, and was beginning to rock back and forth. He mumbled and spread his arms wide. “They are the sons of the vulture,” he intoned. “Their numbers blacken the plain and the fearful sight of them strikes terror—”

“I didn’t ask for a tribal history, just a nice round figure.”

“Only the gods know. There may be a hundred; there may be a million.”

“How much is 20 and 20?” Jason interrupted.

“I do not bother my thoughts with such stupid figurations.”

“I didn’t think you could do higher mathematics, like counting to one hundred and other exotic computations.”

Jason went over and peered out of the opening between the laces. A blast of frigid air made his eyes water. High, icy clouds drifted across the pale blueness of the sky, while the shadows were growing long.

“Drink,” Oraiel said, waving the leathem bottle of achadh. “You are my guest and you must drink.”

The silence was broken only by the rasp of sand as the old woman scrubbed out the cooking pot. The apprentice’s chin was on his chest and he appçared to be asleep.

“I never refuse a drink,” Jason said, and walked over and took the bottle.

As he raised it to his lips, he saw the old woman glance up quickly, then bend low again over her work. There was a slight stirring behind him.

Jason hurled himself sideways, the drinking skin went flying and the club skinned his ear and crashed into his shoulder.

Still rolling, without looking, Jason kicked backward and his foot caught the apprentice in the pit of the stomach. He folded nicely and the spiked iron bar rolled free of his limp hands.

Oraiel, no longer drunk, pulled a long, two-handed sword from under the furs beside him and swung on Jason. Though the spikes had missed, the bar itself had numbed Jason’s right shoulder and his arm, which hung limply at his side. There was nothing wrong with his left arm, however, so he flung himself inside the arc of the sword before it could descend and locked his hand around the jongleur’s throat, thumb and index finger on the major blood vessels. The man kicked spasmodically, then slumped unconscious.

Always aware of his flanks, Jason had been trying to keep one eye on the old woman, who now produced a gleaming, saw-edged knife, the camack was an armory of concealed weapons, and hopped to the attack. Jason dropped the jongleur and chopped her wrist so the knife fell at his feet.

The entire action had taken about ten seconds. Oraiel and his apprentice were draped over each other in an unconscious huddle, while the crone sobbed by the fire, cradling her wrist.

“Thanks for the hospitality,” Jason said, trying to rub some life back into his numbed arm. When he could move his fingers again, he tied and gagged the woman, then the others, arranging them in a neat row on the floor. Oraiel’s eyes were open, radiating bloodshot waves of hatred.

“As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” Jason said, picking over the furs. “That’s another one you can memorize. I suppose you can’t be blamed for trying to get your information, and the reward money as well. But you were being a little too greedy. I know that you’re sorry now and want me to have enough of these moth-eaten furs to disguise myself with, as well as that greasy fur hat which has seen better days, and perhaps a weapon or two.”

Oraiel growled and frothed a little around his gag.

“Such language,” Jason said. He pulled the hat low over his eyes and picked up the spiked club, which he had wrapped in a length of leather. “Neither you nor the old girl have enough teeth for the job, but your assistant has a fine set of choppers. He can chew through the leather gag, then chew the thongs on your wrists. By which time I shall be far from here. Be thankful I’m not one of your own kind, or you would be dead right now.” He picked up the skin of achadh and slung it from his shoulder. “I’ll take this for the road.”

There was no one in sight when he poked his head out of the camach, so he stopped long enough to lace the flap tightly behind him. He squinted up at the sky once, then turned away among the domed rows.

Head down, he shuffled away through the barbarian camp.