Day after day the hunting band wandered till, late one afternoon as they took thought for the night’s camp, a rider in strange colors approached across a clearing, right hand held high for parley. Yellow hair flowed from under his leather helmet, unbraided in further token of peace. Finding no hostile reception, he rode up to announce himself in a loud clear voice. Heathr he was, hearth-ward of Dunagdaen of the kingdom of Bordegund, not a day’s ride to their west. His king, Hlafarr of the Dunare, with his entourage had been seeking the Madroch these three days and more; Hlafarr was even now scarcely half a mile distant and, begging the leave of the noble warriors before him, he, Heathr, would wind his horn to summon his master before Deorgard.

Leave being warily granted, Heathr raised a curling ram’s horn and blew a clear, hollow note to startle the drowsy sunset. They waited not long before half a hundred riders rumbled into their clearing, some wearing the green with yellow double-stripes that mantled Heathr, some in checky of bright red and white, but most in even stripes of blood-red and midnight-blue bound by fingers of yellow.

Hlafarr, he of the twisted gold banding his wild red hair, and gold wire braiding his equally red beard, swept down from his horse and strode toward the Madroch with a young darkhaired man hurrying to keep up. Dunmadroch men drew their mounts together to bar his impetuous path and he halted, but he flung a high, proud stare at Deorgard. The war-king considered, then reached out a booted foot to shove the rump of Maglad’s bay, and his protectors drew aside. The young man stood forth, gripping tight his red-yellow-blue ribboned staff.

“Great king!” he boomed, slowly so that his words reached every ear: no bard he, but he had learned somewhere how to shout a speech. “Fame flies before you like a white herald-bird. Even in fair Bordegund have we heard of the might of Dunmadroch, before whom armies fall like grain in the harvest. We know how the Snow Lion cast down the Great-axe in the Glen of Slaughter, Berongil. We have heard the lamentation of the Bears of Dun Aenwin. And word has come to us, also, of the happy vales of Aellicia, where all men name Deorgard their king and high-king.

“Who would defy one so gifted of the gods? for surely the Holy Ones hold him in high esteem! Who would deny so auspicious a lord? Who could wish to live outside the light of his glorious name?

“Therefore do we, the people of Dunagdaen,” here he turned to bow to the contingent of green and yellow, “of Dun Eftring,” he bowed to the red and white, “and of Dunare”—here, Hlafarr himself bowed, and all those of the red, blue and yellow with him—“do petition Deorgard the Madroch, Master of Men, to accept us also as his people. For this gift do we of Bordegund bring gift of our own.” He nodded to Heathr, who sounded his horn again.

In the center of the Bordegundians, one figure had sat slumped: asleep, bored, or disgusted, Raian, peering over Deorgard’s shoulder from his stallion’s rump, could not tell. Now he was led forth, a balding, brown-bearded, potbellied man, and Raian saw that the man’s arms were bound at his back, and a slave-collar glinted upon his neck. But he straightened as he came near, held his head high, and met Deorgard’s stare resolutely.

“Here do we of Bordegund deliver unto Deorgard the Madroch, Lion among Men—Toryarl, the Manan, king in Fenustad, and all his people, Dunmanan and Dun Flotweland both, behind him. Accept him, and his people and land, if you would accept us, Rald Dunrald!”

Raian felt Deorgard shift in his seat before him. The big man was quite taken aback. Well he might be, for the Geillari had no real precedent for this sort of capitulation. Even Harka of Duncardrogh, for all his very real pride in serving the man who had overmastered him, still had insisted on being overmastered. Perhaps these Bordegundians, sensitive to possible charges of cowardice, had made war upon Fenustad by way of acquiring proof of their hardihood, taking the lesser foe to escape the greater.

All bards had gone to competition, except for a handful of mid-ranked youths, whose counsel no one sought. Bradgith would not have been present anyway, preferring not to camp for less than war. No one ventured to advise Deorgard now, nor did he seek any. He sat now quite still upon his horse, and stared at the Dunare herald.

Raian knew that stare. Deorgard used it often, but especially when he was puzzled or confused and, rather than betray this, would thus force confusion back upon the other. Silence filled the glade. Summer’s heat hung about them, dry and smelling of dusty straw from so many rainless days, and not a breath of air stirred. Grasshoppers rustled, and a wood thrush called from deep in the trees.

King Hlafarr fidgeted. The herald did not move, but Raian thought he looked increasingly worried. Finally, Hlafarr burst out, “Will you have our gift, Lord?”

Then Deorgard moved, to yawn. Crooking a finger, he summoned the “gift,” but a snarl beat back the men who would have accompanied him. Tapping his horse’s flanks with his heels delicately, the bound Toryarl eased himself forward.

“You’ll serve me?” Deorgard growled.

