en he, B'ronth, would strike.

The day before an Abarian warrior had given him a description of the
girl and had promised him a bag of gold for her capture, half a bag of
gold if he killed her and could prove it. A bag of gold, he thought.
He would take her alive. It was a long, cold road to Nadia City. True,
B'ronth the Utalian was small of stature, a puny creature like all his
people. And there were certain disadvantages in his perfect
camouflage. He was walking naked across the ice-fields in order to
remain unseen. His flesh shivered and his bones were stiff. But a
Nadian boy named Lulukee, whom B'ronth had promised half the gold, was
not many minutes' march behind him with warm clothing, food, and
drink. After he captured the girl....

* * * * *

Invisible, he mounted a rise where solid sheet ice adhered to the
shoulder of a rocky hill. Below him, traversing a snow-floored valley
and so far away that they were mere dots against the snow, were the
old man and the girl.

B'ronth the Utalian chuckled. The sound was swept up instantly and
dispersed by the wind. It was a cold wind and it all but froze B'ronth
to the marrow, but the Nadian sun was surprisingly warm and now seemed
to beam down on him with promise of his golden reward. Shivering both
from cold and delight, the invisible Utalian walked swiftly down into
the snow-mantled valley.

There would be a trail of footprints for the boy Lulukee to
follow....

* * * * *

"Cold, Hammeth?" Ylia asked her companion.

"No, girl. I'll manage if you will. Is it much further?"

"Half a day's march to Nadia City yet, I'm afraid," Ylia said. "We
could rest if you wish."

The man was extremely old by Tarthian standards, probably three
hundred and fifty years old. He wore a snow-cape of _purullian_ fur
which the wind whipped about his bony frame and up over his completely
bald head. "I'm sorry, Ylia," he said suddenly. There were tears in
his eyes which the cold and the wind did not explain.

"What for? You came to the cave. You accompanied me here to Nadia."

"When Retoc the Abarian almost killed the White God, I fled with the
others."

"If you didn't flee you too might have been slain, Hammeth."

"Yet you remained behind."

"He still lived. Someone had to tend him."

Hammeth's breath came in shallow gasps. He once had been a strong, big
man, but the life and the strength had fled his frame when R