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screeching, and the second one followed, hissing. I saw the whiplike tails, barbed, coiling for a slash, but
the range was too great.
These exorcs were mere gliders: they could launch themselves from the volgendrins, but they could never
fly back.
So that explained the reference to the cows.
Taking a fresh grip on the rope, jamming the main-gauche between my teeth, my lips ricked back in the
old way, I shimmied down the last length of vine. I wanted to get onto terra firma as rapidly as possible
right now!
A tree nearly got me but I lifted with bulging muscles and stuck my feet straight out. I received no more
than I had often suffered at the hands of the bosun over a gun breech.
The open space had gone, but another appeared ahead just past the trees. Even at five knots and with
the wind I seemed to be racing over the ground. A river appeared and disappeared. I went down lower
and braced myself, trying to remember to relax. Further down the grass hissed away. A stupid wild ordel
rushed away before me, then a herd of them, running in panic. I was down now and they wouldn t get
out of the way. I felt the ground coming up with sudden treacherous speed and I didn t bother to look
up. The vine had parted. I was falling. I fell perhaps four feet to land astride an ordel, running, plunging,
and racing in blind panic. It felt me on its back and it went wild as I grasped a chunk of mane.
Like a bucking bronco it carried me crazily across the grass.
Trees showed ahead. I took a much firmer grip, bashed in my naked heels, yelled in the ordel s ear and
swerved him away. In the next second I was flying through the air again and rolling head over heels
on the grass, winded and bruised but very much alive!
I sat up.
The ordels had reached some kind of sanctuary among the trees. They would have to come out to graze,
and then the exorcs would get at them again. I looked up. Already the volgendrin was sailing on past. It
was already beginning to take on the appearance of a black cloud in the sky, and other flying islands
showed to left and right, bringing the perspectives into proportion. The suns blazed down gloriously.
I stood up.
It seemed a good idea to put the clothes on, to put the dolman on as a pelisse, to fashion the cloak up
loosely around my left arm, to see to the rapier and main-gauche, and then grasp the longsword in that
cunning Krozair grip.
I did all this . . . and only just in time.
The exorcs swarmed down to attack.
They glided in, hissing, their fanged jaws wide, their ruby eyes like the lights of hell.
The longsword could deal with them, shearing wings, heads, and legs. Four legs they had, with those
nasty hooked claws, webbed, leathery, vicious. I took cuts; the clothes were ripped and blood marked
my body. But the sword kept a ring of steel about my head, and dead and writhing exorcs littered the
ground. I saw them running off on all fours, like cats after a fight with a dog, running to the monstrous
cows which flew down to pick them up. These were the mothers. They could really fly. The exorcs
hooked onto the cow s underside and the broad wings flapped and away up to the nests under the
volgendrin they went, so that their offspring could be launched once again to make the kill. The mother
cow would then return to pick up the killers who could not fly and to feed on the kill.
Covered in blood, ripped, scratched, weary, at last I saw the stream of exorcs dwindle. The volgendrin
had passed too far and they were attacking a bunch of short-horned cattle in the next open space. I put
the point of the longsword into the ground and leaned forward on the pommel, gasping for air.
I suppose a four-armed Djang might have been ready for fresh combat instantly. I admit I felt wrung out.
The strain of climbing down the vine had taxed me, the fight in its sheer insensate ferocity had drained me.
I am, after all, only human. Those exorcs had glided in hissing like a constant succession of paper darts
launched at my head. There had been no single instant when I could pause for breath. So I leaned and
drew enormous gulps of air, my head hanging.
I heard the rustling and I lifted my head, which felt as though a damned volgendrin itself rested on my
neck.
The Gerawin handled it all very smoothly, very professionally.
They alighted in a ring about me.
They had crossbows. Their tridents glittered in the light of the Suns of Scorpio.
The leader advanced, his feathers flaring, his leggings tightly strapped around his bandy legs.
You fight well, dom.
Aye, I said hating the pant in my voice. Do you wish to find out how well?
I do not think so. I would prefer, if you wish it, to put a score of shafts into you.
That might be preferable.
He snickered. They are good guards, the Gerawin, if very much on the predatory side. Also, they
consider their tyryvols to be the best flyers in all Havilfar. I believed my Djangs and their flutduins would
disabuse them of that idea, but there were no friendly Djangs around their king now. There was only me,
that onker Dray Prescot, who had escaped into captivity.
They made a rush at me from the front and I put up the longsword ready to take a few of their heads off.
Their tridents flashed but they withdrew and the leader yelled, Now, Genarnin the Chank!
I swung around sluggishly. The iron links knocked me down. The iron chains wrapped me up. The
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