Toryarl looked him up and down through a considering scowl. At last he nodded, once. “Aye. And my people.”

Deorgard raised his glance to Hlafarr. “Loose his hands. He’s no use to anyone like that.”

Hlafarr signed to his herald, who swept up to obey. Deorgard stretched in his saddle, gazed appraisingly at the weather—clear and blue yet again—and the clearing already welling with shadow, and Hlafarr raised his hand.

“Lord,” he said mildly, “we are not yet unborne of all our gifts.”

Deorgard turned the stare upon him again.

After a moment the king of Bordegund hurried into the presentations: three gold cups, each set with blue and yellow gems, the colors of Dunmadroch; three heavy gold bracelets, each three fingers wide and Hlafarr looked openly anxious when he saw how badly his artisans had underestimated the thickness of the war-lord’s forearms. At least the brightsmiths had not been so foolish as to make closed bands, and Deorgard idly pried two of the three wide enough to fit, passing the third to his own herald to hold with the cups. Three gold torques followed, and for the first time the Madroch seemed genuinely pleased. Raian felt the rumble of his interested, “Hmmm!” though only Maglad, close by his lord’s right hand, might have actually heard it. One of the torques ended its braided and beaded curve in two walnut-sized heads, one, a man’s, his eyes wide and teeth bared in battle-rage; the other a ravening wolf. Deor-gard, man-wolf, the wolf in man-shape. The king examined it closely, passed it to Maglad and the men closest about him, who praised it gladly, then took it back and wrapped it about his throat. Raian thought he had never seen a man look so relieved as Hlafarr of Dunare.

“And lastly, lord, accept this!” Hlafarr held out his hand, and the gangly redhaired youth behind him, surely his son or nephew, placed in it a stiff, yard-long palm-wide object swathed in fine red wool. Hlafarr whipped away the wrapper to display a sword sheathed all in black leather, its hilts bound in black thongs, and all Deorgard’s men pricked up with wide eyes. The Dunare king drew the blade left-handed, laid it across his red-wool-draped arm, and presented it to the war-lord, in silence, letting the gift say what only it could.

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It looked like a sliver of fog, or a shard of a river at twilight, the steel wonder. And though Hlafarr stepped forward to hand it up to the great king, Deorgard swung one leg over his horse’s head and dropped—with a lightness that had never yet failed to startle a new acquaintance—to the ground to meet him. He took it up studiously, turned it to gaze down each near-invisible edge, tipped it to make the still-blue sky above ripple up and down in its length, stepped free of the horses to carve the air into deep chunks. Then he grinned, flashing all his teeth, even the three gold ones. Thrusting the point deftly at Hlafarr’s chest, he thundered, “Done!” And all the clearing rang with deafening cheers.

Soon a great bonfire drove back the deepening twilight. Meat and mead were lavished upon everyone, even the thralls. Toryarl the slave-king shared Raian’s duties for the Madroch, and so the boy was close enough to hear when Deorgard bent Toryarl before him and demanded, quietly, half in question, “You will serve me.”

Toryarl shrugged. “Thus I said.”

“And—? If it had not been for—eh?” Deorgard tipped his head slightly in the direction of the now-raucous redbeard.

Toryarl’s eyes flickered, expressionless, towards the man who had bested him, then appraised the Madroch. A reluctant grin tugged at the corner of his sullen mouth. “Sooner or later, I’d imagine. Lord,” he added, but the swift crack of Deorgard’s laughter drowned the word, and almost silenced the whole camp. The great king bounded to his feet, dragged Toryarl to him by his tunic, spun him about, and wrestled with the hasp of the slave collar.

“My lord,” began Hlafarr, fumbling quickly at his belt pouch, Raian guessed for the key. But with a howl of impatience, Deorgard stuffed all eight fingers under the band, making all the muscles of his great arms bulge and Toryarl’s eyes bug, and the collar snapped. Deorgard tossed the wreck aside, staggered the still-choking Toryarl with a mighty clap on the back, and made him sit, facing the fire, at his feet. A crook of his finger summoned Hlafarr to sit beside the new-freed king, and Deorgard seated himself magnificently above them. Men cheered again, and the mead flowed.

Raian had not cheered. Not that he thought his unwelcome master did not deserve it; what living man deserved it more? Nor was it only that cheering was neither expected nor particularly welcome from a thrall. He was, rather, distracted. Hlafarr, and this Toryarl—something about them nagged at his thought, and he kept staring at them as if sight of them might jog it loose.

The clear night cooled. The bonfire faded as nearly two hundred men sank into sleep at last, and the grey starlight gave faint silver form to the world. Horses whuffled, tree-frogs and crickets rang like tiny brass bells, the dry air chilled. Sentries paced like ghosts, Wolf snored gently, and Raian stared at the stars. The Scythe dangled from the Pole star.

