d Ciaran! It is Thord--with a captive."

A voice, toneless and strangely muffled, spoke from within.

"Enter, Thord."

Thord pushed aside the hide curtain and went in, with Stark at his
heels.

* * * * *

The dim daylight did not penetrate the interior. Cressets burned, giving
off a flickering brilliance and a smell of strong oil. The floor of
packed snow was carpeted with furs, much worn. Otherwise there was no
adornment, and no furniture but a chair and a table, both dark with age
and use, and a pallet of skins in one shadowy corner with what seemed to
be a heap of rags upon it.

In the chair sat a man.

He seemed very tall, in the shaking light of the cressets. From neck to
thigh his lean body was cased in black link mail, and under that a tunic
of leather, dyed black. Across his knees he held a sable axe, a great
thing made for the shearing of skulls, and his hands lay upon it gently,
as though it were a toy he loved.

His head and face were covered by a thing that Stark had seen before
only in very old paintings--the ancient war-mask of the inland Kings of
Mars. Wrought of black and gleaming steel, it presented an unhuman
visage of slitted eyeholes and a barred slot for breathing. Behind, it
sprang out in a thin, soaring sweep, like a dark wing edge-on in flight.

The intent, expressionless scrutiny of that mask was bent, not upon
Thord, but upon Eric John Stark.

The hollow voice spoke again, from behind the mask. "Well?"

"We were hunting in the gorges to the south," said Thord. "We saw a
fire...." He told the story, of how they had found the stranger and the
body of the man from Kushat.

"Kushat!" said the Lord Ciaran softly. "Ah! And why, stranger, were you
going to Kushat?"

"My name is Stark. Eric John Stark, Earthman, out of Mercury." He was
tired of being called stranger. Quite suddenly, he was tired of the
whole business.

"Why should I not go to Kushat? Is it against some law, that a man may
not go there in peace without being hounded all over the Norlands? And
why do the men of Mekh make it their business? They have nothing to do
with the city."

Thord held his breath, watching with delighted anticipation.

The hands of the man in armor caressed the axe. They were slender hands,
smooth and sinewy--small hands, it seemed, for such a weapon.

"We make what we will our business, Eric John Stark." He spoke with a
peculiar gentleness. "I have asked you. Why