"We'll rest here," Deeth said. He settled down with his back against the trunk of a huge tree. Two giant roots made arms for his momentary throne.

Before him lay the plain the Norbon had cleared when first they had come to Prefactlas. It was lifeless now, except for a few feral grazers and the morning birds dipping and weaving after insects. Nothing but ruins remained where the Norbon complex had stood. Even the great-house, which had been constructed as a fortress, had been smashed level with the plain. Grass and moss colored its fire-blackened remains.

Of the other structures there was even less evidence. The human Marines had done a thorough job.

And then they had gone. Not even a watch unit had been left behind. The baked landing sites of their assault craft had disappeared under new growth.

He stared and thought. There would be little here for him. Nothing lay behind but torture or death. He had to go on.

Where to? Any animals they encountered would treat them no better than those they had known. And if they reached an area controlled by Confederation humans? The girl would give him away.

Tomorrow and tomorrow. This was today. He had to meet the problems as they arose. Right now he had to keep moving.

"Deeth? Maybe we shouldn't stay here too long. They know I'm gone by now."

Deeth rose and walked toward the ruins. Maybe he could find something useful.

The lower limb of the sun cleared the horizon before they reached the site. Their path led them past scores of skeletons. Some had been scattered by scavengers. Shreds of Sangaree clothing clung to most. Deeth found one small one wearing Dharvon w'Pugh's bright party pantaloons. His skull had been crashed.

Deeth stood over his old enemy. That was no way for an heir to die.

He looked for the kitchens. They seemed the most likely source for something useful.

He poked around for an hour. It was useless. The ruins had been picked as clean as the Sangaree bones. Emily said all the nearby villagers had appeared once the Marines departed.

He came up with a battered aluminum cup and a butcher knife without a handle. He gave them to Emily. He scrounged a pointed, foot-long shard of glassteel for himself. He might be able to mount it on a handle or shaft. He moved to the armory, hoping to find a weapon. The raiders and scavengers had been thorough. He came up with nothing but a bottle of lasegun coolant he could drain for use as a canteen.

He was empting the bottle when the girl shouted. She waved at the sky. A faint chuga-chuga-chuga came from hight overhead.

A Confederation support ship was moving south. Deeth scrambled across the rubble, knocked Emily down. She kicked and screamed and...

The patrol dwindled into the distance. They watched it go. Deeth helped Emily up.

"Why?" she demanded. "They would've helped us. Oh. Well, I could've gone with them."

"You're Norbon." Deeth turned his back. He started kicking rubble around, remembering.

He had been on Prefactlas just one week when the raiders came. Not long, but long enough to have fallen in love with the station and staff. It had been his first trip off Homeworld. Everything had seemed romantic. Especially old Rhafu.

What had become of the breeding master? He had been a real man. Probably took several of the animals with him.

"Time to go, Emily," he said. "We should be off the plain before they track us here." He started after the copter. South was the only direction to go.

He was not ready to confront Prefactlas's conquerors, but had to be near their main base when he was. Their headquarters, he guessed, would be the Sexon holding. It was the biggest on the planet, most easily defended, and had the best communications facilities. It would make an ideal bridgehead for human occupation. It lay near the planet's main spaceport, a facility capable of handling the heaviest lighters.

That would have to be their destination. Only there could he get off planet.

There was one small problem. The Sexon holding lay more than a thousand miles away.

The journey took the youngsters three years. It was punctuated by interims of slavery as grim as their first. Adversity forged nickel-hard transethnic bonds between them. They became a survival unit.

Emily lost any desire to be away from or to betray him.

Years passed after their arrival. They begged. They were forced into schools or orphanages. They did odd jobs. Emily got work as a cleaning girl in the offices of Prefactlas Corporation. They survived. And Deeth almost forgot his father's parting charge.

They were sixteen when the wildly improbable happened. Emily became pregnant.

Deeth's world shifted its axis. He woke up. He began looking in new directions. He could not raise a child himself. He was Sangaree. He had a duty to the infant, wanted or not.

Emily's job had brought her into contact with the President of the Corporation. He was bemused by the girl. He kept plying her with little gifts.

Deeth went off by himself. He did a lot of thinking. And hurting. Emily's suitor was the man who had led the attack on his family. His orders had caused all the deaths at the Norbon station. The man was his dearest enemy. And the one real hope for his unborn child.

Sangaree prided themselves on their pragmatism.

"Go to him," Deeth told Emily. "Make him your man. Don't argue. He has what you need. Yesterday is done. Tomorrow we begin new lives."

She refused. She fought. She cried.

He put her out of their shanty and held the door till she went away. He sat with his back to it and wept.

Twenty-Seven: 3031 AD

The brothers Darksword looked like regimental file clerks. They wore that look of perpetual bewilderment of the innocent repeatedly slapped in the face by reality. Wizards of the data banks. Easy prey for the monsters in the human jungle.

They were short, slim, thin-faced, and watery-eyed. They had pallid skin and stringy brown hair so sparse it belonged on an endangered species list. Helmut affected a pair of pince-nez. The more bold Wulf had had his vision surgically corrected.

They were antsy little men who could not stand still. Outsiders pegged them as chronic hand-wringers, nervous little people who faced even petty troubles with the trepidation of an old maid bound for an orgy.

It was an act they had lived so long they almost believed it themselves.

There was as much ice and iron in them as in Cassius or Storm. Had Storm meant it, they would have killed the mining official without qualm or second thought. Disobedience was an alien concept.

A matched set of stringy old assassins.

Their lives, emotions, and loyalties had been narrowly focused for two hundred forty years. They had followed Boris Storm as boys, in the old Palisarian Directorate. They had attended military school with him, joined Confederation Navy with him, and became part of Prefactlas Corporation with him. When Ulant struck they returned to service with him, and afterward helped him create the Iron Legion. Following Boris's death they had transferred their devotion to his son.

They had been born on Old Earth and taken to the Directorate young. They had learned the motherworld's harsh lessons in Europe's worst slums.

Two things matter. Sign on with the gang with the most guns. Serve it with absolute devotion as long as it serves faithfully in return.

The centuries had garbled those truths a tad. They could not abandon the Legion now, biggest guns or no. One occasionally reminded the other that it looked like time to get out. Neither moved. They continued serving Gneaus Storm with the implacability of natural law.

Storm had left them in command of the Fortress. The simple fact of his absence presented them with enough problems, Wulf claimed, to frustrate a saint into a deal with the devil.