«We had no use for most of them, but these have done well. In the time that is coming, they will do even better for us. They are ours, like the drugs, like the swords and knives of our sworn fighters. They are the assarani.»

In other words, weapons. Who would be the assarani's victims, in «the time that is coming»? Blade did not dare ask that aloud. Instead he asked, in a carefully business-like voice, «What was in those bolts the archers fired into the first assaran? I am surprised that any of your drugs could take effect so quickly in such a large, slow-moving creature.»

Blade's tone brought the Master back to reality. He smiled. «We owe much to the wisdom of the First Master. What works upon the assarani is not in the arrows. It is in them.»

Blade looked a question at the Master. He continued. «The water they drink is from a stream that flows down into their cave. We drop into the stream what will make them more sensitive to any other drug. The water carries it to them, they drink, and thus all the other drugs work upon them in a moment.»

Blade nodded. The account left out a good many details he would have been glad to know, but it gave him one vital piece of information. He'd guessed at it before-now he could be sure. The drugs of the Hashomi were enormously powerful. Like LSD, a few pounds dropped into a city's water supply would probably be enough to affect a whole population. He'd never liked the idea of something that powerful available to dangerous or irresponsible men or groups.

He liked even less the idea of such drugs in the hands of the Hashomi.

The Master went on, too proud of his people's skills to be silent or to notice the chill remoteness on Blade's face.

«We also dispose of the bodies of our dead by feeding them to the assarani. In each body we place the proper drugs, so that in eating the flesh of the dead the beasts also eat the drugs.»

Blade wondered what the farmers and craftsmen of the Valley of the Hashomi thought of having their dead carted off as dinosaur fodder. He would have to ask someone beside the Master, though. In silence he followed the Master away from the pit.

Chapter 9

Not everything the Master showed Blade was as exotic or sinister as the nad-crazed horse or the pit of the assarani. Much of it was simply the training sessions of the Hashomi, with sword and knife, spear, longbow and crossbow, dagger, strangling cords, and other weapons for both open battle and silent murder.

There was very little Blade could teach them about the use of the weapons they already had. Hour after hour of training, week after week, had done about all that could be done.

The Hashomi needed even less advice and instruction on physical conditioning. From the newly entered teenage boys up to the graying men in their late fifties, they were all quick, tough, hard as nails, trimmed down to nothing but skin and muscle stretched tautly over their light bones. In a straight barehanded brawl, somebody the size and strength of Blade could pull any of them apart, but only if he could catch them and hold on.

Still, a time was coming when the Hashomi might need every technique of unarmed combat that Blade could or would teach them. The Master made that clear. The Master also made it clear that Blade had better teach, and teach well-or he might find his freedom and even his life ending abruptly.

The Master also wanted Blade to pass on his skills with the quarterstaff. Like bare hands, a simple staff of wood was not a weapon that would arouse the suspicions of the Hashomi's enemies.

Blade went to work, eight and ten hours a day, doing his best and concealing his distaste for teaching the Hashomi anything that might make them more dangerous. The men learned fast, as he expected. Within a few days he was able to appoint some of the more promising students as instructors.

While Blade taught, he also learned. At times he saw Hashomi training with throwing spears and lighter scimitars. These, he was told, were weapons of the soldiers of Dahaura.

At other times he saw Hashomi using their assassination weapon, but wearing green robes with golden sashes and green shoes of heavy canvas. This was the ceremonial costume of the Hemo-Junah-the Fighters of Junah. They were the strongest of the dissenting sects among the worshippers of Junah, bitterly opposed to the orthodox Tezo-Junahthe Children of Junah.

The rulers of Dahaura, the Barans, had belonged to the Children of Junah for nearly four hundred years. During that time they had persecuted the other sects, until only the Fighters of Junah were left with any strength. As their name implied, they were a militant sect, whose members swore blood oaths and sought to perfect themselves in arms. Often they paid for their oaths and their training with their lives, strangled or beheaded or impaled by order of the Barans. The persecution reduced their numbers, but increased the fanaticism of the survivors.

It was an old and familiar story to Blade, one he'd seen or heard of in a dozen Dimensions. Obviously the Hashomi were planning to take advantage of the religious conflict. They'd be fools not to. But what did they hope to gain by this? The Hashomi were skilled and fanatical, but they had only five thousand fighting men. Dahaura was an empire spreading several weeks ride from border to border, with millions of people: It would be a tough nut for even the Hashomi to crack.

Unfortunately, Blade once more found his quest for information about as rewarding as trying to get answers from the rocks of the White Mountain. The Master did once ask Blade if he believed in Junah and appeared pleased when the Englishman said no. That was the only revealing thing Blade heard. He began to suspect that he could spend a year here in the Valley of the Hashomi, teaching karate and quarterstaff fighting, without learning much more.

Then suddenly he learned he could not safely stay in the valley at all.

The last of the night's women had just slipped out the door of the hut, and Blade was catching his breath before returning to the hospital. He was not fresh out of Oxford any more, and his day's work training left him with only so much strength for his night's work among the women. Fortunately he had strength for both, and there were many happy women in the valley because of that. It was an exhausting routine, but far better than having either the Master or the women as enemies.

He was about to rise when he heard a faint tapping on the door. A moment of silence, and it came again, in a pattern he recognized. Mirna. He opened the door, and she slipped into the but and into his arms.

After a moment she drew her lips and body away from his. He stroked her cheek, and felt her trembling slightly.

«Mirna. Are they after you?»

«No.» A short, harsh laugh. «They do not yet care what the women do. It will take more than this to make them do so. They do care about what you are doing to the women, though. They care, so that there is danger for you.»

«Who are 'they' and what is the danger to me?»

«The fighting Hashomi, even a Treas or two. It is known among them what you do.»

«Is it known to the Master?» That might seem a foolish question. By law and custom the Hashomi were supposed to have no secrets from the Master, but Blade doubted all those laws and customs were obeyed. No man can ever bring himself to tell even the most trusted and revered leader every last thing about his personal affairs.

Mirna knew this as well as Blade did. In the darkness he could see her frowning, weighing what she knew. «None of the men have spoken of telling the Master. At least not in the hearing of any of the women of the Houses of the Iced Water. What they may have said and done elsewhere-«

«Yes, I understand. What is it that the men say?»