Even if I find him, the Kai-feng still comes. There is little time then, even for us- Abruptly, borne on some desolate wind, the voices drop away from him.

The blue morning light woke him. Above him stood the roan luma, its coat a glowing red in the sun's first oblique rays. It shook its head and stamped the poppies beside him. The exhalations from its nostrils were white clouds in the chill air.

Ronin reached up, grabbing for the swinging stirrup, pulled himself hand over hand until he stood on his feet, testing his legs and back. The numbness was gone but his co-ordination was off and he leaned on the luma for a moment, gathering his strength. He walked with its help across the white and blue field to where the golden luma stood over Kiri.

She was still asleep deep within the rustling sea. A large purple bruise swelledalong the left side of her forehead.

She awoke as he bent over her and he stepped quickly back, half expecting her to unsheathe her blade and cross swords with him. She was, after all, the Empress of Sha'angh'sei and he had struck her. But she was quite calm.

She broke out food from her saddlebags, feeding the luma before she would eat herself. She offered some to Ronin.

"Against your strong advice, I rushed the Makkon," she said ruefully. "You did not hit me that hard. When I looked it already had you and I struck at it with my sword." She gave him a small smile then. "I did not believe you, I suppose. I thought, well, you are a warrior and-the rikkagin do not approve of women warriors; they are frightened, I think."

Coming against him in the metaled ellipse just below the crust of the surface, his equal perhaps as warrior, who knows, no one ever will now.

"Now you know I told you the truth."

"Oh, but yes!" She reached up and gingerly touched the bruise. "It slapped me, just a backhand swipe of its claw. I have never felt such power. I was flung a good distance away. That is all I remember."

Ronin chewed on his food. "I wounded it," he said.

"But how?"

He lifted the gauntlet so that the strange scales caught the light of dawn.

"With this! Its own hide." He laughed then. "Thank you, Bonneduce the Last, wherever you may now be. A better gift you could not have left me."

He went to pick up his sword and as he buckled the belt around his waist she said, "What now? Where has it gone?"

"Impossible to say. Too much time has already pa.s.sed for us to attempt to continue to pursue it. Do you know of Kamado?"

"Of course."

"Can you guide us there?"

"It lies north, along the river. I do not think that we shall have a problem finding it."

They rode hard due north, keeping the snaking river on their left, and it was not long before they encountered soldiers streaming northward in long lines, columns bristling with weaponry and machines of war.

They joined this caravan for the last part of their journey, riding swiftly by the soldiers' sides.

Hags fluttered in the wind, the men in leather jerkins and metal helms, armed with long curving swords and bright, finely tipped lances. There were archers, their immense longbows strung vertically on their backs, and cavalry, acting as outriders and scouts, protecting the column's flanks. Metal clanged and jangled and thewooden carts, laden with food and spare arms, creaked under their heavy loads.

They moved up gradually until they reached the hors.e.m.e.n of the rikkagin's retinue who directed them to their commander. He was a sharp-faced man with a long queue and many scars along his desiccated cheeks.

"Are you bound for Kamado?" asked Ronin.

"All are bound for Kamado these days," said the rikkagin darkly. "Or away from it."

"Do you know the Rikkagin T'ien?"

"By name only. There are many rikkagin."

"I have heard that he is at Kamado."

The rikkagin nodded. "Yes. That is my understanding also. You may ride along with my men, if you wish."

"Thank you."

They rode in silence for a time, listening to the wind and the creaking of leather, the clop-clop of hoofs in the dust, the clash of metal.

"You have been to Kamado before?" asked Kiri.

The rikkagin turned his bleak gaze upon her.

"Too often, lady. We were not due back there for another fortnight but the enemy grows stronger each day and we must return now. From whence they come, I cannot say. Nor can anyone else, though we have made strenuous efforts to find out."

"You have learned nothing?" said Kiri.

"Nothing at all," answered the rikkagin. "For none of our scouts have returned."

They caught sight of Kamado just past midday, its dun-colored walls, thick and high and crenellated, dominating the huge hill on which it had been built long ago.

The wide river crashed along the left of the fortress and, to the north, it was possible to make out the verdant splash of a forest.

It was truly cold now and the sky had been lowering as they moved farther north.

