Santhe looked over his shoulder and counted noses. "O Gods."

Alouzon did not wait: she gestured for Santhe to go on and herself made for the stand of trees where the mounts had been tethered, pausing only long enough to shove Baares toward Kyria's gathering darkness. The Vayllen man had been staring at the weapons about him, but he shook himself out of his thoughts and followed his wife into the gloom.

About Kyria's staff had grown up an impenetrable blackness, and in a moment, sorcerers, warriors, and Vayllens had vanished as though a curtain of night had been drawn over them. "Get in here, Allie," shouted Kyria.

Alouzon winced at the diminutive, but did not reply. She heard the sound of Jia's breathing a short distance ahead, and heard also, to her left, the faint crunch of boots on grass and dry moss. Gray faces.

The footsteps were suddenly almost on her, and she plastered herself against the trunk of a great oak, willing her heart to beat silently, holding her breath. A figure passed in the night, so close that she might have reached out and touched it, and faintly-very faintly- she saw the moonlight gleam dully on a rifle barrel.

M-16. Fascinated in spite of the danger, she stared as the man, for it was indeed a man, moved slowly by, his hands ready and easy on his camouflaged rifle. His head swung carefully from one side to another, searching, listening. Alouzon caught a glimpse of goggling lenses where his eyes should have been, and was very nearly sick before she realized that the travesty of a face she was seeing was, in reality, a gas mask.

He seemed of no particular nationality and no obvious allegiance, for his uniform seemed to partake equally of all times and places, and the mask hid his features. He could have been anyone, of any race, and might have come from any modern battlefield ... or from Kent State.

The universal soldier. She was shaking so badly that she thought he must surely hear. My universal soldier.

Another passed, then another, their garb and masks identically nondescript. One carried a machine gun- an M-60-on his back; the rest were armed like the first. Picking their way along the path, they glided almost silently through the trees, their weapons ready.

Then they were gone, moving away, the sounds of their passage fading into the background chatter of the helicopter. Jia was on the other side of the path they had traced, and had held himself in utter silence. Alouzon hoped that he would stay that way: she did not want to have to fight.

Easing away from the tree, she stepped carefully across the track and slid through a dry thicket without a sound. Barely ten feet behind her, she knew, were her friends; but they might as well have been on another planet for all the help they could offer.

She found Jia more by touch than by sight or sound, for the thicket hid the moon, and the helicopter was returning, moving slowly over the tree tops, rhythmically gusting the branches. "Come on, guy," she whispered. "You've gotten me out of some bad shit, and now I'm gonna do you."

A flare blossomed suddenly above her head, and she heard the squawk of a radio. ' 'Delta-nine, this is two actual. I have movement in the trees twenty yards to the southwest..."

She was already swinging up onto Jia's back. "C'mon boy, let's move. Find that road."

A bullet made a sucking noise through the branches above her head, followed immediately by the crack of the discharge. Jia needed no more urging. He leaped a fallen log and detoured around to the right. When his hooves hit the road, he was in full gallop.

Within seconds, though, Alouzon saw lights burning ahead. Darkness and fright had thoroughly muddled her, and she was leading the Grayface patrol straight toward the defenseless village she had seen when her party had first encountered the Vayllens. "Jia, no!" She had no bridle, but she tugged at his mane and forced him to slow, stop, and reverse direction.

The helicopter wheeled, dropped another flare, and turned to follow the fleeing rider.

What next? Grenades? Mortars? . . .

Tracers-orange, blurring with speed-punched holes in the forest and whipped by her head. The Gray-faces were closing on the road, moving to cut off her escape. She sent Jia into the tree line and wove among the trunks. Once again she was playing a lethal game of hide and seek.

What kind of place had she created that could include such disparate entities as pacifist healers and search-and-destroy patrols? Vaylle was a study in nightmare contradictions, and as she rode Jia through the dark, bullet-haunted forest-blundering into low hanging branches, starting in fear at puddles of moonlight (uncertain and fitful guides in this blackness!)- she knew that it could only have arisen from the melange of violence and victimization, frantic hope and fierce hate, that had characterized her life.

