“You say you’ll protect us on the Great Meadow. How can we know you won’t attack us instead? How can we know it isn’t a trap you offer instead of a country?”

There was a short lapse before Ahmed answered. “I have left my mind perfectly open as I talked with you. Have you no telepaths?”

There followed quiet conversation among the Northmen. Three of their newly trained telepaths were there. “We can’t read their thoughts,” one said, “because they think in orcish. But we can read mood and feeling, which are more reliable if less explicit. The one who spoke is ruthless and unpredictable. At present he intends to keep his word, but he is not a man to trust. All three of us read it the same.”

After a few moments of thought, Kniv Listi spoke, full-voiced, with Sten translating. “Our telepaths tell us you mean what you say. But once you have won, you will command all the orcs, and we will be far from our forests. You will have no more need of allies then, heavily out-numbered allies who could be attacked from the sky. What proof can you give that you won’t change your mind and turn on us?”

While the two Northmen spoke in turns, Scandinavian, then Anglic, Nikko felt herself filling with impulse, excitement, determination. As quickly as they were done she called out loudly and clearly. “Ahmed! Will you give up your hostages as a sign of good will? If you turn them over to these people, perhaps they might trust you.”

She felt unseen eyes around her while Sten translated for the Northmen.

“The hostages are star people,” the consul answered coldly, “and mean nothing to the Northmen. You are a hostage yourself, and a fool, not a chief. Beware of talking out of turn. They are indulgent with you but their patience is not limitless.”

She felt small and alone, intimidated, among the tall grim chiefs who scowled at her in the darkness.

“Not all your hostages are star people,” she answered. “You have Nils Jarnhann in your prison, the Northman giant who escaped from your arena once.”

Sten abandoned protocol. “They have Nils? How do you know?”

“Ilse told me,” she replied. “Now that I’m a hostage you don’t let me use the radio anymore. But just after you left for this meeting, the signal started buzzing, and I showed Hild how to turn it on. It was Ilse, and you weren’t there, so she asked to talk to me. She’d had a vision of Nils held captive by the orcs. And it wasn’t a premonition; they have him now. She wanted you to know.”

She stood shivering while Sten translated for the Northmen and Kniv questioned the telepaths. They agreed she had not lied. The chiefs were utterly intent now as Sten spoke for Kniv Listi.

“Why didn’t you tell us you hold our Yngling prisoner?”

For long seconds the orc did not answer. “I don’t hold him prisoner,” he said at last.

Kniv questioned the telepaths again. “He speaks the truth,” one said. “We are agreed. But he doesn’t tell all he knows.”

“What else then?” Sten demanded for the war leader. “Have you killed him?”

“I have never had him prisoner and I have not killed him.”

“Then perhaps your enemy holds him!”

Ahmed didn’t answer. “You struck deep with that one,” the telepaths told Kniv. “His enemy does hold the Yngling.”

Listi scowled thoughtfully. “Nils Jarnhann can do what other men can’t,” he said to Sten. “While he lives there is hope for him. But if we war against the orc that holds him, he won’t live long. Tell this Ahmed if he can return our Yngling to us alive and whole, then we will talk about alliance. Otherwise we will let the orcs kill each other.”

“Sten, wait!” Nikko broke in. She spoke his language now. “There is more about Nils! Ilse saw more than I told you!” She listened in fright to her own words tumbling out, afraid of what she was saying, afraid she was making a terrible mistake in telling it here and now. “Sten, Ilse saw them… she told me she saw them… pierce his eyes! Nils is blind, Sten! Nils is blind!”

Ahmed stood tensely, staring through the transparent hull at the indistinct group in the darkness.

“Whatever the star woman told them that time,” Yusuf said quietly, “it made them very angry. Not at her, but very angry.”

Listening to them, Ahmed didn’t need telepathy to know they were angry. Grim and angry. At last the one who spoke Anglic addressed him with a deadly voice.

“We will fight your enemy. He has put out the eyes of our Yngling. We will ride from here at the second dawning. You will tell us how to know your soldiers from the others so we do not kill them by mistake. And when your enemy is captured, he is ours to settle with. Ours. Do not forget that. Be very careful that you do not forget that.”

Alpha sledded swiftly through the night sky.

“Indeed, my Lord, I was surprised at their rage,” Yusuf was saying. “I’d read them as a hardheaded people, men with control of their passions, or indeed with little that we ordinarily think of as passion at all. I tell you frankly, I never expected that they would agree to your offer. That act of Draco’s cut some very deep taboo.”

Ahmed’s mood swelled with grim pleasure. “They’ve shown a weakness. I see them differently now. Perhaps when it is over we will stay after all. At any rate the die is cast.”

Yusuf withdrew into contemplation and they rode briefly in silence. “My Lord,” he said finally, “let me offer unasked advice. Be careful of the Northmen. When the star woman told them what had been done to their hero, their anger was not ordinary rage that destroys wit and logic, however reckless their decision seems. There was a terribly deadly intention; they reeked of danger. They felt like the storm from the steppe that sucks up men and horses and spits out broken rags.”

Ahmed pursed his lips in the darkness. “You are always somber, my friend, but now you dramatize. That’s not like you. The Northmen are nothing to trifle with, I grant you. That’s why even their small numbers will make the difference and assure us victory. But angry men, vengeful men, make mistakes.”

Yusf stared gloomily into the night as if watching something. “It wasn’t hot anger to thicken the wits. Their rage was cold, with an edge like a razor.”

Now Ahmed brooded also. After all, Yusuf was psychic, and there were many dangers. What whisper might he hear from the future?

The barbarians had grinned in battle-laughed and crowed aloud and fought with the strength and vigor of the possessed. And they always won. Now perhaps they were possessed. Gooseflesh rose on his arms and crawled across his scalp. He wondered if they’d grin in the battle to come, and what their laughter might then be like.

Yusuf was right. He would take no liberties.

XXI

Her world was bright and clear and detailed. Her senses were more than sight and hearing, more than touch, taste, heat and smell, more than awareness of orientation and gravitic vectors-the usual data sources. With her, even the ordinary senses were more sensitive, more aware.

Her mind lacked some of the usual barriers; she was less constrained by past pain and hurtful emotions, more open to data at variance with general beliefs.

Hers was a world of discovery and growth. Possibilities became accessible to her.

Her eyes had closed; she felt no need for visual input just then. The fetus moved within her body, shifting uncomfortably in the cramped quarters, found a new position and became quiet again. She was aware of it but gave it no attention.

She did not grieve at the blinding of Nils, although at first the knowledge had shocked her. And she did not worry over what might happen next, although she was by no means indifferent. Simply, she would see what she could do. Now her attention focused on a question and remained there, examining.