A fine rain had sprung up a short time before but it was freezing, turned to sleet by the unnatural weather, and it hammered now against the soldiers' helms, caked the mounts' hides.

They had broken the crest of a rise and, across the last gentle valley the yellow outline of the great fort had come into sight, rising like a spectral city in the wilderness of the bleak landscape.

The stone walls rose upward, an extension of the dusty hill, wider at the bottom.It was roughly circular, with newer extensions to the east and west, rectangular bulges which gave it a peculiar look.

Ma.s.sive metal-bound doors faced them, guarded by wide outcroppings of the walls along which soldiers constantly patrolled. To the west, the hill dropped away, sweeping down to the water. A wooden bridge with two stone pillars spanned the river at that point On the far sh.o.r.e, a mult.i.tude of tents and pavilions could be seen among which strode many soldiers, some leading horses. Cooking fires were already being started in several places.

The rikkagin halted the column and sent a rider ahead to inform the citadel of their arrival. The man spurred his mount up the slope of the hill, through the thickening sleet, calling out to the guards on the ramparts.

After a brief time he turned in his saddle and signaled the rikkagin who, spurring his horse forward, ordered the column to move out.

With an enormous clash of arms and booted feet, the soldiers marched to the war, trudging in a tired procession through the huge gates of burnished bronze, dwarfed by the towering walls, into the dark and dismal depths of Kamado, the stone citadel.

It was a city unto itself, constructed expressly for the agonies of war; not petty raids or vengeful strikes but centuries of sustained conflict There was no way of determining this by observing it from outside, where all that was visible were the awesome stone fortifications four and a half meters thick so that men could walk atop the walls, safe behind the stone crenellations. And perhaps this was artfulness also, for it gave no hint at all of the citadel's interior.

Kamado was so vast and so complex in construction that, seated atop his luma just inside the southern postern, Ronin could not discern the far northern limits of the fortress.

Long two-story buildings formed the immediate southern area of the citadel. The walls facing outward were windowless and constructed of stone so that they could not burn should any invader choose to rain liquid fire into Kamado's streets. They were blank, featureless, save for the stains and scars of the years.

However, their appearance changed as one went between them, down the angustate streets. Their inward faces were of wood, with wide beams carved in the shapes of the ancient G.o.ds of war, fierce women in high curving helms, attended by dwarfs with curling beards and rings in their noses, from whom the warriors of yore sought advice and favors to a.s.sure victory.

Certainly, from this evidence alone, Kamado predated the building of Sha'angh'sei which, Ronin had been told, had sprung up largely because of the rikkagin from other lands. Who then had constructed this fantastic monument to battle? Surely not the Sha'angh'sei people.All about them as their luma danced gingerly down the dirt streets, the corps of the conflict were to be seen preparing themselves for battle. Grinding wheels sharpened axes and scimitar-bladed swords in a shimmering cascade of cold blue sparks, archers stringing their bows, fletchers gluing feathers to thin wooden shafts that would soon, in their diligent hands, become arrows. Soldiers doubling as stable hands fed and watered horses, wiping at their lathered flanks. Men trotted by them, relief for the soldiers manning the battlements. Up narrow stone stairways they clambered, reaching at last the topmost ramparts.

All about them too were the wounded, a pain-filled world of blood and bandages, of the one-armed and the one-legged, of the eyeless and the scarred. They lay, backs against the wooden pillars or curled in the dust in front of their lost G.o.ds of war, who looked down upon them, arrogant and uncaring. Perhaps their rikkagin had not gone before these deities with sufficient humility, perhaps their sacrifices were not great enough, or, more likely, the time of their power had long since been swept from the face of the world. Alone and forgotten, they yet looked out mutely on a domain no longer theirs.

Ronin stopped before one group of wounded men and asked for directions to Rikkagin T'ien's quarters.

They moved on, through inner gates and circular courtyards, along straight avenues and around stone buildings, and at length dismounted before a wooden-fronted barracks. They turned, hearing voices and the heavy tramp of boots.

He saw Tuolin first, his blond hair and height unmistakable in the crowd of soldiers.

"All right, bring him out here."

