down over the shirt of mail.
A red mouth passionate with fury, wonderful curving bone under
sculptured flesh, eyes fierce and proud and tameless as the eyes of a
young eagle, fire-blue, defying him, hating him....

"By the gods," said Stark, very softly. "By the eternal gods!"

VI

A woman! And in that moment of amazement, she was quicker than he.

There was nothing to warn him, no least flicker of expression. Her two
fists came up together between his outstretched arms and caught him
under the jaw with a force that nearly snapped his neck. He went over
backward, clean out of the saddle, and lay sprawled on the bloody
stones, half stunned, the wind knocked out of him.

The woman wheeled her mount. Bending low, she took up the axe from where
it had fallen, and faced her warriors, who were as dazed as Stark.

"I have led you well," she said. "I have taken you Kushat. Will any man
dispute me?"

They knew the axe, if they did not know her. They looked from side to
side uneasily, completely at a loss, and Stark, still gasping on the
ground, thought that he had never seen anything as proud and beautiful
as she was then in her black mail, with her bright hair blowing and her
glance like blue lightning.

The nobles of Kushat chose that moment to charge. This strange unmasking
of the Mekhish lord had given them time to rally, and now they thought
that the Gods had wrought a miracle to help them. They found hope, where
they had lost everything but courage.

"A wench!" they cried. "A strumpet of the camps. _A woman!_"

They howled it like an epithet, and tore into the barbarians.

She who had been the Lord Ciaran drove the spurs in deep, so that the
beast leaped forward screaming. She went, and did not look to see if any
had followed, in among the men of Kushat. And the great axe rose and
fell, and rose again.

She killed three, and left two others bleeding on the stones, and not
once did she look back.

The clansmen found their tongues.

"_Ciaran! Ciaran!_"

The crashing shout drowned out the sound of battle. As one man, they
turned and followed her.

Stark, scrambling for his life underfoot, could not forbear smiling.
Their childlike minds could see only two alternatives--to slay her out
of hand, or to worship her. They had chosen to worship. He thought the
bards would be singing of the Lord Ciaran of Mekh as long as there were
men to listen.

He managed to take cover behind a wrecked booth, and pres