-arms choked to death, by a
stronger arm than Geoffrey's, and it was The Barbarian's woman who would
be missing. There might be quite a buzz about that.

Geoffrey shook his head in impatient annoyance. This kind of life
demanded a great deal more thinking than he was accustomed to. All these
unpredictable factors made a man's head spin.

And then again, maybe they didn't. The thing to do was to act, to do
what would get him out of here now, and leave him free tomorrow to do
whatever thinking tomorrow demanded. With a little practice, too,
thinking would undoubtedly come more easily.

"All right," he said decisively, "let's get moving over in that
direction, and see if the guards haven't gotten a little careless." He
motioned to Myka and The Barbarian, and began to lead the way into the
underbrush. He thrust out a hand to pull a sapling aside, and almost ran
full-tilt into Harolde Dugald.

* * *

Dugald was almost exactly Geoffrey's age and size, but he had something
Geoffrey lacked--a thin-lipped look of wolfish wisdom. His dark eyes
were habitually slitted, and his mouth oddly off-center, always poised
between a mirthless grin and a snarl. His long black hair curled under
at the base of his skull, and his hands were covered with heavy gold and
silver rings. There was one for each finger and thumb, and all of them
were set with knobby precious stones.

His lips parted now, and his long white teeth showed plainly in the
semi-darkness. "I was coming back to inspect my prizes," he said in a
voice like a fine-bladed saw chuckling through soft metal. "And look
what I've found." The open mouth of his heavy, handmade side pistol
pointed steadily between Geoffrey's eyes. "I find my erstwhile neighbor
risen from the dead, and in the company of a crippled enemy and his
leman. Indeed, my day is complete."

The one thing Geoffrey was not feeling was fear. The wire-thin strand of
his accumulated rage was stretched to breaking. Somewhere, far from the
forefront of his mind, he was feeling surprise and disappointment. He
was perfectly aware of Dugald's weapon, and of what it would do to his
head at this range. But Geoffrey was not stopping to think. And Dugald
was a bit closer to him than he ought to have been.

Geoffrey's hands seemed to leap out. One tore the pistol out of Dugald's
hand and knocked it spinning. The other cracked, open-palmed, against
the other man's face, hard enough to split flesh and st