A group of soldiers with drawn swords emerged from the barracks. Ronin strained to see whom they held prisoner. Slowly, he drifted toward the men, circling to get a better angle. He stopped short.

The man the soldiers escorted, hands bound behind his back, was Rikkagin T'ien.

Light gleamed along his hairless head. He stared straight ahead.

At Tuolin's command, T'ien and his guards halted.

"You are Ching Pang, do you deny this?"

"No." Eyes straight ahead.

"You are a spy."

"I am Ching Pang, that is all."

"All?" echoed Tuolin sardonically. "The Ching Pang wish us destroyed."

"We wish only for the freedom of the Sha'angh'sei people."

"And what would they do with this freedom?" Tuolin said contemptuously.

"Return to the mud and bamboo hovels of their ancestors?""Our ancestors were great once. Greater than your people ever dreamed of becoming."

Tuolin turned abruptly away and, as if that were a signal, the soldiers surrounding T'ien slashed at him simultaneously and in an instant he was but so much dead meat.

"I do not understand this," Ronin said to Kiri. "Rikkagin T'ien a Green?"

"What are you talking about?" She glanced at him. "The Rikkagin T'ien comes toward us now."

"That is Tuolin."

"Yes," she nodded. "And Rikkagin T'ien." She noted the look of puzzlement on his face. "All rikkagin take a second name at the end of their training."

"Then who was the man Tuolin just had executed?"

"Lei'in, the rikkagin's chief adviser." She seemed amused. "And a Ching Pang; Tuolin must be furious."

Ronin was about to tell her of the ruse T'ien had used on him but thought better of it. He wanted to think it through himself now. He recalled the events aboard the rikkagin's vessel. He had not been disarmed when he was brought aboard; he had been kept at ease. When they judged him well enough, he had been interviewed by Lei'in masquerading as the rikkagin. He had been tested. Only then had he been allowed abovedecks into Tuolin's presence. Yes, it made perfect sense now; war breeds its own form of paranoia. It all fitted now, the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on the ship, his night out with Tuolin.

The big blond man had seen them now and he seemed unsure whether to scowl or smile, finally opted for a neutral look.

"Did you find the Council of a.s.sistance?" he asked Ronin.

"I-never got to see them." Ronin remembered Kiri's warning that Tuolin did not know.

"What a pity," he said without much conviction. He turned to Kiri. "I almost did not recognize you." He glanced down at .the sword scabbarded at her left hip. "Can you actually use that or is it for show?"

"What do you think?" Kiri said.

"I think I prefer to see you at Tencho," Tuolin said quite calmly. "I distrust women on the battlefield."

"Oh, why is that?" She was struggling to control her anger.

"They never seem to know which way to go."

"I do not understand you at all."

He shrugged. "There is nothing to understand. Fighting should be left to those who can do it best. End of discussion."

He turned his attention back to Ronin as if she did not exist. "Why are you here?"He began to walk toward the barracks and they went with him.

That depends."

"Oh, on what?"

"On whether you think you can trust me yet."

Tuolin threw his head back and laughed.

"Yes, I see." He wiped at his eyes. "I think we can safely say that your time of trial is at an end."

They went up the wooden steps and into the interior. It was dim and cool. The low ceilings were beamed and dark with smoke residue. The furniture was spa.r.s.e and utilitarian. In the main room of the first story a fire burned on a large stone hearth.

Tuolin led them through this s.p.a.ce, filled with soldiers, into a smaller back room, windowless, with a desk of scarred wood, several hard chairs, and a low cabinet against the back wall. At some time previous, the doors had been removed. The rikkagin sat down behind the desk and reached into the cabinet. He offered them cold wine, which they drank.

Ronin wondered briefly about the rikkagin's changed att.i.tude toward Kiri, then put it out of his mind.

"Sa was killed, then Matsu, by a creature whom I had fought in my own land. It came north out of Sha'angh'sei. It was waiting for me in the poppy fields half a day's ride south of here." He paused. "You do not seem surprised."

"My friend, many things have transpired since first we met. I have seen many sights, battled foes I could not have dreamed of in my worst nightmares." He gestured at the walls. "We fight non-men." He sighed. "Not many here remember the things sp.a.w.ned by the sorcerous wars."