teady himself. There was some reason
why it was necessary to move, to get away. But away from what and where?
When Ross tried to think he could only see muddled pictures which had no
connection.

Then a moving object crossed his very narrow field of vision, passing
between him and a thing he knew was a tree trunk. A four-footed creature
with a red tongue hanging from its jaws. It came toward him
stiff-legged, growling low in its throat, and sniffed at his body before
barking in short excited bursts of sound.

The noise hurt his head so much that Ross closed his eyes. Then a shock
of icy liquid thrown into his face aroused him to make a feeble protest
and he saw, hanging over him in a strange upside-down way, a bearded
face which he knew from the past.

Hands were laid on him and the roughness with which he was moved sent
Ross spiraling back into the dark once again. When he aroused for the
second time it was night and the pain in his head was dulled. He put out
his hands and discovered that he lay on a pile of fur robes, and was
covered by one.

"Assha--" Again he tried that name. But it was not Assha who came in
answer to his feeble call. The woman who knelt beside him with a horn
cup in her hand had neatly braided hair in which gray strands showed
silver by firelight. Ross knew he had seen her before, but again where
and when eluded him. She slipped a sturdy arm under his head and raised
him while the world whirled about. The edge of the horn cup was pressed
to his lips, and he drank bitter stuff which burned in his throat and
lit a fire in his insides. Then he was left to himself once again and in
spite of his pain and bewilderment he slept.

How many days he lay in the camp of Ulffa, tended by the chief's head
wife, Ross found it hard to reckon. It was Frigga who had argued the
tribe into caring for a man they believed almost dead when they found
him, and who nursed Ross back to life with knowledge acquired through
half a hundred exchanges between those wise women who were the doctors
and priestesses of these roaming peoples.

Why Frigga had bothered with the injured stranger at all Ross learned
when he was able to sit up and marshal his bewildered thoughts into some
sort of order. The matriarch of the tribe thirsted for knowledge. That
same urge which had led her to certain experiments with herbs, had made
her consider Ross a challenge to her healing skill. When she knew that
he would live she determined to