"Sorry. In any case, Llyselle, it is downhill and away from the water, and it's going to be hard to bury them deep enough to get rid of the smell. There are rocks there, for a cairn, if necessary."

"Yes, ser." The four gave him resigned looks.

"Why don't we just drop them over the cliff?" asked Huldran.

"That would probably just cause more trouble with the locals, and we don't need that."

"How would they know?"

Nylan shrugged. "I don't know, but they've got something-call it technology, call it magic. They knew Ryba was our leader, and they knew we came from space or the local equivalent."

"Great.. ." mumbled one of the other marines.

"Stow it, Berlig," said Huldran tiredly. 'The engineer's usually been right, and these days that counts for a lot. Let's get on with it."

'Take any weapons, knives, any gadgets or coins. Jewelry, too," added Nylan.

"The more we find, the more we might be able to figure out about these people."

The sun had dropped behind the mountain peaks by the time Ryba, Gerlich, and their work crew had completed a makeshift corral for the captured mounts and by the time a large cairn and five individual graves had been completed and filled in the southwestern corner of the open area, just beyond the end of the meadow and less than two dozen steps from the beginning of the drop-off.

Saryn was by the cook-fire area, making an attempt to butcher a dead horse.

Nylan shook his head, but kept walking toward the stream. He needed to get the blood and grime off himself, if he could.

Not much more than an eight-day and already five were dead-Mertin and four marines. Then, again, reflected the engineer, without the combat-trained marines and Ryba, things would have been worse, much worse.

Nylan bent down and washed the rock dust and dirt from his hands in the narrow stream. Then he walked back toward the lander where they had stockpiled the plunder, such as it was, from the corpses. They had gathered nearly three dozen of the heavy iron blades that scarcely seemed sharp enough to hack wood. After thinking about Ryba's Sybran blade and how she had sheared right through the local plate and chain mail, Nylan shook his head.

He neared the lander, and Ayrlyn, who stood by the single remaining local. The man half sat, half lay almost against the side of the end lander on a thin tarp. The pale green eyes surveyed Nylan, and the man spoke.

Nylan almost caught the words.

"He's asking if you're the only true man here," said Ayrlyn from his elbow. "He wants to give you his sword. Or he would if he still had it."

"Honor concept, I suppose."

"Only men have honor here? Are we in trouble!" snorted the former comm officer. Her brown eyes flashed that impossible shade of blue.

"If I take his sword, I'm responsible for him, I suppose."

"Something like that, I'd guess."

"Does that mean he gives his word not to escape, or is it meaningless nonsense?" Nylan's voice was hoarse, tired.

"Who would know?"

Nylan stared at the local. "I'll take his moral sword, or whatever. Tell him that if he breaks his word, he'll wish no one in his family had ever been born." Nylan was tired. Tired and angry, and he just wished that things hadn't degenerated into slaughter so quickly.

Even before the flame-haired comm officer started to speak, the man paled, and words tumbled from his lips.

Ayrlyn looked sideways at the engineer. "For a moment, I thought you almost glowed." She shook her head, and fires seemed to shimmer in her hair. "Whatever you did, he claims you're his liege. His name is Narliat." She lowered her voice.

"You did something that scared the living darkness out of him. He called you master or mage, something like that."

Nylan rubbed his forehead. "This place makes me feel strange. It's almost like being on the net, except it's not." He almost could understand the man's words, and the language was somehow familiar, but not quite. He kept rubbing his forehead.

Ayrlyn looked at him. "It is strange. I've had a couple of flashes like that, except it's more as though I could feel the trees or the grass." She glanced around nervously. "I'm not crazy. I'm not."

"We're probably just tired." Nylan looked at the prisoner. "Now what?"

"Tell him to stay here, and he will."

Nylan did, and Ayrlyn repeated the words. Narliat bowed his head.

The two angels walked toward the cook fire where Ryba waited. Nylan glanced to the rocky outcropping where a pair of sentries were outlined against the twilit sky.

The captain turned her head. "How many in the cairn?"

"Forty-three."

"Forty-three? That many?" burst out Kyseen from the litter by the fire.

"That few," said Ryba. "There were almost sixty, I think. Probably another three or four were wounded. They'll probably die, if the locals' medical care matches their weapons. That means almost a dozen escaped."

"Killing two thirds of an attacking force sounds pretty good," pointed out Saryn.

"I'm more worried about the one in white," mused Nylan. "It wasn't a laser, but he had a lot of power."

"It doesn't make sense. Whatever weapon he used burned right through the lander's ablative tiles like they weren't there-until it got to the thin steel undershell. That's not a laser. The ablative tiles would have stopped even a small weapons laser." Saryn winced as she shifted her position on the stone.

"Call it magic," suggested Nylan.

"Magic?" Ryba's eyebrows lifted.

"There's something here like a neuronet-"

"You think this is all imagination? That we're really trapped in the Winterlance's net?"

