"You are as wise as your wise men, Lali. I will kill this Mong they send against me and there will at least be a chance to break this stalemate. The Khad may keep his word, or he may not, but there is a chance."

She writhed a bit in his arms, a sensuous movement that began his own arousal. He kept stroking her breasts. She liked that above all things except the ultimate act. At times he could drive her into frenzy by breast play alone. He wanted her in a frenzy tonight. He would give her no time to think, to have second thoughts.

She leaned her head back on his shoulder and nuzzled him with moist red lips. "I have been talking to my spies. I have as many in Khad Tambur's camp as he has in Cath, you know."

Blade gently squeezed her breasts. "And?"

"The Khad has imprisoned his sister. That whore Sadda. She has been placed in her tent under guard. And the guards under threat of death if she escapes. My spies say that she is in a towering rage."

Lali half turned to look at him. "You had better win tomorrow, Blade. But if you lose and we refuse to give up the great cannon, as we will do, you had better be dead! Do not let them make you prisoner. I have loved you too much to enjoy seeing the pieces of your body paraded before the wall. You can expect no mercy from the Mongs. You would find little enough from the Khad, but if you lose, and are taken prisoner, and he releases Sadda, she will undoubtedly ask for you as a slave. She will blame you for her humiliation. And she will treat you as I would have treated her. No, Blade. Do not lose. But if you must lose - be sure you die in the doing of it."

She came into his arms then and kissed him and her tongue was like a flame in his mouth. At their first encounter in the temple he had been too stunned by desire, too overcome by animal passion, to think at all. Now the edge of that desire had been blunted and a part of his mind was clear. He thought, not for the first time, how closely related were sex and death.

Lali led him to the circular bed, having first stripped the silken cloth from his loins. She was eager and insatiable. Their passion flamed until they could stand the tension no longer, and Lali moaned for release. When it came, she cried out in pleasure.

After the first tumultuous bout, as they lay replete and lax, Lali said: "I am sure you will win tomorrow, Blade. So sure that I have prepared a cage for Sadda. Quite a nice cage - full of sharp spikes. And next to her cage is also a cage of the carrion apes we have caught. They will be starved. I want Sadda to see them - and I want them to see Sadda. When I am finished with her they shall have what is left."

Blade kept his eyes closed. "I shouldn't imagine there would be much left for the apes."

He was not as appalled as, perhaps, he should have been. He understood why. He adapted to a new environment with great speed. It had been so in Alb, the first X-Dimension he had explored. So it was now. He was already speaking in the sweet high musical tones of the Caths and, in many ways, thinking like a Cath. Lord L had explained it in terms that Blade had not totally understood. The organism, in any and all circumstances, will adjust itself to survival. Simple enough in the essence.

Isolated civilizations, Blade had read somewhere, will develop along parallel lines. There will be time lags, but the ultimate goals will always be the same and will ultimately be reached.

It would seem to apply to X-Dimension as well. He wondered what the anthropologists back in H-Dimension would make of that? If they ever came to know of it. If he, Richard Blade, ever got back so they could come to know of it.

"There will be enough left for the apes," Lali said. "I will make sure of that."

She rolled over on top of him.