no satisfaction at turning the tables on him. Instead he
felt increasingly uneasy.

"What is this all about?" he asked McNeil as he stripped off his bonds
and helped him up.

McNeil massaged his wrists, took a step or two, and grimaced with pain.
"Our friend seeks to be an obedient servant of Lurgha."

Ross picked up his bow. "The tribe is out to hunt us?"

"Lurgha has ordered--out of thin air again--that any traders who escaped
are to be brought in and introduced to him personally at the sacrifice
for the enrichment of the fields!"

The old, old gift of blood and life at the spring sowing. Ross recalled
grisly details from his cram lessons. Any wandering stranger or enemy
tribesman taken in a raid before that day would meet such a fate. On
unlucky years when people were not available a deer or wolf might serve.
But the best sacrifice of all was a man. So Lurgha had decreed--from the
air--that traders were his meat? What of Ashe? Let any hunter from the
village track him down.

"We have to move fast," Ross told McNeil as he took up the rope which
made a leading cord for Lal. Ashe would want to question the tribesman
about this second order from Lurgha.

Impatient as Ross was, he had to mend his pace to accommodate McNeil.
The man from the hill post was close to the end of his strength. He had
started off bravely enough, but now he wavered. Ross sent Lal ahead with
a sharp push, ordering him to stay there, while he went to McNeil's aid.
It was well into the afternoon before they came up the stream and saw
the fire before the cave.

"Macna!" Ashe hailed Ross's companion with the native version of his
name. "And Lal. But what do you here, Lal of Nodren's town?"

"Mischief." Ross helped McNeil within the cave and to the pile of brush
which was his own bed. "He was hunting traders as a present for Lurgha."

"So--" Ashe turned upon the tribesman--"and by whose word did you go
hunting my kinsman, Lal? Was it Nodren's? Has he forgotten the blood
bond between us? For it was in the name of Lurgha himself that that bond
was made----"

"Aaaah--" The tribesman squatted down against the wall where Ross had
shoved him. Unable to hide his head in his arms, he brought his face
down upon his knees so that only his shaggy topknot of hair was exposed.
Ross realized, with stupefaction, that the little man was crying like a
child, his hunched shoulders rising and falling with the force of his
sobs. "Aaaah--" he wailed.

Ashe a