was a stir. Joaquin Smith came out and swung to his white horse. Now was the moment. Hull rose to his knees, hoping that he could remain steady on the sharp pitch of the roof. Carefully, carefully, he drew the steel arrow back.
There was a shout. He had been seen, and a blue beam sent racking pain through his body. For an instant he bore it, then loosed his arrow and went sliding down the roof edge and over.
He fell on soft loam. A dozen hands seized him, dragged him upright, thrust him out into the street. He saw Joaquin Smith still on his horse, but the glistening arrow stood upright like a plume in his silver helmet, and a trickle of blood was red on his cheek.
But he wasn’t killed. He raised the helmet from his head, waved aside the cluster of officers, and with his own hands bound a white cloth about his forehead. Then he turned cool grey eyes on Hull.
“You drive a strong shaft,” he said, and then recognition flickered in his eyes. “I spared your life some hours ago, did I not?”
Hull said nothing.
“Why,” resumed the Master, “do you seek to kill me after your eldarch has made peace with me? You are part of the Empire now, and this is treason.”
“I made no peace!” growled Hull.
“But your leader did, thereby binding you.”
Hull could not keep his gaze from the emerald eyes of the Princess, who was watching him without expression save faint mockery.
“Have you nothing to say,” asked Joaquin Smith.
“Nothing.”
The Master’s eyes slid over him. “Are you Ormiston born?” he asked. “What is your name?”
No need to bring troubles on his friends. “No,” said Hull. “I am called Hull Tarvish.”
The conqueror turned away. “Lock him up,” he ordered coolly. “Let him make whatever preparations his religion requires, and then—execute him.”
Above the murmur of the crowd Hull heard Vail Ormiston’s cry of anguish. He turned to smile at her, watched her held by two Empire men as she struggled to reach him. “I’m sorry,” he called gently. “I love you, Vail.” Then he was being thrust away down the street.
He was pushed into Hue Helm’s stonewalled tool shed. It had been cleared of everything, doubtless for some officer’s quarters. Hull drew himself up and stood passively in the gathering darkness where a single shaft of sunset light angled through the door, before which stood two grim Empire men.
One of them spoke. “Keep peaceful, Weed,” he said in his N’Orleans drawl. “Go ahead with your praying, or whatever it is you do.”
“I do nothing,” said Hull. “The mountainies believe that a right life is better than a right ending, and right or wrong a ghost’s but a ghost anyway.”
The guard laughed. “And a ghost you’ll be.”
“If a ghost I’ll be,” retorted Hull, turning slowly toward him, “I’d sooner turn one—fighting!”
He sprang suddenly, crashed a mighty fist against the arm that bore the weapon, thrust one guard upon the other, and overleaped the tangle into the dusk. As he spun to circle the house, something very hard smashed viciously against the back of his skull, sending him sprawling half dazed against the wall.
THE HARRIERS
After a brief moment Hull sprawled half stunned, then his muscles lost their paralysis and he thrust himself to his feet, whirling to face whatever assault threatened. In the doorway the guards still scrambled, but directly before him towered a rider on a black mount, and two men on foot flanked him. The rider, of course, was the Princess, her glorious green eyes luminous as a cat’s in the dusk as she slapped a short sword into its scabbard. It was a blow from the flat of its blade that had felled him.
She held now the blunt weapon of the blue beam. It came to him that he had never heard her speak, but she spoke now in a voice low and liquid, yet cold, cold as the flow of an ice-crusted winter stream. “Stand quiet, Hull Tarvish,” she said. “One flash will burst that stubborn heart of yours forever.”
Perforce he stood quiet, his back to the wall of the shed. He had no doubt at all that the Princess would kill him if he moved; he couldn’t doubt it with her icy eyes upon him. He stared sullenly back, and a phrase of Old Einar’s came strangely to his memory. “Satanically beautiful,” the old man had called her, and so she was. Hell or the art of Martin Sair had so fashioned her that no man could gaze unmoved on the false purity of her face, no man at least in whom flowed red blood.
She spoke again, letting her glance flicker disdainfully over the two appalled guards. “The Master will be pleased,” she said contemptuously, “to learn that one unarmed Weed outmatches two men of his own cohort.”
The nearer man faltered, “But your Highness, he rushed us unexpect—”
“No matter,” she cut in, and turned back to Hull. For the first time now he really felt the presence of death as she said coolly, “I am minded to kill you.”
“Then do it!” he snapped.
“I came here to watch you die,” she observed calmly. “It interests me to see men die, boldly or cowardly or resignedly. I think you would die boldly.”
It seemed to Hull that she was deliberately torturing him by this procrastination. “Try me!” he growled.
“But I think also,” she resumed, “that your living might amuse me more than your death, and”—for the first time there was a breath of feeling in her voice—“God knows I need amusement!” Her tones chilled again. “I give you your life.”
“Your Highness,” muttered the cowed guard, “the Master has ordered—”
“I countermand the orders,” she said shortly. And then to Hull. “You are a fighter. Are you also a man of honor?”
“If I’m not,” he retorted, “the lie that says I am would mean nothing to me.”
She smiled coldly. “Well, I think you are, Hull Tarvish. You go free on your word to carry no weapons, and your promise to visit me this evening in my quarters at the eldarch’s home.” She paused. “Well?”
“I give my word.”
“And I take it.” She crashed her heels against the ribs of the great stallion, and the beast reared and whirled. “Away, all of you!” she ordered. “You two, carry tub and water for my bath.” She rode off toward the street.
Hull let himself relax against the wall with a low “whew!” Sweat started on his cold forehead, and his mighty muscles felt almost weak. It wasn’t that he had feared death, he told himself, but the strain of facing those glorious, devilish emerald eyes, and the cold torment of the voice of Black Margot, and the sense of her taunting him, mocking him, even her last careless gesture of freeing him. He drew himself erect. After all, fear of death or none, he loved life, and let that be enough.
He walked slowly toward the street. Across the way lights
