nside his palace. Not even
the thoughtfulness of Siva's priests could have anticipated that ten
horse-men would be riding out of nowhere, with the spirit in them that
ignores side issues and leads them only straight to their objective.

Alwa, as a soldier, knew exactly where fresh horses could be borrowed
while his tired ones rested. A little way beyond the outskirts of the
city lived a man who was neither Mohammedan nor Hindoo--a fearful man,
who took no sides, but paid his taxes, carried on his business, and
behaved--a Jew, who dealt in horses and in any other animal or thing
that could be bought to show a profit.

Alwa had an utterly complete contempt for Jews, as was right and proper
in a Rangar of the blood. He had not met many of them, and those he had
had borne away the memory of most outrageous insult gratuitously offered
and rubbed home. But this particular Jew was a money-lender on occasion,
and his rates had proved as reasonable as his acceptance of Alwa's
unwritten promise had been prompt. A man who holds his given word as
sacred as did Alwa respects, in the teeth of custom or religion, the man
who accepts that word; so, when the chance had offered, Alwa had done
the Jew occasional favors and had won his gratitude. He now counted on
the Jew for fresh horses.

To reach him, he had to wade the Howrah River, less than a mile from
where the burning ghats glowed dull crimson against the sky; the crowd
around the ghats was the first intimation he received that the
streets might prove less densely thronged than usual. It was the Jew,
beard-scrabbling and fidgeting among his horses, who reminded him that
when the full moon shone most of the populace, and most of Jaimihr's and
Howrah's guards, would be occupied near Siva's temple and the palace.

He left his own horses, groomed again, and gorging their fill of good,
clean grain in the Jew's ramshackle stable place. Joanna he turned
loose, to sneak into any rat-hole that she chose. Then, with their
swords drawn--for if trouble came it would be certain to come
suddenly--he and his nine made a wide-ringed circuit of the city, to a
point where the main street passing Jaimihr's palace ended in a rune
of wind-piled desert sand. From the moment when they reached that point
they did not waste a second; action trod on the heel of thought and
thought flashed fast as summer lightning.

They lit through the deserted street, troubling for speed, not silence;
the few whom the