Before I lay down, I went a little way off. "To pray," I told Michael. "Tell the Varangians I'm going off by myself to pray to the angel Deneen." I went out on an outcrop and tried the communicator, but got no one. Just as I'd expected. Tomorrow night would be the sixth. I could reasonably hope to get her on the sixth night. If not, then maybe on the seventh.

After that I went "to bed." This time I didn't let smelly bodies bother me. I lay down against the jam of Varangians to share warmth. I suppose it helped, but it was the coldest, most miserable night I'd ever spent.

What can I say about the next day? Until late afternoon it was basically the same as the one before: hike up and down steep slopes and pick your way along ravines. The country was high and cold, and if a little less rugged, it was still tough going. We were still in luck with the weather, which was sunny without much breeze, but on the other hand, the scouts only killed one goat. One goat for eighty-one of us. Gunnlag stopped early to camp, and a number of men with bows were sent hunting.

If they didn't have some luck, we'd be hungrier that night than the first.

While we lay around in the late sun, we heard a horn off to the south. I asked Arno what he thought it was. He said it sounded like a Saracen war trumpet, but they probably used them as hunting horns too. I asked him what they might be hunting in a time of war like this.

He grinned at me. "They're hunting just what you think they're hunting," he replied, "Us. And the horn means they've found our trail."

He got to his swollen feet and, with only a slight limp, walked over to Gunnlag to talk with him about it. By the way Gunnlag looked-standing, staring off toward the sound-he'd come to the same conclusion on his own. I went off to pray to the angel Deneen again. Maybe this time. If not..

From what I understand about prayer, what I felt when I called Deneen that evening wasn't much different from what the Christians felt when they prayed to their God. Again I didn't get any answer. I began to wonder if, just possibly, my communicator wasn't working. Unlikely. Maybe… I didn't like to think about it, but maybe something was wrong with the Rebel Javelin- something worse than fuel crystallization. No, I told myself, it's just a night too soon.

And tomorrow night could easily be a night too late. I decided it was time to turn on my remote again, in case she called me.

The hunters were back sooner than they might have been. They'd heard the horn too. Among them they'd gotten one goat. She'd been gutted, and given to me to carry because we weren't going to stay where we were. It didn't appeal to Gunnlag for a defensive stand. True, it was a high point on a ridge, but an enemy could charge along the crest at us from two sides with only a mild slope to ride up. While on the next major ridge north there was a rounded peak, sort of a knob, that would be a lot easier to defend.

It was nearly dark when we reached it. By that time we'd heard horns twice more, the last sounding as if it came from the place we'd left two hours earlier. I wondered how many Saracens there were. The Varangians rolled and lugged the available large rocks into a crescent at each end of our position. Only the ends were attackable. The rocks didn't make a wall at all; you could walk between them. But they'd give a little cover from arrows if you knelt behind them.

Then we sat and squatted in little clusters at the top.

That's when I realized that someone wasn't with us.

"Where's Michael?" I murmured to Arno.

"I've sent him north," he answered. "To see if he can find some Norman force to relieve us. The Saracens will assume we've sent someone, but one man is hard to trail by night."

"Can they track us at night?" I asked.

"Saracen knights are like Norman knights in their love of hunting. And the moon will rise before long, with light enough to track a force the size of ours."

That seemed reasonable to me. Piet had taught us to track during our survival training, and we'd followed well-beaten animal trails by moonlight.

"How many of them do you think there are?" I asked.

Arno shrugged. "They think we are a hundred, so they may well be twice that. Quite possibly more. And they are on horses; do not doubt it."

It occurred to me to wonder what use I'd be up there on the hilltop. The Saracens had to be pretty smart about war, or they wouldn't be a power on Fanglith. And if they were smart, they wouldn't rush us. They'd sit down the hill and let us get good and thirsty. They might not even waste arrows on us.

And knowing the Varangians, when they got thirsty enough, after maybe a day without water, they'd go down after some. They wouldn't just wait to die. Then the Saracen archers and swordsmen would get a work-out. And whoever won-probably the Saracens-a lot of us would be dead when it was over. Maybe all of us.

The last of the twilight had died, and moonrise was still an hour or two off. It was as dark as a night in open mountains can get without a good cloud layer. Which was pretty dark. "Arno," I said, getting to my feet, "wish me luck."

I unbuckled my belt and took my shortsword off of it, then laid the sword by a boulder. My stunner and communicator I kept.

"What are you going to do?" Arno asked.

"I'm going hunting. We hunt on Evdash too, you know." Then, after rebuckling my belt, I slipped out through the partial crescent of boulders and started south down the mountain.

TWENTY-FOUR

Deneen:

It was still night when we got to the island. I put the Jav down near the little stream, at about where we'd been before. A little farther from it, actually, in case a big rainstorm came along and the creek outgrew its banks.

With the power off, we'd be down to basics. And I mean basics. Most of our equipment, including kitchen and sanitary equipment, operated off ship's power, while what hand-powered tools we had were designed for working on ship systems and structure. We didn't have so much as a shovel to bury trash with or dig a latrine.

Somehow, I hadn't thought about any of this until we were on the island. Then, for a couple of minutes, I considered going back to the continent and having Tarel and Moise get us some things, but that would mean being on power again for several hours, and there was the possibility that they might get into trouble on the ground. Possibly trouble that could take days on power to handle. Unlikely, maybe, but I wasn't willing to take the risk.

Then I remembered that we had the fire starters from our packs, and the shortsword and dagger that Larn had gotten Tarel in Marseille. Plus stunners to hunt with, and Uncle Piet's survival training. And more than anything else, Bubba was with us as our super watch-canid and master hunter.

We were better off than I'd thought; it wasn't like me to get all shook up with no good reason. That's when I realized how worried and distracted I was about Larn. Which was kind of dumb, because it didn't do anyone any good-Larn or any of us.

Tarel and I looked around for anything I'd missed that might be useful and didn't require ship's power. Then I shut the power off and we all went out and slept on solid ground-more solid than I was used to.

I lay there for a while with Larn on my mind. Both in Provence and Normandy, and recently on the ship from Marseille, he'd shown a lot of ability, resourcefulness, and ingenuity, which had helped keep him alive. But an important part of it had been-let's face it-really good luck. And while luck is very good to have, I'd never felt very comfortable about relying on it. It seemed to me that you couldn't know when you'd run out of it-at least, not until it was too late.

Of course, ability has its limits too, but you at least had some idea of what those limits were. And while you couldn't measure ingenuity or resourcefulness, you knew if you had it or not. just now, Larn's abilities weren't what I could wish they were. For example, his skill with local weapons was almost nonexistent, and Arno had gotten his stunner and blaster away from him. What he had left was his ability to do the right thing at the right time-duck when he needed to. And that's where ability shaded over into luck, which he might or might not have some of at any particular time.