the forefront. Clinging low to the scaly neck, he saw the
men of Mekh scattered and churned and tramped into the snow by the
flying pads. In and out of the shelters, kicking the brush walls down,
lifting up their harsh reptilian voices, they went racketing through the
camp, leaving behind them wreckage as of a storm. And Stark went with
them.

He snatched a cloak from off the shoulders of some petty chieftain as he
went by, and then, twisting cruelly on the fleshy comb, beating with his
fist at the creature's head, he got his mount turned in the way he
wanted it to go, down the valley.

He caught one last glimpse of the Lord Ciaran, fighting to hold one of
the creatures long enough to mount, and then a dozen striving bodies
surged around him, and Stark was gone.

The beast did not slacken pace. It was as though it thought it could
outrun the alien, bloody thing that clung to its back. The last fringes
of the camp shot by and vanished in the gloom, and the clean snow of the
lower valley lay open before it. The creature laid its belly to the
ground and went, the white spray spurting from its heels.

Stark hung on. His strength was gone now, run out suddenly with the
battle-madness. He became conscious now that he was sick and bleeding,
that his body was one cruel pain. In that moment, more than in the hours
that had gone before, he hated the black leader of the clans of Mekh.

That flight down the valley became a sort of ugly dream. Stark was aware
of rock walls reeling past, and then they seemed to widen away and the
wind came out of nowhere like the stroke of a great hammer, and he was
on the open moors again.

The beast began to falter and slow down. Presently it stopped.

Stark scooped up snow to rub on his wounds. He came near to fainting,
but the bleeding stopped and after that the pain was numbed to a dull
ache. He wrapped the cloak around him and urged the beast to go on,
gently this time, patiently, and after it had breathed it obeyed him,
settling into the shuffling pace it could keep up for hours.

He was three days on the moors. Part of the time he rode in a sort of
stupor, and part of the time he was feverishly alert, watching the
skyline. Frequently he took the shapes of thrusting rocks for riders,
and found what cover he could until he was sure they did not move. He
was afraid to dismount, for the beast had no bridle. When it halted to
rest he remained upon its back, shaking, his brow beaded with sw