“Now, what d’we do?” floated up an aggrieved voice from below and off to one side of his own lofty perch. Donal took his palm from his eyes and tilted his head downward.

“Senior Groupman Lee,” he said in a low, but carrying voice. “You will shoot the next man who opens his mouth without being spoken to first by either you, or myself. That is a direct order.”

He raised his head again, amid a new silence, and again peered off under his palm through the trees.

The secret of observation is patience. He saw nothing, but he continued to sit, looking at nothing in particular, and everything in general; and after four slow minutes he was rewarded by a slight flicker of movement that registered on his gaze. He made no effort to search it out again, but continued to observe in the same general area; and gradually, as if they were figures developing on a film out of some tangled background, he became aware of men slipping from cover to cover, a host of men, approaching the camp.

He leaned down again through the branches.

“No firing until I blow my whistle,” he said, in an even lower voice than before. “Pass the word — quietly.”

He heard, like the murmur of wind in those same branches, the order being relayed on to the last man in the Third Group and — he hoped — to the Second and First Groups as well.

The small, chameleon-clad figures continued to advance. Squinting at them through the occulting leaves and limbs, he made out a small black cross sewn to the right shoulder of each battle-dress. These were no mercenaries. These were native elite troops of the United Orthodox Church itself, superb soldiers and wild fanatics both. And even as the recognition confirmed itself in his mind, the advancing men broke into a charge upon the camp, bursting forth all at once in the red-gray dawnlight into full-throated yips and howls, underlaid a second later by the high-pitched singing of their spring-gun slivers as they ripped air and wood and flesh.

They were not yet among the trees where Donal’s force was hiding. But his men were mercenaries, and had friends in the camp the Orthodox elite were attacking. He held them as long as he could, and a couple of seconds longer; and then, putting his whistle to lips, he blew with the damper completely off — a blast that echoed from one end of the camp to the other.

Savagely, his own men opened up from the trees. And for several moments wild confusion reigned on the ground. It is not easy to tell all at once from which direction a sliver gun is being fired at you. For perhaps five minutes, the attacking Orthodox soldiers labored under the delusion that the guns cutting them down were concealed in some groundlevel ambush. They killed ruthlessly, everything they could see on their own eye-level; and, by the time they had discovered their mistake, it was too late. On their dwin-dled numbers was concentrated the fire of a hundred and fifty-one rifles; and if the marksmanship of only one of these was up to Dorsai standards, that of the rest was adequate to the task. In less than forty minutes from the moment in which Donal had begun to harry his sleep-drugged men up into the trees, the combat was over.

The Third Group slid down out of their trees and one of the first down — a soldier named Kennedy — calmly lifted his rifle to his shoulder and sent a sliver through the throat of an Orthodox that was writhing on the ground, nearby.

“None of that!” cried Donal, sharply and clearly; and his voice carried out over the sea. A mercenary hates wanton killing, it not being his business to slaughter men, but to win battles. But not another shot was fired. The fact said something about a significant change in the attitude of the men of the Third Command toward a certain new officer by the name of Graeme.

Under Donal’s orders, the wounded on both sides were collected and those with serious wounds medicated. The attacking soldiery had been wiped out almost to a man. But it had not been completely one-sided. Of the three hundred-odd men who had been on the ground at the time of the attack, all but forty-three — and that included Force-Leader Skuak — were casualties.

“Prepare to retreat,” ordered Donal — and, at that moment, the man facing him turned his head to look past at something behind Donal. Donal turned about.

Pounding out of the ruined village, hand gun in his fist, was Commandant Killien.

In silence, not moving, the surviving soldiers of the Command watched him race up to him. He checked at their stare; and his eyes swung about to focus on Donal. He dropped to a walk and strode up to within a few meters of the younger officer.

“Well, Force-Leader!” he snapped. “What happened? Report?”

Donal did not answer him directly. He raised his hand and pointed to Hugh; and spoke to two of the enlisted men standing by.

“Soldiers,” he said. “Arrest that man. And hold him for immediate trial under Article Four of the Mercenaries Code.”

Directly after getting into the city, with his canceled contract stiff in his pocket, and cleaning up in his hotel room, Donal went down two flights to pay his visit to Marshal Hendrik Galt. He found him in, and concluded certain business with him before leaving to pay his second call at a different hotel across the city.

In spite of himself, he felt a certain weakness in the knees as he announced his presence to the doorbot. It was a weakness most men would have excused him. William, Prince of Ceta, was someone few persons would have cared to beard in his own den; and Donal, in spite of what he had just experienced, was still a young — a very young — man. However, the doorbot invited him in, and summoning up his calmest expression, Donal strode into the suite.

William was, as the last time Donal had seen him, busy at his desk. This was no affectation on William’s part, as a good many people between the stars could testify. Seldom has one individual accomplished in a single day what William accomplished in the way of business, daily, as a matter of routine. Donal walked up to the desk and nodded his greeting.

William looked up at him. “I’m amazed to see you,” he said.

“Are you, sir?” said Donal. William considered him in silence for perhaps half a minute.

“It’s not often I make mistakes,” he said. “Perhaps I can console myself with the thought that when I do they turn out to be on the same order of magnitude as my successes. What inhuman kind of armor are you wearing, young man, that leads you to trust yourself in my presence, again?”

“Possibly the armor of public opinion,” replied Donal. “I’ve been in the public eye, recently. I have something of a name, nowadays.”

“Yes,” said William. “I know that type of armor from personal experience, myself.”

“And then,” said Donal, “you did send for me.”

“Yes.” And then, without warning, William’s face underwent a change to an expression of such savagery as Donal had never seen before. “How dare you!” snarled the older man, viciously. “How dare you!”

“Sir,” said Donal, wooden-faced, “I had no alternative.”

“No alternative! You come to me and have the effrontery to say — no alternative?”

“Yes, sir,” said Donal.

William rose in swift and lithe motion. He stalked around the desk to stand face to face, his eyes up-tilted a little to bore into the eyes of this tall young Dorsai.

“I took you on to follow my orders, nothing else!” he said icily. “And you — grandstand hero that you are — wreck everything.”

“Sir?”

“Yes — ‘sir’. You backwoods moron! You imbecile. Who told you to interfere with Hugh Killien? Who told you to take any action about him?”

“Sir,” said Donal. “I had no choice.”

“No choice? How — no choice?”

“My command was a command of mercenaries,” answered Donal, without moving a muscle. “Commandant Killien had given his assurance in accordance with the Mercenaries Code. Not only had his assurance proved false, he himself had neglected his command while in the field and in enemy territory. Indirectly, he had been responsible for the death of over half his men. As ranking field officer present, I had no choice but to arrest him and hold him for trial.”