“Very well. Be sure to call the moment you need me, little brother. It has been a long time since I fought bad two-legs, so 1 am looking forward to it. Without their weapons, they fight worse than kittens!”

“I promise that 1 will call you when the time is right, Iron Claw. Do you think you are well enough to hunt now?” “Yes, Little Brother. I will start hunting early tomorrow morning. I should bring something down long before I run out of pig.”

The next ten days passed so slowly that Djoh began to look forward to the trial as at least an end to the boredom. His only visitor was the marshal. He came in twice a day, bringing breakfast and dinner but rarely speaking except a few grunted m'onosyllables. Djoh found this worse than no visitors at all, since it only reminded him that he was in jail.

On the eleventh day he finally had a real visitor—Marthuh. The marshal left her outside Djoh’s cell door, with a warning.

“I don’t know why your dad asked you to bring the prisoner a message, but if anything happens, it’s goin’ to be on his head, not mine. Don’t you get too close, neither. No tellin’ what this one might do.”

The moment the door closed, Marthuh pressed up against the bars. Their lips touched; Djoh could tell that she shared his thought that this might be for the last time.

“Don’t cry,” he said.

“I just can’t stand seeing you like this. And all because of me!”

“No, Marthuh. It’s not your fault. It’s not mine, either. I’ve never met a pirate in my life.”

“I know that, Djoh. But my dad did this because I told him I loved you and that nothing would keep us apart. He swore to me that he’d keep you away, even if he had to kill you himself. Now he’s found a better way.”

At that moment, with Marthuh’s declaration of love in his ears, Djoh wouldn’t have minded if they’d taken him out on the spot and stoned him. Marthuh loved him! What more could he hope for?

In another moment, common sense returned. It would be nice if they could have some time together. Also, the impulse to tell her the truth about what had kept him going to the forest all these weeks faded. It wouldn’t make any more sense to her than Oskah’s lies, and would only confuse her.

Besides, the fewer people who knew about Iron Claw, the better.

“I can’t think of any other reason for my being here. But doesn’t that make it dangerous for you to be visiting me?” “No—well, not very. When my father finds out, he’ll be angry. But without you, it doesn’t matter. Djoh, I want to help you escape.”

“That will be dangerous, Marthuh. Besides, how could you get past the marshal?”

“I don’t know. I just have to do something. Maybe I could steal one of my father’s swords—”

“Marthuh, no! You’d get hurt and wouldn’t accomplish a thing.” He wanted to say “I forbid it,” but the look in her eye told him that they’d have their first quarrel if he said that.

“Djoh, we have to do something soon. Father said last night, when he came in from the farm, that your trial is going to be at the end of the week. When I asked what would happen to you, he said that I’d never see you again. The look in his eyes when he said it was scary. Something awful is going to happen. We’ve got to get you out of here!”

Three more days. Suddenly the cell didn’t seem so bad. They wouldn’t really have him stoned for this, would they? Giving information to the pirates was a serious charge, but dammit, he was innocent!

Yes, and they didn’t know that. All they had was his word against Oskah’s—and he knew who they would believe.

“It will be all right, Marthuh. Really. I haven’t done anything. The Sacred Caterpillars won’t harm an innocent man.” He hoped he could make her believe that without believing it himself.

In a moment he knew that he’d failed. Marthuh still stood willow-straight, but tears were trickling from her eyes. Then the trickles turned into streams, and sobs racked her body.

Djoh wormed his arms through the bars and tried to comfort her. They were in this clumsy embrace when the marshal returned.

“What’s goin’ on here? Get your hands offa her!”

Marthuh jerked away.

“Wait till your dad hears of this! You didn’t have no message to deliver, did you?”

Marthuh shook her head.

“You git out of this jail right now. Your dad’ll know what to do with you!”

She gave a half-cry, half-gasp and ran out of the jail. The marshal stood shaking his head. “I ain’t too sure I know what all this means. But one thing you can count on, boy, it won’t make your bed any easier to lie on, no sir.”

Djoh knew that this was the truth, but he also knew something else that really helped. With her father alerted, Marthuh wouldn’t be able to do anything foolish. Both she and Iron Claw were safe, and that was a load off his mind.

Iron Claw woke up irritable, which usually meant that he was hungry. This time not even three rabbits and a runaway calf took the edge off his anger.

Something was wrong. Little Brother hadn’t mindspoken with him for two days. Was he in some danger he hadn’t foreseen?

Iron Claw tried to mindcall his friend, but the scent of his thoughts was lost amid all the other two-legs in their great den. Little Brother had the most powerful mindspeak he’d ever encountered, but Iron Claw had neither his range nor his power. Maybe if he came closer to the two-legs’ den . . .

The idea of being so close to so many bad two-legs did nothing to improve Iron Claw’s temper. He loped off toward Blue Springs in a thoroughly foul mood.

Today was the day of the trial. As much as he hated to admit it, Djoh was scared. He’d picked at his breakfast for over an hour, until it was a congealed lump of oatmeal.

He knew that the best that could happen to him would be exile, which was just a delayed death sentence anyway. Strangers were always suspect, and a wanderer with neither home nor kin was fair game to both human and animal predators. Maybe Iron Claw would protect him for a while, but the prairiecat surely had his own plans, which wouldn’t include wetnursing stray two-legs.

His musings ended abruptly as the door opened. Four men came in, wearing the hooded yellow robes of Sacred Caterpillars. The marshal followed them, and they waited while he unlocked the cell door. Then silently they bound Djoh’s hands and escorted him out of the jail, up the streets of Blue Springs to the Shrine on its bluff.

The Shrine looked no different than any other day, except maybe a little cleaner. From the pole over the big iron-shod doors, however, hung the great banner showing one of the ancient Caterpillars at work moving a mountain.

As the party drew closer, Djoh smelled the fumes of the sacred oil. They must have more lamps than usual lit today, to make such a stink. He wondered if the sacred oil really was what the Caterpillars once drank to give them their magical strength, in the days before the Wasting. Or was the formula as much a product of somebody’s imagination as Oskah’s tale?

It didn’t matter. People would believe what they wanted to believe. They’d wanted to believe that they still had some of the ancient magic, and now they wanted to believe that Djoh was guilty. The set expressions and hard eyes of the Caterpillars told him that plainly. The only question was how severe the sentence would be.

At the front of the crowd around the Shrine, Djoh saw his parents. Peetuh’s hands were balled into fists and held tightly at his side. Djoh felt a wave of affection for this stem man, who’d been a father to him even while knowing better. He hoped his father wouldn’t try to interfere with the trail; he couldn’t fight the whole town.

Oskah stepped forward, as accuser, and one of the Caterpillars began to recite the charges:

“You, Djoh son of Peetuh the carpenter, have been brought before this body for the crimes of treason and murder. You have committed the second crime as a result of the first, by giving to the pirates information leading to the loss of four boats and the deaths of twenty-three men.