“You should eat something,” Meta said sternly. “You have had enough to drink.”

“Nonsense,” he said, sipping from the iron cup and smacking his lips. “I don’t have tired blood, I have no blood. The medikit said that I was partially exsanguinated and gave me a stiff iron injection to make up for it. Besides, I’m too tired to eat.”

“The readings also said that you needed a transfusion.”

“A little hard to do that here. I’ll drink plenty of water and have goat’s liver for dinner every night.”

“Open!” someone shouted, pulling at the laced and knotted entrance flap of the cainach. “I speak with the voice of Temuchin.”

Meta put the medikit under a fur and went to the entrance. Crif, who had been fanning the fire, picked up a lance and balanced it in his hand. A soldier poked his head in.

“You will come to Temuchin now.”

“I come at once, tell him that.”

The soldier started to argue, but Meta twisted his nose and pushed him back through the opening. She laced it shut again.

“You cannot go,” she said.

“I have no choice. We’ve sutured the wounds by hand with gut, that’s acceptable, and the antibiotics are not detectable. The iron is a!ready seeping into my bone marrow.”

“That is not what I meant,” Meta said angrily.

“I know what you meant, but there is very little we can do about it.” He pulled out the medikit and twisted the control dial. “Pain killer in the leg so I can walk on it, and a nice big shot of stimulant. I’m taking years off my life with this drug addiction, and I hope someone appreciates it.”

When he stood up, Meta grabbed him by the arms. “No, you cannot,” she said.

He used a gentler warfare, taking her face in his hands and kissing her. Grif snorted with contempt and turned back to his fire. Her hands relaxed.

“Jason,” she said haltingly. “I don’t like this. There is nothing I can do to help.”

“There’s plenty, but not at this moment. Just hold the fort for a while longer. I’m going to show Temuchin how to make his big bang, and then we’re going to get out of here, back to the ship. I’ll tell him I am going to bring the Pyrran tribe in, which is just what I intend to do. Along with some other things. The wheels are turning and plans are being made, and there is a new day coming soon to Felicity.” The drugs were making him light-headed and elated, and he believed every word he said. Meta, who had spent too long a time bent over a dung fire in this frozen campsite, was not quite so enthusiastic. But she let him go. Duty comes first, that is a lesson every Pyrran learns in the nursery.

Temuchin was waiting, showing no sign of the strain of the past days, pointing to the barrels of gunpowder on the floor of his camach.

“Make it explode,” he commanded.

“Not in here and not all at once, unless you are planning a mass suicide. What I need is some sort of container that I can seal, and not too big a one either.”

“Speak your needs. What you must have will be brought in here.”

The warlord obviously wanted his explosive experiments classified Top Secret, which was all right with Jason. The camach was warm and relatively comfortable, with food and drink close at hand. He sank into the furs and worried a baked goat’s leg until his materials had been assembled; then, after wiping his hands on his jacket, he set to work.

A number of clay pots had been assembled and Jason chose the smallest one, little more than a cup in size. Then he worked out the plug from one of the barrels and carefully shook some of the gunpowder out onto a sheet of leather. The grains were not very uniform, but he doubted if this would affect the speed of burning very much. This stuff had certainly worked well enough in the muskets. Using a scoop formed of stiff leather, he carefully loaded the pot until it was half full. A trimmed piece of chamois fitted on top of the granules and he tamped it down gently with the rounded end of a worn thighbone. Temuchin stood behind him watching every step of the process closely. Jason explained.

“The granules should be close together for even burning, for smooth burning makes the best banging. Or so I have been told by the men in the tribe who know about this sort of thing. This is all as new to me as it is to you. Then the leather goes in to hold the gunpowder in place and to act as a waterproof shield.” Jason had ready a mixture of water, dirt from the camach floor and crumbled dung. This made a damp, claylike substance that he now pushed into the pot to seal it. He patted it smooth and pointed.

“It is said that in order to explode, the gunpowder must be completely contained. If there are any openings, the fire rushes out through them and the substance simply burns.”

“How does the fire reach it now?” Temuchin asked, frowning in concentration as he forced himself to follow the unaccustomed technical explanations. For an illiterate who couldn’t count very well and did not have a shard of technical knowledge, he was doing all right. Jason took up one of the heavy iron needles that were used for sewing the camach covers.

“You’ve asked the right question. The plug is dry enough now, so I can poke a hole through it with this, through the mud and the leather, right down to the powder. Then, using the other end of the needle, I’ll push this piece of cloth all the way down into the hole. I liberated the cloth from one of your men who liberated it from a lowlander’s back I have soaked the cloth in oil so that it will burn easily.” He hefted the pot, grenade in his hand. “So I think that we are ready to go.”

Temuchin stalked out and Jason, with the bomb in one hand and the ffickering oil lamp in the other, followed at a suitable distance. A large area had been cleared before the warlord’s camach and the soldiers held the curious at a suitable distance. The word had been quickly passed that something strange and dangerous was going to happen, so men had come flocking from all parts of the sprawling camp. They were packed solidly into the spaces between the surrounding camachs. Jason placed the bomb carefully in the ground and raised his voice.

“If this works there should be a loud noise, smoke and flame. Some of you here know what I mean. So, here goes.”

He bent and applied the lamp to the fuse, holding it there until the cloth smoldered and burst into flame. It was burning slowly enough so that he could stand for a few seconds to make sure that it was going well. It was. Only then did he turn and stroll back to the camach next to Temuchin.

Even Jason’s drug-induced confidence did not survive the anticlimax. The fuse burned, smoked, gave off some sparks and then apparently went out. Jason made himself wait a long time, in spite of the impatient murmurs and occasional angry shouts. He had no desire to bend over the bomb and have it blow up in his face. Only when Temuchin began to finger his knife in a suggestive manner did Jason walk out, hoping that he appeared to be more relaxed than he felt, to look down at the charred fuse opening. He nodded once sagely, then headed back to the camach.

“The fuse went out before it reached the gunpowder. We need a bigger hole or a better fuse, and I have just remembered another stanza of the ‘Song of the Bomb’ that speaks about that. I will do it now. Do not let anyone approach it until I return.” Before he could get any arguments, he went back into the camach.

The best fuses contained gunpowder, so they could burn even without a supply of air. He needed a gunpowder fuse to get down through that layer of mud. There was plenty of powder here, but what could he roll it in? Paper was best, but in short supply at the present moment. Or was it? He made sure that the entrance was well secured and that he was alone in the tent. Then he rooted in the bottom of his waist wallet and dug out his medikit. He had brought it despite the risk, because he had no idea how long this session would take and had not wanted to run any risk of passing out before it was over.