"Friends?" Scorn steamed up from his reply. "If that's how you treat friends, I'm glad I'm not an enemy."

"What are you talking about? What did I do?"

"Cut the innocent act, Ranna! I may be a bondsman, but I'm not stupid!" Despite the pain burning on his flank, Phelan twisted around on his left side to face her. "What did you do? You were sleeping with him! Did you think I wouldn't care, or did you just not consider that in the heatof the moment?"

She stared at him, utterly uncomprehending. "How can that hurt you? What difference does it make?"

"What difference?" He shook his head. "Am I missing something here? As I recall, you and I were sleeping together."

Ranna looked at him as though he'd lost his mind. "Obviously, you are confused. You have not been able to sleep. I will visit again later."

He flopped back down on his stomach. "Don't bother. Between you and your lover, you've ripped me up enough."

"Lovers? Vlad and me?" She laughed aloud. "It's quite clear your mind is not working at all."

"You were in bed together. They saw you! What the hell would you call it?"

"We definitely are not lovers. Vlad and I were in the same sibko." Her tone challenged him to turn that into some sort of sinister accusation, then her voice faltered. "I was confused about... something ... and I went to talk with him."

"But that's not all you did, is it?"

"How can you make it sound like a crime? We were in the same sibko! We grew up together. You would say we are part of the same family." She pleaded for understanding, but her words only made Phelan shudder with rage. She saw it and tried to head it off. "I came here because I miss the time you and I spent together ..."

Phelan let out a small cry of pain. "You've done enough to me. Don't you understand? I'm not going to let you do to my insides what Vlad did to my back—at least not any more. Just go. Go away. I don't want to see you again."

He buried his face in the pillow so she couldn't see the hot tears burning in his eyes. He fought to control his sobs and thought he had until he heard the sound of crying. He tried again harder, but the sound persisted until cut off by the hiss of the closing door.

* * *

"Are you awake, Herr Kell?"

Phelan looked into the mirror with red-rimmed eyes and nodded at the Precentor Martial. "Forgive me for not rising to greet you properly, but ..."

"No offense taken," Focht said, looking down at the mercenary's brutalized back. "I have seen worse wounds in my time, but never on someone still alive."

The Kell Hound managed a weak smile. "If I'd known it would hurt this much, I probably would have preferred to die."

Focht acknowledged the grim jest with a nod. "Those welts look bad now, but I think the scarring will be minimal."

Phelan nodded. "You know what they said at the Nagelring."

The older man's eyes focused distantly. "Yes, I do. 'Scars are the proof man can survive his own stupidity.' " His left hand rose to adjust his eyepatch. "Those words have taken on special meaning for me in the past twenty years."

The mercenary sighed. "I hadn't thought of it that way, else I might have arranged for Vlad to give me a lash across the face to remind me of how brainless I am whenever I look in a mirror."

The Precentor Martial steepled his fingers. "Some men see such marks as proof of their own immortality and infallibility. You would be intolerable if you allowed yourself that vanity."

The image of Tor Miraborg swam through Phelan's mind. Score one for the ComStar warrior."I learned long ago that I'm not infallible."

Focht watched him closely in the mirror. "You refer to your expulsion from the Nagelring?"

"You must know the story. You provided Ulric with a datastack on me ..."

"All that was included in the packet sent to me," the tall man said with a slight shrug, "but I didn't read it and deleted the explanation before giving it to Ulric."

"Why would you do that, Precentor? You obviously trained at the legendary Nagelring. I should think you would have relished the tale of my disgrace, just as others have." Phelan hesitated for a moment. "Or did you delete it so Ulric would find me more acceptable as a partner in crime?"

The older man smiled sagely. "I am not vain enough to want to see you suffer for the vague judgments of a Cadet Honor Board. Besides, I would have preferred that the Khan choose me as his advisor. In point of fact, I deleted that part of your record because I believed the story should not be told if you did not want to tell it."

"Thank you." Phelan closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again to meet the Precentor Martial's steel gaze. "It's a simple story, really. A friend of mine, someone I'd grown up with, graduated from the Nagelring as I entered my deuce year at the Academy. DJ—Donna Jean Connor—got a commission from the Fourteenth Lyran Guards and was posted to Ford. She was always good with book learning and regulations—exactly my opposite in that respect—and her help kept me in the Nagelring during my plebe and trey years." He swallowed hard. "I guess I was lost without her there, but the holovids she sent always anchored me and kept me on the right track.

"Well, right before that nasty blizzard on Tharkad in '48, I got word from DJ's father that she'd been killed in action on Ford. With the information he gave me, I was able to crack the Defense Department's computer and get a full report on the incident. It appears that DJ walked her lance into an area where it shouldn't have been because her Hauptmann was giving orders straight out of a textbook. The Free Worlders must have the same textbook because their aerowing took one pass at the fire lance supporting DJ's recon advance, then came back and ripped her people to pieces."

Phelan slammed his right hand against the head of his bed, then quivered when his back felt as though some creature was gnawing its way through him. His voice became hoarse with pain. "I went a little out of control, but it didn't reach a head until after the blizzard hit. The media were full of stories about snowbound folks, but the authorities had all us cadets out with 'Mechs to stop people from looting. When I heard a report of a group of school kids supposed to be trapped by an avalanche, I decided to help get them out. I rigged up the stuff needed to increase the pick-up on a Scorpion'sexternal microphones, and then headed out northeast of Tharkad City."

The Precentor nodded. "Into the Sigfried Glacier Reserve?"

"Yeah. I got to the area where their air-bus had gone down and started the computer filtering out everything but human heartbeats and the valve pattern sounds of a Hochbaum fusion engine. Within four hours, I found them and had dug down to where they were. I shunted heat from the 'Mech's fusion engine to the outside to keep them warm, and I gave them the food I'd brought. I radioed for help because some of the kids had been badly hurt when the avalanche wrapped the hoverbus around a dolmen, but a new storm front came through and kept all medevac craft grounded."

Focht frowned. "Wait ... now I remember something of this story. Most of them survived, but the children and others who'd been hurt did not. The cadet rescuer wasn't named in the story, but I remember his action was criticized because he did not bring proper medical supplies and personnel with him—resulting in the deaths."