The man gaped at him, then gathered enough wit to reply. "Yes, my lord. Very few. The dragon keeps them away. No overmen, ever."

"I would think that many would come to try their skill at dragon-slaying."

His unhappy respondent glanced to either side, but saw no sign that any of his townspeople were willing to take over the burden of the conversation.

"No, my lord," he replied, "not anymore. Long ago there were some, but the dragon killed them all, and after a time they stopped coming. There were never overmen, though; only the men of the Baron of Sland, or roving mercenaries and adventurers."

"They stopped coming?" Garth said, encouraging him to continue.

"Yes, my lord. After all, there is no reward offered, no great prize to be won."

"Nothing but a chance for fame and glory, and the risk of death, more easily found elsewhere, to be sure." Garth nodded, then swung himself up into the saddle.

"Forgive me, my lord," the man said, gathering his courage, "but why...ah, why have you come here? Why do you bother with our accursed and wretched valley?"

"Your valley does not seem wretched to me, man. I have come here out of boredom, people of Orgul; I grew weary of a life of quiet and decided, on a whim, to come here and aid those the dragon oppressed. I have lived for more than a century and adventured in many lands, but never before have those I came to aid tried so hard to turn me away."

"But, my lord," someone protested, "we seek only to prevent the loss of another brave-"

"Enough, human," Garth interrupted. "Tell me, now, which road is most likely to lead me to this vile monster?"

Reluctantly, the man pointed to the western road, and with a word in the warbeast's triangular ear, Garth rode on.

CHAPTER THREE

The road he took from the plaza appeared to run through the village's commercial area; the houses on either side held small shops, displaying fine rugs and fabrics in their many-paned windows, or delicate carvings, or gleaming pots and kettles, or other goods. A blacksmith's forge trailed smoke into the blue of the sky, but the smith was not at work as the overman passed.

Even though the people he encountered shied away from him, averting their eyes and hurrying out of sight, he enjoyed the ride. This village, it seemed to him, was more the sort of place he might have liked to live in, if he were to live among humans, than the wastelands of the north. Skelleth might be flourishing, but it was stop cold and dirty and gray, huddled on a barren plain against the long harsh winters; this village was bright and cheerful, trailing off without a border into the surrounding green of field and forest, rather than being chopped off short by a ruined city wall. The sunlight was warm on his back, the breeze fresh with the smells of abundant greenery.

Garth found it quite impossible to believe that this was the home ground of a dragon as terrible as the one he had heard described. He puzzled anew at the Orgulians' insistence that he turn back.

Looking about, he wondered idly whether overmen had ever lived in this delightful valley, back in those long-lost legendary days before the Racial Wars, before his people were driven into the barren Northern Waste. For centuries the overmen of the Waste had believed themselves to be the only ones to have survived those bitter wars, but recently Garth himself had discovered that others still lived on the Yprian Coast, a region nearly as desolate as the Waste itself. Could there be more, scattered about the world? Might some still linger in the hills around Orgul? Garth found that an appealing fancy; this country was one he would have enjoyed calling his home, and it pleased him to imagine that it might not wholly be wasted on humans.

His musings were interrupted when his eye caught a sudden movement in one of the village shops; he turned to see what had drawn his attention.

The last of the buildings that lined the street was a strange little shop on the left, its mismatched windows full of whirling, whirring clockwork toys. Fascinated, Garth stopped his mount, swung himself to the ground, and went over for a closer look. He was in no real hurry, he told himself; the dragon had reportedly gone its way for decades, and another few moments would surely make no difference.

The shop's display held dozens of intricate toys, full of gears and springs, which did amazing and delightful tricks. An armored warrior, with head and hands of china, swung a miniature sword in long, swooping strokes, narrowly missing the bent-over back of a mechanical smith striking sparks from a half-formed steel rake with a stone hammer-the head of which, Garth realized, must be flint, a clever method of creating the sparks that so resembled those of a real blacksmith at work. Nearby, a toy dog wagged its tail, its tongue moving as if panting, and a plaster witch stirred a tiny copper cauldron. Elsewhere, dancers whirled, acrobats leaped, and animals paced, in a glittering festival of copper and brass and silver and ceramics. A few devices had no recognizable form, but were unabashed machines, tossing arms and gears about in complex and fascinating patterns.

Garth had never seen so fine a display of machinery; northerners, either the humans of Skelleth or the overmen of Ordunin, had little time for such inessentials. Clockwork was used for clocks on ships, which needed accurate timekeeping for navigation, but was seldom used elsewhere.

He could not resist a broad grin as he studied the things; he hoped that no one noticed it, lest it destroy the image he had been cultivating of the implacable inhuman warrior. Anyone who saw it, though, might not recognize it for what it was; humans were not always able to identify the expressions of overmen, being distracted from the fundamental similarities by the hollow cheeks, thin lips, and noseless slit nostrils. The two species reacted somewhat differently to various situations and emotions, furthering the confusion. To the uninitiated man or woman, Garth's happy smile might appear to be a ghastly grimace; his delight in the clever toys and machines to be bitter disgust.

The shop window was not lighted, and Garth's own shadow blocked out a measure of the morning sun; he peered in, trying to make out the shapes that flopped and fluttered in the dimness at the back of the display. A brass rooster crowed, with a flapping of wings, and he marveled anew.

"Would you like to buy one, my lord?"

Startled, Garth whirled to face the owner of the pleasant little voice that had interrupted his studies. A small, whitehaired man stood in the door of the shop, squinting and blinking in the bright light of day; he smiled, revealing a jawful of randomly assorted gold and white teeth.

The overman stared at the man for a moment, then back at the window, where the swordsman's blade continued to miss the smith's broad back and swinging hammer by the breadth of a few hairs; where the yapping dog bounced merrily along and the plaster witch grinned gruesomely.

"I think I might, yes," Garth said at last. "Are they expensive?"

"Oh, no," the little man replied. "I don't need much to live on. I have a pension of sorts-I suppose you could call it a pension. Enough to make do, at any rate. But it does get so dull! So I keep making these toys, to amuse myself. The children seem to like them. Have you any children, my lord?"

"Five; two sons. They're grown, though, old enough for families of their own."

"Grandchildren, then?"

"Not that I know of; I haven't been home lately." He smiled wryly to himself at that.

"A pity, a pity." The old man shook his head, looking downcast, as if it were the greatest tragedy of his life that this fine overman should have no grandchildren and should be so long away from home.