She could no longer see anything of the cat, who had gone to earth making itself invisible, its brindled fur one with the earth and the sun-browned grass. Again the girl heard and felt the impatient stamp of Boldhoof. Never had she longed so much for anything before as she wished she could communicate with the huge mare. These rogues had picketed her, but they could not guess the strength beneath that well-groomed hide. Perhaps a single sharp pull would free—

“The evil two-legs!” A flash of warning cut through her own thoughts sharply enough to immoblize her for a moment.

“Sooooo—” That word was drawn out to become the hiss of a serpent.

She turned her head unwillingly, still hoping against hope. Looked up. Dik had fulfilled his claim as an expert hunter. He stood there, his unsheathed sword gripped in his hand. Nancee knew the meaning of that threat. Dik could use his sword like a throwing knife. She had seen him win a handful of good silver bits doing just that. One swing and she would be pinned to the ground—and he could place that unwieldy spear exactly where he chose.

“Lady of the House of Bradd!” He made the greeting a jeer, and in his eyes she could read exactly what she knew would be there. “You have been overshy. But all is well now. Come to me!” His soft slur of speech ended with a snap like that of a whip.

She could be a fool and defy that order—and lose everything by being mishandled and perhaps even thrown down to those stinking men huddled around the fire. Or one could rise as Nancee did now, her attention on Dik, wary and waiting for his next move.

“Lady of Bradd”—again his leer and the tone of the words was like a blow—“it would seem that you come late to our meeting. But that you do come is as it should be.” He spoke without the slur of the frontiersman, the garbling of an underling; he might be some man of name in exile.

“There is no Bradd,” she found her voice to say flatly. “As you well know. Roth had no kin land anymore.”

“Which is the same as saying that you are also landless— but that you are lordless is a different matter, my lady. The man who takes you will have his rights, as you are heiress now and there is more fighting in the east. Even as we stay here there could be a reversal of all which has happened and you could call yourself duchess and first lady in Bradd.”

Her lips twisted in a grimace. “That will never be.” “Ah.” He was smiling, a smile which carried with it the chill of deepest winter. “ ‘Never’ is a word no true man takes for surety. Come!” Again that snap of order, this time fortified with jerk of the swordblade, beckoning her to him.

She rubbed one wrist against the other, remembering her plan bom out of the wildest fear at the riverbank. In that camp there would be other weapons than her own teeth. Again that death lay beyond was nothing to fear—life, on the other hand, was promised enduring horror.

Nancee took two steps farther and then was rocked by the message which flashed into her head:

“Two-legs, why do you what this piece of stinking guts and evil thought orders you?”

The cat! “Go,” she found wit enough to return, watching Dik. If the renegade had any mindspeak the creature from the prairies might already have brought a sad fate upon itself. “Go—this one is a killer-of-all, men and animals both. He would wear your hide with pride. Go before he comes to hunt you!”

“There will be a hunting, yes, a good hunting!” The answer seemed as loud to her as if the prairiecat had shouted it aloud in human-formed words. “Be you ready for that hunting.”

She took another short step. There had been no change in that twisted leer with which Dik was regarding her. She was almost sure that he had no mindtouch ability. “Go before he discovers—”

There was no answer—-nothing she could touch which suggested that the cat was still within range. So, for all its confidence in battle, it had indeed followed the prudent way she had suggested. But deep in her there was another small taste of death—she was wholly alone.

“Lookit, Ed. Th’ boss has him th’ ladybird, all nice and easy!” One of the men by the fire had arisen and was staring upslope at them.

“What yuh do now, boss? Bed her and make yurself High Lord—’ ’

“What I do is my concern.” Again the arrogance of a high-kin man, and something in the note of that wiped all the gap-toothed smiles from the faces of his followers.

Nancee’s chin went up a fraction. She might be wearing clothes stinking from months of travel, her hair hanging in wet tails about her head and shoulders, but the manners of the great hall were hers, and now they provided her with a kind of armor, keeping away the horrors which might still face her here.

She had only one thing to depend upon—Dik would seem to have some ambitions laid back in the war-torn country from which she and Uncle Roth had been fleeing. It was true that if Bradd still held any power the man who wed her could sit in the high seat there. But that anyone would now fasten on such a thought made her weigh Dik’s plans the lighter. There was nothing left in the once-rich land which would be worth even a clipped silver piece now. Yet it was still this belief she sensed in the renegade which gave her any kind of a chance.

Without looking back over her shoulder she spoke again:

“Kehlee of the Peaks squats in the ruins of Bradd—unless he has swept the land of everything, even sold our people to slavers. Do you go up against Kehlee’s squadron with this army of yours?” From some inner strength she produced that same flat tone which denied him any thought of having imprisoned more than just her body.

“We shall see.” He did not sound as if he had any fears of her dismal suggestion being truth. “Harz, over with you and let the lady sit there.”

The man directly before her did move and with a will, which suggested that Dik ruled his own following if he did not play overlord in the east. Nancee seated herself with the same sweep of skirts she would have used back in the House of Bradd. Dik had returned his sword to its sheath; now he made a gesture, and the others of his noisome force shuffled away, allowing him good room to seat himself not too far from his captive.

He now held to her part of a dry and crumbling journey cake, one end of which was covered with thick grease. “Eat!”

She longed to lean forward and throw it into his face, but she ate, the rancid taste giving her queasiness.

“You are wiser than that meat over there.” He spoke clearly, as if determined to make her see the very depths into which she had fallen, perhaps thinking so to cow her further as he gestured to the tangled bodies at the other side of the hollow. “I think we shall deal well with one another.” Now he reached into a saddlebag and brought out a length of dark dried meat, from which he cut a mouth-shaped piece, flipping it into his open jaws with a turn of the knife.

The knife had been riding in his boottop. Nancee made note of that. Then she heard the heavy stamp of Boldhoof’s foot. The Northhorse—if they were lean of loot this outlaw force had at least that bit of luck—there was also what rode in the two panniers. Those had not been loosened from their pack across the mare’s broad back before the raiders had struck.

Metal, always good for sale to the skillful smiths of the Horseclans—some of it dug with her own hands when their small party had chanced upon one of the old ruins before they had joined the wagon train, that train where Dik had enough interest with the wagon boss to get them cut off and left behind, ripe for his taking.

“Two-legs—”

That voice which she imagined was gone with its owner when she had been taken captive again sounded in her head. There was no change in Dik’s expression as he watched her.

Dared she believe that she was the only one here that the prairiecat could reach?