THEIR MASTER

Ga-Niru never had a chance. His stabbing spear was reversed in the position of toucou. The Brana-ma leader swung his war club in a lethal arc that ended by crushing the Ashak-ai's skull. The explosion of violence had been immediate. The two parties had hit head-on in the middle of the river in a flurry of clubs and spears. AD ideas of toucou were forgotten in the howl of rage. They killed and went on killing. At the end, the surviving Brana-ma had turned and run, but they had taken the remaining mounts with them. The Ashak-ai probably could have claimed some kind of moral victory, but by that time there were only three Ashak-ai on their feet.

As the Brana-ma fled the field, the yellow-painted leader reared his mount and screamed back at them. "You think that this is Brana-ma madness, Ashak-ai? This is the madness of the wind." He'd thrown back his head. "Sniff the air, Ashak-ai! Don't you smell the madness on the wind?"

The words still rang in their ears. No one spoke. No one had the words. Harkaan, Valda, and N'Garth had taken the lives of men, and their shame was immeasurable. They could hardly face each other. They had no idea how the madness had come upon them or why the Brana-ma had triggered such a deadly combat. In the grip of shock and pain, they were beyond even grief. Their only course was to retreat into what they knew was their obvious duty. First they checked that their comrades were really dead. There was no good news in this operation. Two of the fatally injured mounts, though, still panted and thrashed in pain. The young men had to finish these creatures, to whom they were almost as close as they were to their own families, by hacking through their thick scales with glassknives until they hit a crucial vein. The work was agonizing and dirty. If more of the hunting party had survived, they would have felt bound to remain until all the bodies were buried, even those of the enemy. As this was plainly impossible, they simply dragged their own dead into a single pile and lit thornbush fires at regular intervals around it. The fires would keep the teroes at bay for a while.

With their obligations to the dead at least minimally discharged, they seated themselves in a small, close circle. One by one, they removed the feathers from their topknots and took off their chest pieces. They were no longer worthy of these hunters' tokens. N'Garth had brought the spirit bag from Ga-Niru's fallen mount. He took out the painting sticks. With slow, methodical strokes, they painted their bodies. The design was stark and unmistakable: one-half black, one-half white. It was the symbol of the ultimate outcast. It identified them as killers of men. Harkaan and Valda sat very still while the paint dried on their skin. N'Garth had removed the prayer levers from the spirit bag. As he worked them through the complex sequence, rocking backward and forward where he sat, he recited the pattern of the dirge. The acrid smoke from the fires drifted around them. Finally they stood and, still without a word exchanged, started the long walk back to the village and whatever fate would await them there.

It took them twelve long days of thirst, hunger, guilt, and horror to walk back to the village. By the sixth day, even their grim determination had started to fail. They couldn't shake off the feeling that something was very wrong on the high plains. They were stumbling through the worst drystorm that any of them could remember. They had never seen the land and the sky in such furious conflict. The winds screeched and tormented, tearing and twisting the dust into shapes of tortured demons. Were they the dead demanding burial, even after the prayers and the lighting of the fires? Colored lightning split the sky, and in the brief periods when the wind let up, it was possible to see even more monstrous storms on the horizon. Was the world being consumed by violence? Through the dust, the moons appeared blood-red. More and more, it looked as if the insane Brana-ma leader had been right. There was a madness on the wind.

The storm still raged when they reached the village. It swirled dust between the lodges and tore at the coverings. The three expected that their approach would go virtually u

Within the village, a shock awaited them. More than half the tribe was standing in the open, buffeted by the wind and scoured by the dust, exactly in the center of the i

The chief of the elders, Exat-Nalan-Ra, regarded the three arrivals with eyes that were impossible to read.

"You have killed men."

Exat-Nalan-Ra's face was wrinkled and brown, a miniature representation of a battered arid landscape. The feathers that held his topknot in place were nothing more than worn bare quills. The gray hair itself was so thin that it almost seemed as if the violent wind would pluck it out by the roots. Exat-Nalan-Ra's body, wrapped in a dirty white robe, was equally ancient and frail, and he leaned heavily on his ceremonial staff, but the fathomless depths of his icy blue eyes hinted at the power that made him the unquestioned leader of the Ashak-ai.

Harkaan nodded. "We have killed men."

"Such a thing has not occurred in generations."

It was as if Exat-Nalan-Ra already knew about the battle at the river.

"It was not of our own choosing."

"That does not change the color of the blood on your hands."

Harkaan looked down at the ground, avoiding those cold blue eyes.

Exat-Nalan-Ra's right hand, the one that held on to the staff, trembled slightly. "You have no answer for that?"

Harkaan raised his head and reluctantly met the penetrating gaze. "I have no answer."

Exat-Nalan-Ra's attention moved on to N'Garth and Valda. "You have no answers either?"

They looked equally uncomfortable.

"We have no answers."

"Unless it was the madness of the Brana-ma."

"It's a terrible madness that costs a simple hunting party all but three of its number," the elder said.

"Their leader already wore the paint of the insane."

"So you blame it all on his madness?"

"He howled like an animal."

"And you felt no part of this madness? You only defended yourselves against it?"

All three hesitated. The eyes of the tribe were on them, and they felt naked. Harkaan finally found his voice.

"I felt it."

Harkaan felt himself in the grip of a dull, exhausted recklessness. The wind still tore at them, burning their skin and turning their eyes red and raw. With every gust, Exat-Nalan-Ra visibly swayed. Harkaan was slipping past the point where he cared what the tribe's elders intended to do with him. for them, and now they seemed to be receiving an odd respect.