As the warriors crowded toward him, Blade examined his pole. It was coated with blood and skin and scales. Under the slimy coating he could feel half a dozen cracks. A few more blows and it would have snapped off in his hands, leaving him no better off than the other warriors of the Kargoi.

As they crowded around him, the warriors pounded Blade's back and shoulders and poured out half-hysterical congratulations. They made so much noise he had no chance to ask what had happened elsewhere in the camp of the Red People, amid the darkness and the screams and the bellows.

It was dawn before anyone really knew what had happened in the camp. It was later than that before Paor was able to tell Blade.

The tale was ugly. At least two hundred of the Kargoi were dead or wounded. Among them was the son of Adroon, the High Baudz, who lay with his stomach slashed opened by talons, a wound that would surely kill him in a day or two. As many drends had been killed or so badly hurt that no one but the butchers could get much use out of them now.

To be sure, more than three hundred of the bat-birds also lay dead, at least forty of them Blade's own victims. But several times that many had attacked and flown away to safety.

Blade didn't like hearing any of this. He disliked almost as much hearing that Rehod had slain nearly twenty of the bat-birds, some of them with his bare hands. Now the loud-mouthed baudz had done something to make people forget his treachery in the duel with Blade.

The more Blade thought about what Paor had told him, the more he began to suspect that there'd been organization or even intelligence behind the attack of the bat-birds. Were the creatures themselves at least slightly intelligent? Blade found that hard to believe. The brains in the narrow skulls were far too small.

But if there was intelligence or direction, and it didn't come from the bat-birds themselves, then where did it come from?

Blade would much rather not have faced this question. But it wouldn't go away, and sooner or later answering it would become important. For now there simply wasn't enough information, and there were other things to do here that could save many lives. Blade made up his mind to watch the next attack much more closely, so that he would no longer have to rely on Kargoi observations of the bat-birds' behavior. It was just possible that everything he'd heard to suggest organization and intelligence was what untrained or frightened observers had imagined.

Blade sincerely hoped so.

Meanwhile, he was at work even as Paor talked to him. With his shortsword he systematically cut out the beaks and cut off the talons of the dead bat-birds. When he'd finished that he started cutting up the great leathery wings and started cutting out the tendons. Finally he took a fresh tent pole and tied one of the hooked, razor-sharp beaks to one end of it with several lashings of tendon. Paor watched all this in polite silence until Blade was finished.

«What do you make, Blade?»

Blade silently picked up his weapon and whirled it around his head. Then he swung it hard. The beak on the business end hissed angrily through the air. Paor carefully stepped out of range.

«I killed many bat-birds last night. I killed most of them with the pole of a tent. I would have killed more if I'd had something sharp on the end of that pole.»

«I see.»

If Paor didn't see now, he would do so before long. The Kargoi were proud of their skill in war. They were not so proud that they would refuse to learn from a hero who worked so quietly that it would be hard for them to realize that he was even teaching.

Blade said nothing for a while, as he practiced with his improvised weapon. Then Paor bent down and picked up one of the talons and one of the beaks.

«May I take these?»

«Certainly.» Blade laughed. «I suggest you tie them to something other than a tent pole, though. If the warriors of the Kargoi take all the tent poles to kill the bat-birds, all the tents will fall down on the women and children.»

Blade spent the day alternately practicing with his weapon and cutting up more bat-birds. By noon he saw Paor making the rounds with a pole-weapon of his own. By midafternoon other warriors were coming around to pick up beaks and talons, while others started cutting up bat-birds on their own. By nightfall half the spare tent poles in the camp of the Red People had been carried off to be made into weapons.

There would still have been another bloody slaughter on both sides if the bat-birds had attacked that night. A hundred warriors stood watch all night, just in case. A few bat-birds flew high overhead, but none came swooping down to the attack.

The next morning a wood-cutting party rode off toward the forest, to cut branches and saplings for weapon shafts. That afternoon Paor discovered that tying a piece of sharp metal to the end of a pole made an even more effective weapon-a proper spear, in fact. The blacksmiths suddenly found themselves being asked to beat points and edges on every bit of scrap metal in their wagons.

A second night went by without the bat-birds attacking. By the next evening several hundred warriors had spears or some sort of other pole weapon. Blade even saw Rehod practicing with a ten-foot pole that had a full-sized longsword tied to the end. He didn't stay around to watch Rehod's exercises. The man glared as though he would much rather use his new weapon on Blade than on the bat-birds.

Everyone had a chance to try out their new weapons that night. The bat-birds came again, twice as many as before. This time Blade himself could clearly see some direction and coordination in their attack. Those who attacked attacked fiercely against carefully chosen weak points. At the same time they held back what could only be called a reserve.

The warriors of the Red People didn't care about any of this. They went into action with their new weapons and a grim determination to avenge their fallen comrades and protect their women and herds. Some of them died, but more of them killed and went on killing until there were no more bat-birds to kill. Archers rode among the drend herds, bows ready. They still could not bring the bat-birds down from the air, but they could often shoot them off the back of a drend before the beast suffered any harm. The women and children huddled safe in the tents or wagons.

There were dead Kargoi on the ground when the sun rose, but there were a great many more dead bat-birds. There were so many that half the warriors of the Red People could have made weapons from their victims' beaks and talons, if Paor hadn't taught them the advantage of metal points.

After that, no one expected the bat-birds to return for some time. The scouts sent on ahead toward the shore came in, reporting that all three Peoples of the Kargoi would have to form a single column to pass along the shore. The hills ahead came almost down to the water, and reached far inland without a pass the wagons could hope to cross safely.

So it was either stay here, or risk the dash along the shore. Before the attack of the bat-birds, there were many who'd thought of settling here, with the plain on one hand and the forest on the other. The bat-birds had changed all that. No one cared to settle in a land where the darkness might hold so much horrible death. They'd got the better of the creatures, to be sure, but was that the only death that stalked by night in this land?

The drends were fat from good grazing. There was food for several weeks in the wagons, and there would be fish and game along the shore. The scouts reported many birds and large herds of the boar-like animals Blade had seen in the forest. Pushing on was clearly the best thing to do.

Blade agreed, but wondered if the land ahead would be much safer than the land they were leaving. If something was in fact directing the bat-birds down on the marching Kargoi, could it perhaps direct something else against them as they moved along the shore? Blade couldn't be sure, nor could he put his doubts and suspicions into words the Kargoi would understand or believe.