into darkness. And, as always, the dream came at once. As always, he dreamed that he was awaking—
* * * *
Khal Kan awoke, in the dark, cold tent. His whole back was a throbbing pain, and his bound arms and legs were numb.
He lay thinking a moment of his dream. How real it always seemed, the nightly dream in which he was a timid little man named Henry Stevens, on a queer, drab world called Earth! When he was dreaming—when he was the man Henry Stevens—he even thought that he, Khal Kan, was a dream!
Dreams within dreams—but they meant nothing. Khal Kan had long ago quit worrying about his strange dream-life, The wise men of Jotan whom he had consulted had spoken doubtfully of witchcraft Their explanations had explained nothing. And life was too short, there were too many enemies to slay and girls to kiss and flagons to drink, to worry much about dreams.
“But this is no dream, worse luck!” thought Khal Kan, testing his bonds. “The prince of Jotan, trussed up like a damned hyrk—”
He stiffened. A shadow was moving toward him in the dark tent. It bent over him and there was a muffled flash of steel. Amazedly, Khal Kan felt the bonds of his wrists and ankles relax. They had been cut.
The shadow sniggered. “What would you do without little Zoor to take care of you, Prince?”
“Zoor?” Khal Kan’s whisper was astonished. “How in the name of—”
“Easily, Prince,” sniggered Zoor. “I always carry a flat blade in the sole of my sandal. But it took me all night to get it out and cut myself free. It’s almost dawn.”
The cold in the tent was piercing. Through a crack in the flap, Khal Kan could see the eastern sky beginning to pale a little. He could also hear the drylanders on guard out there, shuffling to keep warm.
Khal Kan got to his feet while Zoor was freeing Brusul. Then the little man used his sliver of steel to slice a rip through the back wall of the tent. They three slipped out into the starry darkness.
Khal Kan chuckled a little to himself as he remembered how his dream-self—the man Henry Stevens in that dream-world—had worried about his plight. As though there was anything worth worrying about in that.
They did not stop for a whispered consultation until they were well away from the tent in which they had been kept. The whole camp of the drylanders was still, except for an occasional drunken warrior staggering between the dark tents, and the stamping of tethered horses not far away.
“The horses are this way,” muttered Brusul. “We can be over the Dragals before these swart-skinned devils know we’re gone.”
“Wait!” commanded Khal Kan’s whisper. “I’m not going without that girl. Golden Wings.”
“Hell take your obstinacy!” snarled Brusul. “Do you think you can steal the drylanders’ princess right out of their camp? They’d chase us to the end of the world. Beside, what would you want with that little desert-cat who had you flogged raw?”
Khal Kan uttered a low laugh. “She’s the only wench I’ve ever seen who was more than a sweet armful for an idle hour. She’s flame and steel and beauty—and by the sun, I’m taking her. You two get horses and wait by the edge of the camp yonder. I’ll be along.”
He hastened away before they could voice the torrent of objections on their lips. He had taken Zoor’s hiltless knife.
Khal Kan made his way through the dark tents to the big pavilion of the dryland chief. He silently skirted its rear wall, stopping here and there to slash the wall and peer inside.
Thus he discovered the compartment of the pavilion in which the girl slept. It had a guttering copper night-lamp whose flickering radiance fell on silken hangings and on a low mass of cushions on which she lay.
Golden Wings’ dark head was pillowed on her arm, her long black lashes slumbering on her cheek. Coolly, Khal Kan made an entrance. He delayed to cut strips from the silken hangings, and then approached her.
His big hand whipped the silken gag around Golden Wings’ mouth and tied it before she was half-awake. Her eyes raging as she recognized him, and her slim silken figure struggled in his grasp with wildcat fury.
Khal Kan was rough and fast. He got the silken bonds around her hands and feet, and then drew a breath of relief.
“Now we ride for Jotan, my sweet,” he whispered mockingly to her as he picked up her helpless figure.
Golden Wings’ black eyes blazed into his own, and he laughed.
He kissed her eyelids. “This will have to serve as proof of my affections until we can take this damned gag off, my dear,” he mocked.
* * * *
Her firm body writhed furiously in his grasp as he went out into the starry night. Silently, bearing the girl easily, he made his way through the sleeping camp.
Stamping shadows loomed up at the camp edge, awaiting him. Brusul and Zoor had horses, and the little spy handed Khal Kan a stolen sword.
“You have the girl!” Zoor sniggered. “Even I could not make a theft so daring—to steal the drylanders’ princess out of their own camp!”
“We haven’t got her out yet, and it’s far to Jotan,” snarled Brusul. “Let’s get out of here.”
Khal Kan vaulted into the saddle and drew Golden Wings’ struggling silken figure across the saddle-bow. They walked their horses softly eastward till they were out of earshot of the camp, and then they spurred into a gallop.
The cold dawn wind whistled past Khal Kan’s face. Far ahead, the black bulk of the Dragals loomed against the paling sky.
He took the gag from Golden Wings’ mouth. In the growing light, the cold anger of the girl’s face flared at him.
“Dog of Jotan!” she panted. “You’ll be staked out in the desert to die the sun-death, for this crime.”
“I didn’t free your mouth for words, my dear,” replied Khal Kan. “But for this—”
Her lips writhed under his kiss. His laughter pealed bade on the wind as he straightened again in the saddle.
Golden Wings sobbed with rage. “You’ll not be killed at once,” she promised breathlessly. “It will take time to think up a death appropriate for you. Even the sun-death would be too easy.”
“That’s the way I like to hear a girl talk,” applauded Khal Kan. “Hell take these wenches who are all softness and whimpers. We’ll get along, my pet.”
They were still far from the first ridges of the Dragals when the crimson sun came up to light their way. Brusul turned his battered face back to stare across the ocher sands, and then swore and pointed to a remote, low wisp of dust back on the western horizon.
“There they come! They’re following our tracks, curse them!”
“We can lose them when we reach the mountains,” Khal Kan called easily. “Faster!”
“You’ll never reach