I did it to them. I'm going to have to fix it.

The moon rose toward the zenith, laving the forest in silver. Alouzon saw motion ahead, but a moment before she turned Jia away into the deeper parts of the forest, it took on shape and form and turned into Marrget and Karthin.

They beckoned urgently. Alouzon rode straight for them, the helicopter almost directly behind her, the downwash from its rotors shredding branches and buds. "Come on, Jia. Another flare, and it's gonna be curtains."

The ground was clear, almost a meadow. Marrget and Karthin pointed to a blackness that lay behind them, and Alouzon sent Jia leaping into it.

She could see nothing. She might have been blind. Jia stopped short and whinnied frantically, but Kyria spoke nearby. "Easy, boy. Easy. You're safe here."

The white hand of the sorceress gleamed in the en- veloping pitch and descended on the forehead of the beast. Jia calmed.

Alouzon was still straining her eyes. "Where am I?"

"At the camp. Keep it down, will you? I'm not sure how good the aural shields are."

The sound of the helicopter was muffled, distant. It drew nearer, then faded. Panting, sweating in spite of the cold, Alouzon bent her head down to Jia's neck and sobbed. She had finally realized how terrified she was. "Dindrane?" she choked.

"I am here, Dragonmaster."

"This is ..." She instinctively looked for the priestess, but Kyria's shields were impenetrable. "This is what you've been living with?"

"For the last six months. Surely."

Tears were streaking her face. I'm gonna do it. Not for me. For them. "How the hell do you manage?"

"We live and we die," said the priestess. Her voice was proud and unshaken. "We move from one border of the Far Lands to the other, leaving and returning. We are not afraid of death."

Marrget and Karthin had entered the camp immediately after Alouzon. "Do you not defend yourselves?" said the big man.

"Defend? What a curious way you have of using that word. To take up arms and kill seems to me to be more an attack than a defense."

Marrget was shocked. "You do nothing!"

As though in response came the muffled sound of gunfire and explosions. Dindrane sighed, and Alouzon guessed that she had hung her head. "That is Daelin being destroyed. The Grayfaces turn on the less fortunate."

"Then," said Marrget, "let us go and offer what assistance we can, even if we must die fighting."

"Surely not!" Baares's cry was one of shock and horror. "Of all those who should not take life, you should be foremost among them."

"You will let go of my arm, O man." Marrget's voice was cold.

"Baares!" Dindrane said sharply. "Do not touch her so. She bears life."

"Aye," said Marrget, "and death too. Alouzon? Karthin? Santhe? Kyria? Will you come with me?"

Alouzon could have felt the Vayllens' shock through a brick wall. "Dindrane," said Baares, "can we not stop them?"

The priestess was already groping through the murk. "Marrget, child, do not do this to yourself. That you bear arms is evil enough, but to kill others when your soul is so inextricably bound up with creation is an obscenity."

Another explosion. Faint screams. The automatic fire of the machine gun was a sound as of the distant tearing of paper. Daelin was obviously being leveled, but though Alouzon sympathized with Marrget's sentiments, she wondered what help fifth-century weapons could offer.

"My lady," Marrget was saying, "do not speak to me of obscenities. To stand idle while your people are killed is the basest kind of cowardice. For what reason should I stay my hand?"

Dindrane's reply was framed by two colossal detonations that seemed absurdly out of proportion with the size of the tiny village. "For the sake of the Goddess and the God, woman! Are you so unfeeling that you do not know?''

"Know?" Alouzon heard a frightened suspicion dawning in Marrget's voice. "Know what?"

"Child," said Dindrane, "you are pregnant."

* CHAPTER 14 *

Marrget's innate courage had sustained her through the weeks and months of her womanhood, and it did not desert her now. She allowed Karthin to fold her in his arms, but even in the darkness it was obvious that the captain was holding herself as straight as ever, her proud head unbent.