Hlafarr, and presumably his barons, the lords of the two other clans of Bordegund, yielded to Deorgard before he had even asked—and seemed pleased enough about it. Toryarl, too, conceded that the Madroch would be master “sooner or later.” Maybe the Geillari tide rolled now more over other Geillari than Sferiari, but that was only because there were so many more of them. High in the Tre-Uissig the Sferan folk had met the invader with welcome, made him as much Sferan as they became Geillan, and thought, smugly, oh, smugly, that they had thereby escaped the menace. But Geilla would take Geilla almost as readily as Sfera; and most considered Dunwyrding to be nearly as Sferan a prize as could be wished. Time would be, and soon, when this Deorgard, or one like him, brought battle once again to the highlands, and no offer of brotherhood would stay his sword. The first Geillan clans scattered through the new land like children turned loose on a treasure-hunt. They would surge back as a united force that Kinnaith-Dunwyrding could not match.

Raian watched the Pole star twinkle above the sullen airs. By the time Deorgard took thought for the highlands, he would have the power of many kingdoms behind him. But his was the will, he the Pole star of Geillan ambition. Wait—there was a kingdom or two, down toward Andrastir, who did not recognize the Madroch; Dun—what was it?—Brean, yes, and one other, of the kingdom of Wexsa; and the Brean styling himself Earl of Maldan, truly enough until just a few short years ago. Perhaps the Brean might raise enough resistance to keep Deorgard busy, away from Tre-Uissig. Or if not him, some northern king. Raian scowled into the darkness. But competitors might compete for the Uissig, especially if she seemed—as of course she must; the wonderful steel sword of Dunare’s gifting had not seemed quite so amazing to the boys of the Tre-Uissig—a delectable prize.

What if the Uissig had to face only one man mad for conquest? The Pole star. If he could be turned—then all who followed him must likewise turn.

Raian had no idea what might dissuade Deorgard from an assault on his mountain home. But of all the chieftains of the Geillari, he was the only one of whom Raian had any chance to learn anything. If Deorgard became, indeed, high-king of the Perian Geillari, he whose word would be law to them from Dorrocan’s Wall to far Elomar, then if he said nay to Tre-Uissig, she must be safe, for at least so long as his reign lasted.

Raian stared unwinking at the sparkling Pole star. And Bordegund had come willing—if only because harvest was so near and they feared a loss of harvesters, or crops ridden down and burned—and Fenustad seemed to think it all but fated. What that meant, he could not yet see. Meanwhile, he must study his man until, when he and Wolf escaped at last, he could bear home not only warning, but intelligence. Hah! Of all the prizes of the hunt he had won for prince and chief, this would be the greatest.

Wolf sucked thoughtfully at his teeth, when Raian shared the idea with him as they roused the breakfast fire in the dusty dawn. Presently he cautiously suggested that whatever was to befall Rothric, whether the triumph or the failure of that Darian scoundrel, had surely come to pass by now, meaning, he explained, that escape was no longer so urgent. “And I could stick this,” he tugged at his collar and curled his lip, “if I could think I was really a spy. In disguise, like.”

Raian’s jaw dropped, and then he grinned and hugged him fiercely. “You great lunk!” He seized Wolf’s ears and planted a fat kiss on his hairy cheek. Wolf yelped and flung him off. But instead of leaping to the fight, he pointed an arch finger at him and gloated, “See? I told you you’d think of something!” Then they fought.

Thereafter their predicament lay lighter upon them. Raian succored himself, when the sense of his bondage bit deepest, in reveries of how he would stand before Prince Ethain and Fiod the Wyrd in the Privy Closet where they received their most sensitive counsel.

Seven years was all that Geillan law allotted to enslavement. Would Deorgard be high king by then? Raian chuckled darkly. If he did not slow his pace, he might do it in seven months. Good. For if Wolf and he found escape too soon before that, their intelligence would be that much less valuable. Raian looked up from stirring breakfast and waved imaginary magical gestures to all the quarters of the circle of the horizon and willed all the clans of the Galring folk to yield to Deorgard. Wolf stared, but asked no question.

And it could be worse. Kin-thralls often came in for much worse than indifferent treatment, kicked or made the butts of cruel jests. As the king’s personal property, however, he was as out-of-bounds as any of Deorgard’s gear, his bow or his belt or his spoons. Given Maglad’s status, Wolf fared but slightly worse.

“And at least we’re not in Daria,” Raian pointed out as they cleaned up the oatmeal-kettle.

“Hey?”

“Darian slaves are for life.”

“No!”

“True!”

“The—” Wolf balked for an adequately savage epithet. “Well, that’s just evil. I’m just sorry I never had a chance to smash our man’s teeth in, then. Grr!”

The Dunmadroch kettle had never become so clean since it first left the bronzesmith’s forge.