Erak nodded several times. "I know that," he replied. "But if you touch the girl with that whip of yours, odds are he'll kill you. And then I'm going to have to kill him to punish him. And I'm afraid I'm not prepared to lose so much profit. So let her go."

Some of the other Skandians were already laughing at Erak's speech, delivered in such a matter-of-fact tone. Even Slagor's men joined in.

Slagor's brows darkened and drew together with rage. He hated being the butt of Erak's jokes and he, and most of the others, thought Erak was merely belittling him by pretending that the undersized Araluen boy could possibly best him in a fight.

"You've lost your wits, Erak." He sneered now. "The boy is about as dangerous as a field mouse. I could break him in half with one hand."

He gestured with his free hand, the one that wasn't locked around Evanlyn's upper arm. Erak smiled at him. There was no trace of humor in the smile.

"He could kill you before you took a pace toward him," he said.

There was a calm certainty to his voice that said he wasn't joking. The room sensed it and went very quiet. Slagor sensed it too.

He frowned, trying to work his way through this. The alcohol had confused his thinking. There was an element here he was missing. He started to speak, but Erak held up a hand to stop him.

"I suppose we can't actually have him kill you to prove it," he said, sounding reluctant about the fact. He glanced around the room and his eyes lit on a small brandy cask, half-empty, at the far end of the table. He gestured toward it.

"Shove that cask over here, Svengal," he asked. His second in command put one hand against the small cask and sent it sliding along the rough table to his captain. Erak examined it critically.

"That's about the size of your thick head, Slagor," he said, with a thin smile. Then he picked up his own belt knife from the table and quickly gouged two white patches out of the dark wood of the keg.

"And let's say they're your eyes."

He pushed the keg across the table, setting it beside Slagor, almost touching his elbow. A murmur of anticipation went through the men in the room as they watched, wondering where this was leading.

Only Svengal and Horak, who had served with Erak at the bridge, had some slight inkling of what their jarl was on about. They knew the boy was an apprentice Ranger. They had seen, at first hand, that he was an adversary to be respected. But he had no bow here and they hadn't seen what Erak had: the knife that Will was holding concealed against his right arm.

"So, boy," Erak continued, "those eyes are a little close together, but then so are Slagor's." There was a ripple of amusement from the Skandians and Erak now addressed them directly. "Let's all watch them carefully and see if anything appears between them, shall we?"

And as he said that, he pretended to peer closely at the keg on the table. It was almost inevitable that everyone else in the room should follow his example. Will hesitated a second, but he sensed that he could trust Erak. The message the Skandian leader was sending him was absolutely clear. Quickly, he drew back his arm in an overhand throw and sent the knife spinning across the room.

There was a brief flash as the spinning blade caught the red glare of the oil lamps and the fire. Then, with a loud thwock! the razor-sharp blade slammed into the wood-not quite in the center of the gap between the two gouged-out patches. The keg actually slid backward a good ten centimeters under the impact.

Slagor let out a startled cry and jerked away. Inadvertently, he released Evanlyn's arm from his grasp. The girl stepped quickly away from him, then, as Erak jerked his head urgently in the direction of the door, she ran from the room, unnoticed in the confusion.

There was a moment of startled outcry, then Erak's men began to laugh, and to applaud the excellent marksmanship. Even Slagor's men joined in eventually, as the skirl sat glowering at those around him.

He wasn't popular. His men followed him only because he was wealthy enough to provide a ship for raiding parties. Now, several of them mimicked the raucous yelp he had let out when the knife thudded into the keg.

Erak rose from the bench and moved around the table, speaking as he went.

"So you see, Slagor, if the boy here had aimed for the wrong wooden head, you would surely be dead right now and I would have to kill him in punishment."

He stopped, close to Will, smiling at Slagor as the skirl half crouched on the bench, waiting for what was to come next.

"As it is," Erak continued, "I simply have to reprimand him for frightening someone as important as you."

And before Will saw the blow coming, Erak sent a backhanded fist crashing against the side of the boy's head, knocking him senseless to the floor. Erak glanced at Svengal and gestured to the unconscious figure on the rough wooden floor of the hut.

"Throw this disrespectful whelp into his hutch," he ordered. Then, turning his back on the room, he stalked out into the night.

Outside, in the clean cold air, he looked up. The sky was clear.

The wind was still blowing, but now it had moderated and shifted to the east. The Summer Gales were finished.

"It's time we got out of here," he said to the stars.

T HE BATTLE, IF YOU COULD CALL IT THAT, LASTED NO MORE than a few seconds. The two mounted warriors spurred toward each other, the hooves of their battlehorses thundering on the unsealed surface of the road, clods of dirt spinning in the air behind them and dust rising in a plume to mark their passage.

The Gallic knight had his lance extended. Halt could now see the fault that Horace had noticed in the other man's technique. Held too tightly at this early stage, the lance point swayed and wavered with the horse's movement. A lighter, more flexible hold on the weapon might have kept its point centered on its target. As it was, the lance dipped and rose and wobbled with every stride of the horse.

Horace, on the other hand, rode easily, his sword resting on his shoulder, content to conserve his strength until the time for action came.

They approached each other shield to shield, as was normal. Halt half expected to see Horace repeat the maneuver he'd used against Morgarath, and spin his horse to the other side at the last moment.

However, the apprentice kept on, maintaining the line of attack. When he was barely ten meters away, the sword arced down from its rest position, the point describing a circle in the air, then, as the lance tip came toward Horace's shield, the sword, still circling, caught the lance neatly and flicked it up and over the boy's head. It looked deceptively easy, but Halt realized as he watched that the boy was truly a natural weapons master. The Gallic knight, braced for the expected impact of his lance on Horace's shield, suddenly found himself heaving his body forward against no resistance at all. He swayed, feeling himself toppling from the saddle. In a desperate attempt at self-preservation, he grabbed at his saddle pommel.

It was bad luck that he chose to do so with his right hand, which was also trying to maintain control of the unwieldy lance. Twisted upward by Horace's circling sword point, it was now describing a giant arc of its own. He couldn't manage his balance and the lance at the same time and a muffled curse came from inside the helmet as he was forced to let the lance drop.

Enraged, he groped blindly for the hilt of his own sword, trying to drag it clear of its scabbard for the second pass.

Unfortunately for him, there was to be only one pass.

Halt shook his head in silent admiration as Horace, the lance taken out of play, instantly hauled Kicker to a rearing, spinning stop, using his knees and his shield hand on the reins to wheel the horse on its hind legs before the Gallic knight had gone past him.