eak to Rack when
she heard a familiar voice, booming brazenly out in the silence of the
mine. It came from the black hole at the end of the tunnel.

"Then a whole line of them came down at us, faster than a squire can put
a horse over a hurdle, and the forest yet a good half mile away! I had
one dagger left, and my trusty small Jerran up behind me. The squires
were ashooting, but ineffectively, and the roan was carrying us well and
truly; but here came the gods, may they boil in my mother's cook-pot in
Hell!

"I looked wildly for something to beat 'em off with, for as you've seen,
a touch of their radiance burns your flesh from your bones if they wish
it so. Well! The only thing on the whole cursed nag is the scabbard in
which a squire keeps his long gun. It's a thing some three feet long or
over, of light metal, covered with satin and velvet and silk. I tore it
from its moorings, and as the globes came at me, I stood up in the
stirrups, naked as your hand, and started to swat 'em. Jerran leaning
forward past me, guiding the stallion, for his reach is not half mine."

"Brag and bounce!" said a voice that was surely Jerran's. Lady Nirea
grinned and walked toward the cavern.

"So I swatted, I beat at them, I swiped and almost fell, I did the work
of twenty men--don't shake your head, Jerran, you know 'tis not
brag!--for half a mile, and not one globe touched a hair of our heads!
They came at the last from all sides, like a swarm of angered bees, and
one burnt the horse so that he streaked even faster; which saved our
necks, for my arm was nearly dead by then.

"I tell you, there is one protection only against these things, and that
is quickness: for let one come within a few inches of you, and you are a
dead man."

Nirea stepped into the cave.

"I thought you were a dead man, Revel the Mink," she said quietly, still
with the ghost of her grin.

* * * * *

He stared at her, while the men in the place turned and sprang up and
stood uncertainly, looking from her to their leader. He was dressed in
miner's clothing again, and his skin was a perfect fright of scars and
scabs and half-closed wounds. But he was whole, barring part of an ear,
and he was smiling as only he could smile. "Here, men of the ruck, is
the woman you owe my life to. Here is--" he cocked an eyebrow
quizzically--"here is, I think I can say, the Lady of the Mink."

"Here she is," said Nirea, and was stifled and crush