Chapter one

Rumors of the activities of slavers had brought us flying to Djasra Island and now as we sat our mounts and looked through a thin screen of trees onto the beach we saw that rumor had not lied.

“By the Veiled Froyvil, my old dom! We can’t have this!”

My blade comrade Seg’s strong handsome face glowered with loathing upon the scene on the beach where coffles of men, women and children shuffled in their chains down to the waiting boats. Offshore, three fat-bellied argenters rode at anchor with furled sails, already low in the water from their ghastly freight.

“We shall,” said my blade comrade Inch, freeing his long-handled axe, “have to teach a lesson here as well as freeing the people.”

There was no way I could disagree with that sentiment. Yet — there were but a score of us and the slavers down there numbered at least fifty. The Suns of Scorpio blazed in molten ruby and jade overhead, the scents of flowers filled the bright air with heady perfumes, birds sang and cavorted, and we chosen brethren of the Kroveres of Iztar must ride down and risk all to follow the precepts of our self-imposed duty.

“Benighted Whiptails!” quoth Nath Javed, quietening the zorca between his knees. “Hack ’n’ Slay ’em all!”

For, yes, indeed, the slavers were Katakis, as unpleasant a race of diffs as you’d ever wish to cross swords with on a wet and murky night.

The captured people down there were ordinary normal folk, farmers mostly, earning an honest living from the land. And now these Opaz-forsaken Katakis had swooped and swept them up in iron chains. Already the dismal moaning floated mournfully into the bright suns-shine of the morning. Oh, yes, by Vox, twenty against fifty or a hundred or even more — we Kroveres of Iztar knew well what was required of us.

No use lollygagging about then. Beyond the screen of trees the beach trended away in a slope that began steeply enough and evened out as the sand was washed by the waves. This was going to be a full-blooded charge, a whoop and holler helter-skelter, by Krun!

The smells of oiled leather and steel, the warm friendly animal scent of the zorcas, surrounded us. Sober reflection showed me instantly that this was not a holler and a whoop attack. Oh, no.

Seg unslung his Great Lohvian Longbow. “When you reach the bottom of the slope.” He selected a shaft with finicky precision.

Feeling the pressures of the moment, I said: “What d’you think? Four? Five? A talen apiece?”

“Done, my old dom, and you’ll be poorer tonight. Ha!”

I lifted in my stirrups and looked left and right. The lads were as bonny a bunch as you could hope to meet. Naturally, Korero the Shield drew a sword and pushed the two shields higher, and started to speak. I interrupted him with a: “And mind you don’t get killed.”

In a line we moved forward between the trees. A little breeze kicked up sandy dust from the crest as we passed. I said one more word. “Silence!” Then, free of the trees and with the beach ahead, we rode carefully down the slope. At the foot I sensed the tensing up, the gathering together, of the lads. Side by side, comrades in arms, we charged.

Spiral horns thrusting onward, polished hooves kicking sand, all the passionate animate beauty of the zorcas expressed itself as sublime poetry in that headlong charge. Lance heads with their brave scarlet and yellow pennons fluttering lowered into a wicked hedge. Onwards we rushed over the beach, nearer and nearer the damned Whiptails.

Clearly, just like an image seen through a telescope, circumscribed, I saw a Kataki lifting his heavy whip to bring the lash down across the naked back of a woman stumbling to her knees under her chains. Abruptly, the Kataki stood up, stiff, rigid. The whip dropped from his hand. He turned like a marionette, and fell face-first into the sand. From his back sprouted the long Lo