"We were outside a small nothing village, across the channel and three hundred miles southwest of here. Radisson went into town with El-Navar looking for some drink and-" he watched Kit's reaction "-female companionship. They went into a tavern called the Double Shiner. Everybody knows about the place, an old standby for wayfarers in those parts. They should have been safe there. We were forty miles from any enemies, forty miles from our last job."

"But there had been signs," ventured Droopface solemnly.

Kitiara was so surprised to hear the sad-faced mercenary speak so adamantly that she nearly dropped her tin cup into the fire. Ursa, reaching over to pour himself a mug of tea, nodded at Droopface's comment.

"Yes. Somebody or something had been following us. I don't know who or why. There were strange birds in the sky and unfamiliar noises at night. I thought it was wiser to stay clear of people, stick together. But Radisson wanted to get away and have some pleasure, and El-Navar said he would go with him." He paused, frowning. "They ought to have been safe. Radisson can outwit most regular people, and El-Navar has the strength of a half-dozen."

"What happened?" asked Kit anxiously.

"Don't know," Droopface shook his head ruefully. "Don't know."

"When they didn't come back," continued Ursa, "we went into town to look for them. The Double Shiner had been leveled-destroyed. It was almost as if it had been uprooted and ripped to bits and sucked away somewhere, so that the ground was littered with its remnants.

"Everything was gone but its center post, from which dangled Radisson's body. He wore no clothing. His eyes had been dug out, and over his body were scribblings done with a knife point. A thousand little cuts and holes and markings all over his body."

"And El-Navar?" Kit tried to keep her voice even, while in her mind flashed memories of the sinewy Karnuthian. She remembered his deep, mellifluous voice; the hair like writhing snakes; the gentleness of his touch; the power of a panther that lay dormant within him.

"Gone too. Vanished. No evidence of his death or any clue as to his whereabouts. Colo there-" he indicated the female mercenary, preoccupied with her soothsaying "-is an able tracker. She could find nothing."

"Even if the townspeople could have told us anything," added Droopface, "they wouldn't. They were too afraid to talk-There was a long silence after that remark. Ursa swirled his tea. Droopface got up and went over to his pack, preparing to go to sleep. Colo gave Ursa a sharp look, then went to her horse and unstrapped her bedroll.

"As I was saying," said Ursa, ignoring Colo and taking one last sip of his tea before tossing the dregs on the ground, "our luck is changing. We haven't encountered any difficulty for weeks, and now we happen upon you." He flashed Kitiara one of his old brisk grins. "Grown up some and even more skilled as a fighter than I remember."

She had to grin back.

"It will be good to work together again," he finished.

"What's the job you mentioned?"

"It's not much of a job, but it'll bring a fair price. A slig is terrorizing a community just forty miles north of here, someplace called Kimmel."

"What's a slig?" asked Kit.

"Oh," Ursa laughed. "A slig is a rare experience. You'll find out soon enough. Here-" he kicked some twigs and branches onto the fire "-you take first watch. Wake me up to relieve you."

She noticed that he made up his bedroll close to Colo, who was already asleep.

For a day and a half they progressed northward into hill country, following scrawled directions that Ursa fished out of his pocket and consulted at intervals. They gravitated to lesser roads and dirt paths until, in the late afternoon of the second day, they came to a rushing river that they followed upstream in the direction of a small farming village named for the leading family, Kimmel.

The late autumn days were blustery, and the nights at this altitude increasingly cold. But the weather stayed dry, and Kit liked the snap of early winter.

Kitiara had to admit she felt strangely comfortable being with Ursa and Droopface again. Ursa had his swagger back, and she enjoyed his bragging about exploits. Droopface, with his long, inscrutable silences, reminded her of poor, inarticulate Strathcoe; he had become just as companionable, too. Kit wondered about the fate of El-Navar, but she couldn't coax either of her old partners into talking about the Karnuthian any more.

Colo was a strange sort, militant and masculine in some ways, but flirtatious and feminine in others. She seemed to carry no grudge against Kitiara. The first night on the road she performed a wild dance by the firelight that made them all hold their sides for laughing. She always rode in the lead, because Ursa said she had eyes that could see far into the distance.

The place where they eventually arrived was less a town and more a number of hill farms that had clustered together for community and protection. The locals had pooled their resources to hire mercenaries to slay a slig that had been roaming the area, stealing food and terrorizing the women at night. Some citizens had tried to battle the slig, but this one was a ferocious rogue male, detached from his tribe. He was tricky to track and even more perilous to corner.

It was in Vocalion that Ursa heard the good people of Kimmel had chipped together and were offering a fair sum, with proof of the creature's demise.

For an hour, the mercenaries met with representatives of the citizenry led by the constable, a cowardly fool who seemed eager to foist the responsibility for taking care of the problem onto someone else. Ursa presented his credentials, and they in turn affirmed the amount of the reward. The general whereabouts of the nuisance was well-known. The slig dwelled somewhere among the sandstone cliffs that

bordered the river, near where the forest ended.

That night Ursa and the others camped away from the town, as was their habit.

Ursa was in a gregarious mood. Around the campfire he told stories about the time he rode with a company of upright Knights of Solamnia, pretending to be one of them until he was drummed out of their regiment for his drinking and womanizing. Like a lot of his stories, you couldn't tell if this one was entirely true, but Kit laughed along with Colo and Droopface.

They made up their bedrolls early. Colo went off into the darkness to take first watch. Laying side by side on their blankets, Ursa and Kit stayed awake, passing back and forth a jug of local mead that had been bestowed on them by the grateful citizens of Kimmel.

"Sligs are tough kin of hobgoblins," Ursa told Kit, preparing her for the morrow. "Whatever you do, don't get in the way of its venomous spittle. The spittle can't kill you, but it'll burn your skin and make you wish you were dead. Their eyesight is poor in daylight, but their aim is good at night or in caves."

Eventually they drank the jug down to the bottom. The drunken Ursa made an emphatic point of telling Kit that the reward for killing the slig would be shared equally-four hundred pieces of gold, or one hundred pieces each. He was doing his best to make up for his past transgression.

The highland cold was harsh. Following Ursa's example, Kit pulled her blanket around her ears. As she was falling asleep Kit knew, even though she could only see his eyes, that Ursa was watching her with a roguish smile on his lips. His crooked smile was not so unlike her own.

The afternoon of the following day they rousted the slig from a tree roost along the forest edge. Colo had spotted its tracks and been stalking it since late in the morning. Kit had never seen such a thing. It was six feet tall with a horny hide of burnt-orange; a stubby tail; big, pointed ears; and a long, thin snout lined with wicked-looking fangs.