The girl looked straight at Ptol. Her words were just audible to Blade. «Where were you last night, Ptol?»

A sigh went up from the assembled priests. Ptol regained his composure. He made a sign and a priest hurried forward with a quill and an inkpot. Ptol stepped close to the bound girl. «You will sign now? Or shall I sign for you?»

Her lips curled. «You must stoop to forgery? Poor Ptol. How full of terror your fat carcass must be.»

He thrust the document at her, and the quill. «Sign! If you sign I will give you a drug-you will feel no pain.»

She spat at him. «Liar! I have seen your mercy before. You can hardly wait to see me suffer. I will not sign.»

Ptol reached quickly and touched her hand with the quill, then scrawled something at the bottom of the parchment. He looked about at the gold masks. «You are witnesses. She touched the quill and I write for her. She admits her guilt. She gave false counsel. She was in the pay of Hectoris. She opened the sewer gates in the night to admit his armies.»

The naked girl struggled against her chains. Her lovely features were twisted in fury. «Liar-liar-liarl You accuse me of your crimes.»

Ptol pointed a finger at the priest who held the blazing steel helmet in the tongs. «Let the punishment proceed. Let the white hot metal purify this one who has sinned. Let the flame scourge away her vileness as it burns away her hair and her flesh and her bone. The fire!»

The priest came forward, the long tongs extended before him. The helmet blazed white and red and threw off spark and coils of metal-smelling smoke. Two of the priests ran to the throne and, tossing a leather thong around the girl's slender throat, jerked her head back against the backrest. Her red mouth opened in a noiseless scream and her eyes begged. She arched and struggled in terror and hopelessness as the glowing hot mask of metal came closer and closer.

Richard Blade got quietly to his feet, sword in hand. Time to act. He calculated the odds-they were high but not hopeless. Fourteen of them. He had surprise on his side, and anger, and a mean determination that had been growing ever since he tumbled into the sewer. Blade knew himself as well as any man can know himself, and he was ready for a little blood letting.

Ptol raised a pudgy hand. «Burn her face away.»

Blade leaped from the shadows with a fearful cry, his face contorted and stained with blood and filth, a tall, oaken-thewed figure, a devil unleashed from the pit, brandishing a swift, shining and terrible sword.

He played the avenger role for all it was worth. Laughing madly, screaming invective, his white teeth glinting in the rough black stubble on his face, he slashed into them like a nightmare creature come to life.

«Junal Junal» Blade was bellowing at the top of his lungs. «I am come to protect and avenge you, goddessl Juna lives. Juna foreverl»

Three of the priests fainted out of hands Ptol let out a screech, then shoved the lean Zox in front of him to suffer the brunt of Blade's charge, whilst at the same time plucking a dagger from beneath his robe. Blade, being of a mind to spare nobody, sabered Zox, withdrew his steel, and went in pursuit of the fat little priest who was dodging around the throne.

Two of the black priests, flashing knives, leaped at Blade. He took the guts out of one and slit the other's throat with a backhand slash. By this time he saw what Ptol had in mind and knew he could not prevent it. Blade conceded reluctant admiration-Ptol might be fat, and an obscenity, but there was nothing wrong with his brain.

Ptol had his dagger at the girl's throat. She arched against her chains, staring wide-eyed at Blade in wonder and disbelief, as shocked by his terrible figure as were the priests.

Ptol pushed his dagger point into her tender flesh and bleated at the big man who menaced him with the bloody sword.

«Stay,» Ptol howled. «Come no closer or Juna dies this moment. If I am to die so will she-I promise you that, no matter who you are. Back. Back awayl»

The girl twisted against the dagger point, screaming at Blade. «Kill him-kill this vermin. Never mind me. I am Juna, I order you to do this. Kill him-kill himl»

Blade halted and lowered his sword. For a moment it was a standoff. He wanted the girl alive, as a hostage and a source of information-the femaleness of her did not at the moment enter into it and he did not like the way Ptol was leering. Now that his first terror was evaporating the man seemed almost smug. Blade was certain that beneath the golden mast the creature was smiling in anticipation. Why?

Blade played for time, thinking hard. The chamber was empty except for themselves, the two priests he had slain and three who had fainted. The others had all fled.

That was it! The priests would bring help. Not more priests, but troops. Ptol must have had them standing by all the time. They would be Samostans, of course, the soldiers of Hectoris who wore the device of the ringed snake and the motto: A is Ister.

Blade feigned bafflement, defeat. He rested the point of his sword on the stones near the helmet, still red hot and smoking.

Blade grinned at the fat priest. In a placid tone, as though they were discussing the weather over a cup of wine, he said, «Tell me, priest, what means the legend on the shields of the Samostans? Ais Ister? The words are most strange to me.»

Ptol's mouth dropped open. The bound girl stared at Blade and her thoughts were clear-her savior had gone mad.

The point of Blade's sword moved an inch nearer the helmet.

Blade followed with a tremendous lie. «I know your friends have gone for help,» he told the priest. One of the men who had fainted stirred and moaned. Blade moved to kick him in the head, then returned to his place. His sword point was now only six inches from the helmet.

«I am right-hand man and first captain to Hectoris,» said Blade. «I know that you wheedled a troop from him, Ptol, and that they are standing by. That changes nothing-I want the girl for my own. She is promised to me by Hectoris. I intend to have her and no misbegotten priests are going to damage her beauty until I have had my fill of it. Do you understand that, Ptol?»

Ptol's eyes blinked behind the golden mask. He was baffled. Blade moved his sword point again. It was nearly touching the helmet.

Ptol said, «I think you lie, stranger. Your very question gives you the lie. How is it that the chief captain of Heo-

toris does not know the meaning of the legend, Ais Ister? I Act for God? How is this?»

«I am an unschooled man,» said Blade calmly. He had the point of his sword under the helmet now. The scorch of metal was in his — nostrils. Blade made a slight movement with his left hand, signaling the girl to duck, get out of the way. Her glance signaled understanding.

Ptol could not resist being the pedant, the scholar who knew all the mysteries. He kept the dagger at the girl's soft throat, but he deepened his voice and spoke, in a voice so reminiscent of the classroom and of lectures that at any other time Blade would have laughed.

«Mmmmmmmm,» lisped Ptol, «it is possible, I suppose. The words are from the ancient and forgotten language. Only the greatest scholars can decipher and understand it. Hectoris himself, as I happen to know, lifted the mseription from the tomb of a king dead for thousands of years. Yes, it is not likely that a common soldier would-«

Blade whirled the smoking helmet on the point of his sword and hurled it at the little priest. To the girl he shouted, «Down!»

Ptol was caught off guard just long enough. In an instinctive attempt to save himself he leaped back from the throne. The girl flung herself down and to one side as far as her chains would allow. The helmet struck the throne just over her head and bounded high in the air. Blade was after it, covering the ten feet in one great bound, howling for Ptol's blood.