again."

"Here," cried Besan, and flung himself at the giant.

In that instant a hot fire seemed to consume the chill in his bones and he felt no more fear. Detch's startled oath and his own sword knife came out together. Their blades clicked.

It was Besan's first encounter with unshielded blades. One of his weapons went spinning in that first swift onslaught and then the practiced skills of his fencing class came to his defense.

He turned the hacking sword and his own blade ripped across Detch's hairy chest. The pain drew a cry from the big savage's throat and his sword knife slashed more furiously. And already the cave was filled with the choking foul haze that was the defense of all Saaaran humanoids.

Detch roared for aid. In a few moments others of the tribe would be coming and they would be trapped. Besan drove his blade through the clumsy guard of the bigger man into the hairy chest.

Detch went down. Besan wiped his streaming eyes and darted toward the cave's rear entrance where Relsa Dav and the others were waiting.

"Good work, boy," said Nard Rost exultantly. "I hoped that you'd prove I was right."

Right about what? Besan wondered, as he helped roll the slab back into its appointed slot.

Nor were they any too soon. From the cave they had so recently quitted there sounded startled cries and shouts of rage. If Detch were not dead they would soon have a party of warriors on their heels.

Lifa hurried before them, leading the way. Once she stopped in a storeroom and tucked several small bags of goorn dust into her garment's inner pouch. To her it meant wealth and, although Besan told her Garro law forbade possession of the narcotic, she did not throw it away.

They emerged at last in the valley above the caves and beyond the barrier of logs at its upper end. A dense thicket of thorny brush shielded the entrance and sheltered them from the leathery-winged wadts cruising overhead, as they pushed westward toward Rhilg.

Morning found them in a region of rocky gulches and vegetation choked streams but a score of Terran miles from the Rhilg Hills. Far ahead the majestic black cone of Rhilg lifted above the heaped-up jumble of wooded hills and ridges.

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