d we have all this gear to sort!" I
roused myself, and took over the business of the expedition again.

But when the trucks had been parked and a tent pitched and the pack
animals unloaded and hobbled, and a start made at getting the gear
together--when all this had been done I lay awake, listening to
Kendricks' heavy snoring, but myself afraid to sleep. Dozing in the
truck, an odd lapse of consciousness had come over me ... myself yet not
myself, drowsing over thoughts I did not recognize as my own. If I
slept, who would I be when I woke?

* * * * *

We had made our camp in the bend of an enormous river, wide and shallow
and unbridged; the river Kadarin, traditionally a point of no return for
humans on Darkover. The river is fed by ocean tides and we would have to
wait for low water to cross. Beyond the river lay thick forests, and
beyond the forests the slopes of the Hellers, rising upward and upward;
and their every fold and every valley was filled to the brim with
forest, and in the forests lived the trailmen.

But though all this country was thickly populated with outlying colonies
and nests, it would be no use to bargain with any of them; we must deal
with the Old One of the North Nest, where I had spent so many of my
boyhood years.

From time immemorial, the trailmen--usually inoffensive--had kept strict
boundaries marked between their lands and the lands of ground-dwelling
men. They never came beyond the Kadarin. On the other hand, almost any
human who ventured into their territory became, by that act, fair game
for attack.

A few of the Darkovan mountain people had trade treaties with the
trailmen; they traded clothing, forged metals, small implements, in
return for nuts, bark for dyestuffs and certain leaves and mosses for
drugs. In return, the trailmen permitted them to hunt in the forest
lands without being molested. But other humans, venturing into trailman
territory, ran the risk of merciless raiding; the trailmen were not
bloodthirsty, and did not kill for the sake of killing, but they
attacked in packs of two or three dozen, and their prey would be
stripped and plundered of everything portable.

Travelling through their country would be dangerous....

* * * * *

The sun was high before we struck the camp. While the others were
packing up the last oddments, ready for the saddle, I gave the girl Kyla
the task of readying the rucksacks