our of the dead things were lying in the
clearing. The youngster I'd helped loading horses, the first day, gazed
down at one of the catmen, half-disemboweled by somebody's skean, and
suddenly bolted for the bushes, where I heard him retching.

I set the others with stronger stomachs to dragging the bodies away from
the clearing, and went back to see how badly Kyral was hurt. He had the
rip in his arm and his face was covered with blood from a shallow scalp
wound, but he insisted on getting up to inspect the hurts of the others.

There was no one without a claw-wound in leg or back or shoulder, but
none were serious, and we were all feeling fairly cheerful when someone
demanded, "Where's Cuinn?"

He didn't seem to be anywhere. Kyral, staggering slightly, insisted on
searching, but I felt we wouldn't find him. "He probably went off with
his friends," I snorted, and told about the signaling. Kyral looked
grave.

"You should have told me," he began, but shouts from the far end of the
clearing sent us racing there. We nearly stumbled over a single,
solitary, motionless form, outstretched and lifeless, blind eyes staring
upward at the moons.

It was Cuinn. And his throat had been torn completely out.

CHAPTER SIX

Once we were free of the forest, the road to the Dry-towns lay straight
before us, with no hidden dangers. Some of us limped for a day or two,
or favored an arm or leg clawed by the catmen, but I knew that what
Kyral said was true; it was a lucky caravan which had to fight off only
one attack.

Cuinn haunted me. A night or two of turning over his cryptic words in my
mind had convinced me that whoever, or whatever he'd been signaling, it
wasn't the catmen. And his urgent question "Where's the girl?" swam
endlessly in my brain, making no more sense than when I had first heard
it. Who had he mistaken me for? What did he think I was mixed up in? And
who, above all, were the "others" who had to be signaled, at the risk of
an attack by catmen which had meant his own death?

With Cuinn dead, and Kyral thinking I'd saved his life, a large part of
the responsibility for the caravan now fell on me. And strangely I
enjoyed it, making the most of this interval when I was separated from
the thought of blood-feud or revenge, the need of spying or the threat
of exposure. During those days and nights on the trail I grew back
slowly into the Dry-towner I once had been. I knew I would be sorry when
the walls of Sha