He could bear the pain in his arms no longer. He tried to work a leg up to get a foot through the straps. It was cold. Sweat dried in a frigid glaze on his body. One of the straps pulled loose from the skins.

Blade felt it go. His heart skipped a beat. He swung sideways, down a few inches, off center and so pulling the balloon askew and causing it to leak at a greater rate. Smoke billowed into his face. He was no longer rising as the air in the balloon chilled and lost its buoyancy. He began to sink.

Another strap pulled free of the skins. Blade lurched and dropped and for a moment he thought the last two straps would go. They held. By now the balloon was tilted on its side and losing altitude rapidly. The moon was still hidden and Blade could see nothing in the void below.

Not one fire gleamed, he saw no torch, he was alone in cold and blackness.

Down. The balloon was deflating fast and the speed of his fall increased. He could not gauge his rate of fall, but judged that if he struck anything solid now he was a dead man. At best he would be maimed and crippled. The Hitts would find him and feed him to the vultures yet.

Down-down- The balloon was little more than a shrunken pouch trailing after him in the plunge. It had some braking effect, but not enough to save him.

The moon peered out of cloud again and Blade saw the water just before he struck it. He landed flat out and was hurt and stunned. He made a great splash. He loosed his hold on the straps and kicked away from the balloon and trod water while he got his senses back. He breathed deep and felt himself for broken bones and found none. He swam back to the balloon and pressed out air pockets with his feet until it filled and sank. Then he swam for the shore, for a glint of beach some five hundred yards distant.

Blade crawled onto rough shingle and lay gasping. The long confinement had sapped his strength. But there was no rest for him now. The night was before him-he doubted he had been in the air for more than half an hour-and there was much to do. He must get his bearings, find a hiding place, make decisions. He had escaped his prison, but he had not escaped his peril.

He had nothing. No food, no water, no weapon. He was lightly clad, barefoot, drenched and shivering. And lost.

The bulbous eye of the moon mocked him. Blade shook a fist at it and went looking. For the nonce he did not fear encountering human enemies; nothing stirred about him, no night birds or animals, nothing but the soft wash of surf. This latter encouraged him. The water was salt and it moved and high water was marked plainly on the beach. Tides. It must be the channel. But which side of it?

Bit by bit he explored and found that his cove was roughly triangular and slashed well back into tall cliffs. There were great jumbles of boulders and weird rock formations and there must be caves in which to hide if he must. At the moment a cave, and a fire, were vastly appealing. And food. Blade shivered and grinned and forgot it. He had no food and no means of making a fire, even if he were foolhardy enough to show a beacon to every enemy within eyeshot. He took off his shirt, Lisma's present, and wrung it out as best he could and put it on again and went looking.

The moon had wheeled away and was beginning to wane when he saw the dark thing lying at the edge of the water. Blade approached it cautiously, though without fear, and saw that it was a dead man. A corpse near rotted away. Fish had been at it, maybe animals, and he had to kneel by it and look closely before he made it out to be a Zirnian soldier. One of the thousands who had died on the beach, or the bridge, and had floated far eastward with current to strand on this lonely beach.

The undercloth had rotted away, but the armor was still in fair enough condition, albeit the leather sodden and the metal rusted. Best of all, to Blade, was the sword. It was still in the scabbard. As Blade tugged it away, he saw the arrow still in the bony cage of ribs-the man had died before he could draw sword.

He donned the armor, which fitted well enough with some stretching at the jointures, and plunged the sword into sand to cleanse it. He buckled the weapon about him and felt immensely better. There was no helmet and he did not complain-his luck had been good this night.

Blade searched up and down the cove for something to eat. Clams, mussels, anything at all. He could have eaten a raw horse. He found nothing, but, finally, a cave formed by two tilting boulders. Into this he retired and slept.

With first dawn he awoke. He sniffed the gray air and found it familiar, softer, fragrant, lacking the brisk sting of Hitt air. He scratched his beard, sleepy and puffy-eyed, and pondered. Could it be possible? He had been in the air such a little time-but the wind had been stiff when he took off and had increased as he gained altitude. It was, he conceded, just possible.

Blade came cautiously out of his cave and crawled on his hands and knees down to a rock formation overlooking the beach. There he lay hidden until the sun came up. The warmth was glorious and he reveled in it, turning on his back and letting the rays lave his face. He was nearly asleep again when he heard the muffled clopping of horses on sand and the jingle of armor and weapons. A patrol. Blade scuttled back into his rocks like a lizard.

He peered down at the beach. There were a dozen horsemen led by a sublieutenant. Zirnians. Blade gazed beyond them, out over the water to where land, looking like nothing more than a cloud bank, showed on the far horizon. His sense of terrain had always been acute and now he remembered the maps he and Ogier had studied by the hour. He had done it. He had crossed the channel and had landed but a few miles from where the sunken pontoon had been built. That was Hitt country over there. He was back in Zir.

Blade gave a halloo and began to run toward the beach. The troop of horse reined about in surprise and swords were drawn and spears loosed in their scabbards. Blade stopped and raised a hand, then another, his fingers spread and palms revealed. The sublieutenant spurred toward him with a pennon-bearer at his side.

Blade's luck was holding. The young officer recognized him at once. He saluted and doffed his helmet.

«Prince Blade! We thought you slain or a prisoner of the Hitts.»

Blade grinned hugely. «Prisoner, yes. Corpse, no. Unless I am a ghost. And if I am, I am the hungriest ghost you are ever likely to see. Take me to food at once. What is this patrol and where are you quartered?»

«We have a camp two hours' ride inland, sire. I will take you there. The Captain Ogier will be glad to hear of you.»

The troop reached a defile and turned inland. Blade made a brief inspection of the men and did not like what he saw. Their uniforms were tattered, their weapons dirty and the armor rusty and dented. He noted that some were near to sleeping in the saddle.

He stared hard at the young officer. «These men look worn out, spent. They should be in rest quarters. And why are there so few of you?»

«Captain Ogier cannot spare more for beach patrol, sire. He has few enough men as it is.»

«How is that?» Blade knew that the Zirnian losses had been heavy, but Ogier still had a sizable army when he retreated back across the channel.

The sublieutenant was looking at him in surprise. Blade scowled. «Talk, man! I know nothing. I have been a prisoner of the Hitts, mind you, and they told me only what they wished me to know. What of matters in Zir?»

«They go badly, sire. There is a near state of civil war-though it still smoulders and has not broken into open fighting yet.»

Blade knew then, but still asked the question. «Casta? The black priests?»

«Aye, sire. The black priests. Casta and his whore, the Princess Hirga, live in the palace-city and work day and night to undermine the army. The Captain Ogier and Casta had a meeting, and the rumors are that angry words were spoken and swords nearly drawn. In the end Casta had his way-the black crows are dispersed all through the army to aid discipline and preach loyalty to Casta. They have been given weapons and armor and-authority and no soldier is free to speak what is in his mind-lest he run afoul of Casta. Many of the men have deserted.»