"Marrha," Karthin was saying softly, "Marrha. I love you. I am here."

"So are we all here," said Santhe as he groped his way toward Marrget. "Dear friend, give me your hand."

Marrget did not speak for a moment. Then: "You have it, Santhe," she said, her voice husky. "But I am afraid that this is a far cry from Vorya's tent. I know not whether to weep or laugh."

"A woman would know, perhaps. I confess I do not."

Marrget chuckled. "Well, I suppose that I shall tell you when I find out.'' There was effort in her voice, and she changed subjects with an almost physical jerk. "But we have obligations. Bandon has yet to be avenged. Quay, also. Our common enemies are destroying another town. What say you? Shall we show them in what currency Gryylth repays its debts?"

"Child," said Dindrane, "I implore you: give up this madness."

Daelin continued to die in a distant melange of blood and detonation. Marrget drew her sword. "I know not what you mean by madness, Magistrate Dindrane. To do otherwise than follow the dictates of my conscience seems to me to be true madness." She snorted. "Or would you have me bent over the cooking fire, or scrubbing pots?''

" 'Tis among the honored of any people that you should find your place," said the priestess. "Bearing children is a holy thing."

"I have only to give up my sword and my freedom," said Marrget ironically. "Am I correct?"

"You ..." Dindrane floundered in incomprehension. "You cannot take life and bear it too."

Santhe and Karthin muttered angrily.

"I can, and I will, lady," said Marrget. "I will do what I must. I have done so before, in spite of affliction."

Alouzon slid from Jia's back and stumbled through the murk. "Marrget? Can I help?"

Marrget drew a deep breath. "I said before that I would live. I know who I am, and I will not disgrace myself, whether in battle or in childbirth." She squeezed Alouzon's hand. "You will not need to beat me this time, friend."

The gunfire and explosions died suddenly, the helicopter made a final pass, the radio squawked one last time. Daelin was gone. Alouzon's senses, sharpened by danger and the Dragonsword, told her that the Grayfaces had faded back into the forest. At her word, Kyria dismissed the darkness.

Moonlight flooded the clearing. Leaning heavily on her staff, the sorceress nodded to Marrget. "Don't let them give you any shit, girl. You just do what you have to." She slumped suddenly. Tears were streaking her face. "Just don't ask me for anything more right now," she choked. "I'm through. Santhe? Put me to bed, will you? I'm making an ass of myself."

The councilor embraced Marrget, then went to Kyria and silently led her to her blankets. She leaned on him, her head heavy against his chest. His arm was about her shoulders.

Manda was standing off by herself, shaking, eyes downcast. If Marrget's pregnancy had further entangled the snare of emotions in which she was caught, she said nothing of it. Solemnly, she approached Marrget and saluted her in the manner of a common soldier. Marrget examined her from within Karthin's arms-face drawn, eyes uneasy-as though she expected a sudden attack.

"In my land," said Manda, "women are honored as maids and mothers both. Therefore I wish you well. May ..." She fought with her tongue. "May your time be easy." Her mouth tightened, and she turned to Wykla. "Friend and beloved, will you stand watch with me?"

Wykla had been watching, and there was a faint suspicion in her eyes that she thrust away of a sudden as though it were a serpent. "I will," she said, and she kissed Manda. Dindrane and Baares exchanged looks, but appeared resigned to whatever further horrors Alouzon's company could offer.

The forest was silent and the air was still. From the sea came the odor of salt; from Daelin, the pungent scent of high explosive and burning wood. Santhe and his men made a cautious foray into the village so as to look for survivors, and Dindrane and Baares insisted upon accompanying them. But the five returned quickly, and Alouzon saw from the quiet sadness of Santhe's eyes that no inhabitant of Daelin remained alive.

"There is hardly anything left that I would call a town,'' said the councilor. ' 'I have never seen the like . . . save at Bandon."

"It is always this way," said Dindrane. Her voice was firm, but her face was pasty white. Closing her eyes, she murmured to herself, apparently in prayer.

