an afternoon's bellowing. Some were still drunk with the acid fire
of exhausted nerves, and were loud. Others, drained, mumbled in the
background like a chorus of the stupid. Gesticulating, mumbling,
shouting, shadowed, lumped into one knot of blackness lighted by a ruddy
cheekbone here, a gleaming brow there above an eye socket as inky and
blank as a bottomless pit, they were like something out of the wan and
misty ages before the Earth had had time to form completely.

Two arguing voices rose out of the mass:

"Those three barbarian tankettes are _mine_, I say!"

"Yours when I lie dead!"

"They surrendered to me!"

"Because I pounded them into submission."

"Into submission, indeed! You skulked around their flanks like a lame
dog, and now that I've taken them, you want your bone!"

"You were glad enough to see me there when the battle was hot. Call me a
dog again and I'll spit you like a rat on a pitchfork."

No one else in the group of nobles paid the two of them any attention.
No one had time to spare for any quarrel but his own, and the whole
squabbling pile of them looked ready to fly apart at any moment--to draw
sidearms and knives and flare into spiteful combat.

The Barbarian spat quietly. "There's your Seaboard League, lad. There's
your convocation of free men. Step out there and ask for your lands
back. Care to try?"

"We've already decided that wouldn't be wise," Geoffrey said irritably.
He had never cared much for these inevitable aftermaths to battle, but
it made him angry to have an inland barbarian make pointed comments. "I
suppose it's different when _you_ win, eh?"

"Not very. But then, we're not civilized. Let's get moving, lad."

Silently, they skirted the fire and made their way toward the parked
vehicles of The Barbarian's captured supply train. The ground was rough
and covered by underbrush. More than once, The Barbarian stumbled into
Geoffrey, making him clench his jaw against the pain in his chest. But
he saw no point in saying anything about it.

"There she is," The Barbarian said in a husky growl. Geoffrey peered
through the brush at an armored trailer whose flat sides were completely
undecorated except for a scarlet bearpaw painted on the door. A lantern
gleamed behind the slit windows, and The Barbarian grunted with
satisfaction. "She's still in there. Fine. We'll have this done in a
couple of seconds."

In spite of the incongruity, Geoffrey asked curiously: "What's a
second