"Oh, frig ..." muttered Gerlich.

"No. There are too many independent variables for a net to handle, especially the interactions and apparent actions between individual personalities. Also, there's a feel about the net," explained Nylan. "It's not here."

"Thus speaks the engineer." Gerlich's tone was openly sarcastic.

Nylan ignored it.

"What do you think of the local swords?" Nylan asked Ryba. "You're the only one with any experience, I think."

"Not quite," said Gerlich. "I did club fencing for a while."

"So did I," added another voice. "Sers . .."

Nylan looked at the wiry silver-haired marine.

"I'm Istril," the marine explained apologetically.

"That's a help," said Ryba slowly. "You're all going to have to use blades, I think, before the year is out, anyway. Maybe sooner. Unless we can manufacture bows and learn archery."

"Why ..." started a voice farther back in the twilight. "Oh ... sorry."

"Exactly. Fierral took inventory. That little firefight cost us nearly three hundred rounds. That's actually pretty good. One in nine shells counted. Except we only have about six hundred rounds left. That's maybe two battles like we just went through." Ryba bowed to the marine force leader. "Without the marines, we'd all be dead or slaves."

Ryba turned to Nylan. "I fear you were correct, Ser Engineer, about the need for a defensive emplacement, a tower."

Nylan nodded. "You never answered the question about blades."

"Most of their blades are hatchet-edged crowbars. That hand - and - a - half blade the leader carried is a fair piece of work, and so was one other thing like a sabre. Why did you ask?" Ryba smiled tightly. "You don't ask questions, ser, unless you know the answer."

"I saw what your blade did to the local leader," Nylan replied honestly. "I just wondered what the comparisons were."

"If we could find blades like mine, it would give us an advantage-not so much as slug-throwers-but I don't see those for a long, long time to come."

Neither did Nylan.

"But," continued the captain, "I don't know how we could find or forge blades like mine."

Nylan frowned, then pursed his lips. Was there any way? He shook his head.

"What about the language?" Ryba turned to Ayrlyn.

"That doesn't make sense, either. It sounded like an offshoot of Anglorat," said the comm officer.

Nylan nodded, mostly to himself. He should have recognized it, but he hadn't expected the demon tongue to show up here. "What was that idiot saying? Where were you, anyway?" asked Ryba. "Where you put me ... on the other side." Ayrlyn gave a slight shiver. "I didn't get it all, and some of the words didn't make any sense, but the general idea was that we had to surrender because we were trespassing on his lands-"

"His lands?"

"His lands."

"Darkness help us," said Ryba. "We would knock off the local ruler. That can't be good."

"It might be very good," mused Nylan. "Anyone else might decide to wait a while before taking us on."

"Either that, or they'll all be up here on some sort of holy war against their version of the demons. That's what we probably look like to them."

Nylan laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"We got here because we were fighting the demons, and as soon as we land, we're fighting more demons."

"You think this place was a Rationalist colony?" Ryba's eyebrows knit together.

"How could it be? It's not even in our universe," snapped Gerlich.

"Maybe they got here like we did," suggested Saryn.

"We don't even know how we got here, not for sure," pointed out Nylan. "Or where here even is."

"You obviously have some ideas, O Bright One," snapped Gerlich. "So how do you think we got here?"

"We were at the focus of a lot of energy, more than enough to blow the boards and the Winterlance right out of existence. We're still around, even if it's someplace strange-"

"Are you sure we're just not dead, or imagining things?" asked Ayrlyn.

"The physical sensations seem rather intense for being merely spiritual and mental. . . and I explained the limitations of a net..."

"So you did."

Nylan turned to look fully at the taller man. "So . . . listen. I'll listen to your knowledge. If we don't listen and save every bit of knowledge we have to share, we'll be dead-or our descendants will suffer more than they have to:-or both."

"That assumes we'll live that long," snapped Gerlich.

Ryba's blade flickered again, and the cold steel touched Gerlich's neck. "I'm getting very tired of having to use force to keep you in line, but it seems like that's all you respect."

"Without that blade . .."

Ryba handed the blade to Istril, the small marine. "Hold this."

Gerlich looked puzzled.

"Some people never learn." Ryba's foot lashed out across the bigger man's thigh.

"Missed, bitch." Gerlich charged.

Ryba danced aside, and her hands blurred. Gerlich slammed facefirst into dirt and clover, then scrambled up and took a position, feet wide, hands in guard position.

Ryba feinted with her shoulder, once, twice.

Gerlich did not move.

The captain seemed to duck, then with a sweep kick knocked Gerlich off his feet, although the brown-haired man scrambled and slashed at her arm. Ryba took the arm, and Gerlich went flying into the meadow.

He rose slowly, holding his arm.

"It's only dislocated," snapped Ryba. "I could have broken your worthless neck.

So could most of the marines."