Baares muttered under his breath. His dark eyes were angry, and he clutched at his harp as though he would have liked to use it as a club. Dindrane put a hand on his shoulder, but he turned away from her and sat off by himself, softly plucking the strings of his instrument, his music discordant. He did not sleep that night.

When the sun rose over the ocean, Dindrane and Baares led the party toward Lachrae through a heather-colored land that was just beginning to show the onset of spring. Early crocuses lined the broad, straight roads, and the dense forest-wide oaks and sheltering beeches and slender birches-seemed to beckon the observer into solemn and druidic mysteries. Colors were pastel, the air transparent.

They rode on throughout the morning. The way was easy, and along the coast there were many small villages, clusters of whitewashed houses and cottages as neat as Daelin had been. But Alouzon noticed that Dindrane was careful to take turnings that did not lead through any of them. The expedition might well have been under a polite, unobtrusive, but very effective quarantine.

"Are we that bad?" she said to Dindrane.

The priestess blinked. "Bad?"

"Come on, Dindrane, 'fess up. You're keeping us away from the villages, right?"

Dindrane kept her eyes on the road. " 'Tis observant you are, Dragonmaster.''

"So what's the problem? Afraid we'll give everyone cooties?"

Dindrane was small and soft, almost girlish, but her eyes were clear and blue and penetrating. "My land is deeply troubled," she said. "The hounds come and kill. The Gray faces come and kill. The flying things come and kill." She glanced levelly at Alouzon. "And now you and your people also come . . . and kill."

Alouzon met her gaze. ' 'We haven't killed anyone.''

"Not yet. But had you not risked your life, Dragon-master, there would have been death aplenty. I know your sympathies now, and some of your customs. Truly, I wish I did not. But my people already grieve at the depredations of Broceliande. Some spend their days in sorrow, others live in numb shock. Shall I allow you to add to this?"

Alouzon felt as though she had been slapped by her own child. "I think you judge us pretty harshly," she managed.

"How am I to judge you, then?" Dindrane's voice was sharp. "Armed and armored, you come to my land, questioning our motives, denying life." She fought for words for a moment. "Your women deny their own bodies, risk the unborn in combat, take . . . take one another in love-"

Kyria had been brooding, but she lifted her head. "Hang on there, honey," she said, a catch in her voice. "I'm sorry I screwed up. You can go ahead and be pissed at me, but don't give us guff about our women." The strident tones were missing from her voice: she spoke angrily, but with evenness. "Marrget's got herself in a hell of a fix because she hasn't even figured out the ground rules yet and now she's going to have a kid. And as for Manda and Wykla: if that man of yours is as good for you as they are for each other, you're doing pretty damned well."

Dindrane paled. "Mother Goddess ..." She dropped her eyes. "You do not understand, do you?"

"No, I don't." Kyria's voice had turned ugly. "And I don't think you understand, either. So quit judging us. If you're so big on men, how come Baares isn't saying anything?"

Baares spoke without looking up. "Dindrane is the land, and I am the spirit behind her. My time is not yet come."

"And do you have a time to kill, too?" Kyria snapped. "I saw you drooling over our swords."

Mouth clenched, Baares looked away as though caught in some pernicious and solitary vice.

"That's enough, Kyria," said Alouzon.

The sorceress had become enraged. "I'm trying to help! Whose side are you on?"

"Ours." Alouzon found that she was regarding the sorceress almost affectionately. She reached out and patted her shoulder. "Simmer down. We need all the friends we can get."

"Some friends.'' But Kyria fell silent and went back to her brooding.

Alouzon wondered again at Kyria's question. Whose side are you on? A week ago, she would have answered without hesitation: Gryylth's. But her allegiance had shifted. Vaylle was her land, her people, her unconscious. She did not like much of what she had found in it, but she loved it nonetheless, and it seemed to her now that, if she had to choose a side, then she had to be on everyone's side, whether they were Gryylthan, Corrinian, Vayllen . . .

Kyria was muttering under her breath. Alouzon touched her shoulder again. "Hey, thanks."