Before he could complete the thought, a sharp crack sounded from high overhead. One of the guards jerked his head upward, then gave a yell of fear and turned to run. The other guards froze in their tracks. Blade risked a quick look of his own-just as the whole scaffolding shivered, shook, and then began to collapse.

Poles and cross-braces snapped and cracked, tiles, planks, pots of paint, and varnish showered down like hailstones, and the guards scattered in all directions. Blade jumped back too, but not quite fast enough. A pot of paint came plummeting down and scored a direct hit on his left shoulder. It disintegrated as it struck, barely bruising the skin but drenching Blade's chest and left arm with oily brown paint.

As the wreckage settled Blade looked toward the entrance. The, guards were forming a line across it, so there would be no getting out that way. It would have to be over the walls and then outrun the guards. The second part wouldn't be hard-they didn't look built for speed. But the first part-well, there was the pole in his hands. Blade hefted it and flexed it. It would have to do.

He moved back as far as possible to give himself a longer run. He could only hope that the guards wouldn't realize what he was doing until it was too late. He threw a quick look back over his shoulder.

Good. They apparently thought they had him trapped.

Now-raise the pole, take a deep breath-several deep breaths-and RUN!

Blade charged toward the wall even faster than he had gone out of the temple. His long legs ate up the ground. As he judged the right second, the pole swung down in a long arc, driving down into the ground as Blade drove upward with all the strength in his body. Blade felt himself soaring upward, rising up to the level of the spikes on top of the wall, rising over them-

Crack! The pole slammed into the wall and snapped like a twig, twisting Blade in midair. He flung himself over into a complete somersault, desperately trying to avoid landing headfirst. By a minor miracle he managed to land rolling, on his shoulders and back. He kept rolling, doing another complete somersault and leaping to his feet at the end. Five careful deep breaths, and he was off down the hill, ignoring all the bruises and scrapes and twinges in his protesting muscles. He did not run blindly, like a panic-stricken animal. He ran like a distance runner, pacing himself for the best combination of speed and endurance.

He hoped his guess was right about those temple guards not being built or trained for running.

Blade never found out whether the guards came after him or not. They would have had a job catching up with him if they had. He kept on at a steady lope for nearly half an hour, heading downhill as much as possible. When his breath began to come short, he slowed down to an equally steady jog. He kept that up for another full hour. By that time he estimated he was at least six miles from the temple and decided it was safe enough to stop and rest. He badly needed to catch his breath and reorient himself. He didn't want to wind up marching steadily away from civilization, on top of everything else that had gone wrong since he had arrived in this dimension. So far about the only things he had done right were not getting himself killed and not killing anybody else. For all he knew, the affair at the temple might even now have the guards scattering all over the countryside, with a description of him and a «kill this man on sight» order.

So he rested just long enough to catch his breath and get some of the aches out of his legs. Then he was on his feet again and on his way downhill. Sooner or later going downhill should bring him to civilization. He had never heard of a people who built all their homes on the tops of the hills and none in the valleys.

He had been walking for about another hour when it started to rain, a miserable, chill drizzle that soon strengthened into an even more miserable and chillier downpour. The rain made some of the caked and smeared brown paint run, so that before long he looked like the victim of some particularly repulsive skin disease. Blade was too disgusted and almost too tired to even swear at this.

It was beginning to get dark when Blade finally came out on the bank of a small swift stream tumbling downhill through a series of pools and rapids. Unmistakable paths ran along both banks of the stream. Blade nearly let out a cheer, and then swallowed it as the sound of human voices reached him over the patter of the rain and the gurgle of water boiling over the stones.

It was women singing-or rather, chanting rhythmically. Their voices were punctuated by wet, slapping noises. Blade slipped silently through fifty feet of trees and dripping bushes, then crouched and watched even more silently.

Two half-nude young women-hardly more than girls, judging from their slight figures-squatted on the edge of the stream, washing clothes and singing to themselves as they worked. They pounded each garment on a convenient rock to get the dirt out and then spread it out on one of the bushes behind them. Blade saw loincloths, long socks, sashes and scarves, and more of the kimonolike robes in half a dozen different styles and colors. If he could just sneak in and make a quick grab, his clothing problem at least would be solved.

Blade had once made it safely through a Communist minefield with a sixty-pound pack on his back, so there wasn't much he had to learn about moving silently and carefully. Inch by inch he crept closer, belly flat to the mound most of the time, raising his head to take an occasional bearing. It took him five minutes to cover five yards. By the time he did, all his bruises and strained muscles were protesting angrily. His spine felt as though it were going to snap with a crack loud enough to alert the women.

Two yards more. Then he had to freeze for what seemed like an hour, as one of the women sat down to rest with her eyes on the spread-out clothes. Blade lay motionless, gritting his teeth to stifle a grunt of impatience, wondering if the woman would ever get up off her arse!

It seemed like an hour, but it couldn't have been more than five minutes before the woman stood up and began unwrapping the cloth around her waist. It fell to the ground, and she stepped naked down into the pool. As the other woman turned to do the same Blade snaked forward the last few feet, and his long arms reached out. In seconds he gathered in a long blue robe, a red sash, and a loincloth. In a few more seconds he was back under the bushes, crawling away as fast as he could. The two girls were still splashing about cheerfully in the pool, completely unconcerned with what might be going on around them.

A quarter of a mile later, Blade stopped to put on the clothes and get his bearings again. The loincloth was plain linen, but the sash seemed to be heavy red silk, with stylized waves embroidered on it in white thread. The blue robe was also linen, light but fine and tough, with elaborate patterns of black and white checks embroidered around the neck, bottom, and cuffs. On the right sleeve about halfway to the elbow was a stylized golden sunburst with sixteen rays picked out in red.

For all its elegance, the garment had obviously been made for someone rather shorter and slimmer than Blade. From the cut it was obviously intended to be fought in, but it made Blade feel more like a sausage stuffed into its skin. Oh, well, he could always strip it off if he had to fight or run again.

He guessed that there must be a house nearby if the girls had felt safe washing and bathing alone by the stream, as they obviously had. It would probably be downstream, too. The water in the stream would be cleaner above the house.

Blade had guessed right. A few minutes walking, and he saw a large house and the glow of lanterns through the forest and the rain. The house was on the far side of the stream, but a gracefully arched wooden bridge provided an easy crossing.