"They will not be back!" laughed a man.

"See the signla of Mahpiyasapa," said another. "Let us return to our lodges."

We turned our kaiila about and, slowly, not hurrying, well pleased with ourselves, tired, but quietly jubilant in our victory, made our way back toward our camp.

"Look!" said a man, pointing back, when we had reached again our former lines.

"I do not believe it," said another.

We looked back, those three or four hundred yards, across the field. At the crest of a rise, once again, suddenly emerging, silhouetted against the sky, were lines of Yellow Knives.

"They have regrouped," I said. This was evident. Yet I had not expected it. This manifested a type of discipline that I would have expected of routed red savages, and certainly, in any case not this soon.

"I thought they had gone," said a man.

"I, too," said another.

"Surely they have enough women and kaiila," said a man. "It seems like they should have left long ago."

"There seems little enough for them to gain in further fighting," said a man.

"They would have to pay dearly for anything further," said another.

"Yet they are there," said another.

"Yes," said another.

"It is not like Yellow Knives," said a man.

"I do not understand it," said another fellow.

"Nor I," said another.

I, too, wondered at the reapperance of the Yellow-Knife lines.

It was dusk. This, too, was puzzling. Red savages, on the whole, prefer to avoid fighting in darkness. In the darkness it is difficult to be skillful and, in the absence of uniforms, friends my be too easily mistaken for foes. Some savages, too, prefer to avoid night combat for medicine reasons. There are many theories connected with such things. I shall mention two. One is that if an idividual is slain at night, he may, quite literally, have difficulty in the darkness in finding his way to the medicine world. Another is that the individual who is slain at night may find the portals of the medicine world closed against him. These beliefs, and others like them, it seems clear, serve to discourage night combat.

One may, as in many such cases, then, wonder whether night combat is discouraged because of such beliefs, or whether such beliefs may not have been instituted to discourage night fighting, with all of its confusions, alarms and terrors. On the other hand, there is no doubt whatsoever that many red savages take such beliefs with great seriousness. The life world, and consciousness, of the red savage, it must be clearly understood, is quite different from that of, say, a secular rationalist or a scientifically oriented objectivist. One of the most common, and serious, mistakes that can be make in crosscultural encounters is to assume that everyone one meets, is, in effect, very much like oneself. Their personal world, the world of their experience, their experiential world, may be quite different from yours. If it is not understood in its own terms, as he understands it, it is likely to seem irrational, eccentric or foolish. Properly understood, on the other hand, his world is plausible, in its terms, as is yours. This is not to say that there is nothing to choose between life worlds; it is only to say that we do not all share the same life world.

"Why are they not going away?" asked a man.

"It will soon be dark," said another.

"They must have very strong medicine," said another.

"Perhaps," said another, uneasily.

I saw Hci struggle for a moment to again control his shield. Then, again, he had steadied it.

"What are they waiting for?" asked a man.

"Thier ranks are opening," said a man.

"Something is coming through them," said another man.

"It is a sleen," said one man.

"No," said another.

"It is on all fours," said another man.

"Surely it is a sleen," said another.

"It is too large to be a sleen," said another.

"Aiii!" cried a man. "It is rising to its feet. It is walking on two feet!"

"It is a thing from the medicine world!" cried a man.

"It is a medicine helper of the Yellow Knives!" cried another.

Almost at the same time, from behind us, thee were cries of consternation. "Riders!" we heard. "Riders!"

We wheeled our kaiila about. At the back of the camp, thee were screaming and the sounds of numberous kaiila, squealing and snorting, their clawed feet tearing at the grass. At full speed, pennons flying, lances lowered, bucklers set, in sweeping, measured, staggered attack lines, waves of riders struck the camp.

"They are white men!" cried a man near me.

I saw a woman, running, caught in the back with a lance, between the shoulder blades, flung to the dust, the lance then withdrawn. It had been professionally done.

"White men!" cried another man near me.

I saw another man toward the rear, an archer, discharge an arrow, and leap to the side, to avoid a rider. He was hit by the next rider, one of those in the succeeding wave, its riders staggered with those of the first. In this type of formation, given the speed of the charging kaiila, the distance between successive waves is about forty to fifty feet. This is supposed to provide the next rider with a suitable response interval. If the first rider misses the traget the second, thus, has time to adjust for its change of position. From the point of view of the target, of course, which may even be off balance, it is difficult, in the interval involved, to set itself for a second evasive action. Its probles are further complicated, also, of course, by the imminent arrival of even further attack wavs. The primary purpose of the staggering of the attack-wave riders is to bring a target which may have escaped from the attack lane of one rider almost immediately into the attack lane of another.

Certain psychological factors, also, in this type of situation, tend to favor the attacker. As a target's attention tends to be absorbed in avoiding one attack it is less prepared to react efficiently to another. This is a moment within which the target may find itself within the lance range of the next rider. This type of formations is generally not useful against an enemy which is protected by breastworks, pits or stakes, or a settled infantry, its long pikes set, fixed butt down in the turf, the weapons oriented diagonally; the points trained on the breasts of the approaching mounts. It is also generally ineffective against other cavalry for its permits a shattering and penetraition of its own lines. It tends to be effective, however, against an untrained infantry or almost any enemy afoot. The archer, struck by the rider, spun to the side, the lance blade passing through his neck.

"White men!" I herd.

"Turn about!" cried Mahpiyasapa. "Fight! Defend the camp!"

The lines spun about and the men of Mahpiyasapa, whooping and crying out, dust scattering, sped back under the ropes and between the lodges to engage this new enemy. I held my position.

The white men were undoubtedly the mercenary soldiers of Alfred, the mercenary captain of Port Olni. With something like a thousand men he had entered the Barrens, with seventeen Kurii, an execution squad from the steel worlds, searching for Half-Ear, Zarendargar, the Kur war genderal who had been in command of the supply complex, and staging area, in the Gorean arctic, that which was being readied to support the projected Kur invasion of Gor. This complex had been destroyed. Evidence had suggested that Zarendargar had escaped, and was to be found in the Barrens. Once Zarendargar and I, in the north, as soldiers, had shared paga. I had come to the Barrens to warn him of his danger. Then I has fallen salve to the Kaiila. A wagon train of settlers, with which Alfred had joined forces, had been attacked. A massacre had taken place. Alfred, however, with some three to four hundred mounted men, leaving most of his command to perish, had escaped to the southeast. From the southeast, I remembered, the kailiauk had come early. From the southeast, too, had come the Kinyanpi.