He told the Russian Coordinator the orders for the Russian officer. In a very gingerly, alert fashion they began to strip the Brigantes, going over their monkey skin uniforms for knives and concealed weapons, which abounded.

They were in the process of tying the descendants of the long-ago mercenaries when Captunk Arf Moiphy pleaded, “You min ufl attembt to my wounded?”

Jonnie let him go ahead. Moiphy jumped up, grabbed a heavy club, and pounced on the seven wounded before he could be stopped. With expert swings that landed crushing thuds on their skulls, he killed them.

Smiling and gratified he threw down the club and turned to a Russian so his hands could be retied.

"Thanunk you,” he said.

Bittie MacLeod, carrying a blast rifle as tall as himself, followed along behind Sir Jonnie into the main Brigante encampment.

Sir Jonnie had sent him back twice, but wasn't the proper place of a squire to follow his knight with his weapons into a place of danger?

And Bittie admitted to himself that it did look dangerous! There must be twenty-five hundred or three thousand of these people scattered around this clearing deep in the forest.

They had landed at the top edge of the open space. The prisoners– ooh, how they had stunk up the ship!– had been held in a lump in the big marine attack plane, well separated from their weapons, and when they landed, the prisoners had been put on the ground first. Then Sir Robert had looked over the place and made some defense dispositions to cover their possible retreat as was proper for a War Chief.

Bittie had taken the opportunity of persuading Sir Jonnie into some dry clothes– all you had to do was touch him and the water splashed. The Russians had not been idle over at the dam, and seeing all this rain, they had cut up some camouflage cloth and made rain capes.

It had been hard to get Sir Jonnie to pay attention and take care of himself, to get some food down and change clothes. But Bittie had done it. He'd clasped up the rain cape with a badge with a red star on it and gotten Jonnie's dry shirt belted with his gold buckled belt and had found a helmet liner with a white star on it to keep the rain off him, and all in all, under these circumstances, Sir Jonnie looked pretty presentable even in this rain.

Sheets of water were marching across the wide clearing full of people. Somebody had cut down an awful lot of trees and burned them sometime past. The blackened stumps stood all about. A crop was half-grown but these people were running all about trampling it, a thing you shouldn't do to crops.

Bittie looked about him through the rain. These creatures did not fit into his sense of fitness of things. He had read quite a bit in his school– he liked the very old romances best– and he hadn't ever encountered anything like this!

There were no old men or old women. There were quite a few children in various bad, unhealthy conditions-potbellies, scabs on them, dirty. Shocking! Didn't anyone properly feed them or clean them up?

Men they passed gave them a funny salute with a raised finger. Ugly, contemptuous faces. Faces of all colors and mixed colors. And all dirty. Their clothing was a kind of joke of a uniform, and not worn with any style, just sloppy.

They seemed to speak some strange kind of English like they had oatmeal in their mouths. He knew he didn't talk really good English, not like university men such as Sir Robert, nor as good as Sir Jonnie. But anybody could understand him when he talked and he was trying to improve so that Colonel Ivan's English, which he helped him with, would be good. But these people didn't seem to care if the words even got out of their stinky mouths. Bittie almost bumped into Sir Jonnie, who had stopped in front of a middle-aged man. What language was Sir Jonnie using? Ah, Psychlo! Jonnie was asking something and the Brigante nodded and pointed over to the west and said something back in Psychlo. Bittie got it. Sir Jonnie didn't want to know anything, he just wanted to see whether the Brigante spoke Psychlo. Clever!

Where were they headed? Oh, toward that big lean-to that had a leopard-skin-sort-offlag on a pole in front of it. Bittie saw they had been following the prisoners who were still under guard, probably being taken to their chief.

This was a pretty awful kind of people. They simply halted wherever they were, right in the path, and relieved themselves. Awful. Over there a young man had thrown a girl down and they were...yes, they were! Fornicating right out in public.

Bittie turned his head away and tried to purify his thoughts. But the direction he turned showed him a man making a child do something unspeakable.

He began to feel a little ill and walked much closer to Sir Jonnie's heels. These creatures were worse than animals. Far worse.

Bittie followed Sir Jonnie into the lean-to. How the place stank! There was somebody sitting on a tree trunk they had built the lean-to over. The man was awfully fat and was yellowish with the yellow that Dr. MacKendrick said was malaria. The folds of the man's body made deep seams of dirt.

He had a funny cap on that must be made out of leather; it had a peak in front; there was something set on it-a woman's brooch? some kind of stone– a diamond?

The creature they had captured, Arf, was standing in front of the fat man. With a fist beat on his chest, Arf was making a report. What was he calling the fat man? General Snith? Wasn't "Snit" a Psychlo common name? Wasn't “Smith” the common English name? Terrible hard to tell with that oatmeal accent. The general was chewing on a haunch of something and didn't seem much impressed.

Finally the general spoke: "Didjer gitcher serplies? The sulphur?”

“Well, no,” Arf said and tried to tell it all again.

“Didjer bring bock yer stiffs?” the general said. Stiffs? Stiffs? Oh, bodies!

This "captunk" Arf seemed to get a bit scared and back up.

The general hurled the haunch straight at him and hit him in the face with it! "Howjer oxpect ter eat, den!” screamed the general. Eat? Stiffs? Bodies? Eat? Their own dead?

Then Bittie looked down at the thrown “haunch” that had ricocheted toward him. It was a human arm!

Hurriedly Bittie got out of there and got back of the lean-to and was very sick at his stomach.

But Sir Jonnie found him in a moment and put an arm around his shoulders and wiped his mouth with a bandana. He tried to get a Russian to take Bittie back to the plane but Bittie wouldn't go. The place of a squire was with his knight, and Jonnie might need this blast rifle among these horrible creatures. So they let him continue to follow.

Sir Jonnie looked into the lean-to in the edge of the trees and seemed very interested, and Bittie looked and saw a very old, very battered instruction machine like the pilots used to learn Psychlo, and this seemed to mean something to Sir Jonnie.

Who were they looking for now? The rain was coming down and these people were racing around and the blast rifle was very heavy and getting heavier. Oh, the Coordinators!

They found them in another lean-to, a pair of young Scots...wasn't one of them a MacCandless from Inverness? Yes, he thought he recognized him. They sat there, soaking wet even under cover, their bonnets like mops. They looked pretty white of face.

Sir Jonnie was trying to find out how they got here and they were pointing to a pile of cable– dropped by a plane.

So Sir Jonnie told them they'd better leave with them and they were saying no, it was a Council order to bring these people back to the compound in America, and even though the transports were overdue they had supposed it was trouble for the Council to be finding enough pilots for the lift.