Ar’tor dried his eyes and looked up into his brother’s square, somber face. “Uncle is dying, isn’t he?”

Karls nodded soberly. “It is the insect that the Flatlanders call fireworm. It is no native of the hills. Someone introduced it into his bedding. Someone has killed him. We must find why.”

“And who,” Ar’tor said, mind racing.

“And who.”

The two of them sat together on the steps outside the house, listening to their uncle raving into the tree, until the sun dropped below the western hills and the torches of night were lit.

They did not have long to wait for their answer.

The main gate rattled, and a low, booming voice carried across the Hollow, above the thin, keening wind. “Entrance! You give me entrance, by the Code of the Hills.”

Curious, Ar’tor hefted his short spear and stood. Karls broke into a run, and Ar’tor followed as best he could.

“And who are you?” Randii challenged in return.

“Tluman Carpter, and his Huntmaster Carraign,” the voice answered.

“And who are you to invoke the Hillcode?”

“Warchief of the Steelteeth.”

“Lying dog. Old Keeshan is head of the Steelteeth.”

With a loud and vulgar laugh, Tluman shouted, “Aye, that he is!” Something sailed over the gate, landed in the dirt, spinning to a stop near the fire.

Even from where he was, Ar’tor could see the glint of Keeshan’s metal-capped teeth.

“Fair fight?” Randii muttered.

“Fair fight. The old man’s rules. 1 challenged fair and square. He lost. Now 1 be head of the Steelteeth, and no man opposes me. 1 have business! Open.”

Randii cursed vilely and swung the gate open.

The man who swaggered through was almost Syman’s size, but wirier. He wore furs across his shoulders that made him even more monstrous. The shadow he cast by the blazing council firepit was barely human. He dwarfed any other man in the village save Karls.

Accompanying him, carrying one of the short sturdy bows of the plainsmen, was the lithe, almost womanly figure of Carraign. Ar’tor disliked him at once.

Karls extended his arm to the burly Tluman.

“I am Karls, nephew of Syman.”

Tluman ignored the proffered arm. He was a hard-eyed man, his face crisscrossed with scars. Ar’tor had the feeling that some of those scars might have been ritually inflicted, perhaps at the hands of the barbaric Horseclans. He had heard things about them.

“I didn’t come here to palaver with infants.” He grinned, sizing up Karls and discarding him in a single moment. The rest of the Hollow had gathered, some twelvescore men and women, not counting infants and those too old and sick to move from their beds. Tluman scanned them quickly, his gaze returning to Karls. “Where is the man himself?”

Karls’s cheeks reddened at the insult. He left his arm extended for a few seconds, then lowered it.

“Indisposed.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.” Tluman’s voice oozed concern.

“He will be fine soon. In the meantime, you can deal with me.”

He grinned. “I’ve never gotten used to your system here. Where I come from, it is the sons who hold the reins when the father’s hands weaken.”

“No doubt why your northern kingdoms are so weak. They’re full of bastards. Only the mother truly knows whose blood runs in her child’s veins. Your sister’s children are more certain kin.” Karls pounded the butt of his spear upon the ground. “And I am not here to justify our blood customs. What is your business?”

Tluman swirled his skins about his shoulders, a flamboyantly large gesture. “I claim the rights of the ’Ginni Truce,” he answered. “I claim the right of personal combat with the chief of the Windrunners.”

“What grievance?”

“Old Cat,” he said.

Karls was genuinely puzzled. “What of him?”

“He lairs on your ground, and hunts in ours. We say you have been remiss in your duties. Long before now, his worm-eaten black hide should have been stretched in the sun! It is time a proper Huntmaster tracked and trapped the devil.” “Never. Our Steelteeth cousins might have won the right to hunt on our ground. But never at such insult, and never outsiders.” He regarded Carraign’s piercing violet eyes and oversized lashes. “I am certain your bed bitch has many night skills. He’ll never practice them here.”

Karls stood toe to toe with Tluman. Although shallower through the chest, he stood inches taller, and Ar’tor was heartened. “Now, let’s hear the truth. You did not cross the stream to discuss your flocks. Your challenge has nothing to do with Old Cat.”

Tluman grinned. “You’re not as dull as I thought.” He raised his brawny arms. “The whelp speaks the truth. I have no grievance,” he said. “And there need be no bloodshed. Listen to me!” He raised his voice now, and Ar'tor could hear the fox behind the bear. “People of the hills! Too long have your cattle been kept from fat grazing. Too long have your bellies been denied the spoils of good hunting. Down on the plains is food aplenty. I have been there! I know it!”

An old woman raised her voice from the shadows. “But what of the plains people? Fierce warriors they be. You know this for fact. You were once one, before they thrust you out.” His answering smile was warm and kindly, but for some reason Ar’tor had an image of the man ripping the head from a chicken and sucking the blood from its twitching body.

“Aye, and now 1 hunger to take back what is rightfully mine. People of the hills! I call you to come under my banner! Follow me, and my army! 1 will unite the hills. I will sweep these fierce, free people down and wash the plains in a river of blood. By Fire and Steel, this is my destiny, and nothing in heaven or earth can stop me.”

Ar’tor felt himself sway, not so much from the words themselves as from the power of the feelings behind it. This man was a warrior, and a great one. A man who had seen many battles, had charged on horseback to the middle of the fray, his great sword rising and falling, rising and falling, until the sun hid itself from the fury of men.

The image of Tluman standing triumphant on a battlefield, sword or spear lifted to the sky, flashed to mind with blinding clarity. For a moment Ar’tor imagined himself there with this man, his own hands running with blood, his back bent with the weight of silver and jewels.

He saw his people sway around him, pulled by the same dream, and Ar’tor shook his head desperately. Something was wrong. These images of death and rapine were not the product of his own mind. It felt as if someone had prized open his head, jamming alien thoughts and emotions into place.

Fully in Tluman’s grip, Ar’tor fought unsuccessfully to clear his head.

Ar’tor howled as he drove his short spear into the belly of a gigantic warhorse, then slitted the throat of its injured rider.

He laughed hysterically as the sky darkened with the smoke and flame of a hundred ravaged cities. He drank in the sweet, cloying smell of human flesh rotting in the sun. In a darkened cabana, he bent captive, helpless, butter-haired wenches over his silk-sheeted bed and . . .

"Hold!” Ar’tor’s vile dreamworld was suddenly punctured, and he sagged. He heard sobbing exhalations all about the fire, and knew that he had not been alone in his insanity.

“Hold7” Syman screamed. The Warchief of the Windrunners staggered down the path from his house. Gretcha and Rollif supported him, helping drag him foot by painful foot down to the council fires. Syman, dying with fever, his bones eaten out from under him, still possessed the strength of spirit to leave his deathbed and look Tluman in the eye, measuring him. He coughed, hawked painfully deep and spit something dark and viscous into the snow.

“Never,” he said. “Never will it be. You have your hatred for the Horseclans, who rightfully ousted you and your lover Carraign. I know! 1 have heard the story! You took a war captive, a young boy. To cut his throat would have been one thing, but the two of you used the body, and cut his tongue out that none might hear his cries in the night. They found his body a week later, in a ravine. Your own men turned against you.”