I got to my feet. It was a beautiful part of the world, serene and untouched by human hands. Yet I knew that if Ormazd had sent me here, it was because there were humans in this time and place. And Ahriman. He would be here, too. Somehow, this spot was a nexus in the space-time continuum, a pivotal location where Ahriman planned to change the course of events. My task was to stop him, at all costs, and kill him if I could.

At all costs. I could feel my face harden into a grimace of anger and frustration. What did death mean to one such as Ahriman? Or to me? Pain, the shock of separation, the grief of loss. But all that was temporary. A moment, a blink of an eye later, and centuries or millennia had melted away and we still lived, still existed, only to begin the cycle anew: hunter and hunted, prey and predator — kill or be killed. Must it go on forever, endlessly? Was there no peace in all of space-time? Was there no place for me to rest and live like a normal man?

You are Orion, a voice within my mind spoke to me. Orion the Hunter. Your task is to find Ahriman and kill him. Through all the eons of time, if need be, you must seek out the Dark One and destroy him before he succeeds in destroying all humankind. For this purpose you were created. Ask nothing more.

I knew it was Ormazd’s command, and I had no choice but to obey it. I knew that asking for something more, for rest or love or simply oblivion and an end to all existence, was futile; Ormazd would never grant me any of it. I knew that I would do his bidding because I had no real choice. But I did not have to like it. Nothing that Ormazd could do to me could make me serve him happily, willingly. I did what I did out of necessity, out of a sense of duty to my fellow human beings. But not out of love, or even respect, for the God of Light.

I walked to the river. It was pleasant, at first, strolling easily under the warm morning sun. My feet were bare, and I had to smile to myself to think that now I did not even have the sandals that I had worn in the time of the Mongols — the sandals that had caught Ogotai’s notice. But my smile vanished as I remembered Ogotai, his pain, and how I had murdered the man who had befriended a stranger from a distant time.

The going was more difficult along the river’s bank; the brush grew thick and tangled here. Thorns scratched at my bare arms and legs as I forced my way through. At last I stood at the water’s edge, with the big trees swaying and sighing above me in the gentle breeze.

The river was slow and sluggish, meandering gently through the grassy plain. I knelt down and drank from its clear water. Off to my right I saw a row of stones rippling the water’s surface; they had been lined up roughly to form a path across the river. This was the first sign that human beings had been here: a ford.

I made my way across the river and began climbing the gentle slope that led up and away toward a line of low hills. As I reached the crest of the ridge line, I saw that the land became more rugged, serrated into row after row of hills, each line rising slightly higher than the one before it. And off in the distance, floating like a disembodied ghost in the bluish haze, rose a strange double-peaked mountain. One of its cones was covered with snow at the top, but the snow was streaked with dark gray, and a thin wavering line of whitish smoke snaked upward and dissipated in the clean blue sky.

A slumbering volcano. Something about the mountain’s double-peaked shape stirred a faint memory within me, but I couldn’t pin down exactly what it was.

With a shake of my head, I turned to go back down the hill. The river-watered meadow looked better to me than these ridges.

That’s when I saw them, coming over the ridge line about fifty yards to my right. Silhouetted against the bright springtime sky, a string of thirty-some people walked single file, heading in my direction.

I blinked. For a moment I thought they might be Mongols and that I had not traveled through time at all. But they were afoot, not mounted. And they were slender, fair of skin, their hair reddish and wild and long. Their clothes were hides, like mine. They were caked with dirt and I could smell their sweat and grime on the breeze. A few mangy, bone-thin dogs accompanied them. They bared their fangs and snarled at me, but they stayed near their masters.

The red-bearded man leading them carried a pole with the skull of a horned animal fixed to its top. He raised the pole and halted so abruptly that the children, back toward the end of the line, bumped into their elders and jostled them. I almost laughed — until I saw that all of the men, and several of the younger women, carried long, slim spears tipped with blackened, fire-hardened points. Even the pole carrying the groups totem was actually a spear.

For several moments the red-haired people did nothing but gape at me, their expressions ranging from puzzlement to curiosity to fear. Hands fingered stone knives. Several of them shifted their long, knobby-shafted spears to their throwing hands. I saw that all the women were armed, at least with knives, and even the bigger children carried sticks or clubs. The dogs continued to growl menacingly.

A Stone Age hunting clan, out of the dawn of human history. Shaggy-haired, unkempt, gaunt with the tautness of constant hunger, and as wary of a stranger as a bird is wary of a snake. Yet they were human, fully; just as human as I. Perhaps even more so.

The red-bearded leader’s upraised arm still hung poised in the air as he looked me over very carefully. A young woman stepped up beside him. My heart leaped inside my chest. She was redheaded, just like the rest of them, and matted with filth. But even from this distance I could see that was Agla/Aretha.

She showed no sign of recognizing me, though. I saw her lips move as she spoke to the leader, but her tones were too low for me to hear her words.

The leader silenced the dogs with a gesture, then turned and gestured to two of the younger men, further down the line. They glanced at each other in the classic Why me? expression, but they started walking slowly, reluctantly, along the grassy slope toward me, hefting their long spears as they approached. The rest of the clan gathered around their leader in a ragged semicircle, ready to charge at me or run away, back over the crest of the ridge, depending on what happened next.

The pair approaching me were teen-agers, the Stone Age equivalent of cannon fodder. They were beardless, but their coppery hair was shoulder-long and matted. I could almost see the vermin living in it. Every muscle and tendon in their arms and torsos was rigid with tension. Their knuckles were white as they gripped their spears and held them pointed at me. They were too skinny, hollow-cheeked, and young to look truly fierce, but they certainly lacked nothing in grim determination.

I raised both my hands, palms outward, in what I hoped they would understand as a sign of peace. At least they could see that I held no weapons. They halted a good ten yards from me close enough to drive a spear clean through me, if I were slow enough to allow that to happen.

“Who are you?” asked the one on the left, in a quavering, cracking adolescent’s voice.

I wasn’t surprised that I understood their language. Ormazd had programmed it into me, no doubt, during my brief transition from one time era to another. If I could converse with the Mongols, or the twentieth-century Americans, for that matter, why not with these primitives whose language has not been spoken for millennia?

“I am a traveler, from afar,” I replied.

“What are you doing here?” asked the other one. His voice was a bit deeper, but equally shaky. He raised his spear as he spoke, ready to throw it at me.

I kept my hands outstretched from my body. I knew that I could snap both their spears and their bones anytime I chose to. But I doubted that I could handle the whole clan if they decided to rush me all at once.